Archon Panel: Dialogue

How to Write Realistic Dialogue 5 Oct 2024, Saturday 6:00 – 7:00 Have you ever been completely taken out of a story by unrealistic dialogue? Sometimes it’s a matter of being “too realistic”. It can be harder than you think to create realistic dialogue and also drop the real-life filler words that will bog down your writing.

I don’t think that’s the right way to phrase this, and I bet you all agree. I think the above has too much emphasis on “realistic” and should instead be using words such as “good” and “great” and “believable and also “witty.” All of those qualities are more important than “realistic.”

Also, I don’t think it’s at all difficult to drop filler words from written dialogue. In fact, I think it’s hard to remember to put them in, on the somewhat rare occasions you may want to have a character say “um” or “like” or whatever. Those fillers can be used to great effect in great dialogue, but who in the world would put them in by accident? No one, that’s who, because deciding to type “um” is a lot more of a decision than saying “um” in actual real-world conversation.

Who’s moderating this panel? Oh, good, looks like I’m moderating! That means I get to frame questions for the panel, and one of those questions will certainly be, “Do you think realistic is the appropriate word for what we’re trying to create in fiction?” Another question will be, “Do you find it difficult to avoid overuse of filler words when writing dialogue?” I suppose it would be best to start with, “So, what are filler words anyway?” because maybe whoever wrote the panel description was thinking of something else. Maybe they were thinking of words like “So” at the beginning of a sentence. That’s not really a filler word, in my opinion. It’s a way of introducing a sentence that’s perfectly appropriate if what you want is to indicate, “So, I’m going to start a new topic here” or “So, I understood what you said and I’m going to respond to it” or lots of other functions.

Regardless, the real question is: How do you write great dialogue? Or maybe: What is great dialogue? And possibly, What is stiff dialogue? Because that is the most typical failure we see, isn’t it? Dialogue that is stiff or wooden. Or boring. Those are all terms for the same kind of problem.

Or maybe the most typical failure with dialogue is that it’s unnecessary. Characters are conversing, but the conversation isn’t moving the plot forward, isn’t building character, isn’t really doing anything. That can be hard to avoid. That is, I sometimes find it difficult to end a conversation and move into the next scene. I suppose that’s because a conversation is started, it has to reach some kind of conclusion. Or, I mean, not if something blows up; that’s certainly one way to get out of conversation and get moving into the next scene.

Anyway! Dialogue is best shown by example. I don’t honestly think there’s any way to say anything useful about dialogue without examples. So let’s have some examples!

***

After they [Moon and Stone] ate, Moon stretched out on his stomach, basking in the warm firelight, the cool turf soft against his groundling skin, comfortably full of grasseater and tea. From somewhere distant, he heard a roar, edged like a bell and so far away it almost blended with the wind. He slanted a look at Stone to see if they had to worry.

“Skylings, mountain wind-walkers.” Stone sat by the fire, breaking sticks up into small pieces and absently tossing them into the flames. “They live too far up in the air to notice us.”

Moon rolled onto his side to squint suspiciously up at the sky. The stars were bright, streaked with clouds. “Then what do they eat?”

“Other skylings, tiny ones, no bigger than gnats. They make swarms big enough to mistake for clouds.” As Moon tried to picture that, Stone asked, “Did you ever look for other shifters?”

Stone hadn’t asked about this before, and Moon wanted to avoid the subject. Looking for his own people had led him into more trouble than anything else. “For a while. Then I stopped.” He shrugged, as if it was nothing. “I couldn’t search the whole Three Worlds.”

“And the warrior you were with didn’t tell you which court, or the name of the queen, or anyone in your line?” Stone sounded distinctly irritated. “She didn’t even give you a hint?”

Moon corrected him pointedly, “No, my mother didn’t tell me anything.”

Stone sighed, poking at the fire. Moon got ready for an argument, but instead Stone asked, “How did she and the Arbora die?”

That wasn’t a welcome subject either. It was like an old wound that had never quite stopped bleeding. Moon didn’t want to talk about the details, but he owed Stone some kind of answer. He propped his chin on his arms and looked out into the dark. “Tath killed them.”

Tath were reptile groundlings, predators, and they had surrounded the tree Moon’s family had been sleeping in. He remembered waking, confused and terrified, as his mother tossed him out of the nest. He had realized late that she had picked him because he was the only other one who could fly, the only one who had a chance to escape while she stayed to defend the others.

***

What we have here is dialogue that contains worldbuilding plus characterization. This is a great example of dialogue that includes exposition. Look at this next sample for a complete contrast:

***

Just as she neared, I sat up.
“Good evening,” I said.
“Why – good evening,” she replied.
“When do I check out?” I asked.
“I’ll have to ask Doctor.”
“Do so,” I said.
“Please roll up your sleeve.”
“No, thanks.”
“I have to give you an injection.”
“No, you don’t. I don’t need it.”
“I’m afraid that’s for Doctor to say.”
“Then send him around and let him say it. But in the meantime, I will not permit it.”
“I’m afraid I have my orders.”
“So did Eichmann, and look what happened to him.” And I shook my head slowly.

***

That’s from Zelazny’s Amber series — you probably recognized it. That’s hard-boiled-detective style dialogue. There’s no worldbuilding at all — zero description, zero exposition, straight dialogue. Very minimal tags. Zelazny was running the risk here of the reader losing track of who was saying what — except that Corwin and the nurse are solidly in their roles, so that makes it easier to keep track. Contrast that with this next sample, which shows a very philosophy regarding the use of dialogue tags.

***

“I was promised a long story,” Duvall said, after they had gotten their food and drinks.
“I made no such promise,” Dahl said.
“The promise was implied,” Duvall protested. “And besides, I bought you a drink. I own you. Entertain me, Ensign Dahl.”
“All right, fine,” Dahl said. “I entered the Academy late because for three years I was a seminary student.”
“Okay, that’s moderately interesting,” Duvall said.
“On Forshan,” Dahl said.
“Okay, that’s intensely interesting,” Duvall said.

***

That’s from Scalzy’s Redshirts. I found it absolutely excruciating to listen to in audio form because of the (nearly) invariable use of he said, she said always at the end of each short sentence, always in the same form. Then I got used to it and these tags stopped being so much like fingernails on a blackboard, but I would personally point to this as an example of bad dialogue and I’m sorry because I know Scalzi is popular, but there it is. Compare that to the far more sophisticated and far less obtrusive tags in the sample below:

***

“You’ll never guess what Stella told me last night,” Sawyer said, strolling into the kitchen just as Julia was finishing the apple stack cake she was going to take to Vance Shelby’s granddaughter.

Julia closed her eyes for a moment. Stella must have called him the moment Julia left her last night.

Sawyer stopped next to her at the stainless steel table and stood close. He was like crisp, fresh air. He was self-possessed and proud, but everyone forgave him because charm sparkled around him like sunlight. [ . . . ]

“You’re not supposed to be back here,” she said as she put the last layer of cake on top of the dried-apple-and-spice filling.

“Report me to the owner.” He pushed some of her hair behind her left ear, his fingers lingering on the thin pink streak she still dyed in her hair there.

“Don’t you want to know what Stella told me last night?”

She jerked her head away from his hand as she put the last of the apple and spice filling on top of the cake, leaving the sides bare. “Stella was drunk last night.”

“She said you told her that you bake cakes because of me.”

Julia had known it was coming, but she stilled anyway, the icing spatula stopping mid-stroke. She quickly resumed spreading the filling, hoping he hadn’t noticed. “She thinks you have low self-esteem. She’s trying to build up your ego.”

He lifted one eyebrow in that insolent way of his. “I’ve been accused of many things, but low self-esteem is not one of them.”

“It must be hard to be so beautiful.”

“It’s hell. Did you really say that to her?”

She clanged the spatula into the empty bowl the filling had been in, then took both to the sink. “I don’t remember. I was drunk, too.”

“You never get drunk,” he said.

“You don’t know me well enough to make blanket statements like ‘You never get drunk.’” It felt good to say that. Eighteen years she’d been away. Look how much I’ve improved, she wanted to say.

***

Far, far better. In case you don’t recognize that, it’s Sarah Addison Allen. I really love her books — most of them. The above snippet is from one of my favorites, The Girl Who Chased the Moon.

Here’s a post by Joe Berkowitz: Legendary Screenwriting Guru Robert McKee On Creating Incredible Dialogue.

McKee says: “The hallmark of beautiful dialogue is transparency, you see characters saying whatever they say, and you go right through those words to what they’re thinking and feeling, even down to the subconscious level … Bad dialogue is opaque, bad dialogue stops the eye of the audience at the screen, stage, or page, and explains outwardly, blatantly, and falsely what the character’s thinking or feeling.”

There’s probably more to it than that, but transparency is one virtue of a lot of good dialogue, yes. The above is talking about two things, really — transparency and veracity — that’s the part about revealing to the reader what the characters are thinking and feeling. Good dialogue can either do that directly (reliable narrator) or kind of through a back door (unreliable narrator), but both generally show the reader true things about the characters and the story.

Besides transparency and veracity, what else? Well, other virtues common to great dialogue are wit and liveliness. I’m thinking of Lindsay Buroker here.

***

“Waiting for the right people isn’t going to get us where we want; we need to go out and find…” She groped for the right word. A mission? A project? A job?

“Trouble?” Sicarius suggested.

“An endeavor that will help the city and prove to the emperor that we’re undeserving of the bounties on our heads and we’re invaluable resources to his regime.”

“Trouble,” Sicarius said.

***

Buroker can write clunky sentences in non-dialogue prose, but her dialogue is great. Who else does really good, witty banter? Ilona Andrews, especially in later books. Oh, Laura Florand. I was sorry when Laura Florand stopped writing. Hopefully she just turned her attention to other things, because her contemporary romances were the ones that got me reading the genre in the first place.

What are some common problems with dialogue?

1) Too Much Realism

Despite the emphasis on “realism” in the panel’s description, you definitely do not want dialogue that sounds to real. Definitely not.

2) Not Enough Individuality

Every character ought to sound different from every other character, especially if they’re from very different backgrounds, most especially if they’re from very different cultural backgrounds.

3) Clumsy info-dumping

You absolutely can write good, believable “As you know, Bob,” dialogue. It’s not even hard. You do it like this:

“Forgive me; of course you know all this. I fear I’m a little fretful.”

“Now, I think we all agree thus and so and this and that, right? So then the question is …”

In the real world, there are nigh unto infinite situations in which somebody will explain or comment on something that everyone in the room already knows. I don’t mean those times when the office pedant insists on explaining in excruciating detail something everyone already knows. I mean people do this casually all the time, and you can make it sound fine in a novel as well. Not that you should do it for no reason, but if you have a reason to do it, you can do it so smoothly not a single reader will complain — and in a way that builds character as well as offering information to the reader. Do it right and most readers won’t even notice. It’s only when you do it badly that it turns into an “as you know, Bob” moment.

So, don’t do it badly.

4) Trying too hard, getting too silly.

“John, are you listening?” Mary fidgeted, her heart aching at the way he was ignoring her.

“What? Oh, sure. Why are you wondering if I love you? Of course I do—how could you think such a thing?” John went back to reading his book, his brows furrowed in concentration. Mary waited for more, but he said nothing else. Then his face brightened. “Hey, what’s for dessert?”

“Chocolate cake—your favorite.” She played with her apron strings, then, with clenched teeth, she threw the apron to the ground. “I’ll go get you a piece.”

I found this example here, where it is presented as an example of good dialogue. I don’t think so at all. I think this is what people come up with when they deliberately set out to stuff the subtext into the scene and they’re trying too hard and it gets silly. To me, this looks A LOT like ChatGPT dialogue. Here, for comparison, is a sample of ChatGPT dialogue:

Alex gently brushes a strand of hair behind Jamie’s ear, their eyes locking. “You know, even on the toughest days, just seeing you makes everything feel right.”

Jamie smiles, their heart racing, as they lean closer. “I feel the same. It’s like you’re my safe place in a world full of chaos.”

Alex takes Jamie’s hands, fingers intertwining, and whispers, “I never want to leave that safe place, not now, not ever.”

Trying too hard, getting silly. This is really common in ChatGPT-generated dialogue, and since that dialogue has to come from somewhere, I guess it’s similar (in at least some ways) to human-generated dialogue — bad dialogue.

All right! So! Here’s the tl;dr version:

Dialogue fails when it’s too silly, when it’s too stiff or boring, when it’s too realistic, when tags become obtrusive for any reason, when it fails to build character or move the story forward and also fails to be witty enough to justify just on that basis.

Dialogue succeeds when it’s transparent or witty or both, when tags are smooth or absent, when it builds character or moves the story forward.

That’s what I think. I’m now going to design panel questions around some of the ideas here. Anybody else got a great example for authors who do especially good dialogue? Because the way to build skill at writing dialogue, or at least one way, is surely to read a lot of great dialogue.

AND

Here, in case you’d like to click through and take a look, is a contest for short stories written entirely with dialogue. Many past winners are presented.

Here’s a snippet from one entry:

Haikuzilla by Caleb Echterling

“Sugarbear! Get in here with the latest Insta-tracking poll numbers. We need a handle on how my crisis response is playing.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Governor. The bad news is that your approval number is down to fourteen percent. The good news is that undecideds climbed two points to seven percent.”

“Son of a bitch. So my disapproval rating is…let’s see…carry the six…hang on…aw, crap, who does math in their head anymore. What about the real-time focus group?”

“They rate your crisis management somewhere between incompetent and treasonous.”

***

Lively, witty, fun — I’ll have to check out more of the past winners when I get a moment.

“This calls for drastic measures. Get me General Oblong on the phone.”

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