Hey everyone-I'm working on my current story Inscription of Love and the descriptions are great, except the dialogue is *drumroll* BORING! I need some tips on interesting dialogue. Anyone care to help?
"I will have to tell you, you have bewitched me body and soul..." --Mr. Darcy, P & P, 2005 movie
"You pierce my soul." --Cpt. Frederick Wentworth
The way I learned how to write dialogue and make it good is by listening to people, remembering amusing bits of conversation and that sort of thing.
Another trick to interesting dialogue is to make it action-oriented. Make sure it has a purpose. If it not doing much to move the story forward, it should be revealing character or important information.
Please, sit down before you fall down.
Belloq, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
Dialogue! My rule of thumb? Don't worry about proper anything; write how people talk. In other words? Break that wonderful rule teachers (at least mine) keep impressiong on us: write how you talk.
If you want specific examples, post some of the dialogue, and we can see how we can spice it up!
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Yep. Listen to people and rememeber what they say and how they said it. Break grammar rules if need be. People don't talk with correct grammar (it still needs to be readable, so don't go overboard).
And I'd write how you talk, or think, or whatever, whenever you can. I do that in my blog. I think I talk more distinctly in my blog. It's funny. I think it helps though.
Keep your characters' personalities in mind when writing their dialogue. If they're their own person and not just a carbon copy of all the other characters (I don't know if this is a problem for you or not, as I haven't read your work, so it's just general advice) they'll be more interesting and believeable.
Make sure they're talking about relevent things. Five pages of "hi Fred! How 'bout that rain we had earier? Talk about bucketing down, hey?" is not a good idea. Unless the rain is important to the plot. Then it might be a good idea.
And practice a lot. Do random freewrites with loads of dialogue. Maybe write down conversations you've had as closely as possible. Stuff like that.
Oh, you're angry! Click your pen.
--Music and Lyrics
Actually, and this is going to sound really idiotic, Wiggy, but I keep a piece of paper and a pen on me always. And when I'm watching a movie or reading a book or listening in the grocery store and someone says something that sticks in my mind I just write it down. And the stupid part of all this is that often phrases seem to materialize out of nowhere and then find themselves in my dialogue. For instance: I was cleaning my room one day and I found this empty notebook. Cool! thought I. An empty notebook! (I rarely have empty notebooks). And in any event I was flipping through it... relishing... it's emptiness I suppose, and I got to the last page and written at the very bottom in very neat letters, in pen was "Halfway to a worthless ideal." I stared at it for a moment and thought "And where the heck did this come from?" I never remeber thinking it, I certainly never remember writing it. Which is a cool if not slightly eerie feeling. ^_^
So my advice to you is similar to Rei's: write down everything and aynthing that you hear people/characters/actors/drunks say... and then put all this scrap paper away for a while and like a week later pull it back out again and Voila! A dialogue emerges from the snippets. Hehe, it's like soup. ^_~
Soup...nice one Dreamy. That made me lol.
Thanks guys! I think I've gotten a lot better in my dialogue than I was earlier. My mom gave me a compliment that said that I'm doing a lot better in not being so wordy and not doing too much description or too much dialogue. DD, I'm with you on that. Whenever we go somewhere, I have to have my writing binder with me. Just in case I get an idea. Random, yeah, but now more than ever I don't feel complete without my blue binder, looseleaf, and well-chewed pen.
"I will have to tell you, you have bewitched me body and soul..." --Mr. Darcy, P & P, 2005 movie
"You pierce my soul." --Cpt. Frederick Wentworth
I agree with Rei. The next time you go to a grocery store or a mall, just sit down somewhere and write down snippets of conversations that you hear. It really halps make your dialogue more interesting.
"wub wub wub wub. Now Zoidberg is the popular one."
I agree, at first when I started writing I made it mechanical and proper, but then I realized that every speaks differently. Maybe you have a prestigious snob that has a big vocabulary and who makes cunning, satiric comments. Or you have a bizarre character who loves to use weird metaphors and similies. That's how I spice my dialogue up.
"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach
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