Most Common Writing Errors ✔️

Clunky Dialogue + Realism

Okay, let's see.

Oh.

13 contrivances.

13.

That's off the top of my head. There could be more I'm missing.

But yeah, it was totally a good death because it was realistic.

Even if you could explain half of these, that doesn't change how terrible it is. Even if some of them are nitpicks, like Abby not getting confirmation before shooting Joel, that doesn't change anything. There shouldn't even be 1.

Do you see why the death being realistic does not mean it was good? It relied on coincidences and off-screen "character development" for Joel and Tommy.

Oh, and by the way, the flashbacks contradict the "Jackson softened Joel" argument. He's literally the same person in the Jackson flashbacks. He's just as hard as ever. He's literally up Ellie's booty hole about patrol and is overly cautious.

AKA: he was not softened.

It's also interesting how his dialogue was something like "Why don't you say whatever speech you have prepared and get this over with." That sounds like old Joel. That's a great line, but his actions contradict the dialogue because the writers prioritized realism over narrative.

Long story short, do you see why realism isn't always good? If there are over a dozen contrivances like in TLOU2's case, then it's not good writing regardless of how realistic it is that "Anyone, even the protagonists, can die at any time in the zombie apocalypse." That's actually an interesting concept and one I like! 

But not if there are a gazillion contrivances.

I can write a twenty-page deep dive analysis about the narrative flaws of TLOU2, but let's end the realism rant here.

***

Now, how does this tie into dialogue and worldbuilding?

It's simple, really: dialogue doesn't have to be realistic to be good. You shouldn't have to change your dialogue or characters just to make it sound more "realistic," just like how the writers didn't need to change Joel's character to achieve a "realistic" result.

While realism is not inherently a bad thing, prioritizing realism over narrative isn't going to get you anywhere. The writers of TLOU2 prioritized realism over story, and it shows in how incredible the graphics are but how lackluster the narrative is.

If you prioritize realistic dialogue over dialogue that fits the narrative, you aren't going to have a happy audience.

Your dialogue doesn't need to be "This is hella cool."

Is that something a teenager would say? I have no idea, I'm not a teenager.

It sounds like something a younger teen would say, but that doesn't mean it's good dialogue. The same applies to my absolute favorite:

Overly formal dialogue.

Dialogue doesn't need to be overly formal. There's a reason most English majors (myself included) despise reading our textbooks: they're overly formal. The books we read are so hard to understand that I'm more likely to understand Italian than my English textbooks (I don't know a single Italian word even though I'm part Italian).

As I mentioned before, my second language is Korean. Korean has certain levels of formality, but some of the dialogue I've read from stories have been so formal it makes the Korean formal speech style look informal.

Even this book is written informally because I want to have a conversation, not a lecture.

Unless you're writing in a time period where the language is structured like that, or a specific character speaks like that, it isn't necessary to have the dialogue be overly formal.

Sometimes, having a character speak in an over-the-top and formal way is good characterization. In my book, Adrift, I had a character named Seulgi who never used contractions and spoke formally. It was for characterization. The others spoke informally (except for the captain, of course) and provided a contrast to her. Over time, as she developed and became a different person, she incorporated contractions into her speech and spoke more informally. She wasn't 100% informal all the time, but she had more natural conversations.

So I'm not saying don't use formal dialogue, I'm simply saying use it purposefully. Use it to represent a time period, situation where formality is needed, characterization for an overly formal character, etc.

There are times to use it, but be cautious. Remember it can be hard to read if it happens too often.

For example, people disliked the Star Wars prequels because everyone spoke in an overly formal way. The Jedi speaking that way was forgivable because they look like space monks, but everyone speaking that way became distracting and hard to follow.

I hope that makes sense.

As for worldbuilding, a realistic world isn't always the best one. Unless you're taking things way too far, you can stretch reality to fit your narrative.

For example, many people write cop dramas (including myself). The story doesn't have to follow the way cops live in order for it to be good. You can stretch the truth and sometimes even fabricate things and it's okay. As long as it's not too much, you're fine.

An example of too much would be, say, John Wick 4 and how many injuries he sustained. My guy jumped out a window and fell onto a van from several stories up and lived? Nah. He's a human last I checked.

Okay but I love John Wick so I casually ignored that!!!!!

But that's just an example. You can stretch reality without needing to break it. My parents say they go into John Wick movies thinking they're superhero movies because he survives things he absolutely shouldn't. I'm a John Wick defender until my last breath, but they have a point. He survives way too much and he should have died long ago.

That's what I mean by taking it too far. 

The same applies to the TLOU2 example I gave: there's only so much an audience can take before their suspension of disbelief gets shattered. All the contrivances I mentioned before are breaking the audience's immersion in the story.

There's so much that goes into dialogue and worldbuilding. More chapters will come soon about these topics, but I hope that was a decent intro even though I only covered three things. Let me know if you have any questions, but please make it related to what I said and not other topics. I will be covering more on dialogue and worldbuilding soon, so please wait to see those chapters before asking questions not related to the three core topics I talked about here!

~End~

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