noise."Karaoke Dodge Ball · 4:26am Apr 21st, 2019
Do you like Karaoke? Do you like Dodge Ball?
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you combined the two?
Incidentally, meet Polly the Pirate Penguin. She did her best defending me from dodge balls--and I lasted almost a minute and a half before I got hit by three balls and kicked off the stage.
That’s not the subject of today’s blog post, though.
I think I mentioned before that I’m a community guest at EFNW (yay!), and as such I’ll be on a solo panel, speaking on the subject of writing dialogue good.
So--here’s your opportunity. To prepare, I’m gonna write a couple of blog posts about writing dialogue. Now, I can do one easily on the basics--and I will--but why stop there? I’m sure everybody wants to know advanced stuff, right?
<crickets>
So, tell me in the comments, what do you want to know about writing dialogue? Don’t be shy, and don’t think it’s a dumb question--I’ll answer in the comments, very likely in a second blog post, and there’s also the possibility that your question will make its way into a talk at a convention! That’s basically fame by association!
Why are they wearing Admiral Biscuit T-shirts again?
Let's say it's a big conversation, with a bunch of people talking around/over each other. like at a large dinner or a ill-managed meeting.
external-preview.redd.it/NtJNwrX9NEhgmc1jHUJMHZXMoqZcNCKvuO04JNDGj-A.jpg?width=1024&auto=webp&s=0dc265d5b65637c62d9d7626aa931162f3bc3b33
In real life you can tell people apart because they all sound/look different, but in a written format it all looks the same. How does one help the audience keep track of the participants without resorting to-
Crag said,
Rowena replied,
Ed said,
Muttley sniggered,
Gruul roared,
Etc....
When is it (or is it ever) appropriate to write out accents with phonetic spelling? Not words like "ain't," which can stand on its own and doesn't need to be questioned (or so I would think), but things like "yer" (you're), "ta" (to), "mah" (my), or "th'" (the)?
I have my own answer(s) for this, but I want to see what other people think.
5047362
The real question is, why aren't you wearing an Admiral Biscuit T-shirt?
5047362
Admiral Biscuit is in real life a fugitive on the run. This way, when he comes out of hiding to go to conventions and feds raid the place, everyone can stand up, point to their shirt, and say "No! I am Admiral Biscuit!"
Admiral I’m way too high for this shit.
5047369 Lak toh-maters, and taters?
Two great things that go together: Karaoke and Dodgeball. Sounds familiar.
Okay now that I’m less high, ummmmm
Yeah I still have no dialogue questions. I am sorry. I have failed you.
5047384 RIGHT!?
derpicdn.net/img/view/2018/8/18/1810395.gif
5047390 It's like when I go to KFC when it's busy
and they ask for a name for the order, I give 'Sparticus'.
And then when they call it out to let me know that the order is ready
I stand up and raise my hand like,
"I am Sparticus!"
It has never failed to get other customers to play along.
And I recommend it to everyone to try.
Oh, right, an actual question!
Hmm, ooh!
Q. How do you identify speakers in a conversation when there are two (or more) of the same gender, without falling into 'the purple unicorn' trap?
5047362
Pony swag man
and the mans a freaking legend of ratios
5047503
Your a legend man, a legend
Why am I not surprised you look how I thought you would?
5047509
You're* right about that.
Not things I need to know, but might be worth covering for your audience:
>Tags, when to use and not.
>Tags that describe without using a saidism.
>Characterising your speakers through dialogue; maintaining character 'voice'.
>Benefits of various dialogue lengths, vs. what should be covered in description (including all-dialogue and no-dialogue stories).
>How frequently to throw the other characters' names into dialogue between two or more of them
Also, am I still waiting for an extended review of Salarymare, or . . . ?
5047362
Why aren’t you wearing an Admiral Biscuit shirt? That’s the real question.
I gave them shirts at an autograph thing, ‘cause that’s how I roll.
5047363
Of course the first question would be the most difficult one
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this, and some of it’s going to change depending on how much it matters that the audience knows who said which particular line.
I wrote a whole blog post about saidisms which covers some of this.
In a nutshell, besides the obvious “Twilight said,” etc., you can use action tags when appropriate (Fluttershy picked up a hammer), you can use catchphrases “Darling, why?” or even stronger vernacular “Ah said it was rattlesnakes.” You can have a character ask a question to another character by name “What do you think about that, Dashie?” (presumably the character who replies is the one addressed) and in some cases where it doesn’t matter who said what, you can just leave it up to the reader to assign the dialogue as they see fit.
5047369
What you’re talking about is vernacular, and there are mixed feelings on it. If you’re good and consistent with it, and you can justify it in the story, I think it’s something that you should always do.
The two downfalls of it are that it can be hard to do as a writer, and can make it to where you don’t want to write speech for that character, to where you might even try to not put that character into scenes because his dialogue is such a pain to write.
The other downfall is that some readers will be turned off. It can be difficult to read, especially for someone who’s not a native English speaker.
5047390
It’s true!
camo.fimfiction.net/1VbSEB-CWFpgYlOO9dm4nmbqmOFOD8LOLfbcNkd7QwY?url=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F8SFjP95.jpg
5047363
Also, I just found a blog post Noble Thought did that also covers some of this as well.
5047396
5047503
Why have I never thought of this? Dammit man, this will change my life.
5047607
i.imgur.com/hOmpDYJ.gif
5047505
Well, it’s really helpful if one of them has a particular way of speaking that’s distinct from the other. If it’s just back-and-forth between the two, you can of course label them at first and then not for a while, since each speaker gets their own paragraph (Robert B Parker did this a lot with Hawk and Spenser).
I’d say since Lavender Unicorn Syndrome is a constant problem with writing ponyfic, I’d never use that in a description if I could avoid it. I think it would be less distracting to readers to just say her name where required. That’s not going to raise as many hackles.
Also, depending on circumstances, you don’t always have to label your speakers:
5047518
5047548
Yes, those are all things that I should cover for the audience!
Gah, I forgot.
Been one of those weeks . . . Monday was the best day, and then things spiraled downhill until yesterday.
5047594
Well it sounded like you wanted something challenging. And thank you, that was well explained.
5047550
Nothing general, I’m afraid. For humor, it often depends on the situation in the story what works and what doesn’t.
I think that little tangents are realistic; people don’t plan out their conversations in a writing room, after all. In a serious story, you’ll want to eventually get to the point of the conversation, to convey the information the characters want to convey, but it doesn’t have to happen right away.
Here’s a snippet from one of my stories where the conversation goes off-track and then is pulled back:
And for a conversation that goes completely off the rails, the first chapter of Random Horse Fact is probably a good example of how I’ve done it.
5047634
That was a good thing to bring up, and it probably is something that writers would struggle with, so I very much appreciate the question.
I had planned on covering it at the end of my talk, after I’d gone in detail about all the various ways to identify speakers, since I think a mix of techniques is the best way to do it without overusing ‘said.’
5047596
Yeah, that's generally how I've seen it, too. I've been fine writing it out consistently (and in some cases, editing dialogue into that style for those who want to use it but forget to), but I find adding words like "ain't" and "gonna" tend to get the point across.
And saidisms is a topic I also get on my clients' cases about. You want to use words other than 'said,' but you also don't want to look like you have a thesaurus sitting next to you.
5047666
That’s one of those things where generally less is more. You can really go down the rabbit hole with it and faithfully recreate somebody who speaks with a thick accent or whatever, but a lot of times a few little things really serve to get the point across. In one of my stories, the unicorn protagonist never used contractions, which made the cadence of her speech a little bit odd to readers, and I think served as a reminder that she wasn’t speaking English as a native, but wasn’t off-putting to readers.
Yeah, you can totally overuse saidisms, and action tags as well. If a writer is trying to come up with an action to fit every bit of dialogue, he’s probably doing it wrong.
One thing I just found in a blog post Noble Thought wrote that was particularly useful was putting in action tags specifically to give a little pause in the dialogue for the reader. I wouldn’t have thought of that, and yet that can be a particularly useful technique, especially since that makes the necessary indicator serve double duty.
The technicalities of writing dialogue are very important, but I think it's also important to mention the actual dialogue itself - as in, what's being said. Unfortunately making a conversation appear entirely natural really doesn't have any rules, it's sort of intangible, really. Depends on the situations, the characters, the feeling in the room, etc, etc. My personal advice would be to write your dialogue and then actually act the conversation out loud, to make sure it sounds like something people might actually say. I suppose this somewhat includes 'maintaining character voice,' but it extends beyond that.
Actually this kind of includes - as a writer - being able to invent the words being said. Which is something even MORE intangible and harder to describe.
5047720
That’s true, and a very good point. Dialogue is one of those places where a writer--if he’s feeling frisky (and if it’s in character) can toss any rule of grammar out the window. If it’s what a character would say, it’s what a character would say, and it doesn’t matter if it’s grammatically correct or a complete sentence or even if some of the words making it up are actually words at all.
And you’re right, reading out loud can be very beneficial. I rarely do that--probably less than I should--but I have on more than one occasion for a pony who has a thing in her mouth when speaking, just to see what kind of effect it has.
So yes, you can imagine the Admiral holding a bottle in his mouth and saying “here, take thiff” (and experimenting with bottle position until it felt kinda natural).
Inventing words is super-advanced stuff, since your reader has to also understand what you’re saying, or at least be able to pick it up from context. But if done right, it can be very effective. All audiences like perfectly cromulent words that embiggen their minds.
5048235 Idk, it was just my two cents, and I threw that in because I'm reasonably sure that most people going to a panel about writing dialogue are probably going to be people that struggle to write the dialogue, more so than people who struggle with the technicalities of said-isms and lavender unicorn syndrome, etc. Not that that advice isn't useful.
I think you went to that panel about how to make a good OC, and the lady was just telling us not to use too many colors and not to make it an alicorn. When I'm certain that any aspiring (or otherwise) writer that went to that panel expected to get advice on writing a good OC.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: know your audience. Know what I mean?
5048260
Yeah, and I’m still dialing in what I want to talk about. I mean, I see so much badly written dialog that fails the most basic rules. “The castle is over here.” Twilight said.
Stuff like that.
But I don’t want it to all be basics, either; people who want to can find out that stuff easily enough; even FimFic’s got a writing guide that covers the most basic stuff (and that’s something that I should probably at least mention in my talk).
I probably did go to the panel on how to make a good OC, although I don’t remember it specifically.
What I’ve found works in that regard is that the OC be relatable and interesting and other than that, I don’t think that there are any more important rules. Lately, I haven’t even given much of a physical description of my OCs, since I figure that the audience will do that in their head.
I do indeed.