Wednesday, August 22, 2007

A Few Quick Tips For Dialogue
When I sit down to read a good story, be it erotica or fantasy, the dialogue portion is often my favorite. I love how it involves the reader more than a long paragraph and the way it brings the characters to life. Writing Dialogue seems like an easy thing to do, but it can prove to be a tough task at times. So how does one go about creating good dialogue? Well, it involves more than slapping quotation marks around the spoken words. The following are a few tips I have found have helped my dialogue sequences. To begin with always remember that every time a word comes out of someone’s mouth it doesn’t require a “he said” or a “she said.” One or two of these for the sake of clarity is fine, but when you have too many it can really drag down the quality of the writing. It just makes the conversation seem unnatural and will probably drive your audience insane. An example might be if you are writing a scene with just two people. You can get around using speaking tags by having one character state the other’s name. This identifies the person speaking by process of elimination and you avoided using the word “Said”. Here’s an example I wrote to illustrate my point. The following scene has two friends Jennifer and Susie talking. “Hey Jennifer. How’s it going?” “Pretty Good. What’s up with you?” “Not much.” Now with that scene it’s pretty obvious that Susie is the one speaking first since Jennifer probably wouldn’t ask herself how things were going. Once you establish who is speaking first, all your reader has to do is follow the scene from there. Unless the dialogue goes on forever without a paragraph to break it up, your reader should be able to understand what is going on with out much effort. This will work as well with multiple people speaking at once. However, you have to be careful not confuse the reader and you may have to use the name of the person speaking, along with “said,” more than you would with just two people. Here’s an example I came up with that has more than one person speaking. We will revisit the friends Susie and Jennifer, but add a third party named Joan. “Hey Jennifer. How’s it going?” “Pretty Good. What’s up with you?” “Not much.” “Hey guys. What’s going on?” “Hey Joan,” Susie and Jennifer said in unison. In that short dialogue, who is saying what is established pretty quick and with only one use of “said”. Acquiring this balance takes practice and careful editing, but it becomes easier the more you do it. The trick is to have the characters speak with as few “so and so saids” as possible without hindering the audience’s capability to understand what is happening. Another tip I have learned over the years is to spice up my dialogue with some narrative. You can make you characters seem so much more alive making their words and actions more believable by doing this. When a person in their story says something, what is he or she doing at the time. Is she twirling her hair while she talks? Is he pulling her close to him? Here’s another couple of examples I wrote for this purpose. “Hmmm. I’m not sure about that.” Helen wrapped a strand of hair around her finger as if lost in thought. Or “I love you more than anything. I want to be with you.” Kirk pulled her close as his lips met hers. This technique also works when you have more than one person in a scene and you want to avoid dialogue tags without confusing the people reading the story. Let’s at this example I created. “I wish I had never met him.” “Marie, it’s hard to get through a bad break up, but in time you’ll realize it was for the best.” Sandy moved to put her arms around her sister. “She’s right. In a few months this will be just a distant and unpleasant memory.” Helen joined her siblings at the table. This scene gives a clear impression of who is saying what and to whom. It gives interesting descriptions of people’s actions that add to the dialogue and it manages to avoid the use of the annoying “said”. Finally, my last tip on dialogue would be in reference to the judicious use of the last suggestion. Always be careful not to overdue the use of description in dialogue because it can take away from the drama of the scene. I don’t mean to contradict myself; however, you don’t want to have too much of a good thing. If you are writing a story and the dialogue is weighted down by a description of action after every single uttered sentence, it can be as annoying as the “he said she said” issue. There is, however, a way to have your cake and eat it too. All you have to do is separate the speaking parts from the description of the actions related to it. This allows for telling what is going on and who is speaking and doing the action with out the writing becoming cumbersome. It keeps the dialogue from looking too wordy. The following is an example I made up to show how this could work in an actual scene. “I have something for you.” John pulled a small black velvet box from his coat pocket. “John, is that what I think it is?” He dropped to one knee and took her hand in his before speaking the words Lydia had been waiting to hear for months. “Will you marry me?” The above conversation is an example of using sentences to describe the actions that go along with the quotes without overdoing it. This gives the author as chance to clearly express the scene with overwhelming the reader with unnecessary words. Writing dialogue is a great way to bring your characters to life and make them believable. Unfortunately, this is the area where if a writer doesn’t do it well the audience can get very confused trying to figure out who said what and when. The tips I have included were given to me by both editors and other writers and they have proven to be a great help to me. I hope they will be beneficial to you and best of luck in all of your future writing endeavors

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