Patrick Rothfuss on dialogue

[Gary Compton]

Agents and editors have their own individual tastes, just like anyone else, and their own personal prejudices, so we should never regard their words as though they were Holy Scripture.

Although if they point out something in your work that they don't like, it may just be that you aren't doing it well enough to win them over.

(Which can't be the case with Hex's similes and metaphors, because hers are usually wonderful.)

I love similes nearly as much as a US cruise missile targeting Saddam Hussain's hairy backside. A simile I once used with the pre-requisite "like," that a certain editor asked me to remove. Coughs...

I did in the interest of being better!

 

[Laeraneth]

"Dialogue is harder to write. Dialogue takes longer to write. Dialogue takes more words. Dialogue takes more space. But it seems like it's faster, and quicker for the reader to read."

Just requoting that for my own ease mostly and to make sure I'm actually referring to the first post for once

I'm much less experienced at this writing lark than most of the people who have posted above me, but I feel that dialogue is the trickier part for me
I suspect that it's a lot to do with the style of writing, if you're writing from the perspective of the characters (whether it's third or first person) then the voice of the character and their choice of dialogue becomes a focus for understanding their motivations and feelings.
One of my biggest issues when I'm writing is the concern that all the characters speak with my voice. When I'm properly 'flowing' this doesn't seem to be a problem, but I find that the less 'involved' bits of the story end up with character voices seeming quite similar if I'm not careful.

As such, a large amount of my editing and revision seems to come down to subtly changing and rewording how my characters talk, to try and make sure the WAY they talk fits their nature, rather than just what they're saying. (or indeed, not saying )

So... I agree, but I might say instead that dialogue is harder to get right, takes longer to get right, and needs a lot more words written, removed, and rewritten, before it is right.

 

[HareBrain]

I'm a bit like that, Laeraneth. I can tell, I think, that my characters have their own voices, but what makes me panic a bit when I think about it is that I can't actually describe how they differ. My strongest evidence that they do differ is that a couple of times, I've kept a stretch of dialogue but swapped one of the characters, and suddenly lines that felt right before felt wrong, and I've had to make a lot of subtle changes. But I've not been able to say "this character is X, therefore I'll need to make the dialogue more Y". It can all add up to a vague sense that I'm not sure I know what I'm doing.

 

[Bowler1]

If you create and visualise your character then they will take on the dialogue you need. I have one character that does like the sound of his own voice, clever too, so he uses words I have to look up just to make sure I have the meaning right. I have another, who has some anger management issues and is all male and who also happens to swear – I don’t need to look up any of his words. These are the extremes, but each writes differently as I visualise them.

After reading what I wrote, the key word is visualise. The rest should follow. Wisdom from my happy yellow head - which clearly, should inspire confidence.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

When I was first getting serious about my writing and I was writing the first draft of "The Green Lion' (which later came to be a trilogy instead of the short novel I had originally envisioned), there were two characters who were basically there to be scenery in the first part of the book and to help the main characters break into a castle about 2/3 of the way through. They were brothers, and so interchangeable at that point, when I would write their dialogue I would literally ask myself who had the last line or two and assign the next line to the other one because it was his turn to speak.

Yes, it sounds silly (to say the least) now. But I was, as you can see, very, very inexperienced and there was no internet and therefore no sites like this one where I could have had my work critiqued. Not that I would have let anyone except my husband look at it anyway, because I was too sensitive about it, and I knew I wasn't ready to accept criticism gracefully. (I just bumbled along by myself for several years and countless drafts and learned everything the hard way by trial-and-error.)

Along about the third draft, the brothers had acquired enough personality that I'd often come on a line of their dialogue and realize that the character I had assigned it to would not have spoken that line. It didn't fit with the way he thought, or dealt with problems, therefore he wouldn't have said it. (Never mind whose turn it was!) I was also beginning to realize that clever lines that the other characters spoke in certain situations, lines I was much attached to, were simply out of character

For instance, one of the main characters was being particularly glib in his efforts to avoid being blamed for something potentially bad that had happened. It really wasn't his fault, but knowing that character as I did I finally had to admit to myself that for him to speak that way was completely, totally wrong. He was the kind of person, super-conscientious and inclined to blame himself whenever things went wrong, who would be wracked with guilt and try to take all the blame on himself. Which meant that I had to rewrite his dialogue and that particular line that I liked so much had to go.

It was not a pleasant lesson for me to learn, but it did make writing dialogue much, much easier in the future.