Dialogue sharpening

J

john11

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HI and thanks for reading.

Do you have any tips for writing dialogue so all the different charcters do not sound all the same.

After searching around i have found:

1. some people use slang and contractions, while others abhor such a practise.
2. Some speak in short sentences, others in long winding ones.

I am not after adivce on the mechanism, more real examples if you could please.

Thank you.
 
I personally base dialogue on speech patterns of real people, it's easy then to picture how they would say something. You can also do it by giving them character traits that would directly influence speech e.g. private school education, however, it can be easy for this to fall into being cringey.

Just keep the dialogue tags to asked and said!!!
 
I try and get into their heads, as if I'm an actor inhabiting the characters. That helps me adopt their modes of speaking and linguistic tics -- their adherence to the rules of grammar or otherwise, where they put emphasis, whether they mispronounce words so say "nothink" instead of "nothing" or use Americanisms like "gotten" or Irishisms as in "your man" or they confuse words and speak in malapropisms. Also the words they use generally, whether short and Anglo-Saxon, or long and Latinate, and how direct they are in their speech eg blunt and to the point, or more polite and circumspect.

Think of the different people you know and make notes of what they say and how they say it, and see what differences there are between them.

If you're looking for a exercise to help you in this, try writing a dialogue scene between two people where one has eg painted something and the other is giving his/her opinion. Then at the end, swap the roles over, so the previous painter is now the critiquer. The two scenes should be markedly different.

Anyhow, although this touches on grammar, it's not really a grammar issue, so I'll move this over to Writing Discussion, where it might be seen by more people.
 
For me, the first step is to make the characters unique, then do as The Judge suggests and live inside a character's head to write his or her side of the dialog.

I'm a discovery-type writer, so what works for me is that whenever I introduce a new character, I also enter some details about the character on a story spreadsheet I maintain. Some ideas:
  • Give the character an interest outside the main story. A sports nut will use sports related phrases. A country boy or girl will use countyr-ish phrases. A military person will use military jargon, etc.
  • Is the person analytic or more free-spirited? The analytic person will describe things more precisely and use a lot of caveats. The more free-spirit will describe things more broadly.
  • Is the person quiet or verbose? The quiet character will tend to give shorter responses and stick closely to the subject. The more verbose character will give longer responses, probably repeat things, and tend to go off topic (and need to be reined back in).
I find it a challenge to switch between character mindsets in dialog. Even in a group setting, I limit most of the discussion to two characters. Then, I usually use the 'Watson' technique and have one character providing detail and the other doing little more than provide occasional one to three word prompts to keep the conversation going and to break up any monologs by the other character. Except, perhaps, at the beginning and end of the conversation, the questioning character will not display much in the way of a unique voice. I will concentrate on the voice of the primary speaker.

The downside that I have found is that I cannot write two different characters back to back. I need to stop, take a break, take myself out of the first character, and then insert myself into the second character's mindset. I do find this approach very enjoyable and the feedback I get from my writing group is that they feel the uniqueness of the various character voices (and I have gotten called out whenever they feel something I have written is not right for the character who said it).

I hope this gives you some ideas to try.
 
When it comes to major characters, I agree with the advice above.

For minor characters I have a little trick, which some might consider cheating. I simply base them on a real person; someone I know, or a well known public personality. That makes it easier to imagine dialogue, tone and mannerisms. For example, right now I have a minor character whom I see as Boris Johnson. When it is time for him to speak, I simply imagine how Boris would do it. His sentences are somewhat disjointed (which he believes is endearing), his vocabulary is varied, and he throws in latin sayings at every opportunity to show off. The point is not for the reader to notice what I am doing (although some might) but rather to make it easier for me to write the characterr and to make him interesting, believable and consistent. The fact that this minor character is a villain who gets his comeuppance is entirely irrelevant to this thread (but I thought I'd throw it in).
 
This would be more for a "starting point" than a long term practice, but I find it helps to actually say some of the speech out loud to see if it sounds different on your tongue. I was also told that when adding dialect or other ways of marking characters distinct is to do less than you think you need to. It is unfortunately easy to fall into absurdity when going for distinct
 
May i please have some examples of what you mean,

Many thanks
 
john11 said:
May i please have some examples of what you mean,

Many thanks
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So in my dialect I could write

Ach, would ye look at thon eejit, beefed to the oxters he is, the wee crathur.

But if I wanted it to still sound like here and he understood by people beyond the Ulster Scots community I’d write:

Ach, look at that eejit. He’s far too heavy, the poor wee lad.

Eejit and wee are key words here and relatively well known. They keep a touch of the dialect without overdoing it.
 
Jo Zebedee said:
Ach, would ye look at thon eejit, beefed to the oxters he is, the wee crathur.
Click to expand...
Ach, bit Ulster Scots is nae sae diffren fae the Doric, efter aw, ken.

And (code-switching), there you have one thing. Not everyone comes from the same place, or class, or caste, or background. So different languages, and dialects, and also speaking the language of your story as a second language. And lots of people code-switch between languages, or dialects, and to an even greater extent between formal and informal, professional and home.

If you have involvement with the military, you pick up slang and terms of reference which only make sense to others in the same job. You wouldn't use the same phrases at home. That said, the almost cliched military bearing and clipped tone does sometimes work its way into the personality, but it's usually small things which mark them out - like a seemingly frail and elderly person standing straight and using their long-lost parade ground voice to grab the attention of a crowd, or stop a bully in their tracks.

Likewise, lots of professions have their own vocabulary. Fishing boats in the North of Scotland, and the Northern Isles, had various traditions, often for luck, such as not mentioning the word 'wife', for it was considered bad luck to talk about home. And minister, or priest, was an absolutely forbidden word. So, they had euphemisms.

Someone who works out on a hill alone may be used to taking their time in speaking, or may be so glad of the company in the evening they never shut up. Two engineers who work in the same compartment might know what the other needs almost without words, or one might speak lovingly to the engine. Work their characters into their voices and actions rather than explaining them.

I hope some of that makes sense.
 
@Abernovo makes an important point. When I wrote the first Abendau book, @Teresa Edgerton said my dialogue rocked. I handed in book 2, all relaxed about that (single) aspect, and then she came back and told me the dialogue wasn‘t working. Meekly i asked why.
my characters had aged 10 years (not a spoiler, it’s in the blurb). They had new roles, which were more formal and visible. They weren’t the ragtag young people of book one. And, so, they would be more careful in their speech. They knew the power of words now.
also, Aber, thon Scots are nae tae far from here. We knae ye well.
 
>I try and get into their heads
This isn't just the key, it's all of it.

Finding examples of speech then trying to put different forms into the mouths of characters is to grab the stick by the wrong end. Dialog isn't the starting point, it's an end point (not the only one). First have your characters, then put them into situations and have them behave (some will say watch them behave, but my characters don't move unless I move them). In those situations they will speak.

It often takes several scenes with a character before I really settle on their patterns and tics. This is especially true when dealing with non-human characters, where I specifically don't want them to have a precisely human diction.

Then there are practicalities. Sometimes I've had a notion of a catch phrase or a way of responding that seemed reasonable, but in the actual writing it just never worked out. Could still be appropriate to the character, yet the sentences felt stilted or contrived. I just have to go with instinct there.

All that having been said, there are approximately a kajillion examples of dialog out there. Just read. Read a whole lotta bunches. If listening to people talk in real time works for you, that's fine. For me, since I'm writing, I find reading the written word to be more helpful to me as a writer.

And for all love don't write like a Scotsman. Nobody can understand them. <wink> also <gdr> because they have killer aim.
 
You asked for examples, so here are two paragraphs from one of my short stories. Examiner 3 speaks in a formal, professional style while Joe is more informal and emotional, with a little bit of slang. I think the contrast helps individuate the two characters. Here goes:

‘Yes,’ Examiner 3 chimed in. ‘Simple physiology is not enough. A quick glance at history is proof enough that brute, animal instinct often dominates even supposedly enlightened minds. A truer measure of humanity is found in how one interacts with other beings. Can you demonstrate, on both emotional and social levels, that you truly understand what it means to be human? Can you convince others that, appearances aside, you really are human? On this account, Joe, you have been found lacking.’

‘That’s a load of single-use plastic,’ Joe replied. ‘You never gave me a chance to convince anyone of anything. You locked me in here for two hours on my own and made me answer questions on a weird, antique screen that didn’t have any audio, video or voice recognition. I had to type my answers on a keyboard. Type, dammit! Who does that anymore? How can you expect me to show emotion when I’m plonking away at a keyboard full of randomly assorted letters? How can I be social when I can’t even be sure if any of you are really human?’
 
I realize that this isn't what you're asking, but I find myself gravitating toward books where the difference between the roles of different characters is so pronounced that it would be difficult to mistake who is speaking.

On the one hand, you have something like Narnia or the Boxcar Children, where the siblings might be discussing what is going on. And because they are all children, family and have the same experiences; what each of them have to contribute to a conversation is essentially very similar.

Then you have something like Bladerunner or Dune, where all the characters have different levels of authority within their spheres. Which character is speaking becomes clear because they have something important to say about themselves or about the other person that deeply reflects their differing status, background or role.


I prefer the latter because it means that every character is playing a unique role in the narrative and their dialogue furthers how they importantly affect the story. While I am less enamored with the former, as it means that the characters might lack much of a unique individual stake in the story (even if they get some later), and their conversation is being used to share exposition in dialogue format.

So I would suggest looking for signifiers of the difference between two characters in what they have to say (rather than how they talk): Who is at home vs. the visitor? Who wants something? Who is confused by what is being discussed because they are not yet privy to the information? Who is flirtatious? Who is an expert? Who is upset? Who can make threats? Who is likely to be scared?
 
Swank said:
So I would suggest looking for signifiers of the difference between two characters in what they have to say (rather than how they talk): Who is at home vs. the visitor? Who wants something? Who is confused by what is being discussed because they are not yet privy to the information? Who is flirtatious? Who is an expert? Who is upset? Who can make threats? Who is likely to be scared?
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This is good. When characters have different roles it becomes very easy to distinguish between them. There's a great short story They're Made Out of Meat which is pure dialogue without a single dialogue tag or any names or description. But you never get confused between the two characters because of the distinctive roles they play.
 
I think there's some confusion -- as your post immediately followed his, Swank, I think VRlass believed you were replying to the request for help with military jargon (hence VRlass's further post trying to clarify what was wanted) whereas you were in fact dealing with john11's original query about differentiating between speakers.

EDIT: two mods clarifying the situation for the price of one!
 
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