A Brief Word About Dialogue

_____When your characters are talking to each other (or themselves), you want the conversation to be as realistic as possible. There are two things you want to be mindful of when you are writing dialogue: When you are trying to capture the essence of a character's accent or dialect, be careful not to make the conversation hard to read or understand. _____If you have a character from a region known for having a specific accent (a foreign country, the south, the Bronx), you will want the dialogue to reflect this. Dialogue can also reflect a person's class or level of education; someone who never made it past 2nd grade will not speak the same way a scientist will. _____Your challenge is to fight the temptation to spell the words phonetically, to write them the way they would literally sound coming out of the character's mouth. Doing so could have your reader looking at the dialogue as a code that needs to be cracked, rather than a naturally flowing conversation. Let's look at an example: An excerpt from The Gold Bug by Edgar Allen Poe (1843) In this scene, a white man is talking to an old, ex-slave. _____"Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking about. You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him?" _____"Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad bout de matter --Massa Will say noffin at all ain't de matter wid him --but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de time --" _____"Keeps a what, Jupiter?" _____"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate --de queerest figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers. Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut for to gib him d--d good beating when he did come --but Ise sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart arter all --he look so berry poorly." Want to see more of what Jupiter says? You can read the entire story here. The Problem: _____As an ex-slave, Jupiter has never been to school, so he is expected to speak differently from the white fellow. However, the author's approach is overkill. Did you have to read it out loud to try to figure out what Jupiter was saying? You don't want the dialogue to distract from the story. _____If you read a story where the a character is described as wearing a red dress, the writer does not have to remind you in every paragraph that the dress is red. Why not? Because when you read it the first time, you get an impression of the character in your mind, so throughout the rest of the story you imagine her wearing a red dress. _____The same thing happens with characters and dialogue. If you've mentioned that a character comes from the south, when the reader sees the character speaking, she will not have to be constantly reminded that the character is southern. Instead of all of the words in a conversation being written in an accent or dialect, just treat one or two words that way. This way it does not detract from the reading of the story and the character's background is still reflected in her voice. When you want to describe how a person is speaking, do not replace "said" with another word. Let's try an experiment. See if you can say, "I'm going to submit a story to Kuma." while laughing while gurgling while mumbling while grunting When you are laughing, you can't actually talk at the same time. The harder you try, the more awkward you sound. When you are gurling, you know what you are saying, but it just sounds like gurgling to the person you are talking to. When you mumble, sounds come out of your mouth, but they aren't recognizable as words. It's the same with grunting. Laughing, gurgling, etc. are all actions/sounds that are completely different from talking. You should not use them to replace the word "said" in a dialogue. Wrong: "Those shoes look ridiculous," Jackie laughed. Correct: Jackie laughed. "Those shoes look ridiculous." Wrong: "Give that credit card back to me," William gurgled. Correct: "Give that credit card back to me," William said, straining to keep the anger out of his voice. Wrong: "Listen to me," the big man grunted, "I'm in charge of this house." Correct: The big man grunted. "Listen to me--I'm in charge of this house."

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