"'Say, remember when that thing happened with which we're both au fait?' she queried unconvincingly" by Catriona

 Do you have any tips for making dialogue more realistic? And for making it pop?

I just developed a workshop on this very topic and presented it for the first time - to SinC Grand Canyon Writers - so it's been on my mind, as I reflect on what I missed and what I could have put over better. Between that and my back ground in linguistics . . . settle in; I have many thoughts. 

And a fair few opinions. Because bad dialogue bothers me more than any other kind of sub-par fiction writing.

(That said, my first tip is to read what Angela, Gabriel and Eric have already said this week. Great stuff.)

So why does dialogue matter so much? For the reader, I think it's because you can skip dull description and the flattest narrative still tells you what’s happening but bad dialogue - clunky, tin-eared, ill-considered, unrealistic dialogue – screams that these people aren’t real and it would be a waste of time you caring about them.

For the book, for the contract between reader and writer - dialogue breathes life into a story. It breaks up slabs of prose. It’s refreshing to the readers’ eyes and brains. I reckon, if you’re tired and you turn a page, a block of narrative might see you reaching for the bookmark and lightswitch, but a string of short speeches . . . you read on.

For the story, for the writer’s craft, it’s a nifty way to smuggle in plot and it's better than anything else at revealing character. It’s the ultimate show don’t tell. Even better, we can have speech that shows what the character wants us to see and betrays what they're trying to hide. Oh, I love it. In crime fiction, that's a great way to plant clues.

My prime example of this - not from crime fiction - is Lady Catherine de Bourgh, from Pride and Prejudice. She thinks she's displaying her grandeur, wit and all-round spiffiness when she says things like "You have a very small park here" (mine is bigger, Miss Bennet). In fact, she's making herself look petty and ridiculous.

So I suppose my first acual tip is make sure there's more than one thing going on, every time a character opens their mouth. There usually is, in life.

Something I think should never be done via dialogue - no matter how tempting - is where a character backs their brain up to someone’s ears and tips out industrial loads of facts.  This is bad even when the facts are crucial to the plot; it’s unforgivable when the facts are just interesting and took hard library time for the author to learn. 

The title of this post highlights one method of info-dump so bad I kind of love it “Say, remember when . . .?”  is the worst! You can't have a character remind her listener of something that listener knows, so that we find out too. No exceptions. 

I tried to watch a Hallmark movie last Christmas. It was called the HOLIDAY SITTER and, a few scenes in, was one of the most egregious SRW info-dumps I've ever seen. Paraphrasing:

 

Husband: Our surrogate is in labour!

Wife: But the baby isn’t due for another three weeks!

Husband: Who will we get to babysit the older kids?

Wife: My parents aren’t back from their cruise till New Years’.

Husband: And my sister is in Europe.

Catriona: Kill me now.

I mean, no. Just no. And it's not only terrible. It's also lazy. Because getting background information over in dialogue isn't even hard. With a married couple, it's an especial breeze. All you need to do is add conflict. Have them bicker about whatever it is and no reader will ever find their chat unconvincing.

Watch this instead, when the time comes

Wait - as long as you make a bit of effort with the form as well as the content. If your characters talk in paragraphs of syntactically complex, orderly prose then no one's buying it. Real speech is discontinuous, repetitive and fragmented, with staggered turns - everyone answering the question before last - and a ton of padding. 

But the answer isn't to write real speech down and call it dialogue. Because, stripped of tone and body language, real speech is nigh-on impenetrable. (You know? Like how transcripts of certain verbose public figures' outpourings read like total bilge, when live recordings are only 80% bilge?) Good dialogue needs to find a balance between authenticity and comprehensibility. My tip is to write it like you think it would be in real life and then leave it for a while. When you read it over, change anything you find hard to follow. This is Reason 783 for letting your work sit a good while before you edit.

Finally, while we're on writing so bad it's adorable, I can't ignore tags and adverbs. I'm not a hardliner who thinks any speech tag except "said" is a crime and I don't even mind the odd modifying adverb - I've got a real soft spot for "crisply"; I think because it sums up a very particuar kind of (British) character. But there are limits. If I find myself reading a writer who can't see those limits in the rear-view mirror, it's always a lot of fun.

The undisputed King of Tags and Adverbs is a writer called Victor Appleton, whose character Tom Swift gave his name to the Swifty - "I've dropped my toothpaste," she said crestfallen - on account of how Appleton dedicated his life and soul to letting no bit of dialogue go untagged and unmodified. 

It's glorious stuff. At the beginning of Tom Swift and his Airship, after an explosion, Appleton has:

“Of course they are!” declared Tom, positively. 

"There was an explosion!" exclaimed Pete. 

And my favourite:

“Shut it off!” cried Tom, quickly. 

As opposed to all the times when you mildly suggest shutting it off. After an explosion.

Cx