On Writing: Common Mistakes Of Fledgling Writers 5
Flat or Sloppy Dialogue - How To Make Written Speech Dynamic
Ten Shun! Today we are going to talk about talking.
That is, the subject of dialogue - one of the trickiest-to-handle instruments in the writer’s toolbox.
Dialogue, like everything else in a novel, needs to be moving the story forward, or establishing character or illustrating conflict or doing something.
It's not just there to fill the pages.
Dialogue is conflict, a battle between two characters to seize control of reality or to get what they want.
Or it is exposition, but this is something to be careful with - because exposition. although necessary, is usually rather boring.
Dialogue – at least bad dialogue - is easy to do, and a lot of writers fill their first draft with dialogue. But it is very hard to do well, or teach effectively, because it is so subtle. It is like teaching music. But in this case the only instrument is your ear – and your laptop.
It’s quite a good idea to read it out loud or get someone to read it to you, because of its musical nature. Or read plays to pick up tips ( playwrights are the masters of dialogue ).
‘ Each phrase of each sentence, like an air or a recitative in music, should be so artfully compounded out of long and short, out of accented and unaccented, as to gratify the sensual ear. And of this the ear is the sole judge. It is impossible to lay down rules’. - John Gardner
Dialogue is like a rose bush and also like a novel in itself – it improves with pruning. Get the air out - as with your prose. This may make it unrealistically ‘ on point’’ but you don’t want realistic speech, you want speech that moves the story along.
The central thing to understand about dialogue is that it isn’t just an exchange of factual information. Although there is information exchange when people speak that is only one of the many functions of speech. People lie and evade as they speak, both to others and to their selves.
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