Alicia Rasley - Dialogue Dynamics, a Creative Writing Guide

DIALOGUE DYNAMICS

An Interactive Writing Guide

by Alicia Rasley

DIALOGUE DYNAMICS

An Interactive Writing Guide

by Alicia Rasley

Copyright 2015 by Alicia Rasley
All Rights Reserved

Published by Midsummer Books

Indianapolis, IN 46220-2182

#7 in The Story Within Writing Booklet Series

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Table of Contents

Dynamic dialogue can sell a book that might otherwise be ignored. That's because dialogue reaches right out to the human in us all, the one that wants contact and conversation, and if you do that well, the reader will overlook a host of other faults. So don't rest until your dialogue forcefully conveys the individual voices of your characters, and purposefully pushes your plot.

Make your dialogue dynamic. Make it move. Make it meaningful. Make it matter.

We're going to work on character dialogue, on making your characters 3-D and real when they're speaking up. You start this by the magical skill of.... believing in them. (Clap your hands, boys and girls!) And then you start imagining them from the inside out. And then you move to extrapolating from what you know of the outside circumstances to learn more about the inside, and then taking the inside stuff and seeing how it'll affect their actions on the outside. Don't think of dialogue as just filler or transition from one action to another. A major plot action will involve talking, interacting, and that's dialogue.

Creating dialogue is inside-outside, outside-inside, a continual process. Think of yourself as a sculptor, carving away clay to reveal the outline, then putting more on to make the mouth.

In this booklet, I'm going to be asking questions about your story and characters. Something that might help is to (when appropriate) answer in the first-person voice of the character. That way you'll get more of a sense of how he/she "speaks" for dialogue purposes.

So I ask for example: What's your goal, and why do you want it? "Well, I'm a cowboy, and my goal is to win the national rodeo competition for the third time, so I can retire as a Hall of Famer."

Try that: Be your character, just for the purpose of some of the exercises. This will help you understand the characters from the inside, while still "hearing" how they talk.

I'll start with the characters, because they are your human connection to everything else in the storythe plot, the action, and the dialogue. Then we'll get to dialogue in the plot and interaction, and finally, we'll address more mechanical issues like punctuation and quote tagging. So the sections of this booklet will be:

Dialogue as Characterization

Dialogue as Plot Action and Interaction

Dialogue Mechanics

Each character should have a distinctive voice, so that, theoretically, without any quote tags ("Mary said"), the reader can tell which character said that. That doesn't mean you don't use quote tags-- there are several other useful functions of quote tags beyond just identifying the speaker-- rather that the reader can tell who said what even without them. If your characters are individual (and I'm sure they are), then you'll want to have their dialogue be just as unique.

That's hard! I mean, we all use basically the same language, so how to individualize? That's why we have to learn to "hear" the distinctions in our characters' voices. And the best way to do this is to "listen".

STARTING EXERCISE

Do this quickly, in first-person voice of the character. Ask a leading question of the character and let him/her answer in voice, and let your subconscious lead you there!

1. Question: How on earth did you get into this mess?

2. Read over what you wrote in the character's voice. (Can you believe it? Doesn't it sound just like your character? And it came out of YOUR brain!) What does it reveal about the character? Jot down 4-5 "markers" you see there which can be used in dialogue later.

Example: (You can make up your own question or use this "mess" one)

Nick, how on earth did you get into this mess?

It's not a mess. I can handle it. I've got it under control. I know what I'm doing-- I'm investigating the fighter-plane accident that killed my old sergeant's daughter. If I find anything, I'll have an article series for the Weekly Times-- that's sort of a gadfly magazine in Washington that I write for. Sure, no one is helping me, but I'm used to that. You go up against the powers that be, especially in the military, you got to expect some resistance. There was something wrong with that plane, and if there is, well, then they're doing an injustice by blaming it on Susie.

Her dad is suffering for that. Bad enough she's dead, but she's being called incompetent, and used as an example of how women can't be pilots. That's what's killing him. And I'm going to help him out if it kills me. And... well, considering that there's a big defense contractor and the whole military-industrial complex trying to blame it on her, not to mention the good old boys who want only boys in the cockpit, it might come to that.

With Nick, we see that he's ex-military ("my old sergeant"), but he's also sort of anti-establishment. He's now a journalist, which will serve to increase his skepticism. You can also see that "loyalty" is a major value to him. He'll do anything for his friend.

But also look at HOW he talks-- clipped speech, sentence fragments, "guy" language. He's definite and sharp. He doesn't use much in the way of modifiers, as he's more the verb/noun type.

So when I write his dialogue, I'll think about who he is and consider this:

• Goes for the harder-edged words.
• Won't talk long without an action intervening, because he's physical.
• Uses sardonic humor as a weapon when he's angry.
• Doesn't use waffle words-- definite speech.

Now think about how this will set his speech apart from the other major characters. For example, my Nick will contrast with the heroine Kate, who has a PhD in linguistics. If I do the same exercise with her, this is the "speech marker list" I come up with.

Kate -- composed, quiet: uses complete and completely grammatical sentences. Usually thinks before she speaks. Composes whole paragraphs first. When she's excited, she gets more elaborate, not more incoherent.

She's a linguist, loves words and how they work, but worries that she's boring people when she gets going on her field of interest and will break off-- "I didn't mean to lecture you! Tell me what you think!"

So try thatfreewrite in this character's voice, then read the passage over and list what you think are the speech markers.

If you have characters in your story, they already have individual speech styles. That's because they already have personalities, and probably you already have a good sense of who these people are and what life experiences shaped them! You need only look into the background and personality of your characters to determine their dialogue voices. Let's start with background, the societal factors that pre-determine some aspects of our individuality:

Age

Gender

Region

Social class

Educational level

Of course, the possible permutations of these societal factors are nearly endless! But lets discuss a couple of them, the two I consider most determinative of our natural speech patterns, as these two are with us at birth, and tend not to change much in those formative years of language development: Gender and social class.