Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is always troubling to a grammar nazi. Since good dialogue imitates actual speech, it is rarely if ever grammatically correct. In fact, if you as a writer find yourself writing grammatically correct dialogue, it's time to start over.

Grammar nazis, pay attention here. Dialogue should be full of partial sentences, interjections, incomplete thoughts, etc. But you can't just record people talking and use that. Strangely enough, some real dialogue, when written, doesn't work at all. There's a strange distance between what people really say and what they think they say. Because of that disconnect, real dialogue often looks odd on paper.

The best bet is to write your dialogue, then read it out loud. If it sounds strange, revise, revise, revise. Read it out loud to people. See what they think. Have different people read different characters. Give the characters their own voices.  Don't be afraid to use slang. And write a lot of short sentences.

There is no reason to be afraid of dialogue. You use it every day. Just don't try to be Herman Melville.

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