Making Characters Sound Human

When we talk about “voice” in writing, generally there are two different things we can be talking about–author voice or character voice. Author voice is the overall tone and style that comes through his or her use of the language to convey whatever story is being told. Generally, author voice is something that doesn’t change. It didn’t matter what sort of story Hemingway wrote, you could tell it was a Hemingway story because it had that “voice,” that openness to it that nobody else could quite manage (although thousands tried).

When you think of all the great authors, they all seem to have that one thing in common; they all have very distinct authorial voices. Whether it be Stephen King, Charles Bukowski, William Shakespeare, or Sylvia Plath. And there’s a list of people I bet you never thought you’d see compiled together under one heading :)

I plan on talking about author voice in another post, because it’s something I know a little about and I think it’s vitally important. I’ve been told I have a very strong authorial voice and it comes through whether you’re reading one of my science fiction stories, or romances, or my novel that takes place in southern Alabama in the late 80s and is written in southern dialect. So even though my characters talk with twang, my voice still comes through loud and clear.

But this post is on character voices, and how to make your characters sound, well, less like characters and more like human beings. In other words, it’s about writing dialogue.

Writing good dialogue is a craft that some people seem to naturally possess and others have to work at. The good news is that, like everything else to do with writing, it can be learned, and once you’ve got it, you’ve got it for good.

Let’s start by taking a look at some bad dialogue.

I’ll set up the scene: Bill and Ted are meeting for lunch to discuss a business proposal that Ted is offering to bring Bill in on for a meager investment of five thousand dollars. Bill doesn’t actually have that kind of money, but doesn’t want to let his friend know he’s broke, so he’s playing along that he’s interested. I’m not going to take this scene very far, just long enough to use it as an example.

#

“Hi Bill,” Ted said. “I want to thank you for meeting with me. I think you will like what I am going to show you.”

“Well I don’t know,” Bill replied, laughing. “I’m pretty cynical when it comes to investing my money. I don’t like to just throw it around.”

Ted pulled out his laptop and a binder full of promotional material. He flashed Bill a smile. “Let me have a chance to show you what we have been up to. I think you might just change your mind.”

“Okay,” Bill said.

Ted ran through a PowerPoint presentation and discussed financial projections while Bill tried to feign interest. “So . . .” Ted asked when he was done, “what do you think, Bill?”

“Um. . . I’m sorry Ted, but I think I have to pass.”

Ted’s face fell. “Can I ask why?”

“I just don’t feel comfortable investing in something with a friend for one thing. Also, like I said before, I’m pretty tight fisted with my money. Maybe you should talk to Dave at the office. This might be right up his alley.”

Ted seemed a bit ticked off. He put his laptop back into his briefcase along with the binder. “Yeah, I will talk to Dave. Thanks for your time, Bill.”

#

Okay, first let me start by saying this isn’t really that bad. I was trying to make it horrible and found it hard to write horrible dialogue. This is part of the good news I told you about earlier. Once you know how to write good dialogue, you naturally will continue to do so. Even when you attempt to go for stilted, you end up with just mediocre.

But let’s see if we can do better. I don’t want to restructure the actual stage direction of the scene too much (although, I will do a bit because what happens around the dialogue is part of the dialogue). Mainly, I want to concentrate on the words coming out of the character’s mouths.

#

“Bill!” Ted said, taking Bill’s hand. Bill had stood as Ted approached the table. Ted had arrived late, wearing a pressed suit and carrying a briefcase. He had his hair slicked back. Dave, on the other hand, was in dungarees and a T-shirt. “How the hell are ya, buddy?”

“I’m good, Ted,” Bill muttered as they sat. “Pretty good.”

“Been here long?”

“Not really.” Bill looked down at his coffee cup, half empty.

“I need one of those,” Ted said, looking for a waitress. He made eye contact with one and motioned for her to bring him a cup.

Ted placed his briefcase flat on the table in front of him and put both his palms on top. He stared right into Bill’s eyes. “So . . . how’s the wife?”

“She’s . . . she’s okay, Ted,” Bill said quietly. “You know. Same old thing.” He looked nervously across the restaurant to a bunch of people being seated.

“Glad to hear it.” Ted smiled. He had impeccably white teeth, reminding Bill of a shark. “Still golfing?”

Bill looked away again. “Not really. Threw out my shoulder . . .”

“Ooh, sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah . . .”

“Anyway–” The waitress arrived with Ted’s coffee, cutting him off. She set it down on the table in front of him, making him have to move his briefcase.

“Well,” Ted said, “What do you say we get right down to business?”

“Sure . . . ” Bill said, tentatively. His hands felt clammy.

Ted popped the latches on his briefcase open. They seemed extra loud in the small restaurant. He pulled out a laptop and a binder stuffed with promotional material. He passed the binder over to Bill. “I think you’re gonna LOVE what I have to show you,” Ted said.

“I don’t know,” Bill said, “Stacey and I are pretty tight when it comes to our money. It’s more her than me.”

Ted smiled. “She’s got ya by the short hairs, hey? Well even SHE’LL be impressed when you tell her about this.”

With a bit of rearranging of coffee cups and chairs, he set his laptop up on the table so they could both see it and began running through a PowerPoint presentation describing his investment deal. Every so often, he’d stop and refer Bill to a page in the binder. The presentation was very professional and slick.

Bill felt very warm. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face.

The presentation came to and end. “So,” Ted said, “what do you think? I can get you in for five thousand. That’s a pretty sweet deal just for you. We’ve moved up to ten thousand for everyone else at this point. I’m only doing this because we’re friends.”

“Gee, I really appreciate the opportunity Ted . . .” Bill said, “but I don’t know. I think I’m gonna have to pass.”

“Seriously? Can I ask why?”

Once again, Bill’s gaze wandered across the room. “Like I said, Stacey and I are pretty tight with are finances. She doesn’t like me to throw money around. I know this is a good deal. I can see how good it is.”

“You bet it’s good.”

“I know. I can tell.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I just . . . I don’t think she’ll GET it.”

“Why don’t you go home and talk it over with her?” Ted suggested.

“Okay,” Bill said, with a sigh. “I’ll do that.”

“Good man!” Ted said, checking his watch.

He stood from the table. Awkwardly, Bill stood too and they both shook hands.”I’ve gotta take off. I have another appointment downtown in twenty minutes. Don’t forget to talk to Stacey about the thing. I’ll call you in a couple days. All right?”

“All right.”

“And give her my love.”

“I will.”

#

Okay, now you’re probably going to call foul and say I cheated because it’s so much longer, but that is a little bit of the point. Real dialogue isn’t condensed in a few lines, it meanders and goes on tangents. Things happen to interrupt it. That’s also why there is more happening in the second scene; everything in it is around the dialogue and, in a way, dialogue related.

There’s also better characterization–we actually see that Bill is nervous–but that’s part of good dialogue too. And notice the structure of the sentences. They aren’t all the same length like they are in the first scene. They vary. Sometimes speakers go on for three or four sentences, in other cases, they say one word and get cut off or drift off. If you listen to real dialogue in real life, people rarely say a complete sentence and hardly ever say a complete sentence without a contraction. You should pretty much use contractions always in dialogue unless you have a good reason not to. Good reasons might be: the character speaking is Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, he is a God of some sort, he is some sort of being that speaks very formally. Without contractions, a certain level of stiltedness will automatically occur in your dialogue.

Another thing to watch for when you’re writing dialogue is that you’re not playing ping pong. Dialogue shouldn’t just be back and forth, one speaker says something the other reacts with something the other reacts back, etc. There are always multiple levels of things going on. We are always saying one thing and meaning something else. There is always subtext. Half the time, we are playing catch up, still talking about something referred to three lines of dialogue back while the person we are talking to is onto an entirely new topic.

Want to do a neat exercise? Most smartphones have recording software. Next time you’re at a gathering or a party or whatever you call it, place your smartphone in an inconspicuous spot with the recording feature active and just let it record. Then, later, listen to the conversations. Better yet, transcribe them. I actually wrote a short story this way once and it turned out to sound incredibly similar to something in the style of J.D. Salinger.

One last example. I mentioned that my latest novel, Dream with Little Angels (Kensington, 2013) is written in dialect. A lot of editors warn against writing in dialect, because you have to be dead on for it to work. I had no problem selling my book and I think the dialect helped. Here is a scene from that book to give you an idea of how I handled the dialogue. Note that only the dialogue is in dialect, the actual rest of the prose is not. There are also other interesting differences between the prose parts and the dialogue parts. The book is written in first person from the point of view of the eleven-year-old son of the detective solving a murder. Whenever he refers to his mom in dialogue, he calls her “mom,” whenever he refers to her in the prose, it’s always, “my mother.” I do the same thing with the words “reckon” and “think”. In this way, the prose is elevated to a more literary level, even though the book retains the feeling of being placed firmly in southern Alabama.

In this scene, the protagonist (eleven-year-old Abe Teal) and his best friend Dewey (who is at least one burnt sienna short of a box of Crayolas) think Abe’s neighbour is suspicious, so they follow him into town one Saturday morning on their bicycles.

#

Dewey turned out to already be up. He answered the phone on the first ring, which was good, because I didn’t want to wake up his ma. She would have her own concerns, although through the years I had discovered Dewey’s mother didn’t seem nearly as thorough as my own when it came to worrying about or monitoring her son’s business.

“I’ll meet you outside on my bike in fifteen minutes,” I whispered excitedly into the phone after telling him about what I saw.

“Why was he dressed like a cowboy?” Dewey asked. I heard him yawn right before he said it. It annoyed me that he wasn’t already off the phone and getting his shoes on.

“How the heck should I know? Why is he walking down Cottonwood Lane before seven on a Saturday? And the biggest question is why is he carrying a shotgun with him?” I was getting frustrated, because it was questions like these that were exactly the reason we had to follow him. If we knew all the answers, we could just stay home and Dewey could go back to bed the way it sure seemed like he wanted to right now.

“You said the box just looked like it could carry a shotgun,” Dewey said.

“Yeah, but what else would you put in a box like that? Come on, Dewey. It was a cardboard shotgun box if I ever seen one.”

“Have you ever seen one? I never even heard’ve one.”

I thought that over. “No, I suppose I haven’t. Not until this morning, anyway.”

“I’m not sure I should leave,” Dewey said. “My mom’s still asleep.”

“Leave her a note. Tell her you’ll be back before nine.” I reminded him I now had my very own watch.

“I’m still thinking that maybe we should wait . . .”

“Wait for what? We’ve been watchin’ his house going on . . . I don’t even know how long. Now, out of nowhere, I actually see him leave and we have the opportunity to find out what he’s really up to. And you’re worried about your mom because she’s sleepin’?”

“We know he ain’t taking roadkill,” Dewey said. “It came back, remember?”

“We know he ain’t taking it no MORE,” I corrected him. “We have no idea WHAT he does. This is what we have to find out.” I sighed, trying not to get too angry and raise my voice too loud. I didn’t want to wake anybody.

Finally, I convinced Dewey that going after Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow was not only the right thing to do, it was, by all intents, the only thing to do.

“All right,” he said. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes? You already used up ten on the phone. We need to catch up with him. You got ten to get here.”

“All right.”

It took him more like seventeen. In fact, I was on the verge of calling him back when I saw his bike pull up outside my yard through that gap in them drapes. I already had my boots on and quietly headed outside using the backdoor, being careful to shut it slowly so it didn’t slam the way it normally did. I grabbed my bike from beside the garage and pushed it gently down the driveway in the still quiet of the early morning.

“What took you so long?” I asked, still keeping my voice down.

“I was in my pajamas when you called.”

“So was I.”

“I was hungry.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine time to think about eating. Anyway, let’s go before someone wakes up and finds us.”

“Did you leave YOUR mom a note?” Dewey asked.

I nodded.

“What’d it say?”

“Said I was going biking with you and I’d be home by nine. What did yours say?”

Dewey’s cheeks pinkened under the golden morning light. The sun twinkled off the chrome of his handle bars. A few puffy white clouds were stretched across an otherwise light blue sky the color of a dipped Easter egg. “I said we was going after your neighbor to see what it is he does on Saturday mornings dressed as a cowboy.”

I stared at him for what felt like a full-on minute, wondering if he was pulling my leg. He wasn’t. “Now why would you go say somethin’ dumb like that?” I asked.

“Cuz it’s the truth, ain’t it?”

“So? What if your mom calls my mom?”

“I always tell the truth.”

I bit my tongue and thought before responding. “I do too, but just because I left out part of the why doesn’t mean I wasn’t being truthful. Anyway, it’s too late now to worry ’bout it; we ain’t goin’ back to your house to rewrite your note. Let’s go, before we lose any chance of findin’ him. Christ, Dewey, it’s been nearly half an hour since he left.”

We kicked off in the same direction Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow had been walking. “I figure he’s likely gone downtown,” I said. “Although I doubt too many shops or anythin’ is open so early on a Saturday morning.” I said this, although I didn’t rightly know whether or not it was true. Maybe all this time I’d been thinking I was one of the only people who woke up bright and early on Saturday mornings when the truth was it actually turned out most folk were just like me, and my mother and Carry were the exceptions. I guess me and Dewey were about to find out.

While we rode, I told Dewey about me and my mother finding Carry and her boyfriend the night before. Most of the story I went over rather quickly, but he made me slow down at several key areas. The first was when I described what Carry was wearing in the back of that car. I knew he’d be interested in hearing that, I just never realized how interested. He must have asked me nearly ten different things about it. Finally, I just got mad.

“She was in her bra. What else do you need to know? Why is this so important?”

Dewey shrugged. He was coasting beside me. “I dunno,” he said.

“Well, let’s get past it, then, all right? I mean heck, you can either imagine what she looked like, or you can’t. I don’t see how I can provide any more details than I already have.”

He stopped me again when I got to the end and told him about how my mother pulled out her gun, pointed it straight at Carry’s boyfriend, and—the most important part, I thought—used the word. Not once, but twice.

“Really?” Dewey asked. This interested him even more than Carry’s undergarments. “Was the gun loaded?”

It was my turn to shrug. “I’m assuming so. My mom said it was.”

“And she used all them words?”

I nodded. We both swerved around a parked Chevy truck. “I couldn’t believe what I heard,” I said. “She even said she was gonna blow his balls off, or something to that effect.”

“Wow.”

When Dewey was finally satisfied that he’d wrung every detail of the story he could from me, we fell into silence for a while. I rode the lead, taking us up to Main Street.

“How do you know this is the way Mr. Farrow went?” Dewey asked.

“I don’t,” I said. “I just figure if you’re gonna go out on a Saturday morning and get dressed up, you’re probably headed downtown. I doubt he was going to the swamp or any of the mud roads or anything like that. He certainly didn’t look dressed for roadkill collectin’.”

Dewey considered this and seemed to be satisfied that it made some sort of sense, because he never asked any more about it. “So,” he said after a bit, “did your mom really arrest Mr. Garner?”

This question didn’t sit well with me, but I answered the truth. “Yep. Far as I know, he’s still in jail.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it,” he said.

I hesitated. Truth was, I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t exactly know why. Something about the whole thing felt very wrong to me. Like there was something I should understand but didn’t, or maybe something I should be remembering but forgot. “Tell me somethin’, Dewey, you were there that afternoon in the rain when we went searching for Mary Ann Dailey. Remember all the stuff Mr. Robert Lee Garner said? Remember the way he talked about Ruby Mae Vickers? How he put flowers out for her?”

Dewey said he did. “He didn’t seem as though he wanted to talk much ’bout them flowers, though.”

I nodded. “But we saw more flowers that day we rode over to his ranch, remember?” I asked. “The day they found Mary Ann? Those flowers seemed fresh to me.”

“Yup,” Dewey said. “Me, too.”

I backpedaled slightly, slowing a bit. “Dewey, do you think Mr. Garner could do something like this to Mary Ann?”

“If the police think so, I don’t see why my opinion would rightly matter. I’m only eleven years old,” he said. This was a slightly different opinion than the one he had expressed the night Mary Ann Dailey showed up dead and Mr. Garner was first taken into custody.

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There’s a taste of good dialogue in action. It’s not overwhelming the scene by taking up all the space nor is it being squeezed out of existence by exposition. Both have to achieve an equal balance and let the other breathe.

That’s about all I have to say about character voice.

Michael out.