[Link] Beyond the Accent: Writing Speech Patterns Authentically

by Elle Jauffret

When developing memorable characters, few elements bring them to life as vividly as the way they speak. Speech patterns—whether accents or impediments—quickly establish background, personality, and history without exposition. However, as writers, we carry a significant responsibility: to represent diverse voices authentically rather than falling into the trap of stereotype or caricature.

The power and pitfalls of accented speech

In storytelling, accents serve as immediate shorthand. They can place a character geographically, hint at their cultural background, or suggest their social standing—all without explicit exposition. As our society becomes increasingly diverse and globally connected, representing this linguistic variety authentically becomes both more important and more challenging.

Research confirms the power of accents in shaping perception. Studies have demonstrated that listeners often make immediate judgments about a speaker’s intelligence, socioeconomic status, and trustworthiness based solely on their accent. A 2010 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that participants “orientated themselves nearly exclusively on the spoken accent while categorizing people,” with accent perception affecting key cognitive processes including memory and social categorization. Other research shows that non-native accents can reduce “cognitive fluency”—the ease with which the brain processes stimuli—which can inadvertently affect credibility judgments.

However, accented speech in fiction has often devolved into shorthand stereotyping. Consider how many villains speak with vaguely Eastern European accents, or how Southern (American) accents frequently signal a character is either unsophisticated or prejudiced. These portrayals perpetuate harmful assumptions about intelligence, trustworthiness, and capability based solely on how someone speaks.

Read the full article: https://janefriedman.com/beyond-the-accent-writing-speech-patterns-authentically/

Best Dialog Advice You Ever Received

 

I posted an open question on my various social profiles. I asked this: "What's the best advice you ever got for writing dialog?" Here are the results. 

Josh Nealis: Dialogue is tough. Generally, on my first draft, the dialogue is more or less kind of a placeholder for kind of what I want the character to say. Once the entire story is written and I know the Arc of the character on the second and third passes you can go back and fix the dialogue to Trend in the way you want it to. Always think about what the character is trying to accomplish in that moment or 

Anthony Taylor: This: ", he said."

Cully Perlman: Stick as best as you can to “he said” and “she said” for dialogue tags. Be sparse with anything else. Especially adverbs.

Ef Deal: Tags are not always necessary. Intersperse dialogue with action instead.

Shannon Luchies: Say it aloud. If it sounds wrong, rethink it.

Lucy Blue: If you’re not sure, try reading it out loud. Would you say it? If somebody said it to you, would it get the reaction you intended? Remember, people tend not to talk in long, complex sentences even when they “monologue.” You ain’t Shakespeare; you’re writing conversation, not poetry. Dialogue is my favorite thing to write; it comes most easily to me. It’s descriptions that hang me up.

Susan H. Roddey: It should always sound natural when spoken aloud.

Lainey Kennedy: Read it out loud. You will catch more weirdness from hearing it than reading it on the page.

Devin Hylton: Dialogue is not actual conversation.

David Wright: Find the rhythm in the speech. Don't overburden with tags. Let word choice be governed by character and setting.

John Morgan Neal: As has been said by many already, read it aloud. But I would add to try and read in character. That way avoids all characters 'sounding ' the same.

Angela Hope: Death to adverbs!! (via Stephen King)

John French: (from my high school freshman English class) When writing dialogue, the rules of grammar do not have to be strictly followed.

Jessica Hodges: To help the verbal exchange between characters feel more organic, replace repetitive dialogue tags with action beats.

Jesse Baruffi: Don't spell words differently based on characters' accents. Let word choice make their accents come out.

Characters should not be constantly setting each other up for clever wordplay. Such things occasionally happen, but it is best when it's surprising, and doesn't feel like the author's hand at work.

If all the characters sound the same, it's your voice, not theirs.

Let your characters listen poorly and talk past each other, so only the reader often hears them.

Characters, even honest ones, should usually hold back their feelings and intentions as much as they can until there's no choice but to reveal them.

Also, don't have the characters tell each other things the audience already knows.

Kay Iscah: I disagree with this to a point. Some authors do a fantastic job of conveying accent with dialogue, and it creates a richer experience. But it requires really knowing and understanding the accent.

Don't use an accent to mock a character, but there is a place for regional flavor. I think A Secret Garden is a book in which this works well. But it is extra grating if done badly, so if the accent is slight or unimportant to the story, probably best not to try to imitate it.

I used a very heavy, almost unintelligible accent for one of my fantasy novels, but it was done with purpose, not to mock anyone. But I had to craft rules for it to keep it consistent.

Listen to how people speak, but dialogue can be the characters saying the things you wish you had said an hour later. Unless you need to show nervousness, minimize the "um" and rambles that often come in real conversation. And this does vary a bit by genre, so understand if you're writing an adventure or screenplay dialogue should be very tight. If you're doing a leisurely slice-of-life novel, then you can meander more.

Taylor Mosbey: Read more Mark Twain.

Anna Salazar: I go to a coffee shop and eavesdrop.

Gordon Dymowski: Make a point of focusing on how a person speaks - what vocabulary are they using? Is that person's vocal rhythm unique? Thinking of dialogue like music is one of my key go-to strategies when writing dialogue.

Ali Marceau: Write the conversation that's in your head first...actions and reactions will come to you the more you "study the lines" and you're less likely to forget the feelings of the scene.

Bobby Nash: Walk around the house reading dialogue aloud.

Scott Rogers: Give each character their own way of sayin’ something so their personality comes through. Read what you have written aloud after you have written it.

Ruth de Jauregui: Read it out loud in the cadence and accents of your characters. Words too. So if the Latino across the street says oh my god, it’s in Spanish, then continues in English with his accent. And words spelled differently to mimic the accent, ok, maybe sometimes, but if the book is filled with it, it’s hard to edit and honestly distracts from the story.

Robby Hilliard: Read it out loud. Listen to someone else read it out loud.

Eliseu Gouveia: I usually use movie actors as proxies. I had a dialogue scene where a guy was trying to convince his pissed-off girlfriend to quit smoking. So, in my mind, I projected The Shoveler (Mistery Men) for the guy role, and Morticia Addams/Anjelica Huston as the girlfriend. The results were... unexpected. 😊

John Hartness: Read David Mamet.

Jessica Nettles: Watch Aaron Sorken shows. Read Neal Simon. Listen to real conversations and language. Understand that every person has their own language music and patter.

Nancy Hansen: If I can see the character in my mind's eye, I'll figure out the background, and then the dialogue comes more naturally. Sometimes I'll hunt for the right look online, and either find it in a celebrity or other recognizable person, or maybe some random picture I stumble across. Ethnicity and local/period slang and phrasing will figure in, but as Ruth said, in small doses. Like adding spice to a dish, it gets overwhelming if you add too much. For example, in the Jezebel Johnston pirate series, which takes place in the mid/late 1600s I decided from the outset to not use the 'thees and thous' sort of parlance that was popular in the day. It's hard to do well and gets tiresome to read after a while. I do my share of pirate talk though, just not the theatrical stuff. I also dump in the occasional phrase in French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, etc to remind readers that seafaring was a melting pot affair.

Charles Santino: Less is more. Clever is bad.

Jamais Jochim: Be passionate.

Allen Hammack: Ninety-nine percent of dialog lines should use "said." The very rare substitution should emphasize something important.

Michael McIlvain: Keep it understandable. Eliminate any possible question in the reader’s mind.

Pj Lozito: Don't let any character give a speech...

B. Clay Moore: Don't work to emulate the way people "actually speak." Work to make the way your characters speak seem believable. Also, dialogue comes easily for me once I can "hear" a character's voice in my head. That comes from *knowing* who my characters are. Everything follows from there.

Michael Woods: Dialogue isn't what they say, but how they say it.

Sorella Smith: Writing dialogue and how you tag it are not the same thing. for me, simply saying 'said' can often understate the intent of the dialogue. For others, adding a descriptor devalues the dialogue, gives too much weight to the narrative. Figuring that balance out is separate from writing good dialogue. Dialogue should be suited to the character. Dialogue isn't what should define the character, but it should inform the character and everything about the character should inform it.

Hilaire C Smith: Not really advice for writing so much as personal insight... I learned I am a wordy b**** 😂 and use $5 words regularly... the "would YOU say it like that" doesn't help me. 😂

Also, most of my characters are Southern precisely because I cannot excise my Southern roots from my grammar/vocabulary. Along those lines, some advice: avoid regional dialects as it can be done badly and come off as bigoted if badly done. Ie, it's fine to toss in a "y'all," but making a character sound like Boomhauer might not go over well and will be tiresome to read.

Aaron Rosenberg: Listen to how people speak. Hear your characters speak in your head. Read what they say out loud. Then go listen to people more. 

James P. Nettles III: I’ve been known to dictate, poorly acting out the character voices to get the first draft. And also, listen to old radio shows - very tight dialogue.

James Tuck: if you are having a conversation between two people, once you establish who's talking trust your audience to keep up. You do not have to he said she said that shit all the way down the page.

Jen Mulvihill: I listen to other people interact in dialogue and take note of how they communicate then I play it out in my head with my dialogue then I listen to what I have written in audio playback.

Shannon Murphy: Don't worry about grammar. Nobody speaks in perfect grammar. Write dialog the way people actually speak. That is, if your book is contemporary. If you're writing of another time, you'll have to research how they spoke then. No one in Victorian England is going to say, "Hey, dude!"

[Link] 5 Types of Dialogue Your Novel Needs

by NowNovel

Dialogue is a key part of any character-driven novel. What characters say and how/why/when/where they say it is revealing. Read 5 types of dialogue your novel needs, and illustrative examples from books:

1: Dialogue introducing key characters
Dialogue is useful for introducing characters because:

• It allows subtlety. We can show crucial details of characters’ personalities without explicitly stating them in narration
• It moves quicker. Dialogue is nimbler than paragraphs of narration
• Characters’ voices gain immediacy. We meet characters through their own voices

Take this example from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). The dystopian novel about a near-future world where women are enslaved for reproductive purposes is narrated by one such woman, Offred.

Here, we first meet Cora who works in the kitchen at Offred’s residence. Offred describes eavesdropping:

Sometimes I listen outside closed doors, a thing I never would have done in the time before […] Once, though, I heard Rita say to Cora that she wouldn’t debase herself like that.
Nobody asking you, Cora said. Anyways, what could you do, supposing?
Go to the Colonies, Rita said. They have the choice.
With the Unwomen, and starve to death and Lord knows what all? said Cora. Catch You.

Cora’s voice is grimly practical. [Note: Atwood leaves out speech marks in her original text.] Cora is quick to shoot down Rita’s dream of greater freedom.

Read the full article: http://www.nownovel.com/blog/5-types-of-dialogue-novel-needs/

[Link] Dialogue: 4 Ways it Goes Wrong

by Darcy Pattison

Dialogue is an essential part of fiction, the way an author shows a character through what s/he says. And it’s so easy to get it wrong. Here are some ways dialogue goes wrong and what to do about it.

Trivial. When characters talk to each other, the reader doesn’t need to listen to the trivial, or unimportant, things we all say to each other. We ask about the weather, chat about the inconsequential details of our days, or just generally avoid talking about anything of substance. That type of dialogue clogs your storytelling and drags down the pace. Cut the trivial and only leave the meat of the discussion.

Read the full article: http://www.darcypattison.com/revision/dialogue-mistakes/?utm_content=bufferfa965&utm_medium=social&utm_source=pinterest.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[Link] Writing Dialogue: 50 Things Your Characters Can Do WHILE They Talk

by Bryn Donovan

In the wonderful movie Warrior, a science teacher who moonlights as a fighter talks with his wife late at night while he repairs his girls’ dollhouse furniture. This is a brilliant action that tells you so much about the kind of guy he is, and it makes their conversation about bad financial news all the more compelling.

In fiction, giving your characters something to do while they talk can also add more depth or interest to the conversation. Additionally, it opens up new ways for them to express themselves through movement and body gestures. If someone’s having an argument while he unloads the dishwasher, he might bang the pots and pans around. If she’s jogging with a friend who tells her something shocking, she might stop in her tracks.

If all the conversations in your story consist of people sitting and looking at one another, you might want to mix it up. Here are a bunch of things your characters could be doing while they’re talking. In some cases, maybe only one person is doing the action, while in other cases, both or all of the characters may be doing it.

Some actions may underscore the conversation, and others may provide an ironic contrast to it. I made most of these things pretty normal and everyday, but some of them are more unusual. The list will probably make you think of a lot more things that could work for your characters or your story.

Read the full article: http://www.bryndonovan.com/2015/10/11/writing-dialogue-50-things-your-characters-can-do-while-they-talk/

The Worst Advice Ever About Writing Dialog

Lots of articles and writing books teach how to more effectively create dialog that just "sings" to readers. But enough about that. Let's look at the flip side of that. What's the worst advice you've ever received about how to write dialog? And did you take? How did you learn just how wrong it was?

Desmond Reddick: To listen to how people REALLY talk and mimic it. Ugh. That would create unreadable nonsense. Ha! I think the trick is more to approximate real dialogue but rather boiling it down to its purest, most plot-driving core while still leaving room for characterization and distinction.

Robbie Hilliard: Tagless dialogue. Sure, it has its place, but I once ran into a writing group that uniformly insisted that all dialogue tags must go! How insane is that? You know, the 'he said' and 'she said' speech attribution tags? Yeah, well I think there are times when they are just fine. They can help give the reader a hint at the pacing of 'spoken word' in the story. Just like you don't want to twist sentences due to grammar rules to the point that they don't sound natural (e.g. "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."), you don't want to find yourself creating dialogue that is twisted and unnatural just so your reader will clearly know who is speaking. Sometimes a 'he said/she said' is exactly what you need in order to preserve the natural flow of the dialogue.

So when to strive for tagless dialogue? When the scene is close, the tension is high, and the action is tight and flying by so fast you don't want the reader to have to slow down for anything. That's a great time for tagless dialogue!

C.E. Martin: Oh, I am all over this one... Back in 2012, when I started my first Kindle Direct book, I read a lot of advice from authors at Kboards.com. They were blasting the use of dialogue descriptors, like "Stay back" he growled. They claimed "Said" was always better.

Even though it went against my grain, I went ahead and followed the advice. By my second book, I decided that was stupid, and went back to trying to avoid having "said" appear twenty times on a page. I think "said" takes a reader out of the story when used more than once a page.

I also don't like that Hemingway-way of never identifying who is talking. Sure, if it's two people in a scene, then yes, your readers should be able to tell who is who, but in a crowded room, you need to spell out who's who.

Gordon Dymowski: Worst advice: try to capture a local dialect by spelling. Tried it in one of my stories, and rereading it....hoo, boy, was it bad.

Now, I tend to write dialogue the same way that Tommy Lee Jones once described his method for scripts - people tend to talk in sentence fragments. So I tend to write very fragmented, lyrical dialogue. (Plus, best advice - listen to *how* people people. Find rhythms)

Paul Mannering: Dialog should speak directly - people talk shit in real life. We hesitate, mumble, stumble over words, say things in a round about way. Listening to most people talk is like listening to Donald Trump -- it's bizarre.

In a story -- off the cuff comments should sound like they were carefully thought out - because they were - but they make your characters look cool.

Avoid dialect and specific slang -- it never reads well.

D. Alan Lewis: I was once told in a critique group that we all speak English and we talk the same. So, write your dialogue that way. Don't try and make everyone sound unique because it will confuse the reader. I didn't follow his advice.


Richard L. Altstatt: Most words are monkey noises. Ignore them...or, learn to spell....other good advice.

PJ Lozito: Potential agent: "No, don't set STING OF THE SILVER MANTICORE in 1942. World War II would make the events in it sort of a side show...." forgetting there were plenty of novels and stories happening during WWII.

Nugget #60 -- Dialog

 I love writing dialog. For my money, nothing moves a story along 

like good dialog. Until it doesn't any longer. Then no matter 

how much I love writing dialog, I have to stop.

Nugget #37 - Conversation Beats

I find that in my stories, people will sigh, clear their 

throats, look up, wrinkle their brows in thought, 

or sit down and cross their legs quite a bit. It's a

minor thing, I guess, but it's something to break 

up the dialog and to make the characters 

do real life people stuff while they talk.

Nuggets #25 -- Good Dialog Fools

Good dialog fools the reader into believing 

it sounds natural. It's a common mistake of 

beginning writers to transcribe dialogue just 

like it sounds in real life. But the fact is that 

real life speech is -- let's face it -- boring.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #301 -- Cussing in Fiction: How Much Is Too Much?

Recently two of my writer friends published posts about this topic on their blogs, and it got me thinking.

First, Mark Bousquet ran the article Genre Fiction: To Curse or Not to Curse, That Is the Question, in which he states:

"Since then, I’ve largely kept curse words out of my stories. My go to swear word is “damn” because that’s a soft curse word, in my book, and I’m sure the occasional “shit” and “piss” has made its way through to publication. Part of this is a choice on my part to not use that kind of language (and if you think that’s a prude thing, you missed the demonic orgy in this book), but again, it’s mostly about what the right words are to come out of a character’s mouth."

A few weeks later, Lance Stahlberg, a former Shooting Star Comics alum and fellow pulp and genre writer, through his two cents into the discussion with his article To Cuss or Not To Cuss. In that article he writes:

"...in the crime novel I am working on, I'm up to 48 F bombs and 78 variations of feces. I even drop the dreaded N word. Twice. Two and a half if you count the time someone started to say it and was shot before he could finish it. Earlier drafts have an even higher curse per word count ratio."

Then I found that Lance referenced this article, Why I No Longer Swear in My Books, by Robert Chazz Chute, a writer I was unfamiliar with up to that reference. He adds to the discussion with this bit:

"The f-word can be a crutch.

"Use it too much and dialogue risks a feeling of laziness and sameness. Increase the frequency and the impact suffers. Working around that obstacle has proved so minor, I wish I’d done without cursing from the beginning. “She cursed him as she sliced his throat,” can serve just as well, or better, than a string of expletives."

So, where do I fall on this topic? What do I feel I can add to it?

Precious little, I'm afraid, but I will say that the following is how it works for me.

Gratuitous-ness is a relative thing, a sliding scale. As with any kind of possibly gratuitous content, be it sex, violence, language, gore, it is necessary for as long as it keeps the story grounded and keeps the illusion intact for the reader. The very second it begins to pull a reader from the story because it seems superfluous it becomes gratuitous. I know that makes it an art more than a science, but it's the best way I can gauge it. Only the contract between the reader and the writer can determine the answer to that question.

Unless...

You're writing for a market with rules about such things. Then you do what the publisher or the market dictates. Other than that, I stand by my first comment.

And that's my two pennies. As always, your mileage may vary.

Nuggets #7 -- Two-Headed Voice

When I was a beginning writer, I needed to learn 
to write anyone's voice, red or yellow, black or 
white, man or woman, boy or girl or two-headed 
Beeezlesnord from Planet X (they are 
precious in his sight). Anyone.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#236) -- Dialog Tips

What advice would give to new writers for writing dialog? 

Really? You don't say.

Dialogue is talking, plain and simple. Without it, stories become long exercises in narration and description. Modern bestsellers can’t live without dialogue, and most pages tend to be full of more of it than any other weapon in the writer’s arsenal. Modern comics depend on it to avoid the clichéd “Meanwhile back at the Round Table” descriptive boxes that a strip like Prince Valiant depended on.

Okay, so dialogue equals talking, and all that talking has purposes and goals it’s trying to accomplish in your story.

GOOD DIALOGUE REVEALS CHARACTER.
Imagine a woman who uses big words when little ones would normally be used. Or how about a man whose speech consists mostly of phrases and idiom, with few complete sentences. Or the woman who says little but "speaks" instead with her gestures (or to a writer, beats). What do those word/sentence choices reveal about the characters? Would you expect the first woman to be a little arrogant or just well-educated? The man to be shallow or perhaps hip? Or the second woman to be shy or perhaps cautious and secretly deep? Even the cadence of speech should reveal bits of characterization. A character who speaks with a sing-song quality of rhythm or "poetic" sounds would have a vastly different personality than one who speaks with direct, choppy sentences with concrete nouns and verbs and few descriptive words.

GOOD DIALOGUE CONTAINS EMOTIONAL IMPACT.
Physical and emotional descriptions are a good start for helping readers to view your characters, but they become truly loved or hated or pitied or supported when they step onto the stage and speak. Effective dialogue helps clue in readers as to how they should feel about your characters. A strong lead who speaks little won't typically hold a reader's attention. Likewise, a supporting character who can't shut up may be distracting your reader from the person or people you're actually writing about. On the other hand, if your main character is a chatterbox whom you want readers to view with a little disgust, constant prattling and interrupting will help reinforce the emotional impact you're trying to establish.

GOOD DIALOGUE DRIVES THE STORY.
If what your characters say has nothing to do with the theme, tone, or plot of your story, then you need to take a hard look at the dialogue you've written. (Don't go any further until you read that again. It's that important.) This, however, does not mean that your characters should explain the plot like a bad Bond villain. But your characters shouldn't chatter inanely about stuff that has no bearing to what you're trying to accomplish with the story. Even if you let the story shape itself as you write, at some point you must stop and determine the target you've sighted to hit with your story. Having said that, sometimes what the characters choose not to say can be a more effective way of conveying tone and theme and plot than what they choose to say. People tend to talk around things more than talk about them. Just listen to a couple on the verge of a break up if you need proof. They'll talk about anything to avoid addressing the downhill turn in their relationship. (Go read "Hills Like White Elephants" by Hemmingway or "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver for classic examples of talking around the real subject.)

GOOD DIALOGUE FLOWS.
Often silence can say as much as words. A good dialogue writer realizes that what the characters don't say is sometimes more powerful than what they do say. Also, as in real life, sometimes gestures (or beats) can convey intricacies of communication better than speech. It takes each piece - speech, silence, and gestures - to put into print the illusion of communication between fictional characters. Effective writers listen and watch for the dance of words, silence, and beats. A caveat, however... don't feel the urge to switch to writing poetry at this point, but do learn to listen for the sounds and the cadence of the words and phrases you use. They carry baggage and impact, even on a subconscious level. A sequence of short words with lots of vowels has an entirely different feel than a sequence of mixed-length words with hard consonants. Try rewriting a few speech balloons or narration captions from one of your stories three times and changing the word choices and sentence lengths for each. Listen for the different rhythms and "feels." (Cool, huh?)

GOOD DIALOGUE FOOLS THE READER INTO BELIEVING IT SOUNDS NATURAL.
It's a common mistake of beginning writers to transcribe dialogue just like it sounds in real life. But the fact is that real life speech is -- let's face it -- boring. We pause, "uh,” “um," backtrack, miss the point, and correct ourselves more often that we actually "say" anything. Can you imagine line after line of that? Instead, good dialogue gives the illusion of real speech. It's what we might say if we were able to really think and self-edit as quickly as we speak. It accurately portrays the idioms and idiosyncrasies of real speech, but without the verbal speed bumps that would make readers feed your story page by page into the shredder along with Aunt Louise's fruitcake recipe.

GOOD DIALOGUE HIDES ITS OWN MECHANICS.
Or let's put that another way. A good dialogue writer gets out of the way and let's the story do its work. As with any craftsman, the goal is to show off a finished piece, not the nails and screws that went into creating the piece.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#183) -- Action vs. Dialog

Action vs. Dialogue: which do you prefer to write? Why?
(Thanks to Rachel Hunter for today's question.)

Use 'em all. Don't play favorites.

That's a lot like asking which tool do you prefer to use, a hammer or a screwdriver. The fact is, they both do different things for a story and they both have their place.

As to which is more fun to write, I have to admit that dialog flows easier for me than writing an action scene. I hear the people in my head and they speak through me to the page. On the other hand, an action scene is a dance and must be choreographed or it won't make sense. It'll seem disjointed, out of sequence, and a slip-up like that can get readers a jarring jolt to send them right out of the tale and back into reality.

The simple truth is that one does come easier for me, but neither is my favorite. I can't effectively drive nails with a screwdriver, so I have to learn how to use a hammer too.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#31) -- Believable Dialog

Any advice for making dialog sound more believable? 

-- republished from Inside the Lines magazine

When I look back on my earliest attempts at writing fiction, I'm faced with an embarrassing realization -- all of my characters were English majors like me. They all spoke with clean, proper sentence structure and had the vocabulary of an amateur linguist. The sad part is this -- stories that could have been entertaining and interesting were poisoned and ruined by one of the most heinous plagues to infect beginning writers. Flat dialogue.

Put bluntly, my dialogue sucked like an upright Hoover. (And believe me, those beauties can suck up dust and dirt and carpeting like nobody's business.)

So, let’s take a look at how to park that Hoover back in the stairwell closet. In this tutorial we’re going to look at two key ideas of writing dialogue: (1) What dialogue is and does and (2) Using dialogue specifically in comics.

De-Mystifying Dialogue

Dialogue is talking, plain and simple. Without it, stories become long exercises in narration and description. Modern bestsellers can’t live without dialogue, and most pages tend to be full of more of it than any other weapon in the writer’s arsenal. Modern comics depend on it to avoid the clichéd “Meanwhile back at the Round Table” descriptive boxes that a strip like Prince Valiant depended on. And while Prince Valiant may be a really cool strip, you have to admit that reading it is more like reading a nice picture book than reading a comic book.

Okay, so dialogue equals talking, and all that talking has purposes and goals it’s trying to accomplish in your story.

GOOD DIALOGUE REVEALS CHARACTER. Imagine a woman who uses big words when little ones would normally be used. Or how about a man whose speech consists mostly of phrases and idiom, with few complete sentences. Or the woman who says little but "speaks" instead with her gestures (or to a writer, beats). What do those word/sentence choices reveal about the characters? Would you expect the first woman to be a little arrogant or just well-educated? The man to be shallow or perhaps hip? Or the second woman to be shy or perhaps cautious and secretly deep? Even the cadence of speech should reveal bits of characterization. A character who speaks with a sing-song quality of rhythm or "poetic" sounds would have a vastly different personality than one who speaks with direct, choppy sentences with concrete nouns and verbs and few descriptive words.

GOOD DIALOGUE CONTAINS EMOTIONAL IMPACT. Physical and emotional descriptions are a good start for helping readers to view your characters, but they become truly loved or hated or pitied or supported when they step onto the stage and speak. Effective dialogue helps clue in readers as to how they should feel about your characters. A strong lead who speaks little won't typically hold a reader's attention. Likewise, a supporting character who can't shut up may be distracting your reader from the person or people you're actually writing about. On the other hand, if your main character is a chatterbox whom you want readers to view with a little disgust, constant prattling and interrupting will help reinforce the emotional impact you're trying to establish.

GOOD DIALOGUE DRIVES THE STORY. If what your characters say has nothing to do with the theme, tone, or plot of your story, then you need to take a hard look at the dialogue you've written. (Don't go any further until you read that again. It's that important.) This, however, does not mean that your characters should explain the plot like a bad Bond villain. But your characters shouldn't chatter inanely about stuff that has no bearing to what you're trying to accomplish with the story. Even if you let the story shape itself as you write, at some point you must stop and determine the target you've sighted to hit with your story. Having said that, sometimes what the characters choose not to say can be a more effective way of conveying tone and theme and plot than what they choose to say. People tend to talk around things more than talk about them. Just listen to a couple on the verge of a break up if you need proof. They'll talk about anything to avoid addressing the downhill turn in their relationship. (Go read "Hills Like White Elephants" by Hemmingway or "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver for classic examples of talking around the real subject.)

GOOD DIALOGUE FLOWS. Often silence can say as much as words. A good dialogue writer realizes that what the characters don't say is sometimes more powerful than what they do say. Also, as in real life, sometimes gestures (or beats) can convey intricacies of communication better than speech. It takes each piece - speech, silence, and gestures - to put into print the illusion of communication between fictional characters. Effective writers listen and watch for the dance of words, silence, and beats. A caveat, however... don't feel the urge to switch to writing poetry at this point, but do learn to listen for the sounds and the cadence of the words and phrases you use. They carry baggage and impact, even on a subconscious level. A sequence of short words with lots of vowels has an entirely different feel than a sequence of mixed-length words with hard consonants. Try rewriting a few speech balloons or narration captions from one of your stories three times and changing the word choices and sentence lengths for each. Listen for the different rhythms and "feels." (Cool, huh?)

GOOD DIALOGUE FOOLS THE READER INTO BELIEVING IT SOUNDS NATURAL. It's a common mistake of beginning writers to transcribe dialogue just like it sounds in real life. But the fact is that real life speech is -- let's face it -- boring. We pause, "uh,” “um," backtrack, miss the point, and correct ourselves more often that we actually "say" anything. Can you imagine line after line of that? Instead, good dialogue gives the illusion of real speech. It's what we might say if we were able to really think and self-edit as quickly as we speak. It accurately portrays the idioms and idiosyncrasies of real speech, but without the verbal speed bumps that would make readers feed your story page by page into the shredder along with Aunt Louise's fruitcake recipe.

GOOD DIALOGUE HIDES ITS OWN MECHANICS. Or let's put that another way. A good dialogue writer gets out of the way and let's the story do its work. As with any craftsman, the goal is to show off a finished piece, not the nails and screws that went into creating the piece.

We've looked at some of the fundamentals of what good dialogue is and does, so let's build on that.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I’d like to propose that dialogue isn’t just two characters talking to each other, but can also include a character talking to himself or herself (thought balloons and internal monologue).

I know what you’re thinking. Trust me. You’re thinking, “Sure, Sean. But what specifically does that mean for me as a comics writer?”

So let’s get to it, shall we? But, let’s get some definitions first, so we’re all using the same terms. These are by no means “official” definitions, but they’ll work for us practical types. The include:

Dialogue—talking


Dangling Dialogue—a bit of dialogue that is captured in a narrative box rather than a balloon and ties a panel to the previous or following scene


Internal Monologue—a person talking to himself or herself, but at the same time directly to the reader


Thought Balloons—puffy balloons, usually when a character is talking to himself or herself, but not directly to the reader

Your Extra Time and Your KISS

No doubt most of us are familiar with the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), and we’re going to adapt it here. A good comics dialogue writer must remember this key principle—Keep It Short and Strong.

Don’t believe me? Then find the nearest letterer and ask him or her. I bet he or she will tell you that nine times of out ten beginning writers channel their inner Clairmont and have their characters speaking in novel-length expositions better suited for novels or short stories. Okay, the nearest letterer may say it differently, something like “They have their characters say too much, and I run out of room and usually have to tick off the artist by covering up some of the art,” but the idea is the same.

For the record, I’m actually a fan of many of Chris Clairmont’s stories, but you have to admit, the man sure knows how to cram a lot of words into a panel. He can often find ways to make it work because his characters are standing around a conference table or hanging out in a kitchen at the time, not knee-deep in the middle of an epic battle.

This is a good time to remember and practice the proverbial Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, think about your artists and letterers and try their shoes on. If your artist has to draw miniscule scenes in order to fit your characters’ dialogue and internal monologue into the panel, then it’s time to rein it in, cowboy.

Some writers will give you algebraic formulas such as “a splash panel = no more than six balloons or 250 words” or “a typical panel = no more than 35 words,” but I won’t do that here. If you’re not sure how much room your dialogue takes up, reset the font in your word processor and take a look for yourself. (Comics Sans will do for this purpose, at 6-8 point size, though hopefully that’s not what your letterer is using!)  If it goes beyond 2-4 full-page-width lines of text in your average word processor per panel, you’re probably going to give your letterer a headache.

More than One Way to Skin a Cat's Mouth

Repeat after me: There is more than one tool in my dialogue toolbox.

Go back and read that sentence again. Then commit it to memory. Some writers have made names for themselves by avoiding either thought balloons or internal monologue. Some even go so far as to belittle these tools as unsophisticated or passé. But I want to encourage you as a comic book writer to open up your mind to all the tools at your disposal. There’s a valid reason a carpenter needs a hammer, a wrench, and a level—because sometimes a screwdriver alone just won’t do the job. The important thing is to know why you’re using a specific tool.

On the other hand, I’ve seen stories in a submissions pile in which writers have misused their tools—trying to tell a more adult, Vertigo-esque tale but filled with lots of thought balloons or trying to convey a nostalgic feeling but using heavy internal monologue that in no way resembles the stories they’re trying to emulate. In other words, I’ve seen folks hammering at screws and trying to drive a 10 penny nail with the butt end of a screwdriver. Sure, eventually they may get the job done, but it won’t be pretty or efficient.

However, bear in mind that the way you use your dialogue tools can and will determine the tone of your story. For example:

    Lots of thought balloons can make a story feel very Silver Age.
    Using liberal doses of internal monologue can give a story a more literary feel (if used well).
    Lots of short, to-the-point dialogue unfettered by thoughts and internal monologue will help action sequences “move” quickly

Dangle Your Participles… and Your Other Words Too

Don’t be afraid to let your characters’ words jump scenes. Dangling dialogue can be an effective way of bridging from one scene to another, especially if you can find a way to play the words ironically off against the new scene. This is actually a fairly common practice now, and many pros use this technique almost religiously.

If it’s true that the key to keeping a reader engaged is to make sure he or she turns the page, then dangling dialogue is an easy way to force a page turn, especially when you’re in the middle of a scene without lots of kicks, punches, or bullets. Just find that opportune bit of dialogue (something like “But it wasn’t Rick’s baby at all, according to the doctor. She said it must be…”) and let it hang. And with a set up like that, I dare readers not to turn the page to find out what’s about to be said.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#24) -- Best Quality

What do you think is your best quality as a writer? --- John Morgan Neal

Wow. Appeal to my vanity, why don't ya? *grins*

That's actually a tough question. I'd like to say it's something professional like my ability to hit deadlines early (I tend to push them to the last minute, and love to write by the stress of the pending deadline -- I think it prompts my creativity) or my ability to sell thousands of copies with my amazing grass-roots promotion (I know I still have a lot to learn on this, but I'm learning). 

I really wish I could answer this in the practical. But I can't.

So, to answer this honestly, I'm going to have answer in the esoteric. 

I think my best quality as a writer is my ability to write dialog. I really do. I remember when I was taking a fiction writing class in college, I was told by my professor that I really, REALLY needed to work on my dialog. So I did. I read books about writing dialog. I took notes of things that I heard people say. I watched for unique facial ticks that people make while they speak. I wrote and rewrote dialog exchanges between characters, and then I rewrote them again until I felt it resonated with "fake truth."

In other words, until it started to sound like real speech without actually sounding EXACTLY like real speech. 

The most important lesson about writing dialog came from reading Hemmingway and Raymond Carver. It is this: People tend to not talk about the thing that is actually on their minds. The tend to talk around it.

And I owe it all to the professor who told me my dialog writing was crap. (Well, he didn't actually say "crap." He was nicer than that, but he was just serious about it being bad.)