Forum: Author Hangout

The definition of the Story Ideas forum is you give the idea to an author and have no further involvement. I don't think that is what jcourson50 is thinking of. It sounds like he wants someone to do the writing but he has input to the story.

I think I understand the working relationship you want. I don't know of anyone who would be interested in that form of collaboration.

I was much like you when I first started writing. Good at narrative, but atrocious at dialog.

In my existing chapters, I had had used narrative format to convey what should have been dialog. So, I edited the chapters to convert portions of the narrative to dialog. The first cut at the dialog was awkward. So, I placed myself in the position of the speakers and reworded the dialog using what I would say if I were the speaker. After about 5 passes through the chapters the dialog was much better than the initial attempt.

Try doing your own dialog. Think of your character and what you want them to say. Then write the words you would use in that situation. It will take several passes through the chapters to smooth out your dialog passages.

"I think I've got a good start on the story, but I can't write dialog that sounds anything close to real and I don't know how to add the extra "flavor" that makes it sound like a story and not like a junior high school essay," said jcourson50.

There, you do know how to write dialogue.

AJ

Sometimes - and this depends on the writer - I could see it making sense to listen to the dialogue out loud. I don't do that, but I can hear it in my head most of the time. If you consciously listen to how people talk, you'll start noticing where dialogue doesn't match with real people. If you can do that, hopefully making it sound more like an actual conversation will develop with practice.

And, repeating what Vincent Berg said, and many other authors have said: writers write. I am tempted to say writers also publish, in some way, but what I mean to say there is 'get feedback.' That can be a friend, or putting out there on SoL, or a volunteer editor, or even an AI. Or, initially, your own rereading. Just writing makes you a writer, but doing so in a vacuum might not help you become a better writer.

If you consciously listen to how people talk, you'll start noticing where dialogue doesn't match with real people. If you can do that, hopefully making it sound more like an actual conversation will develop with practice.

But fictional dialogue shouldn't try to be too realistic because its primary purpose is informatory rather than entertainment.

AJ

It can be both if done correctly.

Entertainment wasn't the correct word.

I think there's always going to be a sacrifice of clarity if an author is heavy on some notion of realism.

I recently read a story in which the author went overboard on attempting to make the dialogue conform to their idea of realism.

And I also recently read a story in which the dialogue was perfectly clear but felt like it was written by someone over 100 years ago.

Of the two I preferred the latter because it didn't continually jerk me out of the story.

AJ

We're splitting hairs on 'too realistic', I think. I agree - hyper-realistic dialogue can become too much and bog the story down. I'm often tuning dialogue that way - word choices the characters might make are sometimes much less accessible for people without knowledge of those regionalisms and so forth.

Maybe what I should have said is 'if you consciously listen to well-written dialogue.' There's plenty out there.

As usual, I take a different approach with this too, as I prefer leaping into the heart of a scene, rather than gradually building up to it, thus having shorter, more intense dialogue rather than more generic conversations. It's my preference, largely determined by my preference for shorter novels of a given length, yet it suits my unique style of storytelling. Thus sounding like most people talk isn't my goal.