Thoughts on writing dialog

[deborahjross]

Agent Nathan Bransford blogs about what makes good dialog. Lots of food for thought.

Sometimes you'll see characters in novels bantering back and forth in a way that is meant to reveal character or fill space. Unless it's just so insanely unbelievably clever that the writer makes it work, usually this feels hollow and, well, boring.

A good conversation is an escalation. The dialogue is about something and builds toward something. If things stay even and neutral, the dialogue just feels empty.

Characters in a novel never just talk. There's always more to it.

oOo

Human beings are not very articulate creatures. Despite all the words at our disposal, words tend to fail us at key moments, and even when we know what we want to say we spend a whole lot of time trying to describe and articulate what we feel without being quite able to do it properly. We misunderstand, overemphasize, underemphasize, grasp at what we mean, and conversations go astray. So when two characters go back and forth explaining precisely what they are feeling or thinking to each other, it doesn't seem remotely real.

Good dialogue is instead comprised of attempts at articulation. There's a whole lot that is kept back, because we humans only rarely really truly put our true feelings out there.

oOo

There's nothing worse than reading a stretch of dialogue where the characters are saying precisely what we think they're going to say.

The best dialogue counters our expectations and surprises us.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Whoa, there *is* lots of food for thought there. Because on the one hand, characters who express their mind too clearly are unrealistic, but on the other hand, you have to use art in representing conversation--it can't have too many of the (true to life) digressions or hemming or hawing, or that, too, will be very offputting!

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Sometimes what a character doesn't say is as communicative to the reader as the actual speech. Likewise, inconsistencies between affect or action and speech.

Way too many things to keep track of at once! But we try, and slowly we get more skillful.