Realistic Dialog
I think writers walk a fine line when they create dialog. You want dialog that sounds like something people would actually say, but you don’t want to get too bogged down in the realism, either.
Shows like My So Called Life that really get into the “realistic” dialog (complete with a full complements of ums and stutters and run-on sentences) get on my nerves before too long. And reading such things instead of just listening to it would be even more irritating. Dialog is such an important part of a story, that if it irritates me, I’m very likely to get thrown out of the fictional dream and not care about fighting my way back in.
I like dialog that is crisp and clear and that portrays important information. I want it to be realistic, but in the best way possible — realistic for someone who’s into public speaking or has had training. Forget “uh” and “um,” and also forget boring dialog that, while we might say it in real life, has no bearing on the actual scene at hand. We don’t have time for that in our fiction today!
Writers have to be careful about information portrayal in dialog, though. Too much is just as much of a faux pas and dialog that is not relevant enough.
I get turned off when I read a conversation between two characters where they tell each other stuff that they would already know. For example:
Joe: When are you coming home tonight, honey?
Jane: Well, I work in a law office, so I have to stay until all the other partners are gone for the night. I probably won’t be home until 9.
If Joe and Jane are close enough that he would call her honey, they are close enough that he would already know she worked in a law office, so Jane would not feel the need to say that. The information was just thrown in so that the reader would get it. If that’s the only reason the information is in the dialog, cut it right out of there. If it’s that necessary to the story, find a way to get it in through narration or naturally in a scene. Don’t shoe-horn it into dialog.
And, now I’m off. A long weekend at the cabin. No internet — I hope I manage to get some writing done. Perhaps I’ll work on dialog! Either way, I expect to enjoy a relaxing weekend, which is probably the most important thing!
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That’s all good information about dialogue (and the example was a real “clunker” as well).
In the past couple of years I have taken two creative writing classes at night school at the university. The instructor was a man name Ed Kavanagh who wrote a wonderful novel called “The Confessions of Nipper Mooney”. A coming of age story about a boy growing up in Newfoundland’s Catholic school system in the 60’s. Anyway, the book’s dialogue was impeccable. He mentioned that when editing, he hired a local actress (with grant money from the government)to read back the book to him. When she stumbled on dialogue he knew that that was an area to fix.
He said exactly the same as you, Erin. You can’t construct dialogue exactly as people speak. You’ve got to streamline it, make it flow. He likened reading a story to being held underwater. A good story keeps the reader under the water, enjoying the story. One with poor grammer or unrealistic dialogue has the reader being dragged to the surface, pulled out of the story.
Thanks for the reminder about that. I find dialogue the aspect of writing I struggle with the most. I’m editing a short story right now with a fair bit of dialogue. If I’m happy with it I’ll send it to EDF (maybe…I’m still waiting to hear about the last one I sent them 2 months ago *sigh*).
Nail, Hammer. Hammer, Nail. Bang!
I know a writing coach in Florida who calls your Joe-Jane dialog example, “As You Know conversation”.
“As you know, Professor Bilgewater, the new university cyclotron is the 78,000-jigawatt, multi-directional, fast-flow Model 17-A, manufactured in 2008 by IBM factory in Lorain, Ohio.”
“IBM, Doctor Flummox?”
“Come now, Bilgewater, surely you have heard of Incredibly Big Corporation.”
If an author’s story is that much in need of exposition and that’s the only way he or she can think of to insert it, then he or she needs to do one of three things — seek the assistance of a writing coach, throw the story out and work on something simpler or consider retiring the word processor, to take up knitting or base-jumping.
And as Mammy Yokum used to say, “I has spoken!” ;P
hah! You can always tell when some bad exposition is coming when some character opens with “As you know…”
I remember spotting a lot of that in one of those bad Mars movies that came out a while back. Someone spends like five minutes summarizing how his friend’s wife died and how his friend hasn’t been the same since…to his friend.