Touche Cliche ― The Book of Cliches

-dialogue

15. dialogue

Sup? Yeah, I'll talk about where the fuck I've been at the end. Graphic content warning.

Ah, dialogue one of the most important aspects of a story: what your characters are telling each other. I've been reading some terrible examples of dialogue over the past couple of months and wanted to finally talk about it as dialogue is something that I struggle with a lot. 

These couple of chapters on dialogue are going to be a little different because I'm gonna try and make it a little more fluid. I'll give examples in groups of three and then talk about how realistic each piece of dialogue is and how I'd fix some of the unrealism.

Example(s):  

a). "She's got some guts showing her face 'round here." Ai sneered, crossing her arms.

b). "Calm down, man, Damien invited her. He'll be pissed if you so much as touch her." Ben looked over at Damien and Elia talking and sloshing liquor about. "Aww, aren't they cute?"

c). "They'd make a lovely couple, don't ya think?" Catherine said, sarcastically, staring at the two, yet grimacing when Fay approached the two, blocking her view. "Oh, buzz off, Fay! Can't see shit!"

Dissection - I; (jeez, didn't know we were in a science lesson):

a). "She's got some guts showing her face 'round here."

This is a decent line on the surface, but I'd give it an 8/10. It's very short and snappy, but it tells us a lot about Ai. First, who's this girl she's talking about? Second, it creates conflict with Ai and who we'll later know as Elia.

All ingredients for a good quote, but the real kicker comes with the amount of exposition we are given, it's very little, but not enough to know the full story. It's a tease (no, not that one) and it also creates a sense of tension. 

Knowing how much exposition to give is essential, you want to gradually layer it out through the course of an exchange, but you also want to make sure the dialogue is subtle about this. For example, you don't want a character completely spilling the beans in one giant paragraph because that won't look good and it also erases the tension. 

To improve this, I'd perhaps not have Ai say: "She's got some guts showing her face 'round here.", but "Can't believe she showed up here." as what she said first made her sound like some cliched mafia thug.

Dissection - II; 

b). "Calm down, man, Damien invited her. He'll be pissed if you so much as touch her." and "Aww, aren't they cute?"

I'd give the first line a 6/10 and the second an 8/10. They function just fine if it wasn't the same character, in this case, Ben, saying it. 

Together, I'd give them a 3/10, if that. I don't know what kind of crack I was on when writing this, but I realized that it sounds weird for Ben to be warning about Damien being angry at Ai if she confronted Elia, then immediately switch to 'aren't they cute?'. 

Of course, you could chalk this up to sarcasm, but that wasn't my intention whilst writing the quotes. Remind me to thank my crack dealer for giving me some grade-a shit to make me fuck up the dialogue that bad.

[Yo, it was a joke, don't call the FBI on my ass]

To improve this, I'd have Ben say this sarcastically, here's my revision of the quote: