Say what?
Using dialog effectively
When I was writing my first book, my father asked if he could read it. If you’re an author, you know how precious those words can be and the least little criticism can be fatal. It took some time before I was comfortable enough to share, and confident enough in what I was doing. Eventually, I let him read it. One of his notes was “you use too many contractions, especially with the dialog.” Let me tell you I was relieved, because that was one thing I was very sure of.
When you write dialog, it has to sound genuine. People don’t talk in perfect English. They don’t say “I am going to the store.” They say “I’m going to the store.” One of the workshops I’d been to back then discussed having a conversation with someone, recording it, and transcribing it to get a feel for authenticity. Does it sound real? Stilted?
Another tip I learned was brevity. Often, when we have conversation, we speak with unnecessary repetition. “Hi. How are you.” “I’m fine, how are you?” “Good. Hey, do you want to get some coffee?” “Sure, where do you want to go?” While this is all realistic, it’s also boring. Cut to the chase. Many of the callback phrases we use in everyday speech can be abbreviated to avoid getting stuck in useless dialog. What your characters say has to move the story along, not get bogged down in minutia (unless there’s a reason for the minutia).
And then there’s the dialect issue. I’m from the Midwest. My characters speak the way I do because my books are primarily set in the Midwest. We have a unique speech pattern in that we like to end sentences with prepositions. This drives my critique partner crazy. “Do you want to go with?” For me, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that question, but for someone who isn’t from around here, it can be frustrating to read. Sort of like writing a character from Massachusetts whose use of superlatives includes wicked. “That was wicked good.” Or people from the south with their “Bless your heart.” A little dialect goes a long way. I watched a movie about a Kentucky Derby hatmaker who wasn’t from around there. The other hatmakers decided to denigrate her often with the bless your heart line, which went over the new hatmakers head, and it got old real fast.
And speaking of speech patterns, I’m not sure how many of you read the Outlander books. They’re set in Scotland. Diana Gabaldon delivers a master class in when to show the accent and when to not use it. Jamie’s accent becomes more pronounced under certain conditions, and even then she uses it sparingly. You get the general idea without having to read every line of dialect written with the Scottish accent.
Dialog can also be used to show what’s going on in a scene, show a character’s response to something that’s going on rather than writing expository paragraphs to tell them what you want them to see. It gives direct emotional impact from the character’s point of view.
Dialog can be tricky. There’s a delicate balance between showing speech patterns and overusing them, between realistic dialog and boring your reader with too much back and forth.
When I did Verbatims for work, we'd have to remember and write down pages of conversations. It helped a lot when later doing it for the imaginary ones in my stories.
Good reminders. I have to remind myself that men tend to use fewer words than women, and usually go back and cut dialogue when they're talking.
I started a book the other day which was a "cowboy" book, and the dropped Gs at the end of "ing" words ... Every. Single. Time. drove me nuts. It's now in my "last resort" pile.