064: Creating Realistic Dialogue
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Creating realistic dialogue
Hi, friends, welcome to an episode on creating realistic dialogue. This is something that I did a training on in the blank page to book membership. And so I'm going to just hit a couple of points that I talked about in that longer training that we did in the membership, because this is an important topic. Dialogue is one of those things where if it's done well, sometimes you barely notice it, but it's done so well. And it seems so natural and so easy. But if it's not done well, it is so obvious, and it can really, really take you out of the story. That's something that I've noticed with reading that I've been doing lately, just reading for fun, where I've actually had a couple of books where it's like, the dialogue is, it's just so stiff. And it sounds so unnatural. That it really, again, it just takes me out of the story, it makes me realize it's like I sort of get shaken up and realize like, Oh, I'm reading a novel, I'm reading about these characters that don't exist. So yeah, this is this is something that's important, and realistic dialogue. And I mean, when we talk about doing this, so much of it is dependent on the character, characters are going to speak differently, they're going to talk differently, depending on a lot of different things. And we'll talk about that this in the episode. So it's worth spending some time to figure out who your characters are, what their mannerisms are the way in which they speak, not just the actual words that they're saying.
What I'm going to do in the episode here is just give you some points to think about some tips and suggestions for creating realistic dialogue. Before we dive into that, I do just want to say in addition, sometimes dialog is best to just get on the page and the first draft and not worry about very much like you can get the rough shape of the sentences down. But in the revision process is when you can really devote some time and attention to making sure that the sentences just flow, right that the words sound like something the character would say. So if you're in the drafting process, if you're still getting your first draft written, I would say keep this stuff in the back of your mind to be thinking about your characters. Ultimately, don't worry too much about this, which actually, that advice could apply a lot of to a lot of things in the first draft, because the focus is really just getting the words on the page. Then when you go back and edit, you can really shape them to be what you what you want them to be to make sure that everything sounds right.
My first tip is something that I've hinted at already, which is that the dialogue really needs to match the character. This is especially true if you have a novel with it, where there are a lot of characters who have speaking roles. And it's sort of like a an eclectic group or a diverse group, or people from all different walks of life, all different ages and backgrounds. Odds are those characters with all of those different experiences and different personalities, different ages, all that like they're going to speak differently. If you have a teenager in your novel, that teenager is probably not going to sound exactly like their grandmother in dialogue, right? So that's something to pay attention to. Now, you don't have to get too nitpicky with this. I mean, if you have a minor character, who has one or two lines in your book, you don't have to worry about making it sound like really unique and different from everyone else. But this is just something to keep in mind with different characters. Whereas if you have a if you have a novel where the main character and all of the other supporting characters with speaking roles in the book are around the same age, they come from the same background, and maybe they have the same job.
They're all kind of similar, like it's a group of friends, let's say who have similar lives, then sure those friends might sound the same. But even in that case, it's worth doing some thinking about what makes these characters different. Because I mean, I'll just take myself for example, I'm in my 30s I'm 36 and I have a lot of friends who are in my in their 30s as well like in their mid 30s Who who are married, who don't have kids who are writers, you know, I have friends who are very similar to me in a lot of ways. But we have different personalities, we express ourselves in different ways. We have different mannerisms, we have different traits. So, even in in real life, although we overlap a lot in terms of our identifying characteristics and life experience, and what our life looks like, right now, we talk differently, we, you know, we speak differently. So that's, that's important to consider, even if you have a novel where a lot of your characters are similar.
Tip number two, for creating realistic dialogue is, if you're not sure about a sentence, read it out loud. This is one of the best tips, the best hacks for making sure that something just sounds right. Again, there's a lot of there's a lot of this, it's really like, just kind of an instinctive knowing, like, if I were to say an awkwardly phrased sentence to you, or, say, if you were to read an awkwardly constructed sentence in a novel, you would probably be able to tell that something isn't right. It would just sound stiff, it would sound a natural, something, we just wouldn't be quite right with it. So if you have that feeling when you are writing dialogue, especially again, when you're in that revision process, and really tightening up that that dialogue that you've that you've already written, that's a really good place to read it out loud and see how it sounds and read it out loud as if you are that character, pretend that that this is, you know, being filmed, and you're playing the role and how does it sound. Another way to do this, instead of you reading it out loud, is to get like in Microsoft Word, they have the read aloud option, get the computer to read it and see how it sounds, it's probably gonna sound a little bit unnatural because there's AI technology and that voice doesn't sound exactly 100% Human, like something sounds a little bit off with it. So. But beyond that, just hearing the words out loud hearing the construction of, you know, whatever they're saying, Does it sound right or does something sound off?
Oftentimes, I have found with my own writing, and with clients writing that a lot of times when it just feels off, it's because it's too stiff and too formal. Like they are not using contractions, they are just have they have too many words jammed in to that sentence. So that's something to pay attention to as well. Now, if you are writing from the perspective of a linguistics professor, who is, I don't know a 65 year old woman who's incredibly articulate and thoughtful and accomplished and whatever, like, sure that character might not use contractions, I don't know, I'm just like pulling this out of my ass, but that character might not use contractions, right. So there are some cases where having a more formal way of speaking fits the character that's appropriate, it would not be appropriate for the character to use tons of slang and contractions and just a really, for them to have a really casual way of speaking. But in a lot of cases contractions help. And just really quick as a refresher, in case you're like, I kind of know what a contraction is, but not really. A contraction is where you take a firm a form of a verb and shorten it. So like, instead of saying, I cannot do that, you would say I can't do that, see an apostrophe. That's something that a lot of us do in real life, we tend to not say, I cannot, I cannot believe she did that. You would say, I can't believe she did that. Right. Um, okay, so another tip that I have for authentic dialogue is actually something that takes place outside of the actual dialogue itself.
Here's what I mean. If you have a scene where there's back and forth conversation between two or more characters, sometimes writers can get so focused on the dialogue that they forget everything else that's happening in the scene. This is sometimes referred to as talking heads, right? Where we have character a talking to character B, and all that's happening over a page, multiple pages, maybe even a chapter if you have a really long conversation is back and forth, back and forth. character says this character pieces this back forth, back forth, and there's no other action that's happening in the scene. Again, think of this is about realistic dialogue, right? Think about a conversation that you have had recently with your partner or your friends or your dad or someone coworker, someone. Odds are the two of you are not sitting down formally in a chair, looking at each other and then do and nothing else, besides talking for the duration of the conversation, I guess that could be the case, if it's a formal work meeting or something. But we gesture with our hands, we push our hair back behind our ears, we nod, we calm, we're doing other things while we talk, we're doing dishes, we're walking, we're scratching something, we're leaning down to pet the dog.
We're doing all kinds of things while we talk usually. Basically, your characters need to be doing other things as well. And where this gets interesting is this can be a tool that you use to provide clues about what's going on in the scene, and what the characters are thinking and feeling outside of what they're saying. So maybe the character is saying something very confidently to another character. All of their words are coming across as if they're confident, they're sure they're telling the truth. But then their body language outside of the dialogue is showing something completely different. They're not making eye contact, they're shifting around a lot. They're fidgeting, they're nervous not to say that those behaviors always indicate someone is not confident. But there, it can be interesting to create a mismatch between the body language and the behavior versus the dialogue, or sometimes what the character is not saying and what they're thinking in their head. So there are all of these cool things that you can do to flesh out the scene to fill in the gaps outside of what the characters are actually saying. And all of that has a huge impact on how the scene comes across how the conversation between these characters comes across. Because if you just have two talking heads that are back forth, back and forth, number one, that can get a little bit boring, but two, it can be hard to picture, it can be hard for the reader to like set the stage and if they have nothing else to grasp onto. And also it can just get hard to follow. If it's just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So keep that in mind when you're writing your scene.
Now something that I have to do often when I'm drafting is I will include the dialogue. And I'll include a little bit of action in there as well like in the conversation. But I often have to go back and add more in the revision process, because there's not much else happening. But again, that's okay. In the first draft, I'm just trying to figure out what are these characters saying? What what is the purpose of this conversation that's taking place, and then I can go back and add in another layer of complexity to it, and let the reader see other things that the characters are doing. Okay, so one, I'm going to give you a little bonus tip here. This could be a tip for pretty much anything that I talk about when it comes to writing. But this is this is very true with with writing dialogue, read, read other books, note how the characters are speaking, if they're using slang, if they're talking in an accent, if they're using jargon, how they're structuring their sentences, what they're not saying what they're doing, in addition to talking in the scene, pay attention to all of that, as a writer, not just a reader, and start noticing how different writers do this in different genres depending on what their writing style is like. And depending on the characters, that can be a really good way to start to hone. It's almost like honing your ear to be able to pick up on these things, even though you're reading it. It's a good way to sort of train your mind and train your ear to be able to pick up on what sounds right and what doesn't quite sound right.
All right, I hope that helps with dialogue. And thank you for listening.