Dialogue - Observations and Thoughts...

[WonderandAwe]

I've been thinking a lot about dialogue lately.  Mostly about what separates good realistic dialogue from poorly written passages of dialogue.  Forgive my brainstorming here.  I sort of want to start a general discussion on the way dialogue is used in real life and in written form.  A lot of these ideas will be skeletal in nature.  Some of them will be more fleshed out. 

I guess the basic way to break down dialogue is in two groups:  Informational and Persuasive. 

1.  Informational Dialogue:  This dialogue conveys facts and observations.  The person speaking wants to make sure thier target audience understands what they are trying to convey. 

2.  Persuasive Dialogue:  This dialogue is meant to encourage the target audience to agree with the speaker.  I'm not sure if a command should fall under this catagory or be its own.

Another way to break down dialogue is into target audiences (for lack of better word).  Three ways to do this: Speaking to an authority figure, Speaking with an equal, and Speaking with someone you have authority over.  Languages other than English have this built into them.  For example, the Spanish words for "You".

1.  Speaking to an Authority Figure:  From what I observed, when you speak to authority figures, you do so in a very formal tone.  Most people would be more likely to take time to think before they speak.  They are also less likely to curse, lose their temper or openly bad mouth others.  Of course there are exceptions to this.

2.  Speaking to an Equal:  Freinds and co-workers fall under this catagory.  I mostly hear very informal speech when people talk among themselves.  Slang is more common.

3. Speaking to someone under you:  I find that this is somewhat similar to speaking to an authority figure.  However, there are usually more commanding in thier tone.

Education and Slang:  Why did I put these two under the same topic?  I feel that both have much to do with vocabulary and Grammer and less to do with tone.  An highly educated person will have a larger vocabulary and better grammer than someone that barely finished grade school.  Also keep in mind that just because a person KNOWS a word doesn't mean that it will be used in thier everyday speech.  A person will probably be more likely to use the word punishment instead of retribution in spoken language.  I also think the gap between what a person says and what a person writes widens with education, but that is just a pet theory of mine.

Slang is interesting as you can make up all kinds of neat phrases in a fantasy setting.  Don't get too carried away though. 


Making better Dialogue:  I found that I write better dialogue when I actually interact with people face to face.  For a while I got sucked into World of Warcraft.  I tried to write something after that and discovered I lost the knack I had for making believable Dialogue.  While you have hours to look at a line and re edit it, your character came up with it during a course of conversation.  Not to say you should edit your dialogue to make it sound right, but just keep that in mind. 

Feel free to add, argue, and discuss. 

[Kali]

I think one of the biggest areas people fail in is your "Informational Dialogue", and they fail because they think only about the information they, as the author, want to convey to the audience, and not enough about what the speaking character wants to convey to whomever he's speaking with.

So you get dialogue like this:

"Marty, I know you want to kidnap Tina Grandchamp because of the way her father, who employed you for five years, treated you, but don't you think her fiance, the FBI agent, will come after you?"
"No, Ted, because I am an ex-FBI agent myself and I know all the tactics they will use to catch me."

Everyone got bumps on their noggins from being smacked in the head with all that info?  If Marty knows, and he knows Ted knows, why would he ever ask him that stuff?   If you need to convey that information, do it either in prose near the dialogue, or for god's sake, be subtle.

"Are you nuts, Marty?  What, the old man gives you some crap so you're gonna commit a major felony?"
"He didn't just give me crap, Ted, okay?  He fired me on Christmas, for Christ's sake.  He owes me big.  He can start by paying some ransom on his slut daughter."
"I'm not saying the guy's not a jackass.  I'm just saying it's not worth getting thrown in jail over."
"I'm not gonna get caught."
"They always get caught.  Hell, she's practically married to the FBI."
"He's just a kid, a rookie.  I've got ten years experience on him, easy.  What can he know that I don't?"

Which isn't exactly subtle, either, but it's 6 am and pre-coffee and you get the idea.  Plus, hey, it ups your world count.   An editor might go after it, but at least it'll have a better chance of making it to an editor than with the former bit of dialogue.

The other thing using more dialogue to convey the same information can do, if you do it right, is tell you more about who the characters are. Education and Slang, to put it in Dreamer's terms.  Here's a couple of quick and dirty tricks:
 - If the character's well-educated, remove as many of the contractions from their speech as possible, without driving yourself nuts.
 - The more innocent you want them to come off, the less they should curse.  You don't have to make them sound like morons, but remove the... erm... more vivid expostulations, let's say.  This works especially well if you have another character who curses with every few sentences.  It works even better if you NEVER POINT IT OUT.  Maybe your innocent can say something to your curse-spewer about their language.  But for god's sake, try not to mention it in your prose.  Your reader will note it, however subconsciously, and the mental voices in their heads as they read will reflect the difference.

Some general tips:
 - Everyone knows not to overuse slang or dialect marks, right?  Once a sentence or so is enough for your readers to get the idea without making them reach for the Advil.  I personally believe that all dropped letters should be replaced with an apostrophe.  If you're Mark Twain, I'll forgive you for replacing "going" with " goin " instead of " goin' ", but not otherwise.
 - And the oldest saw of all when it comes to writing dialogue, read it out loud.  Listen to yourself say the words.  Do you sound like you wanted the character to sound?
 - Want to get really good at dialogue?  Take an acting class.  Even if you have no talent, someone in the class will be possessed of at least the vestiges of it.  Listening to actors "play" with speech to get the right mood and inflection in a sentence is highly instructive.

Any other tips or thoughts people have about dialogue?

[WonderandAwe]

I see that issue with conveying information a lot in published books.  A lot of really decent authors do this too.  One such example would be Jean Auel's Earth's Children Series.  A good 60% of Ayla's dialogue is her explaining something. 

Some other tips (didn't add them yesterday because it was quiting time)

1.  Ride Public Transportation/Hang out in Public Places.  Since the invention of the cell phone, people all over the place are having private conversations in public.  I eavesdrop on them and get great ideas for dialogue.  For example, one girl was explaining something that happened with her roommates to her mother.  She was speaking very calmly and rationally, trying to convince her mother that nothing was wrong and that sort of thing was perfectly normal.  The only issue here is that you only hear one side of the conversation.

2. LARP.  If you can't afford acting classes, do some Live Action Roleplaying.  In someways this is better because then you have to improv some dialogue on the spot. 

One thing I always try to do is make my dialogue stand out from the prose.  It isn't you that is talking in the dialogue, it's your character.  Also make sure your characters sound different from each other.  Don't rely too much on accent to do this either.  One of the tricks I use is figuring out how a character reacts to a particular situation.  A freak out character's dialogue is much different than one that is calm and rational. 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Another way to break down dialogue is into target audiences (for lack of better word).  Three ways to do this: Speaking to an authority figure, Speaking with an equal, and Speaking with someone you have authority over.  Languages other than English have this built into them.  For example, the Spanish words for "You".

1.  Speaking to an Authority Figure:  From what I observed, when you speak to authority figures, you do so in a very formal tone.  Most people would be more likely to take time to think before they speak.  They are also less likely to curse, lose their temper or openly bad mouth others.  Of course there are exceptions to this.

2.  Speaking to an Equal:  Freinds and co-workers fall under this catagory.  I mostly hear very informal speech when people talk among themselves.  Slang is more common.

3. Speaking to someone under you:  I find that this is somewhat similar to speaking to an authority figure.  However, there are usually more commanding in thier tone.

The last seems to be the most difficult to get right across cultures; I have been in work situations where I was the immediate superior of some people recently emigrated from China, and what struck me as showing a reasonable standard of civility seemd to strike them as an incredible degree of easygoing tolerance from a boss. 

The places where this gets interesting to write is where the social lines are unclear such that people aren't entirely sure who has authority, or where different lines of authority go in different ways. [ An admiral and a bishop, for example. ]  I'm kind of glad English does not have different forms of address that are strongly bound to this, becuae it would remove interesting ambiguous ground.

A person will probably be more likely to use the word punishment instead of retribution in spoken language.

I have a number of warrior monks in my head for whom the opposite is the case.

I also think the gap between what a person says and what a person writes widens with education, but that is just a pet theory of mine.

Depends on the context.  There is a definite sort of... mode of thought, for want of a better word, which leads people to speak in complete paragraphs. Some do it all the time, some none; personally, I only notice I'm doing it when someone reacts.

Note also with regard to the dialogue-to-convey-information; the places where I most often get annoyed by that not working are not it being clunkily phrased, but situations where there's no logical reason for anyone to ask for or volunteer things that they already know.  Which in SF/F can well be a consideration that's in tension with needing to explain what's going on in your cool new interesting world to the reader; child protagonists and visitors from other cultures turn up so much of the time in genre because you can legitimately need to explain things to them.

[Sara Dennis]

So you get dialogue like this:

"Marty, I know you want to kidnap Tina Grandchamp because of the way her father, who employed you for five years, treated you, but don't you think her fiance, the FBI agent, will come after you?"
"No, Ted, because I am an ex-FBI agent myself and I know all the tactics they will use to catch me."

Everyone got bumps on their noggins from being smacked in the head with all that info?  If Marty knows, and he knows Ted knows, why would he ever ask him that stuff?   If you need to convey that information, do it either in prose near the dialogue, or for god's sake, be subtle.

This is commonly referred to as, "As you know, Bob..."  Your examples on how to fix it were great and it's really important information. Nicely done.

- If the character's well-educated, remove as many of the contractions from their speech as possible, without driving yourself nuts.

This however... Kidding, just kidding. I would amend it a bit, though. I know very highly educated people and they still use contractions. Unless you have a character who is always formal, is *in* an extremely formal setting or speaking very deliberately, either for effect or because they're irritated or what have you, I'd warn against taking out contractions.

Even the upper crust of the crusties use contractions, after all. 

- And the oldest saw of all when it comes to writing dialogue, read it out loud.  Listen to yourself say the words.  Do you sound like you wanted the character to sound?

This is the gem of all gems. Do this. You may feel like a fool for reading out loud, but it's so important. If you trip over words or feel like there are too many syllables for the situation, odds are good the reader will too.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

:
 - And the oldest saw of all when it comes to writing dialogue, read it out loud.  Listen to yourself say the words.  Do you sound like you wanted the character to sound?

This is the gem of all gems. Do this. You may feel like a fool for reading out loud, but it's so important. If you trip over words or feel like there are too many syllables for the situation, odds are good the reader will too.

On the other hand, you can overdo this.

Try taping [ or otherwise recording, yeef, my age is showing - see, clue about character in casual dialogue right there in in a single word use ] casual conversation with real people, and then play it back and listen to it. It will be full of umms and ahs and pauses and repetitions and sentence fragments and the general cumulative effect, while perfectly comprehensible spoken, is unlikely to be something that, if it were transcribed accurately, any reader could bear with for any length of time.

Speech and written dialogue are not exactly the same thing.

( This is presuming that you're not actually writing for the stage, or some context where it is all going to be spoken; of that I have no experience, and on it I have no opinions worth the sharing. )

[Sara Dennis]

On the other hand, you can overdo this.

Try taping [ or otherwise recording, yeef, my age is showing - see, clue about character in casual dialogue right there in in a single word use ] casual conversation with real people, and then play it back and listen to it. It will be full of umms and ahs and pauses and repetitions and sentence fragments and the general cumulative effect, while perfectly comprehensible spoken, is unlikely to be something that, if it were transcribed accurately, any reader could bear with for any length of time.

You're right. Casual, unplanned conversation usually does have pauses and such. What we were suggesting is to read your own writing out loud. If you haven't put a lot of pauses and ums on the page, this shouldn't be an issue.