Art Imitates Life

When we write, we strive to create real people. Not story characters, but people that live and breathe, cry and laugh, hate and love. They have lives that feel real to the reader. And yet…they don’t live and breathe and as authors we have to limit what they do.

Oh, they can kill people. They can have sex. They can go to faraway lands. But they have some limits.

Try writing a scene where twenty characters carry on a conversation, yelling over each other, interrupting each other, leaving, coming back, switching subjects mid-sentence. That happens in real life, but it’s awfully difficult to write it and not lose the reader.

Even fewer people, say eight sitting around a dinner table laughing and trading stories, is difficult to maintain. With that many people talking in real life, you end up sometimes listening to one person, sometimes breaking up into two or three simultaneous conversations, and sometimes trying to keep up with two stories at once.

That makes for lively dinner talk. I’ve found, though, that it doesn’t work so well in a book. When you’re writing a scene with multiple characters, having that many people interacting is too confusing. More than about three people talking together is too many. If it’s a play, a movie or a TV show, you can do more characters – the audience can see and identify easily who’s talking. In a book, it’s either confusing or boring with constant tags to identify the speakers.

I might call this a general rule, but like all rules, there are exceptions. There are ways around a limited pool of three speakers. You could have three talking at a table or football game, long enough to establish who they are in the readers’ minds, then have one or two more come into the conversation, then exit. You could have six or eight at a dinner table, but have them broken up into three or four conversations, each going on separately with the main character focusing in on one interaction.

Fiction may imitate or mimic real life, but it’s not an exact copy. What’s you “limit” on the number of characters in one conversation? How do you handle more than three speakers at one time?

Dialogue Don'ts

Have you ever had trouble writing dialogue? (Some people might think that question should be "Have you ever NOT had trouble writing dialogue.")

If your characters sound like cardboard cut-outs, dry and stilted, or like cartoons, over-the-top, maybe you need to stand back and listen to what you're saying. And to what others are saying.

Take notes when you overhear conversations. This is not to say that you can write verbatim what you hear. You can't, because real people tend to hem and haw, uh and er, and tiptoe around endlessly before getting to the point. When you write, you have to cut to the core, spitting out the seeds. But your characters' conversations need to sound natural, have that ebb and flow of real people's thoughts, without all the junk. Listening to real people will help you write.

Remember, though, to cut out extraneous information. Yeah, we may get sidetracked in our conversations in real life, but in our writing, our characters have to stick to the subject. What they say needs to contribute to the plot or character development, just as every scene has to further the plot. While this is difficult sometimes, it's important. Cut the "filler" or it'll bloat your book. Of course, characters don't always give direct answers to questions. Sometimes they hedge or change the subject, but even that should be consistent with plot development and the characters themselves.

Now, I just said that dialogue should contribute to the plot, but I don't mean that you should use your characters to tell the plot or explain some technical doo-dad. Sometimes you can make it work; most times you can't. It'll sound artificial. And when you do have one character explaining something to another, keep it simple and conversational. Try making it a quick give-and-take between the two of them, not a professorial dissertation by one character to another.

Watch out for the cartoon characters who try to invade the story. They're the ones who are constantly shouting, hammering, spitting, echoing, smiling, or sobbing their words.

"Get out of my life, Lisa! You're pathetic," he spat at her, then grabbed her arm, pulling her close to him for a deep, lingering kiss. He pushed her away and ordered, "Go, Lisa. Now. You can't keep teasing me like this."

Oh please, only in the cartoons.

And did you notice that he said her name twice in that short paragraph? Watch out for that, too. Most of us don't repeat the name of someone we know. Unless maybe if you're a salesman. Or my husband when he sees the blank look on my face when someone I should know starts talking to me.

Make your characters' dialogues fit their personalities. Once again, listen to real people. My 90-year old granny sounds nothing like my 13-year old niece. They use different words, have different cadences to their sentences. Ideally, my granny and my niece should be able to have a conversation in my book, with only an occasional tag, yet the reader would never get lost as to who is speaking. You would know by the way each one talked, by what they said, the slang they used, the contractions, the tone, the politeness -- or lack thereof -- even the length of their sentences.

I called this post "Dialogue Don'ts," but it really should be DIALOGUE DOS. Do work on your characters' dialogue. Do make each person in your book unique in the way he/she speaks. Do make them sound real, but cut out the filler and hem-hawing.

This will take time and a lot of effort. But it'll be worth it. "Trust me," she screamed, then whimpered, "Please, just do it."

Dialogue Primer

If you’re having trouble writing dialogue that sounds natural, but not too natural (it sounds like a real person but not so real that it includes the uhs and wells), sometimes it helps to channel your characters.

You know the people living in this world you’ve created better than anyone (other than the characters themselves). Each person is different. They have different backgrounds, grew up possibly in different parts of the country, show different quirks, and so on. They will NOT all sound alike. So you can’t just write the same words in the same cadence for every character. Each character has a different personality.

One way to channel a character is to write a scene, then read the conversation aloud. Do both characters sound the same? Try reading the conversation without any tags or descriptions. Read only the “spoken” words. If possible, record yourself. Now listen back to it. Can you tell which character is speaking just by the words and the way they speak? (The way the character speaks, not the way you read it.) If you can, try giving just the spoken words (no tags, no filler) to someone else who’s never read your manuscript. Can they identify the speaker?

Can you go back and cut extraneous verbiage, like the uhs and ers? Yeah, we all say them, but it can be very annoying to read that in pages and pages of dialogue. You want your “people” to sound real, but not annoying. Sometimes even though a character would say a contraction like “don’t,” we find ourselves typing “do not.” See if you can catch those. Most of us use contractions. Of course, there are times when you might deliberately have a character use no contractions. If that’s the way that person speaks and if there is a viable reason for him/her to speak that way.

Be careful of using too much slang. What is popular today may not be in two years, let alone ten. And be careful of using spelling to indicate dialect. It can be difficult for readers and can get old quickly. Find other ways like cadence to show dialect.

Also, remember that just like a scene should move the plot forward, so should the dialogue between characters. It should have a purpose. That purpose doesn’t always have to be visible to the reader, though. People in real life and in your book don’t always directly answer questions. They have their own agendas and tend to direct the conversation where they want it to go, not necessarily where the other person wants it to lead. Their answers may have double meanings, meanings that they understand and that hedge the question, but that the other person and the reader may not understand until later.

Work on the dialogue in your book. The manuscript will be better for your efforts.

Note from Helen: I probably won't blog again until next Monday. Tomorrow, I leave for Bedford, Texas, to lead a workshop for the North Texas Professional Writers Association.

Dialogue Study

Good Monday morning to everyone.

Over the weekend I went to a play called Dearly Beloved, put on by the Paradox Players. A fun play with some good actors in it. Disclaimer here – one of those good actors was a friend of mine. Lots of laughter from the audience and lots of applause throughout the play.

Going to see live actors is fun. It’s immediate; it’s personal. The big production plays in huge theatres are beautiful and seamless. But there’s a lot to be said for small performances. You see some of the mechanics of putting on even a small play. You cheer for the actors as they move in and out, as they wait professionally for the lighting when sets are changed. I enjoyed watching the performers and I liked having other friends in the audience. Family and fans of my friend took up two rows by themselves.

I also liked the play itself. It’s one of those where you like the dialogue and can hear many lines that you think are clever and original. Some that you wish you’d thought of yourself. Some that you even wonder if you could get away with stealing.

Okay, I wouldn’t do that, at least not intentionally. But it teaches you about timing, about punch, about turning an ordinary bit into something hilarious. And since plays are all about the dialogue, a play is a good place to go to see how the pros do it.

Talking about Talking

Hope everyone had wondrous and joyful holidays. We did at the Ginger house. Not only did both kids come for Christmas, they both came Christmas Eve and spent the night. We broke a couple of traditions and started a few new ones.

For Christmas dinner, we had the four of us, plus four more – my sister, her son, her husband, and her husband’s mother. That made it fun – eight of us around the table laughing and trading stories. With that many people talking, you end up sometimes listening to one person, sometimes breaking up into two or three simultaneous conversations, and sometimes trying to keep up with two stories at once.

That makes for lively dinner talk. I’ve found, though, that it doesn’t work so well in a book. When you’re writing a scene with multiple characters, having that many people interacting is too confusing. More than about three people talking together is too many. If it’s a play, a movie or a TV show, you can do more characters – the audience can see and identify easily who’s talking. In a book, it’s either confusing or boring with constant tags to identify the speakers.

I might call this a general rule, but like all rules, there are exceptions. There are ways around a limited pool of three speakers. You could have three talking at a table or football game, long enough to establish who they are in the readers’ minds, then have one or two more come into the conversation, then exit. You could have six or eight at a dinner table, but have them broken up into three or four conversations, each going on separately with the main character focusing in on one interaction.

Fiction may imitate or mimic real life, but it’s not an exact copy.