Ramblings On The Craft : The Spoken Word
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DISCLAIMER : I consider myself to be a life-long writer but I am still an aspiring author. What’s the difference? Essentially, to me anyway, it means that while I have devoted a great deal of time to my words and my art, the amount of money I have made as a professional writer to date could maybe be used to purchase a nice steak dinner for two. So while I have a deep and devoted passion for writing, I do not claim in any way to be an expert or authority figure. What you will find in these essays represent my personal thoughts and feelings about various issues related to writing. I think that in any endeavor, it is essential to have the mindset that there is always something to learn, something you don’t know. As soon as you start to think that you are an authority on anything (besides how to eat a hot dog or perhaps, spelling your name) there might be a problem. With that in mind, I am fully cognizant and comfortable with the fact that on any and all of these issues, I could be completely wrong.
Put another way, I recognize and admit that I could be full of shit.
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Dialogue.
It’s a central part of the narrative formula, as the voices of your characters often drive the book as much as the voice of the narrator. One aspect of its importance to the story is that if a book is over-wrought with dialogue that isn’t working, it can turn someone off from your book at a very early stage. We want the voices to sound vivid and real, honest and authentic. How do we accomplish that? Like anything else, there are any number of theories and ways of going about things, but here are some thoughts of my own on the subject.
First of, let me address an issue that you may or may not already be taking note of, namely that I am intentionally choosing the British spelling of the word. In case this is throwing you, or you find the spelling troublesome, sorry. But I find that whenever I look at the American spelling of this word, “dialog” to me just looks like a word that dashed out of the house in the morning and forgot to put pants on. If it makes you feel any better, as I type this, my spell check is insisting that I’m misspelling the word.
For me, I think that the most important thing to remember with dialogue is that there needs to be at least some distinction between the sound of your characters speaking, and that of the narrator. If you just have a mono-tone voice running through the entire book, you can run the risk of wearing on the patience of your reader, the writing and the story becomes less compelling and to be honest, kind of boring. One aspect of story telling that books struggle with, in comparison to movies is that we don’t get the weight of the actor’s performance. All of that is happening inside the imagination of the reader, so we need to do whatever we can to encourage that process. I also think that you need to strive for some distinctions somewhat between your characters themselves, as well. That doesn’t mean that you have to come up with some strange quirk of language for each character, as that often ends up coming off as cheesy or overdone. I listened to the Song of Ice and Fire series on audiobook and I often suspected the reader was giving himself near-hernias, finding some new caricaturized voice for each character. I think that is enough if you have a few characters who have something unique to the way they speak to improve the feel to your story.
I think that a common pitfall with dialogue is that often writers try to do too much, try to pack too much impact and mechanisms into the speech of the characters. It’s important to remember the modes of speech and the sound of real people talking. Pay attention to your conversations and watch people, see not just what they are saying but how they are saying it. You can achieve so much with small moves, there isn’t a need to go over the top and risk losing your reader.
One technique I have found to be extremely helpful in my quest to improve the quality of my dialogue is to read it to yourself out loud. The reason for this is that if you can actually hear the sound of the words and, as you are going through the process of forming it into speech yourself, you are much more likely to spot something that doesn’t sound right. If you find yourself realizing that you would never say something like that in real life, chances are that you might be molding something that is unrealistic and again, knocks the reader right out of the story. If the dialogue is wrong on the page, you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly as you start to read it out loud. For an even better variation on this, if you have someone you know who you can trust to be careful with your feelings, you can have a friend read the dialogue to you. The advantage of this is that your friend doesn’t have any knowledge of the story, and will read it with no prior influence. You can hear how the dialogue might sound to someone, reading the book for the first time. You won’t have to perpetually do this for every piece of dialogue in your manuscript. I think that as you work to refine your abilities, you develop a stronger ear for the speech and are better at spotting problems.
Another good trick you can use with your dialogue is to let the normal rules of grammar fall by the wayside to some extent. Obviously, the reader isn’t going to want to struggle their way through poorly constructed sentence structure, but the fact is that people make grammatical mistakes in their speech all the time. Often, people aren’t even aware that what they are saying isn’t technically, grammatically correct. Allow your story to reflect that. Have your characters use sentence fragments, get their word order jumbled a little bit. It humanizes your characters and makes them easier for the reader to relate to. You want your readers to believe in the characters, so giving them permission to make mistakes, gives them flaws which in turn, makes them more attractive to the reader.
One other arena in terms of simple fixes for your dialogue is that of profanity. Now, this is a sticky issue for some, more so than others, and it isn’t required, by any means. However, one of the easiest ways to make a particular character stand out is to let him or her curse every now and then. Don’t be gratuitous about it, you don’t have to go over the top with it but again, having a character who curses every now and then humanizes them and makes them more sympathetic, or possibly more despised by the reader. Either way, you are creating an emotional reaction. Also, while it may seem like a trick, or cheesy, it does provide one more way of distinguishing your characters’ voices from that of the narrator.
There’s a great quote from Vonnegut that in any given scene, every character present should want something, even if it’s just a glass of water. The point of this is that you shouldn’t treat your characters like they are interchangeable props that exist and operate solely to provide assistance or roadblocks to your protagonist. Treat them like they are three dimensional people, who have just as an important role to play in the story as anyone else. One way to accomplish this is to work to give them a more defined and unique voices.
A technique you can use to better get inside the head of a character is to re-write sections of the story, from their perspective. This doesn’t even have to end up in the story, the point is to just shift your perspective and force yourself to see the universe of your story through someone else’s eyes. Try re-writing chunks of the story from the villains perspective. It gives you a huge amount of insight into the minds of your characters. And for those of you who are sweating at the idea of having to re-write your 2000 page fantasy epic, relax. Once you do this a little, your understanding of the story as a whole is significantly improved. You don’t have to rewrite the entire book, just key sections.
Ultimately, these are all obviously just my opinions, and I’m sure there are plenty out there who would disagree. But if you’re taking some time right now to think about your dialogue and how much attention you are paying to it, I’ll consider that win, even if you don’t think I know what the hell I’m talking about. It wouldn’t be the first time. I still stand by my overreaching premise, however, Namely, that knowing your characters, and their motivations, is the first step to making them sound like actors in your play, not just slightly different versions of yourself. It’s the difference between an actual, three-dimensional and vivid universe that actually exists out there and which you are just describing, and just a string of random thoughts that you are making up as you go along. It’s about giving your story sound and voice, not just words.
It’s why I wanted to be a writer.
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