One of the things that I hear often is how difficult dialogue writing can be. And by “hear often” I mean “frequently curse under my breath about while I write.” I've tried the tip of reading your dialogue out loud, and for me I've found that this only works if I'm reading it to a willing listener. If I do this exercise all alone, what happens is that all of my characters just end up sounding like slightly more clever versions of myself. Which is more realistic than everyone talking like prose, but still not great. I still do this, because having everyone sound like me talking rather than like my writing is an okay starting point. But it doesn't finish the job for me, and maybe it doesn't finish the job for other people either. So I thought I'd share the trick that helps me.
I am very easily distracted. On top of that, I have a four year old and a one year old who constantly get up to small-child shenanigans, and a teenage stepson who once spent ten minutes trying to pretend that he didn't remember what our pantry was, much less where, because he wanted me to find a snack for him. So I don't exactly live in a distraction-free environment. What this means for me is that when I have a quiet hour or two or somehow find the zone in spite of the four year old announcing for the fifth time in as many minutes that he has a new name now, I don't want to pause too much or get too bogged down in any single aspect of the writing process. This especially includes dialogue, because that's where I can get stuck. So for the first part of my writing day I don't try to make the dialogue exceptional or even, honestly, good. I just get it out.
Then, when something happens to break the flow – like the baby waking up or the teenager trying to leave the house without a coat in January in the Midwest or the cat somehow finding her way into a closed, baby-proofed cabinet and needing to be freed – I leave the writing for a little while. Or, you know, sometimes for a long while. Either way, I try not to fret about it until I come back to it, usually after lunchtime when everyone is either content or napping. What I do at that point is to re-read whatever I had written before real life reasserted itself. I don't go into a deep edit for this, mostly skim until I find dialogue and then focus in on that. In this way I don't bog myself down and lose the flow, and also it gets be back in the headspace I was in when I was in the flow, so I'm able to get back into the writing more quickly.
What are some turns of phrase that you use that aren't terribly common? Or maybe a common phrase that you use very often? I have no idea why or where it came from, but when I am trying to emphasize the phrase “no reason,” particularly if there's an element of absurdity to whatever there was no reason for, I say “no ass reason.” I've never heard anyone else say that and I don't know where it came from. Also, I say “straight up” for general emphasis a lot. I didn't even realize how much I say it, until my four year old started saying it all the time. I feel like everyone has these little verbal quirks. So when I'm editing the dialogue, I keep in mind what character is likely to use what phrase, and include it where it fits naturally. That gives me my first layer of distinction in character dialogue.
A character who stammers when they're nervous, an absent-minded character who makes filler-noises like “uh” or “um” in their conversation often, a character who frequently starts to say one thing and then stops herself and says something else. How a character is described as speaking is more important than how a character is described as looking. You want it to feel real, but this is one of those times when I feel like we shouldn't make it feel too real. Let's go back to the “uh” example. My high school principal read the morning announcements every day over the loudspeaker. And he said “uh” a lot. Not just a lot, but extremely a lot. Once my first period class and I counted the number of times he said it, and I am telling you that we lost count. There was also an argument over whether one of the “uhs” should be counted as more because of how incredibly drawn out it was. He said “uh” for the amount of time it would take to say an entire sentence. That's an extreme example, but I think you get my point. I want my characters to sound like real people, but I don't want them to sound like that. So pick your verbal missteps for your characters, but use them a lot more sparingly than people actually do in real life. That gives me my second layer of distinction in character dialogue.
Does one of your characters have an accent? Do you want to include different spelling for that accent? What comes to mind immediately in this regard, for me at least, is when a character with an accent replaces hard TH with Z. “Come zis way. Sit over zere. Ze headmistress will be along shortly.” I personally think that this should be used sparingly. More interesting, in my opinion, is to briefly include a description of the accent without going overboard, but to pay attention to things like how someone's sentence structure might differ when they speak.
Now this question is more for fantasy and science fictions writers — but what about when your characters encounter a foreign language? Of course we all know that Tolkien invented the entire elvish language for Lord of the Rings. I don’t think we have to go that far! We should take more care, though, than the book I read in which a character was listening to two others speaking a language he didn’t know, and the author wrote their dialogue as just, “Gabble gabble gabble gabble. Gabble.” Gotta find a middle ground there. Personally, there’s only two ways that I handle this. In the initial writing I don’t put that in dialogue at all. I would just write in the narrative something like “The strangers spoke for a moment in their own tongue, and Lyssa wasn’t able to follow it.” And I make sure that if it’s important then I know what they’re saying even if I never write it out. Much more rarely when I go back and do my dialogue edit, I’ll make up fantasy foreign language phrases to have spoken out loud in the narrative. This is much less common for me, and I do it primarily if I feel like it’s important for the feel of that part of the book or if there’s any specific plot reason to do so.
From there, you can think of as many different layers as you want. Who is very short spoken? Who talks too much? Who uses big words when they feel threatened because they think it makes them sound intimidating? Who changes the way they talk around certain people? I think of these all as layers or filters that I don't fret myself to pieces over applying during the initial drafting process. I add them on after the bare bones of the dialogue are in place. Sometimes I keep a list of which character uses what kind of dialogue.
What are your favorite lines of dialogue from any book or story you've ever read? What about your favorite movie or television dialogue? What about these lines really stands out to you? Do you think there's a difference between them, and if so what is it? Let's talk about talking.