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systran posted:Also it's "three and twenty" not "twenty and three". Ha, poo poo. Thanks for the structure advice too guys.
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May 18, 2013 22:48
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To join in the talk about dialogue, I agree that it shouldn't be real realistic, but be engaging and interesting without being a literal transcription of a conversation. However, I would warn again only using written dialogue (from TV, comics, etc.) as a way to learn about dialogue or only going by what sounds good in your head without a bit of "real world" research. I think it's extremely important to listen to real conversations and pay attention to 1) what makes them interesting, and 2) word choices, figures of speech, and other important grammar and vocabulary. The goal of this will then be to learn how to distill all of this into an interesting conversation to read or watch. This will then depend on form, since a conversation in a movie needs to play out much differently than it would on stage. The reason I bring it up is that you can easily throw someone out of a story if you don't get it "right". Especially if you're writing a character with a particular accent/regional dialect (of course, written without dialect spelling since it is horrible and I hate it). Some of these dialects tend to get bastardized or misrepresented in media, and if you only take those media representations as examples, then you get dialogue that sounds outdated at best or offensive at worst. Also, language changes both at large and individually, so if you listen to real conversations, you may hear people who speak with specific quirks, new slang, tell the differences between a child speaking and an adult, and other things that would be harder to do by only reading/watching something. Now, I personally like more realistic dialogue in the stories I read (even if it has a few more pauses and asides), but I also like it when it gets really dramatic or funny, even if no one on the planet would ever speak that way, as long as it sounds like how someone would feel and uses the language the characters would be expected to use. What I hate is when I hear a Jamaican character say "mon" at the end of every sentence or teenagers use completely outdated slang or a character from a southern state say "well that's crazier than a [blank] in a [blank] on a [blank] [blank]."
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May 19, 2013 00:21
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Veg posted:Ha, poo poo. Structure isn't your problem. You thought it was a good idea to post a blurb of fanfic poo poo, apparently. Here's some good advice: you should look into pottery. Or, if you really want to write, read some books. What would possess you to take a screenshot of your horrible fanfic and inflict it on us? Even though there are soul-crushing low standards for CC in terms of writing, you've failed to meet them. You have managed to act like the horribly obese dude that ate a dozen boiled eggs and a bowl of beans for breakfast and decided to waddle to the back of a tiny airliner on a two-hour flight to take a horrible poo poo before you even got off the ground--then left the door open. If you actually want to write in a way that doesn't make you look like a complete idiot, at least put minimal effort into seeing what the most basic standards are. Excuse me while I take a blurry selfie with my cellphone in a dirty bathroom mirror and ask what the photography subforum thinks about it.
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May 19, 2013 03:05
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You should post your picture in the photography thread as text for absolutely no reason.
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May 19, 2013 04:10
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Chillmatic posted:My main issue with this dialogue is that it's boring, mainly because nothing really happens and you're spelling out too much for me-- which means you're not letting me, the reader, do any work. Right. It's often said that effective dialogue typically conveys messages on two or more levels. There's the text, and then there's the subtext; what the characters are saying, and what they mean. When the text is exactly the same as the subtext, there's no tension and no intrigue. On the topic of dialogue being "real," The trick, I think, is that dialogue needs to feel plausible or realistic, without necessarily being plausible or realistic. It's an illusion of sorts. When your reader can "hear" the various characters in their head as those characters are talking, you're on the road to the Promised Land! Here is an an interesting podcast on dialogue. And here's one on avoiding stilted dialogue. These people often have a lot of very good insights.
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May 19, 2013 17:47
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Tartarus Sauce posted:Right. Spot on. This is my quickest and dirtiest tip to new writers: your characters should never, ever, plainly say what they mean. There should always be something more, boiling just under the surface. yoyomama posted:
Not to belabor the point, but... no, it's not important to do this. In fact, when writing dialogue, it's important to forget entirely what real-world conversations sound like. Use your favorite books and movies as an example of what to do; do not emulate real life. Ever. Your job is to make your character's conversation engaging and believable. The end. I hate to say it yet again, but "believable" does not mean "sounds like real life." quote:1) Listen to what makes them (real-life conversations) interesting, Nothing makes real-word conversations interesting. Literally nothing at all. People read fiction to escape the real world. Stop trying to remind them of it with your dialogue. Just stop. It's the number one mark of amateur writing and the fact that so many are clinging to the idea reveals that truth. Good dialogue is an illusion, an imitation of the real world. It feels genuine to the reader yet still has that bit of magic that clues them them in to the fact that they're enjoying a fictional universe. Think of it as similar to the illusion of film itself. When you watch a movie that was shot on traditional film, you're not actually seeing motion on the screen; you're seeing the illusion of motion, created by a series of still images being displayed to you very rapidly. Dialogue is similar in that if the reader slowed down and really examined, on a fundamental level, the words they were seeing, they'd notice all kinds of "problems" with it and the illusion would be broken. (for instance, almost nobody in a fictional story ever says hello or goodbye when using the telephone-- try pointing this out to non-writers and watch their mind be blown) Your readers don't want to break the illusion. They want to feel as though they're in the hands of someone capable enough to keep the illusion alive for them. This is why when new authors actually do insist on their characters using every single real-world verbal tic like "hello" and "goodbye" and so on, the reader gets bored and frustrated; this is NOT why they picked up this book or went to this movie. Thoren posted:While I agree with most of what you say, I believe it with a softer implication. There are certainly times when the rules can be broken. Though, they are usually broken for either a specific goal As you mentioned, the rules are only ever broken successfully when there's a specific goal in mind. It's either that, or bad writing. Period. I'm not against seemingly mundane character interactions, as long as they pull weight for either the story or the characters in question. For instance, consider again the example I used before: Johnny: [walks into flower shop] Hi. Flower Shop Clerk: Can I help you? Johnny: Yeah, can I have a dozen red roses, please? Flower Shop Clerk: Oh, hi, Johnny. I didn't know it was you. [grabs bouquet of roses] Flower Shop Clerk: Here you go. Johnny: That's me. How much is it? Flower Shop Clerk: It'll be eighteen dollars. Johnny: [hands over cash] Here you go. Keep the change. [grabs flowers and pats dog on the counter] Johnny: Hi, doggy. Flower Shop Clerk: You're my favorite customer. Johnny: Thanks a lot. Bye! Flower Shop Clerk: Buh-bye! This scene sucks. It's incredibly boring and stupid, right? But what if there was a hurricane (or some other disaster) happening right outside the window! Now, this scene is interesting. Why are these two people so calm when the windows are shattering and the roof is about to come off? Do they want to die? Are they on drugs? What the gently caress's going on? The rule of "no boring dialogue" is successfully broken here, because it's used with an exacting purpose, and there's something else to engage the reader. "Real life" dialogue can only, only be used for purposes like that. To give the reader insight into a character's state of mind, something they can think about, chew on. If the dialogue is banal just because the character and situation are banal, then you've gained a net of zero. And lost your reader's attention and trust. Chillmatic fucked around with this message at 20:15 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 20:09
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Real world conversations CAN be helpful, because it really helps to have a basic sense of the rhythm and flow of conversation, and the sorts of words people (especially various TYPES of people) do and don't use, and how those choices serve to reveal how they think, and how they see the world. Charles de Lint's a solid writer, but reading The Blue Girl, you can tell he's never encountered a real teenage girl before. Lots of science fiction suffers from stiff, robotic dialogue, because the authors themselves are hardcore scientists or techies who don't know their way around non-technical conversations whose primary purpose is not simply to convey information. Oh, and a good rule of thumb is, if it's boring to write, it's boring to read. By all means, don't feel obligated to march us through every little chat with every single waiter, ticket-taker, or cashier, unless those conversations actually tell us something about the character, and how they relate to others. If your character is just ordering a latte, just say they ordered a latte. If everyone in Starbucks groans when your character walks in, THAT conversation is worth tracking! Tartarus Sauce fucked around with this message at 22:16 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 22:11
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Tartarus Sauce posted:Real world conversations CAN be helpful ... Oh great, you've probably set Chillmatic off again. Chillmatic, chill the gently caress out. You don't need to repeat yourself a fourth time because people don't 100% agree with you. Chillmatic's point: When people talk in real life, they throw in a lot of ums and ers and pointless filler. Don't write like that. It's boring to read. Everyone else's point: It is still necessary to note how people talk in real life to pick up things like cadences and idioms. You are both correct, and you've all had a page to make your points. Now kindly stop repeating the same argument for the next page or so. Thank you.
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May 19, 2013 23:17
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edit: ^^^  Settle down, Beavis. The arguments being made demonstrate why so many authors struggle with writing good dialogue. I'll risk annoying people, but this will be my last post on the subject since it's upsetting you. (and btw that actually isn't anything close to the entirety of my point)Tartarus Sauce posted:Real world conversations CAN be helpful, because it really helps to have a basic sense of the rhythm and flow of conversation, and the sorts of words people (especially various TYPES of people) do and don't use, and how those choices serve to reveal how they think, and how they see the world. Determining the rhythm and flow of real world conversations does indeed help one become a better conversationalist--in the real world. But one needs to determine the rhythm and flow of fictional conversations if one wants to become a better writer of fiction. Thinking that learning the rhythm and flow of real-life conversation will help you write better dialogue is not unlike trying to understand the rhythm and flow of jazz music will help you become a better public speaker. Or, another crappy analogy, it's like thinking that because you can beat a computer at hold 'em poker, you could surely do well against a human opponent with real cash stakes. The rules are different. They are not the same thing. You're wasting time. quote:Charles de Lint's a solid writer, but reading The Blue Girl, you can tell he's never encountered a real teenage girl before. I don't know when that was written, but if it was in the 90s, the author could have just watched Buffy The Vampire Slayer and gotten a much more accurate version of how viewers/readers of fiction expect a teenage girl to sound, rather than just sitting in on a real-life classroom and trying to capture their vernacular. I've seen lots of authors attempt the latter and the results are always embarrassing. That's if the author even attempts to capture such a voice at all. quote:Lots of science fiction suffers from stiff, robotic dialogue, because the authors themselves are hardcore scientists or techies who don't know their way around non-technical conversations whose primary purpose is not simply to convey information. And if you were to ask them what kind of fiction they enjoy reading or watching, they'd almost certainly list material containing stiff, robotic dialogue.  Not saying there isn't a market for that, but it will only appeal to other techies/scientists. I will concede that to successfully bring vibrant, "real" characters to life, an author does need to understand how people function; or more accurately, how they wish to function. Apologies if it sounds like I'm suggesting that people not understand that. But the "wish" part is why listening to real-world dialogue will always fail to help you. People do not want to read fiction that emulates their every day experience. They just don't. What person on earth would read about someone getting up in the morning, brushing his teeth, going to work, coming home, doing the dishes, and going to bed? What person on earth would want to listen in on the conversations that you and me have every day? Aside from our own jilted lovers and overprotective mothers, the answer is nobody. So trying to dissect those conversations to get 'the good' stuff will only show you that there's no good stuff to be had. Again, this all applies unless your goal is becoming a better real-life conversationalist. Then, by all means. Chillmatic fucked around with this message at 23:29 on May 19, 2013 |
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May 19, 2013 23:19
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Chillmatic posted:
You're kidding. I literally said what you did, but managed not to be a dick about it and pull out "ultimate rules of writing do as I say or it's poo poo" logic. You think it's not important to listen to people talking. That's fine, but I said that I think it can be, and how you could listen to real world dialogue, take what good you can out of it, AND do exactly what you said (write a good, entertaining conversation without re-creating a literal conversation). I never said it needed to sound like real life, so don't put words in my mouth. Nevermind that almost every other artform does something like this. Studying from real life is a important part of art study. No one goes to an animator and says to only rotoscope everything, but they sure as hell LOOK at the real world and study it in order to learn their craft. I can see an argument for saying listening to people speak doesn't equal learning how to write dialogue, but all I'm saying is that there's something to learn in listening to people if you want to write dialogue. That said, I'm done with this discussion, since I take your points and get what you're saying and agree with you (about the dialogue, people do not always read to escape the "real world", even if that's what you want to do), but now you're just being a dick about it.
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May 19, 2013 23:38
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For a bunch of people wanting to write fiction, the lack of ability to communicate in this thread is fascinating (and snippy!) 
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May 19, 2013 23:44
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Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:For a bunch of people wanting to write fiction, the lack of ability to communicate in this thread is fascinating (and snippy!) You just hush and get back to writing withering critiques of lovely fanfic plastered on a jpg! (you were twice as nice to that guy as I was gonna be) yoyomama posted:You're kidding. I'm genuinely sorry that it reads that way. This is a frustrating topic for me because it's something that I get asked about a lot, and people seem to cling to some ideas that are damaging their ability to do what they want to do with their own work. And now to awkwardly change the subject, I'll plug a recent post that I found really helpful on Larry Brook's (rather excellent) blog on developing good characters. http://storyfix.com/the-risky-middle-realm-of-character
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May 19, 2013 23:56
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Chillmatic posted:You just hush and get back to writing withering critiques of lovely fanfic plastered on a jpg! (you were twice as nice to that guy as I was gonna be) Nice rolling with the punches there. When someone tells you to chill out because you're being an overbearing prescriptive rear end and then someone else chimes in saying you're being an overbearing prescriptive rear end, then maybe you're being an overbearing prescriptive rear end. You have done this before. Stop getting upset and defensive when people only 80% agree with you.
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May 20, 2013 00:29
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I have some thoughts on dialog so I am going to unchange the subject, sorry Chillmatic. I think writing good dialog is a lot like gossiping about someone. Real juicy gossip, where you don't even care if you're putting words in the other person's mouth because even if it's not -exactly- what they said, you know what they meant to say. Real life conversations come with things like context, body language, tone, eye contact, and a million other little clues that we subconsciously use to determine meaning, mood, intention, and so on. Good writers seem to describe very few of those things in detail, so we're left with the story context and the dialog itself, and maybe a few fancy dialog tags like "moaned", "shouted," "ejaculated." (I think using 'ejaculated' to describe an abrupt bit of dialog is something that published authors do to prove they've really made it and thus can get away with that poo poo) But you should absolutely hone your ear for conversation. Good dialog shouldn't always read like real conversation, but real conversations can certainly resemble good dialog. When you as a listener can glean things about people from how they talk and what they're saying, you will inevitably have a better sense of how to imbue characters with that sort of depth. Our brains are already pretty good at shrugging off the details and keeping only the gist of our experiences. So when writing dialog, I approach it as if I were the neighborhood gossip giving someone the "true" version of events, even if it isn't the real version. See you gotta take a big hunk of unrefined reality and whittle it down to some nice purestrain truth. So yeah. Whenever I'm stuck on what a character is supposed to be saying, I imagine the conversation as if I were relating it to someone else, and I really want them to get the gist of it even if that means embellishing/smoothing over some bits. I also keep a mental catalog of trusty quotes from real people that I found poignant,funny, or particularly awful. Public transportation is also a good place for inspiration. We don't call someone who's particularly off or eccentric a 'character' for nothing.
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May 20, 2013 00:57
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Stuporstar posted:Nice rolling with the punches there. I don't know what this means but I had already apologized so maybe you should simmer down a bit? Sitting Here posted:Whenever I'm stuck on what a character is supposed to be saying, I imagine the conversation as if I were relating it to someone else, and I really want them to get the gist of it even if that means embellishing/smoothing over some bits. That's a good approach, though I'd also add that, for me, one of the best things to understand when writing dialogue is to remember what a given character really wants. What drives them, motivates them? They'll almost never say what it is directly, but that desire will tinge every single word they do say. This is a good trick for exposing weak characters; a character who doesn't want anything is a weak character, indeed. quote:...things like context, body language, tone, eye contact, and a million other little clues that we subconsciously use to determine meaning, mood, intention, and so on. Good writers seem to describe very few of those things in detail, so we're left with the story context and the dialog itself I think good writers actually describe those things frequently, though a little goes a long way. For instance you only need to tell me once that 'Andy stuck his hands in his pockets and refused to make eye contact with Sue.' The example of good dialogue I posted on the last page (from Fahrenheit 451) demonstrates this reasonably well. When I first began writing, striking this balance was something I struggled with a lot. As always, practice makes a reasonable facsimile of 'perfect'. Chillmatic fucked around with this message at 03:08 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 03:06
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I think there's a misconception here that dialogue has to be "either-or" when it comes to realism. I'm saying it's neither all here, nor all there. You need to have encountered people before, in order to know how humans talk, how they convey ideas, and how they choose their words. You need to have some experience with how various types of people talk and behave when angry, sad, satisfied, fearful, or in love. You need to appreciate the cultural, behavioral, and linguistic differences that exist between types of people, and know how to apply these insights to your own characters. This is level one. At the next level, you study the elements of good storytelling and snappy, enjoyable dialogue, like we've discussed, and you bridge these two experiences for best results. I think as long as your tags aren't distracting, and as long as your dialogue generally adheres to the "two levels" rule-of-thumb, you can actually get away with a fair amount, where dialogue's concerned. And, of course: rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. My characters tend to be too long-winded in the first draft, and they tend to wander before getting to the point. As I rewrite, the focus becomes tighter, and the characters get to the point, and don't belabor it.
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May 20, 2013 03:54
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If you ever find your characters answering each others' questions, rewrite.
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May 20, 2013 09:53
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sebmojo posted:If you ever find your characters answering each others' questions, rewrite. I get this as a warning against overly expository dialogue, but would you explain a little more what you mean?
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May 20, 2013 14:18
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Phil Moscowitz posted:I get this as a warning against overly expository dialogue, but would you explain a little more what you mean? It's part of show, don't tell. A: "Why would you do this to me?" B: "Well you see when I was a child I was neglected by my parents and blah blah blah." You achieve a lot more with a deflection which would be much more likely in this scenario anyway. I don't for the record think he means answering a simple need for information like: A: "How many houses did you sell?" B: "Four." But in reality there aren't too many requests for information that aren't loving boring and really don't belong in the first place. Personally, a "rule" like this is just something to make you self-aware. No it's in no way absolute and if sebmojo is trying to say that then I say fiddlesticks. However, it is a good thing to make you ask, "Hmmm, I'm getting a lot of asked and responded dialogue. Does this scan well? Does it need to be in my fiction?" For example, one good exception I can think of is perhaps when a character is asking a series of questions and the other character is answering elusively and the first character keeps re-phrasing the question. Obviously you wouldn't want this to drag on for too long, but it would show both the over-inquisitive nature of the first character and the evasive nature of the second.
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May 20, 2013 16:02
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Overwined posted:It's part of show, don't tell. Yeah, pretty much that. If you have two characters asking and answering each other in a simple direct way (unless that's explicitly the point) then you should probably be conveying the information in another way. Of course it's not a absolute rule, but it works very well as a rule of thumb for non-sucky dialogue - not least because it takes away a crutch, since you have to keep finding interesting ways for the characters to avoid answering each others' questions.
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May 21, 2013 01:11
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To continue this discussion, I hear people talking about how real life conversation and fictional conversation should not be similar. It's happened in this thread and I've heard it from others. I cannot stress how much this is prejudicial oversimplification. Granted, we aren't always talking about significant things, but I bet most people would be surprised how much subtle connotation and inference occurs in day to day life as we talk about day to day things. The reason directly answered questions don't work in fiction is because they rarely work in real life! People are always deflecting, obfuscating, and otherwise trying to divert the agenda. Just a couple weeks ago I was in a lovely restaurant with a friend who had gone to the bathroom after everything was over. I eavesdropped (yeah, I know it sounds terrible, but it's a good practice as a writer, okay?) on a couple on the other side of a half wall from me. They were trying to decide whether or not to get the shrimp appetizer or the chorizo quesadilla. Neither was backing down and it became obvious they were arguing about anything BUT the appetizer. It was a beautiful and sad conversation in which it became clear to me that the man wanted to deepen the relationship and the woman had no inclination because of something that had happened a couple weeks prior. The funny thing was, they rarely stopped talking about quesadillas and shrimp and you could pick this information out. I put that one in the old memory banks. The best line was from the woman when she answered the question about why exactly she objected to the quesadilla (you could tell he thought she was just being obstructionist), she answered, "Because a sausage quesadilla is the type of thing someone orders when they don't give a drat about what happens to them tomorrow."
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May 21, 2013 01:46
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Overwined posted:stuff Absolutely. Eavesdropping is the best thing. I don't know how anyone could ever get a feel for what natural dialogue sounds like without hearing people speak freely. The problem I always have with "mumblecore" and other attempts to emulate, or rather synthesize, natural human speech is that people are much, much less rambling and inarticulate than how writers present them, and I think that comes from taking inauthentic, writer-made utilitarian dialogue and trying to decorate it with stammering when people know what they want to say in real-life, especially in moments of conflict. Like in the example you had, there was subtext there, and the people involved were probably trying to broach topics that they'd been thinking about before.
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May 21, 2013 03:25
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Chillmatic posted:The example of good dialogue I posted on the last page (from Fahrenheit 451) demonstrates this reasonably well. When I first began writing, striking this balance was something I struggled with a lot. As always, practice makes a reasonable facsimile of 'perfect'. As much as I have loved and read Ray Bradbury's work, dialogue was probably his weakest point. Other authors would serve your argument better. I think this is boiling down to a misinterpretation of what people see as "real life dialogue." It's not about mundane day-to-day conversations, it's about capturing the intensity and sporadic nature of a real conversation. It doesn't mean the conversation has to be irrelevant to the story.
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May 21, 2013 04:03
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Overwined posted:The best line was from the woman when she answered the question about why exactly she objected to the quesadilla (you could tell he thought she was just being obstructionist), she answered, "Because a sausage quesadilla is the type of thing someone orders when they don't give a drat about what happens to them tomorrow." Oh, that's beautiful. That's one for the record books. I once eavesdropped on a much-less-interesting conversation between two people (who appeared to be a couple?) about mattresses. Just mattresses. Mattresses they had slept on; mattresses they'd loved and lost; mattresses that had brought them pain. There wasn't a juicy subtext as near as I could tell, but it did cause me to reflect on the type of person who would willing have an hour-long conversation about mattresses. Call it a character exercise, if you will.
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May 21, 2013 05:47
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I was on the bus today, heard an older-but-not-elderly woman talking with some guy about how she had to move. She was gonna leave her cat, Daisy, with the neighbors, cause Daisy couldn't stand being locked up somewhere tiny with no outside to explore. But I think she was thinking of herself more than that cat; the impression I got was that she was leaving her own large house and moving into an apartment with/near people who could look after her. The whole conversation was pretty much story-ready, smooth with no mumbling or weird pauses. Perhaps she was particularly theatrical, maybe she's a writer herself. For my part, when I got to my computer at work, the first thing I did was open up a blank document and write 700 or so words of story, starting with an eccentric older woman talking about her cat while in the waiting room of an ominous rehab facility. I have no idea where this is going but my protagonist (not the old lady) is currently wandering stark halls with a conspicuously hip and chill "nurse" named Brian. Brian scares me. So thanks thread. I feel extra vindicated for being a eavesdropper now. Imagining the subtext of a conversation can be pretty interesting, writer or no.
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May 21, 2013 06:29
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Some college writing workshops even assign eavesdropping as homework.
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May 21, 2013 07:29
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I like to put headphones on and not play any music so people have their guard way down.
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May 21, 2013 13:10
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Thoren posted:Some college writing workshops even assign eavesdropping as homework. Mine did! I ended up sitting on a train listening to two bros talk about Madden '06 (the newest iteration at the time). It wasn't very interesting, but it made for fun reading in my next class.
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May 21, 2013 14:03
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Tartarus Sauce posted:I once eavesdropped on a much-less-interesting conversation between two people (who appeared to be a couple?) about mattresses. Just mattresses. Mattresses they had slept on; mattresses they'd loved and lost; mattresses that had brought them pain. This is my experience with probably 90% of the conversations I overhear. I listen to conversations everywhere I go, and the vast majority of the time, the only subtext immediately noticeable is that people get incredibly frustrated when they feel the other person isn't really listening to them. So they start trying to talk over the other person, who then starts trying to talk over them. (completely off topic, but if you can make a person feel as if you've truly listened to what they have to say, they'll love you forever out of sheer gratitude) People are, as a rule, horrible conversationalists. The quesadilla example was great but hearing that last zinger out in the wild is drat-near a once in a lifetime happening. Overwined posted:The reason directly answered questions don't work in fiction is because they rarely work in real life! People are always deflecting, obfuscating, and otherwise trying to divert the agenda. Sure, I agree with that. But real-life hidden agendas are incredibly mundane. "You don't listen to me. You always overcook the pasta. You didn't wake up to help the baby last night. How 'bout them Cowboys? My job sucks and you don't care. Wah." Real conversations, rife as they may be with subtext, (boring subtext, 90% of the time) aren't actually building towards any kind of narrative goal. As an author, you don't have the luxury of just letting things happen, or boring subtext. If you know how to imbue your characters' conversations with the right kind of tension and subtext, and eavesdropping helps you with that, then I'll certainly not argue with that. Anyone who is right where they want to be as an author shouldn't think twice about anything I'm saying. But if (the proverbial) you continue to struggle, as most writers do, to write dialogue that people tell you is really great, then consider that relying on those restaurant or bus conversations may be holding you back more than you realize. Oh, and: quote:As much as I have loved and read Ray Bradbury's work, dialogue was probably his weakest point. Other authors would serve your argument better. Fair enough. I used that particular example because the language was incredibly plain, and, some might say, "realistic". Yet it still conveyed very clear meaning through what was said, and what wasn't said. And there's no way in hell you'd ever hear someone talk like that in the real world, despite the plain tone. The rhythm and cadence are entirely unlike anything one might overhear at work or on the train. This is more than simply not using 'ums' and 'errs'; it's recognizing that the flow and feel of dialogue is not equivalent to that of conversation. Here's a great article that goes into more detail of my point without being quite as acerbic as I've been: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/18/unreal-art-realistic-dialogue (for which, again, I do apologize. This is one of my favorite and frustrating critical subjects and I do go on a bit much) Chillmatic fucked around with this message at 14:43 on May 21, 2013 |
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May 21, 2013 14:40
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Mine did! I ended up sitting on a train listening to two bros talk about Madden '06 (the newest iteration at the time). I'm pretty sure we went/go to the same college.
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May 21, 2013 14:41
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Bradbury is by far my favorite writer, but yes, his dialogue did tend to be his weakness, and I think it was meant to sound more poetic than realistic. Anyway, it occurs to me that eavesdropping and real conversation actually informs my approach to side characters much more than it does my main characters. Chillmatic's correct that styling the dialogue of my main characters off of real conversations would result in a real doozy of a snoozefest. Key dialogue between key characters needs to be and do more. But, real people do say the darndest things, and I have been known to sprinkle my dialogue involving side characters and minor characters with actual quotable quotes, because the things people had actually said were funnier, stupider, or more ludicrous than anything I'd managed to come up with myself.
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May 21, 2013 15:23
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Thoren posted:I'm pretty sure we went/go to the same college. Mine did too! I think this is pretty common practice. Amongst other writers I know it always seem they find dialogue the hardest part of writing. But I am completely the other way around. I find it weird that people find it really tough, but I do acknowledge it (not trying to be a dick). The only advice I can really think of is to read it back and try and see if it sounds weird or not? Just imagine people talking, and write that. Really reading it back, or aloud, should help you get "flowing" dialogue at least. Also, if you have any interest in scriptwriting, writing out a comedy sketch or two might help you get back into the "conversation mood" if you're just out of whack.
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May 21, 2013 15:32
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Overwined posted:It's part of show, don't tell. Because I am perverse, this is exactly the kind of rule I like to frequently break. Actually, that's all the rules, but anyway... Example: A: "What the hell is this?" B: "Well, A, I've decided to tie you up, blindfold and rob you. As you can see - well actually you can't due to the blindfold which is why I'm telling you now - I'm using a double hitch knot, which is very useful for securing hostages. After I've finished with that I figure I'll empty your till and then, because I'm an ornery lout who is no respecter of other people's property - as demonstrated by the aforementioned intentions towards robbery - I'm going to urinate all over your shelves and poo in your freezer." A: "No, I mean what's that you were whistling?" B: "Oh. Theme to Bonanza." A: "Ohhhhhhh! Thanks, that was bugging the hell out of me. All right, carry on." ...and so on.
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May 21, 2013 16:08
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Well you are funny so it is funny
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May 21, 2013 16:11
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Humor writing usually requires rule-breaking. Also, this is Sitting Here when she reads Chairchucker's prose: 
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May 21, 2013 16:30
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It's the accent I guess
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May 21, 2013 16:58
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I'm struggling to remember this Sci-Fi short story where an investigator goes to a house where a murder has taken place. There, he interrogates the house android for clues in order to find out what happened. The entire story is told through dialogue and dialogue alone, but it's done in a way that conveys action and physical contact. Does anyone know this story?
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May 21, 2013 17:29
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For someone who has never written anything before, I have big ambitions. I want to write an epic fantasy series. I've had ideas floating around my head since I was a little kid but I've never written them down and now, after finishing my education, I feel like it's time to get started. Here's my question, should I jump straight in and start developing the world for this series (i.e characters, story lines etc) or should I practice writing short stories and prose first?
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May 21, 2013 20:17
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Practice writing short stories and prose first. Your writing will be much worse than you think.
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May 21, 2013 20:18
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systran posted:Practice writing short stories and prose first. This should really be the subtitle of this thread's name.
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May 21, 2013 20:27
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