Writing and Publishing on Wattpad or Anywhere

Chapter 8 - Dialogue

Dialogue

"I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue." - Aaron Sorkin

"If somebody from the past doesn't rise up from the grave and start talking to me, I haven't got a book. I have to hear that voice, the voice of the narrator. How she sounds will tell me who she is, and who she is will tell me how she will act - and that starts the plot in motion." - Geraldine Brooks

First, you create, and then you recreate.

What do I mean by creating and then recreating dialogue?

I have friends who meet at a cafe and write, all hanging out together. That will never be me. I've tried it, but between my limited attention span (Squirrel!) and my writing process, that's not for me. I write at home where only a few people can tease me about how I write because I create before I recreate, and I think this makes my dialogue more believable.

When I write, I scowl, raise my eyebrow, sigh, growl, even subvocalize dialogue. I've had a roommate interrupt my writing to ask if I was okay. I've had the question, "Are you upset, or is Gwen (one of my characters) upset?" Yeah, Gwen was having a tough day, and it was written all over my face.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. - Robert Frost

I don't see how I can write a character who is sad, upset, angry, etc. without first going to that place myself. Don't be afraid to verbalize your dialogue. As a matter of fact, I encourage you to do it. You are the first critic of your writing, so be a reader of it. Are you going to look a little bit nuts? Well ... sure, but who cares. I have a roommate who will walk up to me and sigh again and again. That means I was sighing again and again, but it's the only way I know where the sigh goes in that piece of dialogue or if there should be a sigh in that piece of dialogue. Should it be a soft sigh, or should they sigh heavily? Should the character run their hands through their hair while sighing? If you worry about how people will react to you while you're writing, how will you ever publish?

Every character needs their own voice.

It's easy to know who is speaking in a story with a tag (e.g., "Blah, blah, blah," Jim said.). However, the goal is to give each character enough of a voice that you don't need those tags all that often. I find keywords to be incredibly helpful. I have a character who drops the f-bomb constantly. If you read the story and someone is using an f-bomb, it's about a 99% chance that Debbie is speaking. I have characters who babble and stutter and some who speak grammatically the way I write. I have a character who, through almost the entire book, only says one word at a time when speaking to someone. At the end, he breaks out in a whole paragraph, and that is stunning for him and makes that section powerful. The point is, your character's personality should drive their dialogue, and their dialogue should be as unique as their personalities. Just because you as a writer says the word 'yeah' and calls you SO 'babe' doesn't mean your character should.

Write motion around your dialogue.

You don't always need to tag something with 'said,' 'asked,' 'commented,' etc. You can write the way the character is moving, the way they're acting, as your character tag (Eyes narrowed, Alex leaned in close to Winn, a single index finger inches from his face. "Do you know how many ways I can kill you with just one finger?"). We know who the speaker is, and it sets tone. If your character is angry, have them stomp or throw something. If they're happy, let them run up to someone and hug them. What the character is doing will help the reader to understand how to interpret a line of dialogue.

In the end, does your dialogue sound like something someone would actually say? Is the dialogue appropriate for the age and education of the speaker? Does everyone sound the same, or does each character have a distinctive voice? Are people using slang words or phrases specific to where they exist in society? Be an actor and read each line out loud with the intended tone and inflection? Does this sound like your character?

Dialogue is a series of back and forths.

When I write dialogue, I think of it as a game of ping-pong. One character tosses a line out, and another character returns it. It isn't always perfect. You should know the goal that each character has when the conversation starts, but the characters don't know each other's goals. Maybe Character A is nervously trying to ask Character B on a date, while Character B is trying to hide the fact that they got interrupted while stealing a notebook from someone else and just wants to get away from everyone including Character A. As they both don't know the other person's goals in that moment, the dialogue will get batted around the table. It will go off track and get pulled in again. Maybe one or both of them will succeed in their goal, but maybe neither of them will. Dialogue is not two pieces of rehearsed speech given in perfect symmetry. Let every character have a goal, even if it's boring in that moment, and let the dialogue wander off topic before being reigned in. Don't make it a straight line from point A to B. That's unrealistic and uninteresting.

If you have only two characters speaking, you don't need to tag every sentence. If you have three or more characters speaking, you need to be more consistent with dialogue tagging so readers don't get confused. You must start a new paragraph each time you have a new speaker, and make sure Character A's motion is attached to Character A's dialogue. If you have someone sigh heavily and sit in a chair for motion, and then someone talks in the same paragraph, it needs to be the person who just sighed and sat in the chair. If you want someone else to speak, start a new paragraph.

Beware your pronouns.

As someone who writes a lot of f/f stories, the word she is a dangerous one. An easy rule of thumb is that if you assign a pronoun to a person in a paragraph, that is the only person who gets that pronoun in that paragraph. In real life, I get called out a lot about using pronouns and changing about whom I'm speaking be it a character in a book or a real life friend. If you're writing m/f work, you still need to be careful, but if you write m/m or f/f work, watching your pronouns is a challenge.

Be careful when using names in dialogue.

When you're speaking to someone, how often do you actually say their name? Odds are, it's not very often. If you're first greeting them, you might use it, and if there are a group of people and you're trying to be clear about to whom you're speaking, then you use a name. If you are yelling to someone and you want to get their attention, you would probably use their name. We don't just say people's names all the time when talking to them. To write realistic dialogue, you need to write characters who speak like real people even if the topic they're discussing is extraordinary.