Life in the Realm of Fantasy

We who write love our characters and want our written dialogue to sound as natural as a conversation with our best friend. We meet on the street, in the bar, or at a coffee shop.

And we talk, talk, talk.

And so do my characters. Sometimes they won’t be quiet, and it drives me nuts.

Other times, my characters behave like a fourteen-year-old forced to go camping with the family. She owns the backseat with the glowering disapproval only a teenager can bring to it, sitting in stony silence and staring at her signal-less phone. Hell will freeze before she interacts with these strangers who claim to be her parents, kidnappers who dragged her out to the wilderness for something called “family time.”

Eww.

But when my characters DO choose to participate in the conversation, how do I make them sound natural? I go back to the works of established writers whose dialogue is crafted so well that I don’t feel like I’m reading it. Instead, I feel like I am living it.

If you visit many writers’ forums, you’ll find a wide variety of opinions on this subject. I don’t worry about the gurus who want you to know how important they are. Instead, I consider the reader.

How can I write dialogue that is the easiest for the reader to follow?

My favorite authors don’t get too fancy or uber creative. Their written dialogue tags are simple and show the conversation.

I try to stick to said, replied, answered, and asked. Most readers won’t even notice the attributions are there.

This is especially true when writing genre fiction. I stick to simple tags, such as John said.

At times, we may need an attribution like “screamed,” “uttered,” or “retorted.” Most of the time, fancy synonyms for ‘said’ are distracting.

I agree that you can skip using dialog tags altogether for a back-and-forth or two, but never if there are more than two speakers in the scene. I never do that for more than one exchange. Readers want to be able to track who is saying what.

Beats are what screenwriters call the little bits of physical action that are inserted into dialogue:

Junior unbraided his hair and pulled it back into his customary long ponytail. Off came the sarape, which he told Pap smelled musty. “Tell Johnny thanks for the loan of his buckskins,” he said.

Some writers will leave the ending attribution, and some will move it to the front of the dialogue. As an editor, I would suggest removing it entirely, since the words “he told” already appear in that paragraph. But again, the author’s choice is final.

Beats or actions not only punctuate the dialogue, they also give the scene movement. Actions present a strong mental picture, eliminating the need for a description dump.

Character moods can be shown by actions and are often best placed where there is a natural break in the dialogue. This allows the reader to experience the same pause as the characters. Beats are an effective tool and are essential to good dialogue.

But don’t overdo it, or the scene becomes about the action rather than the dialogue, and the impact is diluted or lost entirely. When we add gestures and actions to the conversation, we want the information that is conveyed to be meaningful, and the visual actions to be subliminal.

This is why we don’t make the mistake of eliminating attributions in our entire manuscript. We must insert clues as to who is speaking, or the reader will be confused.

Worse, the action takes over, and the dialogue fades into the background, obscured by the visual noise of foot shuffling and paper rattling.

But what about exclamations and verbal tics?

“Um … ah ….” We frequently speak this way in real life, but I recommend being sparing with them. When a character overuses thinking sounds and exclamations, it is exhausting for the reader.

Another conversation stopper is the “filler sound.” Have you ever met a person who drones on with a long “A-ahhhhhhhhh….” effectively holding conversations hostage with meaningless syllables?

These are ‘thinking syllables.’ This is known as a ‘verbal tic’ or a “filler sound” and is usually such an ingrained habit that the offending party is unaware they are doing it. I warn you, their feelings could be hurt if you try to hurry them along, so I ignore the habit when I come across an acquaintance who suffers from it. They are just gathering their thoughts.

However, if there is a habit you don’t enjoy in conversation and don’t want to read in a novel, don’t write it into your characters’ dialogue.

As a reader, I’ve come to feel your best bet when dealing with verbal tics is to give a brief example of a character’s speech pattern, and, if it is important, occasionally mention how their habits annoy other characters.

What about accents? Please, don’t overdo spelling them out. You have no idea how hard it is for readers to wade through heavy accents.

“My feet hurt, and I’m feeling dead tired. I need to sit and rest a while.” A writer could get away with using knackered and kip to convey the general idea of a regional accent without losing the reader’s interest.

I recommend going light and limiting the use of misspellings, bad grammar, and vulgar accents, especially if you are trying to point out that the character is uneducated or from a rural background.

Fun fact: negative experience is a harsh, but thorough, teacher.

So, nowadays I use only a few well-chosen words to convey the idea of the accent and am consistent in how I do so. I don’t want my dialogue to be incomprehensible. It’s too easy to go over the top with it, and then the character becomes a parody, a cartoon of a person, instead of someone who feels real.

This winds up my rant on annoying habits we don’t want to inject into our dialogue. Accents, dialects, and verbal tics are all things we need to convey, but we must be mindful of our readers’ supply of patience. Show what is necessary and let the reader’s imagination do the rest.