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| Photo credit: theilr on Flickr |
As many of you know, dialogue makes a huge impact on your writing—stilted dialogue can very easily ruin an otherwise well-written scene, while lines of great dialogue are often quoted by readers as their favorite lines from the book. But how do you ensure that you’ve written brilliant dialogue? The secrets to brilliance, my friends, are here.
How to Write Brilliantly Fantastic Dialogue That Will Leave Your Readers Clamoring for More*
- Make sure your characters always address each other. As your readers can’t see that your characters speaking to each other (you’re not writing a screenplay for a movie—you’re writing a book), it’s very easy for them to become confused. Who is speaking to whom? The quickest way to remedy this is to make sure your characters address each other, like so:
“Hello Bob, how are you doing?”
“I’m doing very well, Mary, and yourself?”
“I couldn’t be better, Bob!
“That’s wonderful, Mary.”
“Isn’t it, Bob?”
“Truly, it is, Mary.”
And so on. - Never use “said.” “Said” is about the most clichéd word in the English dictionary and must be avoided at all costs, unless you want to bore your readers to death. Besides, why would you use “said” when there are dozens of more interesting words like “remarked,” “declared,” “divulged,” “avowed,” and “proclaimed”? You wouldn’t. That’d just be silly.
- In fact, forget dialogue tags altogether. Who really uses dialogue tags anymore, anyway? All they do is weigh down your writing with unnecessary words. Besides, your readers will know who is speaking to who since all of your characters are addressing each other in every line.
- Quotation marks are cliché. Use italics to differentiate your dialogue from the rest of the writing. It looks much prettier.
- No cussing. There are NO circumstances when it’s ok for your characters to curse—it’s very ugly and few things will chase your readers away faster than cursing characters. Instead, use substitute words like “fairy poo,” “fiddlesticks” and “shish kabobs” to save your readers’ innocence.
- Formal speech is a must. If your characters don’t sound like they came out of a work of Shakespeare, you aren’t doing it right.
- Write out accents. How are your readers supposed to remember all of the various accents your characters have if you don’t sound them out? Hope y’all err havin’ a fantaaaastic day! looks much better than “Hope y’all are having a fantastic day, she said with a Southern accent.”
- Use as much punctuation as possible. Case and point: WHY AREN’T YOU USING ENOUGH PUNCTUATION?!?!?!?!?!?!?!???????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????????!!!!!!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!.....?!
- Strive for uniformity. It is essential that all of your characters sound the same, otherwise you risk confusing your readers with characters that don’t sound like they belong in the same book.
- Forget dialogue altogether. You know what? Who really needs dialogue, anyway? Silent movies were all the rage way back when, what’s to say it can’t work now?
Now it’s your turn: what dialogue “tips” would you add to the list?
31 comments:
Ah. I do love your sarcastic posts! They always seem to give me a giggle :]
Good post though!
Hehe, great tips (not!). I have to remind myself of the punctuation thing, sadly enough, because when I write informally (in emails, etc), I will do the multiple question mark thing. Terrible habit.
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You know that awesome joke / Internet meme / catch phrase that's not the least bit germane to the conversation being written? Shoehorn that in at any cost!
Also, make sure to include lots of internal dialogue that explains the spoken dialogue, or at the very least goes on at length about how the character feels about each and every sentence.
I love your sarcasm! I'll add, to continue the sarcastic theme, please include boring exchanges that we use in everyday life (ie: Hi Harry. Hi Sally. How are you today? I'm fine, and you?). Also, repeat words often; that's fun to read. (ie. We went snorkling. Snorkling? Where did you go snorkeling?) Thanks!
Haha, this was great, as always! The only thing I kinda "eh" at is "never use dialogue tags". Actually, it's really easy to cut back the tags and still make things easy to follow and understand. It's basically just context. I've found I use a lot less tags now than I used to and my writing is definitely stronger for it. Of course, tags are still necessary in some instances! (and I LOL'd at "don't use said". Will that ever die?)
Totally agree. Remove dialogue tags when you can, but not when you can't. Haha.
Hahaha. Oh my! I was reading and getting hot, then steamy, and hit the boiling point at guidance #9..."Oh yeah...Julia did say 'sarcastic" LOL!!! Thank you for an entertaining post. Happy Saturday to All. :)
Oh man...THANK YOU for number two! I made that mistake so many times when I was starting out, and even know I know some new writers who think color-coding and snatching away "said" in every given moment for something the thesaurus gave them is a good idea. It's notttt, but they never listen.
Great post, as always!
I now aspire to write with the words "fairy poo," "fiddlesticks" and "shish kabobs." Great post! The other thing that annoys me is YA fiction that doesn't get what it's like to be a young adult - you know, the kind that uses "like" and "dude" way too much.
Well done. I was getting pissed but it was enough to make me see what other moronic advice was being peddled here. When I got to 3 I became suspicious. Nice way to hook a first time reader!
I'm tweeting this. It had to be done. This post was too good.
Surely most any book would be improved with a line or two about "fairy poo." :-P Another brilliant how (not) to post, Ava!
Thank you, Joe! As I enjoy writing them and people seem to enjoy reading them, it's a win-win. :)
I think the rules are a tad different when you write informally, but I can see how the multiple punctuation mark thing could be tempting, especially in an informal setting. Sometimes it's fun to just watch the exclamation and punctuation marks fly across the screen...
Yes! Use ALLLLLL the memes!
Parentheticals are a great way to include those oh-so-important character feelings/ruminations/random tangents. But only if you have a parenthetical to explain your parenthetical.
Those are great additions! :D I especially love the repetition bit--makes for great cadence.
Glad to hear you enjoyed the post! I agree that you can definitely cut back on dialogue tags--the sarcastic bit just came in with never using them at all. :)
And yes, the immortal "don't use said." It does seem to reappear despite many attempts at killing it.
Precisely. ^_^
You're not the only one to mistake this for a serious post at first--which is why I make sure to include the note at the bottom. :)
Thanks for commenting, Brian! So glad you enjoyed the post after you recognized the sarcasm. ^_^
I feel like the second point is a trap a lot of new writers fall into, and I can certainly understand why. It seems like it'd be cliche to keep using "said," but it's one of those sneaky little exceptions. Yay for the invisible said!
I feel like those "swear" words would be fun to use, if you could manage to sneak them in there without it looking out of place. It would have to be a very particular story for it to work, but it'd be entertaining (to me at least) nonetheless.
As for the "like" and "dude" thing, I know what you mean. Thankfully I haven't encountered that in any of my reading as of late, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when it happens. One of my favorite aspects of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is that his teenage voices sounded completely authentic--he used "like" and other teenage mannerisms, but he didn't overdo it.
Thank you, Caster! Glad to see you picked up on the sarcasm before the post scared you away. :)
Welcome to the Writability community!
Thank you so much! ^___^
Thank you, Grace! I'm going to try to remember to sneak "fairy poo" or something of the like into a tweet someday just for fun. :D
Just to clarify (not that it's needed, requested, desired, or appropriate [in other words, it isn't wanted]), brackets instead of parentheses would be the correct form of punctuation in this case, I think. Furthermore, I already incorporate all of the above in my writing, yet no one wants to read it. Hmm....
Love this! Thank you for the laugh, Jeff. :)
11. The characters don't need to reply to each other logically. They should just blurt out anything that moves the plot. Seriously, it bothers me when a character doesn't acknowledge something in a conversation "just because".
Nice addition, Robin!
Thanks, Leaf! That's a good addition, particularly if they continue to talk about irrelevant things for pages. Entire chapters, even. WHOLE BOOKS.
Yes, that's a great suggestion. :)
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