Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to write DIALOGUE

Dialogue is one of the paramount elements of a story. It's not just what the characters say, but how they say it that can reveal a lot about their personality. You should tailor each character's dialogue so that if we hear a line out of context, we should be able to figure out who said it. There are several ways to make distinguishable dialogue.

Introduce different lexicons. This is especially easy in high fantasy stories. Commoners would speak differently than nobles. They may use improper grammar or slur some words together. They'd have different figures of speech and may use vulgarities more than polished nobles. They may be more blunt with insults whereas the nobles might hide their insults in witty and sly ways. People who live in snow-covered lands would have several words to describe snow whereas someone from the desert might not even have a word for it, instead calling it “hard water” or something.

I mentioned the chicken fighting culture in the world building chapter. Because cock fighting is so central to their way of life, they have a lot of sayings and jokes about cocks (the obscene ones and the chickens), like “My cock is bigger than your cock” type of things.

Expressions unique to a group of people or even a single person will help distinguish them from others.

Exercise: Write out the same piece of dialogue spoken by two different people in your story.

Example: Kairi - “I have to relieve myself. Please excuse me.” Reks- “Outta my way! I need ta piss.” You can already see a stark difference in personality and upbringing just from that.

Depending on how the character was raised, they may use certain words or ideas more than another character who grew up differently. One character may always refer the conversation back to cars whereas another might throw in references to nature. Example: character 1 - “It roared like a Ferrari V8 engine.” character 2 - “It sounded like the splashing of water on rocks.”

More examples: A commoner from my story would speak like this: “Yer goin' ta the markets, aye?” but a noble would speak like this: “Are you making a trip to the markets?” A gangster from a real world story would say: “The hell you goin' shopping, bro?” A normal middle-class girl would say: “Are you going shopping?”

To add onto this, keep your character's background in mind. Don't have a scholar talking like a gangster from the ghetto (unless they're trying to be funny or undercover or something, but then it should be forced and sound very odd on purpose). If you have a stable hand, they shouldn't talk with formalities. If you have a gangster, they wouldn't talk like an English scholar. Someone who was raised by wolves wouldn't necessarily speak proper English. Their speech would be very crude with verbs left unconjugated or missing some pronouns or other words. A French person trying to speak English would make different mistakes than a Mexican trying to speak English than an Asian trying to speak English. Make sure you study these things before you incorporate them into your story. Listen to people whose first language isn't English, and you'll hear the difference, not just in accent, but in the words they say and the words they forget to include.

Accents: These are very helpful to distinguish characters and hint at where they're from. J.K. Rowling did that with Fleur having a French accent and Hagrid with his....Hagrid accent. But don't take this overboard to the point where we can't understand a word your character says. “Heya I tol'ya I'm'a com'an' help ya fix up tha' door, di'n' I?” Please keep apostrophes to a minimum. A piece of dialogue should be read naturally. If It takes more than five seconds to say in your minds a sentence like that, the accent is too complicated. Tone it down.

Realistic Dialogue: Read it aloud, and if it's something you'd naturally say, it's fine. If you struggle to get the words off your tongue or it sounds really choppy and jolted, you need to work on it. Example: “I'm home. Want dinner? I want pizza. Where are you?”

If you're talking to someone, you wouldn't say their name at the end of every sentence: “I'm home, Kara. Kara, do you want to go out for dinner today? I'm in the mood for pizza, Kara.”

You should also keep small talk to a minimum in your story. Each piece of dialogue needs to further the plot or the character, and talking several paragraphs about the weather or what you ate for breakfast that morning is going to bore your reader. Realistically, yes, you do have conversations like that, but in a novel, where you need to hold your readers' attention and keep the pace lively, you'll want to skip the formal pleasantries and get to the point as much as possible. Maybe a line or two of formalities might be needed if your character is talking to a king or something, but don't go on and on with the how do you do's and lovely weather we're having today's.