142: The Dialogue Deep Dive

 

Register for the live dialogue workshop happening Friday, August 23 at 1pm EST HERE. 

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the dialogue deep dive

Hello. Welcome to your big creative life. I'm Katie Wolf, thanks for being here. I'm recording this episode shortly after Tropical Storm Debbie came through the coast. And if you're listening to this and you live in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, any of the Carolinas, I hope you're doing okay and didn't have damage or flooding or anything. We had two days of a ton of rain in Charleston and downtown flooded very badly, which was not a surprise, because honestly, there are some parts of downtown Charleston that flood when there's like an inch of rain. So it's just it was to be expected, but it wasn't as bad as I think some people were fearing.

 

So that's great news, and we don't live downtown, so we were okay again. We just had heavy rain. Daycare was closed for three days, so we had Audrey home with us for three days, which is kind of challenging with working, but we made it work, and I'm just grateful. I'm grateful we were okay. We didn't lose power or anything like that. So Audrey survived her first I was gonna say hurricane. I guess it was a hurricane when it hit, when it made landfall, but, yeah, this is just something that you deal with living on the coast. And I didn't grow up here.

 

I grew up mainly in the Midwest, so this is, like, totally new for me. And actually, we did have a tornado. There were multiple tornadoes that touched down in the Charleston area, one of the days when one of the bands of the storm hit, which is crazy, like we got on alert that there's a tornado warning and so and it was like 1215 at night, Sam and I were dead asleep, so we jumped up and grabbed Audrey and went in the closet in our bedroom, and just hung out for a bit. But thankfully, it was the tornadoes were not, like right next to us or anything. So, yeah, it's crazy, the damage and everything. And what's wild about tropical storm Debbie, is how slow it was moving. It was moving at one point, like three miles an hour, which is like a walking speed. I mean, that's how slow the storm was moving, and they're saying that that's just going to continue. That's just going to be the norm, that storms are moving a lot slower because of climate change.

 

So this is a, this is a big thing that we'll be dealing with in Charleston and lots of places, obviously. But yeah, we are safe. We are good, and we're back to normal. It's back to the hot, humid, gross weather. Now I'm excited to talk to y'all about dialogue in this episode, because what we're talking about in this episode is a small component of what we're going to be talking about at the dialog deep, deep dive workshop. I'm doing a live workshop Friday, August, 23 at 1pm Eastern. That's happening on Zoom. It's 60 minutes, and we are going to cover so much good stuff. You can find information about what's included, how to register all that good stuff at the link of the description of this episode.

 

And yeah, if you're listening to this episode, and it's after the 23rd of August, I'm going to have a pre recorded version, or not pre recorded, I'm going to have the replay available for purchase. So if you still want access to it, but you missed the actual live workshop, that's fine. You could just purchase the replay. And if you're listening to this before August 23 and you're interested in signing up, but that time doesn't work for you. That's no problem. Everyone who signs up will get an email with the recording after the workshop. So you could just watch it when it works for you. You can watch it again if you do attend live. And I'm so excited, so I would love to see you. It's only $39 for the workshop. I have an agenda of stuff that we're going to cover, and then there's also going to be time. Going to be time for Q A at the end, so that you can ask any dialog questions that you have that we didn't cover.

 

I'm really excited about it, because dialogue is one of those things where my my belief about dialogue is that a lot of times when we're reading, we don't even notice good dialogue. It's like it just fades into the background, and it's part of the satisfaction of reading a good story. And it's like you almost don't notice it. You almost don't notice the intention in the work that the author's putting into the dialog, because it feels so natural and you. Could say that about a lot of story elements, but I think there's something, I think this is very, very true with dialogue specifically. But if you have bad dialog that is stiff, that sounds very unnatural, that's just there's something off about it, you can tell right away. And it's very easy to get taken out of the story when the dialogue is not constructed well.

 

And maybe you've had an experience like that, where you've been reading a book, you're enjoying the book, and all of a sudden it gets to a scene of dialogue, and you're like, wait what? This sounds so stiff. This sounds so strange. I can't believe the characters are speaking like this, whatever it is. So dialogue is one of those things that's really worth paying attention to, because it's, again, it really has the power poorly written, poorly constructed. Dialogue has the power to take the reader out of the story, and we don't want that. We want the reader to be so immersed in your world. We want them to be so connected to the characters in the plot and to keep reading to figure out what happens next, all that.

 

So dialogue is definitely worth spending time on. And we're going to talk about using dialogue in your book, coming up with what sounds authentic for your character. But then we're also going to talk about the construction of dialogue, so like the grammar piece of it, using dialogue tags, all that good stuff, and then also share, like common mistakes that a lot of writers make when it comes to dialogue, which is actually part of what we're part of that from the training is what we're talking about today. So again, this episode is like going to give you a little bit of a teaser of of what you're going to learn at the dialogue deep dive workshop.

 

Okay, so I want to talk about a few mistakes or pitfalls to avoid that I see with manuscripts that I work on, from editing clients, from coaching clients, and occasionally books that I read as well, like published books where the dialogue just isn't working and the first mistake is just stiff. I said that that weird, stiff dialogue that's too formal. What I mean by this is okay, if you have a character who is a professor and he's a 75 year old man, he might have a very articulate voice. He might be very well spoken, and speak in a more formal way, and that might be authentic to his character, right? But if you have a 25 year old woman who's hanging out with her friends, she's probably most likely going to speak in a way that is very casual, that is not at all formal. She's not giving a presentation, she's not at a job interview. She's gonna use slang. She's gonna use contractions. She's going to speak casually with her friends.

 

So you want to think about your character in the situation, a circumstance, their background, all of these things, because most characters in most books will speak in a casual way. I mentioned contractions a minute ago, and this is something that a lot of new writers struggle with. I think maybe this is, I suspect that part of this comes from, like academic writing, where you do want to be formal and you don't want to use slang. So, for example, a new writer might have a line of dialogue where a character says, I just do not want to attend this party. That sounds very formal to me, like saying I just do not want to attend this party, versus saying I don't want to go to this party. Don't using the contraction for do not is a much more casual way of writing dialog, and it mirrors how people speak in the real world.

 

Again, if you've got a an average, you know, the average person walking around, they're not going to speak to people that formally, they're going to use contractions. They're going to use the simplified language. So again, I share the example the professor, because it might be authentic for your character to speak in a more elevated way. Or maybe you have a character who's trying to convey an era of importance. They're trying to impress people with their vocabulary because it's masking the lack of confidence that they feel in themselves or something. So then they might use more elevated language. They might speak more formally, but again, in most cases, people just don't talk that way in real life. So if you have dialog that's written that way and sounds really stiff, it's just gonna feel unnatural.

 

Number two is talking heads in a white room. This is a common thing that I see in a lot of Chapter openings, the first chapter, but also subsequent chapters. It can happen at any point in the novel where there's a chapter break, there's a new chapter that's happening, or even just a new scene that's happening, and it's just back and forth dialog, without any indication of. This is taking place. What's happening any other context? It's just back and forth conversation of dialog. And this is, I call this talking heads in a white room, because it's like you don't know where this is taking place. You can't picture it. You're not giving the reader anything to to be able to do that. And so it just feels like you have two talking heads that are just going back and forth.

 

This does not mean that you need to provide tons of detail and tons of description, but especially if there's been a scene change where something is different. Time has passed, the characters are in a different location, whatever it is, you have to convey that to the reader. You have to tell them that, instead of letting them get a page of dialog into the chapter before you let them know. And the next mistake is kind of related to this, but it's a little bit different. I guess these things can happen simultaneously. The mistake is all dialogue with no action or interiority or description to balance it out.

 

So if you have conversations with characters, just just back and forth, dialog with almost nothing else happening that gets a little difficult to read, you want to use all of the elements at your disposal. So when I say action, I mean, what are the characters doing when two people talk in the real world, they don't just stand perfectly still and not do anything at all while they're having a long conversation, right? People shift. They take a sip of their coffee, they scratch their ear, they grimace. They whatever they're they're real people. They're moving, you know, as if they're just not like stoic statues. So your characters need to do the same thing. Interiority means thoughts, feelings, emotions, of your point of view character.

 

So whatever character, who's ever character we're inside of, like whatever point of view character? What are they thinking during this conversation? Because they're not going to share all of their thoughts. The reader might know what they're thinking internally, but their words might be different because they're not sharing how they're truly what they're thinking and then emotions. I mean, especially if it's a heightened scene where there's a lot of emotional dialog happening, what is this character thinking or sorry, what is this character feeling internally? Because we're in their head, we get access to their thoughts and feelings so we can know how they're responding to this internally, and then description is just what is happening, like where the scene is being set, what's happening.

 

So if you want to describe something about the weather, if you want to describe something about this, some other thing about the setting, whatever it might be, those are all things to include in the scene, because including all of these different elements is going to make the scene. It's going to make the conversation so much more balanced and satisfying to read than if you just have dialog, if you have a page of straight dialogue and only like two other things going on, again, it's just, it's just a lot to read. And there are other things that you can play with to make it feel more satisfying and richer and more immersive for the reader, the last mistake that I want to touch on is something that can apply to any genre of writing. I think a lot of times when we talk about info dumping. A lot of us assume that it's fantasy or sci fi or some kind of speculative fiction where there's a world building element, where you need to tell the reader about this world.

 

You need to tell the reader about the magic system or whatever. But the mistake is dialogue that's purely to convey information to the reader, and that can happen in any genre. I'm going to give you an example of what I mean by this. Let's say you have two characters who are very good friends, and they're meeting up for coffee on a Saturday morning and catching up about what's going on in their lives, right? And let's say that one of these characters has just, I don't know, broken up with their boyfriend, and that's one of the things that they want to talk to their friend about. Let's say it happened, you know, three or four weeks ago, and this, they've been texting and calling about this, but they haven't really had a chance to talk in person about this.

 

So that's what your characters are doing. That's the point of them having coffee. So let's say that you're writing the scene. The two people get together at the coffee shop. They hug each other. It's been a couple weeks since they've seen each other in person. One character like pats, the other character on the back and says, Oh, I'm so sorry. Blah, blah. They sit down. They have coffee if you have the. Broken up character, who who just ended the relationship. You have this character saying to their friend, as you know, four weeks ago, my relationship with John ended, and it was devastating. That feels very forced. It feels very unnatural, and it feels like the only function that that piece of dialog is serving is to tell the information to the reader, to fill in some of the gaps, to provide some backstory and let the reader know that three or four weeks ago, this character broke up with their boyfriend named John, and it was devastating.

 

If you have a set of girlfriends who have been texting and calling and the character knows that her friend has been broken up with they already know that, like, the person wouldn't need to tell their friend. As you know, three weeks ago, John and I brought like, yeah. It just feels forced. It feels like the only reason the character is saying that is to paint a picture and fill in some of the backstory for this person. I mean, if all else fails, and you're like, Wait, does this sound force? Is this the way to convey information in that scene? If you can, like, put yourself in the position of the character.

 

 So let's say that you've just been your relationship has just ended a month ago, and you've been texting with a girlfriend of yours, and you meet up for coffee, she gives you a hug. You're not going to sit down and say, Well, as you know, John and I broke up four weeks ago, and I was devastated by it. You probably wouldn't say that, because your friend already knows, yeah. So think about ways that you can infuse that information into the scene with dialog in a way that feels more natural, that mirrors how two friends would talk in real life. Okay, let me think, if there's anything else I want to say, I think that's it. Yeah.

 

So that gives you a little bit of a sneak peek of one of the sections that we're going to cover in the dialogue team type workshop, which is the mistakes to avoid. I'll have a few other things in the workshop. And again, we're also going to talk about constructing dialog, figuring out authentic dialogue, tricks you can use for writing dialog, how to construct it in terms of sentence structure and grammar and dialogue tags and all that good stuff. And I'll have some examples for you as well, so you can see examples of like, good, really effective dialogue in action, in like on the page. So alright, I hope this was helpful.

Katie Wolf