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So let’s continue the discussion on dialog, because why not? A lot of people struggle with it. Any help those of us who don’t struggle with it (or don’t struggle as much) is probably welcome, assuming we can express our assistance properly.
That part’s the rub, isn’t it? Last week I talked about how I’ve been writing all my life, over and over and over, but it seems like the greatest cop-out to tell someone having trouble to “just write.” Again I’ll equate it to the thought of Dawn telling me to “just draw.” Some more guidance than that would be appreciated, wouldn’t it?
But when you’re so familiar with something, you have to go back and take it apart and try to figure out some of the underlying things that you think would help a newbie. These past few weeks I’ve been attempting to do that. So let’s talk a bit about what I’m just going to call “voice.”
Do you hear your characters’ voices in your head? You really should. In fact, you might even want to speak your dialog aloud and see how it sounds. In the early days of Star Wars Harrison Ford is supposed to have famously told its creator, “George, you can write this shit but you sure can’t say it.”
Do all your characters sound the same? They shouldn’t. True, groups of close friends will often develop a certain unifying vernacular, but if everyone’s just a generic quip machine that’s going to ring hollow after awhile. Quirks of speech aren’t just for determining who’s talking from off-panel, they can be downright crucial in establishing a sense of verisimilitude for a reader. Nothing’s worse for me than a bunch of twelve-year-olds talking like they were 35. You might even need to go listen to some actual twelve-year-olds for a refresher.
I don’t want to say this isn’t hard, because for someone having trouble with it it’s of course going to be hard. So maybe start with the broad strokes, so to speak. Extreme characters and extreme situations… how would Characters A and B respond to Character C’s declaration of a risky plan?
Character A: “Have you quite taken leave of your senses?!”
Character B: “Dude! Are you nuts?”
Without even seeing them represented on a page, these characters have formed a picture of who they are in your mind’s eye just by virtue of their words, haven’t they? So maybe do that several more times. Take one of your characters and imagine what they might say when threatened… when exhausted… when in love. Then take another character and do the same. Now put them together and let those different reactions interact. It’s alchemy of a sort, to be sure, but writers have been rediscovering the formula over many centuries, so I have a feeling you can, too.