A. Bring on some action!
A lot of speech with no descriptions can become bland and the whole image of the scene the reader may have created in his/her head will disappear immediately. This is not good! You’ve got to remember these are human beings (or nearly humans in some of your cases anyway) that breathe and move, so you’ve got to show this in your writing! Physical details of what your characters are doing during the dialogue will help to break up the speech on the page, making long periods of speech less dull by fleshing it out and adding more to the scene than just plain speech. Remember lots of speech with no break (aka actions or descriptions) can be just as tedious as lots of descriptions with no breaks (aka speech). Also, by breaking up speech with actions it can help develop your characters and show more about them. For example, if your character constantly fidgets and never listens, you can portray this through use of describing their actions and body language or expressing their thoughts/feelings and thus breaking up the speech!
Here is an example on how Cassandra Clare in City of Bones combines dialogue with action to break up speech in a part I picked out at random from the book:
“Well, nobody told you to lean over me like that. You practically scared me to death.” Clay rubbed at her own head. There was a sore spot just above her eyebrows. “What do you want, anyway?”
Isabelle indicted the dark night sky outside. “It’s almost midnight. We’ve got to leave for the party, and you’re still not dressed.”
“I was just going to wear this,” Clary said, indicating her jeans and T-shirt ensemble. “Is that a problem?”
“Is that a problem?” Isabelle looked like she might faint. “Of course it’s a problem! No Downworlder would wear those clothes. And it’s a party. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb if you dress that ... casually,” she finished, looking as if the word she’d wanted to use was a lot worse than “casually”.
Take a look and notice the mixture of both dialogue and description during the conversation. Sometimes, scenes can be made up of just speech, but it is rare as it’s not always interesting for the reader to read, and I won’t just repeat what I’ve already said above
. Also notice that a new speaker means a new paragraph.Assignment 2: Write out a short speech between two (or more) of your chosen characters, making special use of breaking the speech up with actions and other descriptions. Make sure also that you use the speech to show characterisation between your characters and that the speech is natural, not forced.
POST ALL YOUR ASSIGNMENTS IN THE HOMEWORK THREAD AND MARK IT 'DIALOGUE DEVELOPMENT: ASSIGNMENT 2'. THANK YOU.