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Lesson Seven: To Speak, to Drawl no More...
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Dialog must be good. As seemingly simple a thing as that phrase is to utter, or write, one cannot dismiss the important of keeping your characters’ various speeches interesting. Readers can tell when a writer has simply thrown in some ‘lame’ lines of dialog into order to hurry things along.
Shakespeare, for all this flowery, period language was still way ahead of his time in showing the audience how one can indeed serve the story up with little more than simple conversation, and still not say ‘too much’ and thus give the plot away. The writer John Grisham is also very talented in this arena. Human book characters should talk as real people do: some carefully mask their words, some get a bit carried away with verbosity and some mistakenly stay silent when they should speak.
Folks on this site and others have—from time to time-- forwarded me their novels to be reviewed; most often it is a young writer in need of an Other Eye (Lesson Nine). The thing I most often send back in comment regards an over-use of slang terms and phrases. As I have mentioned before, slang in the dialog is not as bad; it adds flavor. When you are writing a historical piece, it helps date your prose appropriately; my husband and I are currently working on a 1900s series on immigrant stories in America, so rightfully the various conversations are tinted with heavy accents and peppered with foreign phrases appropriate to the culture background of the character in question.
However, slang terms or other cultural colloquialisms become a problem when time elapses. For instance, in 20 years most folks may not remember what OMG means, therefore using text-speak in dialog--instead of spelling it out--may harm the ability of future readers, older readers or English-is-my-second-language readers to understand what you mean to say… which is the point of a written language in the first place.
Here are some more things to bear in mind when embarking on writing a bit o’ speech betwixt characters:
Avoid long explanations at all costs. This goes along with the ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ lesson of yore.
Ask yourself: Does this conversation further the story? Inane conversations consisting of phrases such as “Ya, like, you know… he’s so hawt!” are just plain silly and actually de-value your book. However, in some cases--as in writing a high-school drama fiction for the eyes of only one demographic--such phrases as the above might be present. Do bear in mind that you are in fact severely limiting your audience if writing to just one age group, and it is possible to write a teen-age story in prose that spans several generations.
After writing the dialog, read it aloud; this exercise helps you determine if it is something a human being would actually say. Once you’ve established that the bit of speech is good, then consider in light of your character. Does the dialog match the personality of the character speaking it?
Try to use ‘real’ conversation to model yours after. Real answers, to real questions that you have heard, tinge the prose with figuratively tangible substance.
Remember that humans generally don’t say things in the same dead-pan manner, or using the same words over and over again; use a wide, varied vocabulary and many type of sentence structure. IF using a thesaurus, however, bear in mind this warning: taking random large words out of the thesaurus and inserting them in otherwise juvenile prose makes no sense and draws attention away from your story.
Another thesaurus warning: always, ALWAYS pair its use with a dictionary. Synonyms may not suffice in all situations; therefore, establishing the correct meaning and context of a word before using it in your story is vital. Again, Robert Louis Stevenson’s quote applies here: “The difficulty of literature is not to write but to write what you mean.”
Lastly, research – if writing a historical piece then research the speech cadence and phrases used meticulously; era songs and poetry are often useful in this arena, as well as the obvious suggestion to read classic literature of that age.
