META: The Problem with Dialogue
Martin Phipps
thought that was too negative. Don't forget that "problem" could mean
"puzzle" as in "math problem". Anyway, with that disclaimer out of
the way...
Dialogue is, apparently, not an easy thing to write. It shouldn't
really be that hard, after all, because we are all able to talk but
the problem with dialogue it involves two people. It's a challenge,
for example, to present an argument between two people and have each
side try to put forward a convincing argument: the author usually
takes a side in the argument and doesn't give the other side a fair
hearing.
The general problem is trying to make dialogue seem natural. Natural
dialogue includes hesitations, restarts, even poor grammar and it
doesn't usually feature the level of vocabulary that you might expect
from a prepared speech. People writing dialogue should avoid frequent
rewrites and simply have the characters find their own voice and speak
in the manner that they are expected to speak. (This is why when you
go back and read a character in one of his or her early appearances
that he or she may seem "off": it is because the writer hasn't found
the character's voice yet.) In general, writers should let their
characters make mistakes when they talk and avoid refering to a
thesaurus (unless you're thinking of a word that your character would
say but you, yourself, normally wouldn't which means that you're going
to end up having to look it up).
The question has been brought up before. What is meant by a
character's voice? Does that mean accent? Does that mean
catchphrases? No, not at all. In fact, having a character speak in a
thick accent can be a bit annoying. Having a French speaking
character say "Ze movie I saw last night was excellent!" is okay but
"Ze movie I zaw las nigh waz excellen!" is way over the top and is, in
fact, a bit difficult to read. What would be the point of writing
"was" as "waz"? Isn't "was" pronounced /waz/ anyway? And if a French
speaking person spoke English that badly then the person he was
talking to wouldn't be able to understand him.
In any case, if someone doesn't speak English very well then you can
show that without using a funny accent. Here's a (made up) example of
what I mean.
"Hi. I'm Maria. I'm from Venezuela. Venezuela: it's a nice
country. You should visit. It's very hot, but not too hot. You
would like it there, I think."
See what I mean? You wouldn't want to go and "fix" the way Maria
talks because the way she talks gives her her own voice. The point is
that there are more subtle ways of establishing character through
dialogue than funny accents or catchphrases.
Another thing to consider is dialogue that is appropriate to the
situation. Consider the following (made up) example:
Captain Amazing grimaced with pain. He didn't expect Lord Ebon's
death ray to have any effect on him.
"Captain Amazing! Are you alright?" Sidekick Boy asked.
"I'm fine," Captain Amazing said. "Let's get him."
Of course, the writer is trying to show how cool Captain Amazing is
but what if "I'm fine" were changed to "I'm... fine". What a
difference that makes! That means that Captain Amazing isn't really
okay and he's just telling Sidekick Boy that he's fine. What a
trooper!
Finally, authors should avoid making characters provide awkward
exposition. I personally don't like forced exposition (including
flashbacks). This makes some scenes difficult to write, however.
Consider the problem of having a story set in an airplane.
Joe Blow was flying to Bermuda. It was his first time on a plane
and he was nervous.
Actually, that's not so bad. Can we provide the same information
using dialogue?
"Hi. I'm Joe Blow. What's your name?"
"Maria. Maria Lopez."
"Hi, Maria. Is this your first time flying to Bermuda?"
"Yes."
"This is the first time I've ever been on an airplane. So I'm a bit
nervous."
"I see."
Hmm. That's not bad either. Obviously Joe is hitting on Maria so
the dialogue doesn't seem too forced. I actually like it better than
the narrative exposition. Of course, if Joe and Maria had already
knew each other then there would be no reason for Joe to tell Maria
that he'd never been on a plane before because she'd already know
that. That's when exposition becomes problematic.
There are some scenes where exposition comes perfectly natural,
however, such as when detectives arrive at a scene and the arresting
officer explains what happened. This kind of exposition occurs all
the time in crime dramas. In general, exposition is natural whenever
the person being spoken to is being told something new or when the
speaker is so surprised by what he sees that he has to say something,
such as a character saying "Look, Dude, it's a flying saucer... and
it's landing in our back yard!"
Basically, dialogue should always sound as if it is actually coming
right out of the mouth of the person who is supposed to be saying it.
If it doesn't then that's a problem.
Previous "The Problem with/of" posts:
* Fourth Wall Breaking
* Subjectivity (in reviews)
* Secret Identies
* Good versus evil
* Humour
Martin
Tom Russell
a lot of good points here. Nice post, Martin.
==Tom
Adrian J. Watts
>>I don't always agree with everything you have to say, but you do make
a lot of good points here.<<
That's funny - I read your message and thought the same thing about you,
Tom. :)
I must say, when it seems like every mailing list you're on is designed
purely to breed flaming, it is really cool to come across a message where
someone is so civil.
- Adrian
chriso...@gmail.com
One of the big challenges is finding a way for the characters to talk
like themselves and not like the author -- I think films are a good
way to pick it up. Watching old Humphrey Bogart movies, you'll hear
him use the most bizarre decades-old slang as though it was the most
natural thing in the world. Watch a subtitled foreign film and you'll
see stilted, artificial dialogue as the translator tries to bend the
rhythms of a different language to seem familiar. It makes you think
about right and wrong ways for personalities to talk.
EDMLite
> This is a newbie post, but I'm just going to jump right in.
>
> One of the big challenges is finding a way for the characters to talk
> like themselves and not like the author -- I think films are a good
> way to pick it up.
That's a really good point. I've sometimes
found it helpful to imagine actors I know
playing the roles of the characters in my
stories. I really struggled with writing
dialogue for Captain Continuity, for example,
until I decided he would sound exactly like
Patrick Warburton. After that, it was a
breeze.
I think Martin does something similar in
"casting" the roles for "Superfreaks,"
which is perhaps why the dialogue in that
series comes across so well.
--Easily-Discovered Man Lite
--Sounds just like James Earl Jones on helium
Tom Russell
> This is a newbie post, but I'm just going to jump right in.
>
> One of the big challenges is finding a way for the characters to talk
> like themselves and not like the author -- I think films are a good
> way to pick it up. Watching old Humphrey Bogart movies, you'll hear
> him use the most bizarre decades-old slang as though it was the most
> natural thing in the world. Watch a subtitled foreign film and you'll
> see stilted, artificial dialogue as the translator tries to bend the
> rhythms of a different language to seem familiar.
Well, it depends on the translation, but I do see your general
point. :-)
With a film, each performer can bring meaning to dialogue through tone
of voice, volume, facial expressions, body language, and the context
in which it appears in a given scene. You could give five different
actors the same line of dialogue, and each one's going to turn in a
different performance with different shades of meaning.
(Check out one of the first season episodes of THE WIRE, in which the
word "fuck" is said at least forty or fifty times in one scene; it's
the only word spoken in that scene, and it means something different
every time.)
You don't have that with prose; the words remain the same, and other
than resorting to bad punctuation (!!!?) and adverbs (he said
dismissively) there's no way to get those myriads of feelings across.
A lot of writers try to solve this problem by giving their characters
different verbal tics, and while some very great writers have done
great things with that-- Dickens and Trollope, for example-- most of
the time it feels like characterization is being replaced by a mass of
tics that never really come together. Those times that it does work,
it works with "flat" characters or "types"-- the very sort of
characters that Dickens and Trollope used in many cases. Those
characters who were more well-rounded-- for example, that dashing
young Phineas Finn-- are less likely to have a "distinct" voice all
their own. It what he has to say that's important, and it's the
tensions within him-- the dynanism that prevents him from being
defined as "this" or "that" but rather has him constantly shifting
between them-- that make him interesting. Once he was "defined" and
settled, his story became less interesting and effectively ended.
More important, I think, than having characters who express themselves
in a different style from one another are characters who have
different things to express; give five people the same situation or
stimuli and get five different reactions, and, of course, everyone's
going to have different reactions to those reactions. That's the
secret, I think, of strong ensemble work.
==Tom
chriso...@gmail.com
> than resorting to bad punctuation (!!!?) and adverbs (he said
> dismissively) there's no way to get those myriads of feelings across.
In a way, you do have that option with prose, by describing the body
language that accompanies the character's speech. In these three
paragraphs the dialogue is the same, but I've tried to give a very
different impression of the character's thoughts on the matter by
changing the actions that go with it:
"Your brother called," she told him, arms folding tightly across her
chest. Her knuckles whitened as she made a fist around the keys.
"Your brother called," she told him, smiling. One hand rose
unconsciously to pat her hair, checking that it was neat.
"Your brother called," she told him, sneaking a glance in his
direction out of the corner of her eye. She paused a moment longer
than usual before stepping through the door.
> A lot of writers try to solve this problem by giving their characters
> different verbal tics, and while some very great writers have done
> great things with that-- Dickens and Trollope, for example-- most of
> the time it feels like characterization is being replaced by a mass of
> tics that never really come together.
I've always thought of overdone verbal tics as a text equivalent of a
bad actor exaggeratedly mugging for the camera. Kinda breaks you out
of your reading trance, doesn't it? And some writers take it much too
far. I never want to read another book where a character speaks in
dialect.
chriso...@gmail.com
> On Aug 6, 12:52 pm, chrisoute...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > This is a newbie post, but I'm just going to jump right in.
>
> > One of the big challenges is finding a way for the characters to talk
> > like themselves and not like the author -- I think films are a good
> > way to pick it up.
>
> found it helpful to imagine actors I know
> playing the roles of the characters in my
> dialogue for Captain Continuity, for example,
> until I decided he would sound exactly like
> breeze.
That's something I hadn't considered, but it's an interesting
approach. I wonder how many comedy supervillains have been based on
Rick Moranis or Steve Martin? :)