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Revising Fiction: The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing Dialogue

by Kirt Hickman


Revising Fiction

Realistic dialogue is one of the most difficult things for some writers to achieve. Compressing your dialogue to as few words as possible will help. If you’ve done that and the dialogue still rings false, look between your quotation marks for these deadly sins.

Everyday Dialogue
Skip the pleasantries every reader knows occur at the beginning and end of a conversation:

“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”

It’s boring. Start the conversation at the point where it becomes interesting.

Informative Dialogue
Never have a character say something that everybody in the conversation already knows.

Consider this passage from an early draft of my science fiction novel Worlds Asunder in which Snider speaks with the manager of Stellarfare, a commuter starline:

“May I remind you,” Snider said, “that NASA is your regulatory authority. I can revoke your license to fly from Lunar Alpha.”

“Don’t bully me. NASA is funded by taxation of the businesses that operate from its bases. Stellarfare alone supplies a third of that funding for Lunar Alpha.”

Both characters know this and the only person who doesn’t know this is the reader. That’s who these characters are talking to, not to each other.

Informative dialogue can often be corrected by moving the information from the dialogue to the thoughts of your viewpoint character:

“I’ll revoke your license to fly from Lunar Alpha.” Snider’s voice shook with forced civility.

“Don’t bully me. Revoke our license and it’ll be the last thing you do as director. When you’re replaced, we’ll return.”

He was right. Damn it, the manager was right. Stellarfare provided a third of NASA’s funding for Lunar Alpha. Snider’s threat had only solidified the man’s resolve.

Direct Address
Direct address occurs when a character says the name of the person he’s addressing:

“What time is it, Jennifer?”
She consulted her watch. “Four o’clock, Tommy.”

Notice how natural the dialogue feels when I remove the characters’ names from the spoken lines:

“What time is it?” Tommy asked suddenly.
Jennifer consulted her watch. “Four o’clock. “

Self-talk
Often, when a character talks to himself, the author is using contrived dialogue to relay the character’s thoughts, as is done in this passage from a critique submission (reprinted with the author’s permission):

“I feel like I’ve been run over by a Mack Truck,” he moaned. “Where am I anyway?”

He rolled his eyes from side to side and tried to think. “I can’t see a thing,” he said aloud and tried to sit up again. This time the ground moved beneath him.

“Oh oh,” he said. “An earthquake?” He tried to concentrate. “Naw. It’s not like that at all. It feels more like ball bearings rolling around under me.”

Because your scene is written from your character’s viewpoint, you can communicate his thoughts without having him say them out loud:

Luke’s body ached like he’d been run over by a Mack Truck. He rolled his eyes from side to side in the darkness to clear his head.

The earth began to shake. Not like an earthquake. More like ball bearings rolling around beneath him. “Whoa.” It was the strangest thing he’d ever felt.

Mismatched Dialogue, Actions, and Emotion
Consider the following passage:

Jorge slammed his fist on the table. “Well, you know, I really don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

If the speaker’s words are inconsistent with his actions, the reader won’t believe whatever emotion you’re trying to show. Make your character’s dialogue match his emotions:

Jorge slammed his fist on the table. “Over my cold carcass.”

Overuse of the Exclamation Point
Reserve exclamation points for when your character is genuinely shouting.

Neglecting to Read Out Loud
Once you’ve purged all of the sins described above, read your dialogue scene out loud for sound and pacing. Does it sound natural? Does it have the rhythm of speech? Is it tense and engaging? Have you achieved the desired pace? Only then will you know if it’s effective.


WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).


This article was originally published in the June 2009 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




Dialogue Compression: The Key to Realistic Dialogue

by Kirt Hickman


Realistic dialogue is one of the most important things to achieve in your writing. It’s also one of the most difficult. When people talk, they ramble, they pause, they repeat themselves—they say all sorts of unnecessary things. Written dialogue that includes all this stuff will be cumbersome. Your reader won’t have the patience for it. The objective of dialogue is to make it more efficient than normal speech yet still have it sound realistic. This is what makes dialogue a challenge.

The single most effective thing you can do to make your dialogue realistic is to compress it.

Wordiness

Cut any line of dialogue down to as few words as possible. Consider the following passage, excerpted from a critique submission with the author’s permission. The viewpoint character observes this exchange between a young woman in a tavern and a druid who has just walked in.

One of the girls suddenly stood and waved at the shrouded figure. “Hey, Cuddles, it’s Nancin! What are you doing here? Hey, this might just turn out to be some fun after all. We have to get together later on and catch up on old times. I haven’t seen you since that party at Sister Hillary’s Nunnery and Bawdy House back in ’65. Come on up to my room when we get through with this rah-rah what-ever-it-is that’s going on here and we’ll crack a bottle or three and talk about old times – and more. Hot Damn, Cuddles is back, WHEEE!!!”“Silence Woman! Hold your tongue. There is serious business afoot—and many unanswered questions. We will surely talk, later, and in private . . .”“Okay. I can wait for you to finish playing those ‘serious business’ games that you little boys insist on playing. Just don’t forget that you and I have more important things to do.” The soft purr of the reply held the promise of interesting times ahead.This passage can and should be greatly compressed. In the first paragraph, Nancin rambles for far too long. The druid, a man of some renown, would probably be embarrassed by Nancin’s outburst. He would likely stop her. The rest, I’d compress as much as possible without sacrificing the essential voice of each character:

One of the girls stood and waved at the shrouded figure. “Hey, Cuddles. What are you doing here? This might just turn out to be some fun after all —”“Silence, woman,” the druid said. “We’ll talk later.”“Okay,” came the soft purr of her reply. “Just don’t forget that you and I have more important things to do.”Decide for yourself which passage is more engaging.

Compression can make dialogue more crisp and realistic even in less extreme cases, as in this example from my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder.

“Randy performed the preflight checks according to protocol.”“Randy did the preflight checks correctly.”Meaningless Words

Eliminate expressions that don’t carry meaning, such as:

“Well,” “Hey!” “Um,” “Aw, geez.” “Oh my gosh.” “Right?”Phrases like these make dialogue sound rambling and unimportant. They reduce tension. These types of expressions can be useful in making each character’s speech distinctive, but use only one per character and use it sparingly.

Sentence Fragments

Consider the following dialogue exchange:

“Have you had lunch?”“No, not yet.”“Do you want to go to Stufy’s?”“That sounds good.”People don’t generally speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences. Look for opportunities to use sentence fragments to emulate real speech patterns:

“Had lunch?”“Not yet.”“Stufy’s?”“Sounds good.”It not only makes your dialogue more natural, it makes it more crisp. It quickens the pace.

Contractions

Use contractions wherever possible. Otherwise your dialogue will sound clunky and mechanical:

“We will need results on this one,” Snider told Chase. “And we will need them fast.”Contractions make dialogue more natural:

“We’ll need results on this one,” Snider told Chase. “And we’ll need them fast.”Use these tips to compress your dialogue, to make it realistic, taut, and engaging.


WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).


This article was originally published in the April 2009 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




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