One of the things I consistently struggle with is writing dialogue that flows well. Apart from avoiding saying the same ‘action words’ all the time between dialogue, do you have any advice?
Thanks;
MimicsChest
this is a difficult question to answer. unlike with so many other writing topics, dialogue is a matter i don’t have models at the ready to offer. this is a bit funny to say, given dialogue is one thing i’m so often praised for, and especially when i’m on record noting that i feel dialogue is both the purest distillation of scene and my preferred form for rough-drafting them — but truth told, i’m not sure i even conceptualize dialogue as a thing—not a problem to solve nor a skill to cultivate.
if i had to break down what dialogue is to me, one key principle is the concept of filtering.
every character has intentions, things they want to get out of the conversation, and things they’re scared of saying directly. (sometimes these are the same thing, sometimes they’re different). a character has a perspective that distorts how they see the world. and characters of course have moods they’re in as a consequence of the story’s events.
take all of these facts together, and you start to approximate what i think about when i craft a line of dialogue. a character’s voice filters and distorts what they’re thinking. on a stylistic level, too — they have diction, tics, turns of phrase; and the level of framing: there’s metaphors and analogies only they would make, there’s a sense of priority and focus to what things they do say and done, and how they talk about them.
but it’s not just filtering, there’s also the matter of prompting.
i do most of my brainstorming while out on evening walks, hands occupied with stim-bouncing a lacrosse ball. i’ll often walk for anywhere from forty to ninety minutes, and one person was surprised to hear that i can still remember the scenes and snatches of dialogue i’d devised once i return home.
it’s not a mystery for me, and i think it comes down to how i think of them. Palahniuk has an article where he argues that your stories should process with all memorable flow of an great song’s lyrics. i’ve never thought it was an attainable ideal, but it definitely informs my approach
every line of dialogue should prompt the next in tightly locked chain. no, a better analogy is a rope, because what holds tied knots together is friction. and the place where two character’s filters rub against each is what great conversations is made of.
difference is the fuel of dialogue. differences of knowledge that prompt question and answer, differences of opinion that prompt argument and counterargument, difference of status that color how each character regards and circles around the other; differences of mood and goal and expectation that lead to each grabbing the steering wheel to push the conversation somewhere different.
i think part of why dialogue comes so naturally to me that i’ve always been rather argumentative. it got me into trouble in school, and made me some enemies in my early days on the internet. i’ve always been inclined to picking at the specifics of someone’s word choice, honing in on the perfect cutting rejoiner that quips just right.
i’m not sure how i can convey this aspect of my education. funny as it is, “take memes seriously and get into fights with strangers” is probably not advice i should offer people.
maybe it’s on a useful track — there’s skills in common with how i craft dialogue and Posting. studying how to craft a punchline will teach you how to craft a punchy line, i guess.
but i’m waffling, i think. my process for writing dialogue isn’t much deeper than “think about how to make it good and then write that down”
there’s a lot of different reasons why dialogue might fail to flow. you might be failing to convey that the characters words are a consequence of their conscious or unconscious conversational agenda, you may be failing to ensure that each line “hooks” into the other promptwise, those are the two problems i can think of, but dialogue is multifaceted enough there must be many that aren’t occuring to me
i hope something in there could be some help to you, even if this ramble isn’t up to my usual standards.
by the way, i might end up putting this text on my site — are you cool with me quoting what prompted this? should i name you, or leave you as an anonymous correspondent?
Yeah you can name me. I don’t mind.
I think my problem is that I have a problem with making the characters themselves.
I can imagine them; their motivations and history. I can connect point A to B to C. It is all logical.
Clean even.
The problem is that people are messy. Not clean. Not at all logical. Its hard for me to understand, thus it is hard for me to write. I do fine when I am roleplaying; when other people are engaging with a particular character. However, when I am just by myself, it is difficult. […]
i might push back a little on the assertion that characters aren’t logical. they certainly feel logical when i write them. but the logic of a cellular automata is not the logic of a chaotic weather simulation nor the logic described a music theory textbook. i think you can pick apart characters down to the word choice and individual twitches of body language. there are reasons behind everything a character does, a sense to what emotions and biases take precedence, and dialogue is a realm where a character’s personal logic is all that reigns.
but i’m not sure putting so fine a point on it does much to make it easier to comprehend the alien logics of other people.
something i recall doing years ago (back when refining my dialogue was an explicit pursuit of mine) was to pay close attention when i was in public — on a bus, in a room with other people — and take notes about the things i observed about “real” dialogue and think about how i might capture that in writing. it’s borderline cliche to note that you of course shouldn’t try to write truly realistic dialogue, but i do think there’s something to learn in studying from life.
(sometimes i wonder if falling out of the habit of doing this has left my characters increasingly disconnected caricatures, more dramatic and written than can sound real and relatable)
but i digress. you’re right that trying will give you the experience if you keep at it. i’ll note that the imagery you listed off in that [note: unquoted here] paragraph was striking and evocative to me, even in its abbreviated form. a fun corollary to the fact that i don’t necessarily view dialogue as a “thing”, simply a seamless part of how i approach writing, means that i think the fact that you show a decent eye for writing and presentation suggests you already have the potential to write workable dialogue. i believe in you!