Home of author Eric Penz; seeker of lost history,
creepy cryptids, and all that lies beyond the horizon.
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Home of author Eric Penz; seeker of lost history, |
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Writing Believable Dialogue We spend so much of our lives speaking you would think writing dialogue would be as natural as opening our mouths to yet again share more of our infinite wisdom with our fellow man. Well let me illustrate how wrong that assumption is. “Hey—pass me that,” Doug said, wriggling a bony finger across the table at Steve. Steve glanced about the diner table crowded with condiments, napkin dispensers and unused coffee mugs. “What?” “That.” Doug spoke through another bite of omelet, still shaking his finger at the collection of condiments. “These eggs are as bland as the paint on these walls.” Guessing, Steve picked the Tabasco from the table. “This? I thought you were supposed to lay off the hot stuff.” “What are you, my wife?” Doug snatched the bottle and immediately began removing the red cap. “You only live once…” He stopped and glanced up at Steve. “Best to not tell Linda, though.” “Sure.” Steve reached for his water. “You know, Debbie and I are getting a divorce.” Hopefully you see the problem here. Ninety-nine percent of this dialogue is BORING. No reader will, or at least should, put up with it. The last one percent, however, is NOT boring. Even in this day and age where divorce is commonplace, learning the details of the failure of someone’s marriage is anything other than boring. And this illustrates the objective when writing dialogue. Engage and intrigue the reader while moving the plot forward, and if you can relay a sense of the characters in the scene, the setting, and the stakes or emotions so much the better. If you were sitting next to Doug and Steve in this diner their conversation would be nothing but white noise in the background. That is until you heard the word divorce. That one word would get your attention. Why? Because a divorce implies conflict, drama and high emotional stakes. Like driving by a car wreck, hearing good dialogue is seductive, commanding us to stop and listen. And this is the trick of believable dialogue. Believable is not the same as accurate or realistic. Accurate dialogue is boring dialogue. Believable dialogue is actually believable not because it’s accurate but because it mimics only the parts of conversation that we hear and not those that we ignore. Believable dialogue is also written to relay the emotion of the characters, more than even in our own everyday speech. When you and I chat most of our emotion is communicated via non-verbals. Non-verbals don’t really translate onto the page, though, so the words or dialogue have to do double duty—communicate information as well as emotions. “Debbie’s divorcing me.” Steve stared into his glass of ice water as if it were a crystal ball just now declaring the doom of his thirty-year marriage. Doug set the Tabasco on the table, then pushed it away as his appetite evaporated. “Oh, Steve. I’m so sorry to hear that. But why, you two are high school sweat-hearts and…” Steve’s eyes rose from his glass, fixing on Doug’s. “She’s been cheating on me.” Doug swallowed a little harder than he wanted as he struggled to meet Steve’s gaze. “Come on, Steve. You don’t know that. Debra would never…” Steve dropped a photo on the table. The image turned Doug’s blood cold. “Steve. Oh, Steve, I can explain…” Setting his glass on the table next to the photo, Steve stood and walked out. Doug’s point of view elaborates on the dialogue, of course, but notice the difference than that above. Each line of dialogue is almost a line of action, like thrusts and parries thrown by each character. Emotion and action is relayed with each line. Therefore, and hopefully, each line is not boring. So when you write your dialogue, think action and emotion. And be sure to only write the parts of the conversation worth eavesdropping in on, keeping always in mind that believable dialogue is not the same as realistic dialogue. |
News Archive
July 26, 2006 Articles on the Craft
Crafting a Novel Articles on Cryptofiction
Conspiracy within Our Own Minds Articles on Lewis and Clark
A Violent and Untimely End for Meriwether Lewis A proud papa holds his first born. |
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