Dialogue: Part One
Dialogue is to novels what sound must have been to the movies. You can have pages of exquisite description, but it's all a bit staid and ponderous. You can show your character walking to work, but he or she doesn't truly come alive until the moment they speak.
Despite this (or maybe because), many authors find writing dialogue challenging. A rare few are held up as models: Pinter's dialogue is said to be so naturalistic it sounds like real speech, yet even his is pruned of non essentials, fillers etc. Others apparently believe that peppering dialogue with swear words lends it a gritty authenticity, but more than a page of this can tax your reader's patience.
Since this is a huge topic, I'll tackle it in a pair of blogs. Today I'll look at 2 separate issues: where to find inspiration for your dialogue, to make it as dynamic and interesting as possible; and the content of characters' speech, i.e dialect, accents, swearing and time period.
Listen
Conversations are going on all around you. On the bus, at work, in the supermarket - soak it up. Real conversations can be funnier than anything a standup can devise, with an intuitive grasp of timing and back and forth. I'm not suggesting you transcribe them verbatim (your colleagues will start demanding royalties!), but it's worth jotting down conversations that made you laugh or intrigued you. If it had this effect on a bystander, imagine what it'll do to a reader.
TV and radio
Next time you're watching TV, do some research. Find a show in the genre you're writing - comedy, thriller, drama- and pay close attention to the dialogue. Is it convincing? Does it grip you? It doesn't necessarily have to be fiction; you might find talk shows or documentaries provide useful insights.
Radio is a treasure trove of dialogue, especially the comedies. Two brilliant examples are Cabin Pressure, a sitcom about a commercial airline and its madcap crew, and Down the Line, a pitch perfect parody of radio phone ins. Although undoubtedly helped by great acting, the writing in these shows is first rate.
Accents and dialects
In less sensitive times, writers portrayed the speech as anyone non white or non U as a bewildering mass of hieroglyphs. Presumably meant to be read aloud, it resulted in a noise quite unlike whatever was intended. For your average reader at home, it was a mental workout on par with the Times crossword without a dictionary.
Even if this is your own accent and you believe you can faithfully reproduce it - don't. If you don't offend readers with the accent, you'll alienate people who haven't heard it before, and certainly not this mangled version. I still remember how frustrated I was with a minor character in V for Vendetta. Alone of all the cast, he has a thick Glaswegian accent, which Alan Moore decided to recreate phonetically. You have to read it aloud to make sense of it, and not always then.
Mention it in passing - "soft Welsh lilt", "harsh Scouse accent" - and be done with it. If you're really worried about it, get somebody with the accent to help you out.
Dialect is another case in point. In moderation it can add real flavour; if overdone, your poor readers will have to sprint for an urban dictionary every few minutes. Ask yourself if the character would plausibly use that phrase, if it's relevant, if the reader can understand from the context.
Slang
If dialogue is passé before the ink dries, slang is doubly so. We automatically think of posh slang from a bygone era (spiffing, ripping) or hippy catchphrases (groovy, way out) but surely you can remember phrases from your own lifetime that have died out.
Think before you use slang. Will it date your novel? Will people outside your age group or geographical area understand? Would your character use slang in the first place? Check urban dictionaries to be sure it's still in vogue.
Swearing and slurs
Swearing is a matter of taste. There are readers who are so offended by an f-word, they hurl the book away; others shrug as characters eff and jeff. You need to reach a happy medium: as Eliza Dolittle's Freudian slip shows, a little profanity well employed has a far greater impact than reams of the stuff. If your characters are foul mouthed nihilists, fair enough - otherwise it seems a clumsy attempt to shock.
Slurs should be used sparingly - and carefully. Unless your novel is set in another time (and even then I'd advise against it), do NOT have your heroine use ethnic slurs. Just because you're blasé about such language doesn't mean your reader will be. Personally I'm incensed by the way "gay" became a synonym for rubbish a few years ago; while it's thankfully fading away, I'd look askance at an allegedly intelligent, educated person using such language.
Other time periods
Writing dialogue for other time periods is a tricky feat. You know not to drop obvious clangers - slang and swearing being a definite no-no - but how long have common phrases been in use? How would you address a social inferior, or a superior for that matter? What about the finer subtleties of interpersonal relationships, far stricter than today?
The truth is, we will never know; the best we can manage is a hazy reenactment. Read both fiction and non fiction about the period in question; you'll likely be surprised by how contemporary people sounded. With few adjustments, Conan Doyle characters could be speaking today.
Whatever you do, do NOT attempt the cobbled together mess often found in older works, where characters all but proclaim, "Gadzooks, I'm in the sixteenth century!" Throwing in the odd "Marry," "Prithee" and other Shakespearean rip offs do not enforce a sense of place, but makes the reader laugh. You can just about get away with it in a comedy but it grates in a serious novel.
Despite this (or maybe because), many authors find writing dialogue challenging. A rare few are held up as models: Pinter's dialogue is said to be so naturalistic it sounds like real speech, yet even his is pruned of non essentials, fillers etc. Others apparently believe that peppering dialogue with swear words lends it a gritty authenticity, but more than a page of this can tax your reader's patience.
Since this is a huge topic, I'll tackle it in a pair of blogs. Today I'll look at 2 separate issues: where to find inspiration for your dialogue, to make it as dynamic and interesting as possible; and the content of characters' speech, i.e dialect, accents, swearing and time period.
Listen
Conversations are going on all around you. On the bus, at work, in the supermarket - soak it up. Real conversations can be funnier than anything a standup can devise, with an intuitive grasp of timing and back and forth. I'm not suggesting you transcribe them verbatim (your colleagues will start demanding royalties!), but it's worth jotting down conversations that made you laugh or intrigued you. If it had this effect on a bystander, imagine what it'll do to a reader.
TV and radio
Next time you're watching TV, do some research. Find a show in the genre you're writing - comedy, thriller, drama- and pay close attention to the dialogue. Is it convincing? Does it grip you? It doesn't necessarily have to be fiction; you might find talk shows or documentaries provide useful insights.
Radio is a treasure trove of dialogue, especially the comedies. Two brilliant examples are Cabin Pressure, a sitcom about a commercial airline and its madcap crew, and Down the Line, a pitch perfect parody of radio phone ins. Although undoubtedly helped by great acting, the writing in these shows is first rate.
Accents and dialects
In less sensitive times, writers portrayed the speech as anyone non white or non U as a bewildering mass of hieroglyphs. Presumably meant to be read aloud, it resulted in a noise quite unlike whatever was intended. For your average reader at home, it was a mental workout on par with the Times crossword without a dictionary.
Even if this is your own accent and you believe you can faithfully reproduce it - don't. If you don't offend readers with the accent, you'll alienate people who haven't heard it before, and certainly not this mangled version. I still remember how frustrated I was with a minor character in V for Vendetta. Alone of all the cast, he has a thick Glaswegian accent, which Alan Moore decided to recreate phonetically. You have to read it aloud to make sense of it, and not always then.
Mention it in passing - "soft Welsh lilt", "harsh Scouse accent" - and be done with it. If you're really worried about it, get somebody with the accent to help you out.
Dialect is another case in point. In moderation it can add real flavour; if overdone, your poor readers will have to sprint for an urban dictionary every few minutes. Ask yourself if the character would plausibly use that phrase, if it's relevant, if the reader can understand from the context.
Slang
If dialogue is passé before the ink dries, slang is doubly so. We automatically think of posh slang from a bygone era (spiffing, ripping) or hippy catchphrases (groovy, way out) but surely you can remember phrases from your own lifetime that have died out.
Think before you use slang. Will it date your novel? Will people outside your age group or geographical area understand? Would your character use slang in the first place? Check urban dictionaries to be sure it's still in vogue.
Swearing and slurs
Swearing is a matter of taste. There are readers who are so offended by an f-word, they hurl the book away; others shrug as characters eff and jeff. You need to reach a happy medium: as Eliza Dolittle's Freudian slip shows, a little profanity well employed has a far greater impact than reams of the stuff. If your characters are foul mouthed nihilists, fair enough - otherwise it seems a clumsy attempt to shock.
Slurs should be used sparingly - and carefully. Unless your novel is set in another time (and even then I'd advise against it), do NOT have your heroine use ethnic slurs. Just because you're blasé about such language doesn't mean your reader will be. Personally I'm incensed by the way "gay" became a synonym for rubbish a few years ago; while it's thankfully fading away, I'd look askance at an allegedly intelligent, educated person using such language.
Other time periods
Writing dialogue for other time periods is a tricky feat. You know not to drop obvious clangers - slang and swearing being a definite no-no - but how long have common phrases been in use? How would you address a social inferior, or a superior for that matter? What about the finer subtleties of interpersonal relationships, far stricter than today?
The truth is, we will never know; the best we can manage is a hazy reenactment. Read both fiction and non fiction about the period in question; you'll likely be surprised by how contemporary people sounded. With few adjustments, Conan Doyle characters could be speaking today.
Whatever you do, do NOT attempt the cobbled together mess often found in older works, where characters all but proclaim, "Gadzooks, I'm in the sixteenth century!" Throwing in the odd "Marry," "Prithee" and other Shakespearean rip offs do not enforce a sense of place, but makes the reader laugh. You can just about get away with it in a comedy but it grates in a serious novel.
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