Theresa E. Grant, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Theresa E. Grant
WRITING REALISTIC DIALOGUE 2/1/2018 6:12:21 AM
How do we write realistic dialogue? I never thought about it when I first started writing. I just wrote what I thought readers would like to hear and the person whom they could identify with. After writing several books and the feed back that I got from my readers prompted me to follow some rules.
Rule#1: Stop listening to what people say and start listening to the actual words they use.
#2: Read lots of fiction and examine how other writers write conversations.
#3: Use the simple present tense and use direct speech. Don't use reported speech. Reported speech is when you tell someone what another person said at an earlier time. Example: "Tom called. He said that he couldn't come to the party tonight."
#4: pause dialogue occasionally for a bit of action or description. You must convince your reader that your characters are real people by making action happen in the physical world, and description helps to break up long passages of dialogue.
#5: Spell words incorrectly and use bad grammar in dialogue sometimes. Afterall not everyone speaks like a professor. Example: "Wazz up, y'all."
#6: Start taping conversations. Tape arguments, small talk, business sales, transactions and etc. What people say when they're playing games, or watching sports and conversations with their boss, their friends and total strangers. Notice how your speech changes according to whom you are speaking with and the social situation. This is called register. Also notice how often people don't finish sentences. It happens a lot.
"7: Practice transcribing recorded conversations to get a feel of how to write dialogue in the way that people actually speak. You will probably notice that you'll want to delete many of the color words and other unnecessary signposts and speech markers.
#8: Don't overuse dialogue tags, he said, she said. Using too many synonyms for these words can often draw attention to them. Try to write your dialogue as it would really be spoken unless you really need to identify who is speaking.
#9: Don't base your dialogue on old Hollywood movies, or on classic novels by Charles Dickins or Sir Walter Scott
