Alright, so I did the workshop, and I came back with some useful bits of information. Some of the things we covered I already knew, but some of it I have never even considered. Hopefully these things will be of help to some of you as well.
- Dialogue can be used to accomplish three things: Illuminate a character, introduce characters, and advance the story.
- Dialogue is difficult to write because we are essentially switching mediums. Trying to represent something spoken in writing is like trying to represent something three-dimensional in two dimensions. It's not impossible, but it can be difficult to approximate. Some things can be lost in the transition.
- There are two core components of dialogue: the actual words spoken and the tags. The tags are things such as "he said", "she queried", and so on.
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Tip 1: Write your first draft of dialogue striped of descriptions and tags. Leave just the words.
Tip 2: Read it out loud._____________________________________
Exercise #1 - The Eye Opener
Our first exercise was to take the dialogue we had written for a piece, and strip it of the tags, scenery, descriptions... everything. All that was left were the words actually spoken by the characters. Then we each took turns reading our dialogue aloud. The purpose of reading it aloud was not only so that we could hear the dialogue ourselves, but also so that we could hear what impressions other people got.
For instance, each time the instructor asked those of us listening: Can you tell anything about the characters just from what they say? Can we determine gender or personality? Is their speech pattern an indication of their social standing? What's the relationship between them? Can we tell anything at all about this character from their words. Sometimes the answer was
no.
The point she was trying to make was that we can tell a lot about character just from their words if dialogue is used well. To illustrate:
"Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!"
"Who's scruffy-looking?"
Without tags, scenery, or context, you can still tell something from this bit of dialogue. For the sake of example, ignore the fact that you know who these lines come from.
The first thing you can tell is that there are two characters. While that may seem a silly thing to pay attention to, this is a simple case. In scenes where there are multiple characters talking, it can be less obvious unless each character has a distinct "voice".
If you are ever wondering whether or not your characters have distinct voices, read only their spoken dialogues, no tags or descriptions, out loud to someone else. See if that person can tell you how many characters are in the scene. You'll be surprised what impression people may get.
Other things you can tell from these two lines: the two characters are either close enough to insult each other or there is tension between them. One might be fed up. Even without descriptions of stance or expression, we can tell the second character is not terribly concerned. We may not know whether or not a scruffy looking nerf herder is a grave insult, but we do understand that stuck up and half witted are pretty good points to take issue with. Our second character completely ignores those in favor of questioning who's scruffy.
From two lines, we have personality, relationship, and number of characters. With more lines you can parse out more information. In your own writing, look for how you can convey these things through the actual words:
- The characters' demographics
- personality
- Place in society
- Education level
- relationship
- values
- what is happening in the scene
- lore relevant to the story
If you'd like to do exercises like this one, let me know and we can set up a thread. Even without reading aloud you can still get valuable feedback.
Here's some more random tips I picked up in the workshop:
- When writing dialogue, don't worry about being grammatically correct unless it is a character trait or commonly use in that context. For instance, droids might be inclined to observe good grammar but the average person does not.
- When making the dialogue reflect the quirks of the character, don't make it hard for the reader to read. Accents often fall in this category. There is a line between distinct and can't be read.
- Don't start at the "beginning" of a conversation unless it is relevant. Cut the how's your mother chat. "How's your mother" has been the shorthand I've used for years to refer to the idle hellos and how are yous that don't advance the story but we sometimes feel obligated to include in RP but aren't the interesting part.
- Don't have the characters talk without listening. Give them a chance to hear and absorb or react to what another character says to them before they bring up a new topic.
- Don't info dump. If you really feel all that information must be said, split it up between multiple characters instead of one character giving a long exposition to another and therefore the reader.
As always, all don'ts are soft don'ts. There are no true rules in creative endeavors, just guidelines.Dialogue Tags
The dialogue tags are not the main stars. They aren't even secondary stars. They are the orchestra. While they contribute to the whole, you should not be overly aware of seeing them.- Use said or asked, 90 percent of the time. Let the reader take the tags for granted, so that unique tags don't draw so much attention that they disrupt the flow of the reading.
- Resist the use of adverbs. You can convey the "ly" words through action and speech which will be more effective. I know, I know... *raises hand* I love my adverbs too.
- Keep the emotions out of tag. --->"he yelled angrily". Like the adverbs, convey that through speech and action.
As is commonly said, show don't tell.
When done effectively, you will find that you can actually replace many of the tags outright. Especially when the reader can tell who is talking, replace the tags with descriptions of action, movement, expression, or setting. Unfortunately, I don't have any readily available examples here.
Another thing that might help your dialogue along is to give your character a prop or something to do with her hands. Sometimes it can even be an action characters are occupied with. Remember you can replace a tag with action. Instead of using "he said", perhaps you describe what he is doing after speaking. However, tie the actions back to the conversation at hand. Maybe it is a shared task that forces characters to be close enough to talk. Perhaps it is something a character distracts themselves with to cope with difficult emotions and so on.
Further, in a story there should be no meaningless conversations. There is no idle chit chat, how's your mother, and for single author stories, the story should start close to the "important bit". Keep these things in mind:
- How does this bit of dialogue develop the character or story?
- Do each of the characters have goals?
- How are they going to go about pursing that goal in this conversation?
Exercise #1 - Think of actions or props for characters in the scene.
For the second exercise, we had to think of an action that we could have one or more of our characters doing that would enhance the scene. Some actions are symbolic of inner turmoil or thoughts. Some give insight in to the personality of a character. Others are actions that help to advance parts of the story.
Exercise #3 - Expanding beyond just the words
Exercise three is going back in and putting in tags and descriptions that can replace tags into our original, stripped dialogue. Unfortunately, we ran out of time for working on this one before the workshop had to end.
Hopefully something in this is helpful for you in your writing endeavors. Bonus points if it helps you in your RPs.
