Writing better dialogue

August 2, 2006 9:15 AM

Help me write dialogue!

I am looking for recommendations of books with amazing dialogue, authors whose style of writing dialogue has made you sit up and take notice, and titles that have used the speech of its characters to gain notable results. Mostly interested in Prose (Non- or Fiction...any genre) but i'll investigate anything you come up with.

I am currently most interested in the defining line between what a character thinks and what a character says out loud and how to blend those two actions together seamlessly, if that helps get this question rolling.

(I'd also be interested in tips you might share from your own experiences of making characters come to life in their speaking...)

posted by iurodivii to writing & language (18 comments total)

This seems so Creative Writing 101, but what's most helpful to me when I'm in a dialogue rut is to just go out and listen to people, especially in restaurants when for some reason people think they're having private conversations.
posted by ferociouskitty at 9:24 AM on August 2, 2006

A lot of people admire the dialog in Elmore Leonard novels. For realism without resorting to dialect, try the cop novels of Richard Price.

You can also learn some really valuable lessons from bad dialog. Go read some fanfic or something and try and figure out what's wrong with the dialog (yes, good fanfic exists, but ...)

One thing I do is watch movies or TV shows with good dialog, and try to mentally picture it on the page. Chances are, if you're writing bad dialog, you're writing it too formally. While readable prose shouldn't have every stutter and "uh," it should be choppy, ungrammatical and have a natural beat to it.
posted by Bookhouse at 9:28 AM on August 2, 2006

I've been told that I write very good dialogue (my website which has excerpts from my first mystery - PWA Shamus award nominated - is in my profile here).

I really learned a lot from Erle Stanley Gardner (the creator of Perry Mason) and Ed McBain (creator of the 87th Precinct), both of whom write what I write, third person mysteries.

I would also highly recommend Renni Brown and Dave King's "Self Editing For Fiction Writers" chapter on dialogue.

Reading some screenplays (the best are in pdf format over at http://www.screentalk.biz) might help a bit.

Keep it short, keep it sharp, keep it moving.
Like the pornographer said, "Get to the f*cking point!"

Best of luck!
posted by willmize at 9:43 AM on August 2, 2006

One experience that helped me a great deal with dialogue writing was several months I spent freelancing as a transcriber for a TV newsmagazine. You literally sit down with headphones on, in front of a screen with a videotape of raw footage playing—whether interviews, conversations, or B-roll—and type verbatim whatever anyone says.

When you actually have to type out every "um," "like," and "you know," and are paying more attention to the actual words people are saying than to their content, you become exquisitely attuned to all the little verbal habits and tics that people often tend not to notice. After you do this for weeks on end, it carries over into how you listen to speech even when you're not transcribing it.
posted by staggernation at 9:52 AM on August 2, 2006

William Gaddis. The majority of the text in has novels is dialogue and it's amazing stuff.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 9:58 AM on August 2, 2006

I agree with ferociouskitty and Bookhouse that the best ways to jump start your dialogue are to eavesdrop on actual people and reverse engineer bad dialogue.

I am currently most interested in the defining line between what a character thinks and what a character says out loud and how to blend those two actions together seamlessly, if that helps get this question rolling.

Ah, for this, I'd point you to Hemingway. Specifically, his short stories, like Hills Like White Elephants, which is almost entirely dialogue. You may also want to look to playwrights, as the actors' spoken words convey 90% of a play's structure. Mamet pops to mind, but his dialogue is so iconic that emulating it will make you sound like, well, you're emulating Mamet.

As a preemptive strike, I fully realize Hemingway and Mamet are devisive members of the Literati.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 10:01 AM on August 2, 2006

I'm fond of the dialogue written by my three favorite (duh) writers: Robert Parker, Robert Heinlein, and Spider Robinson.
posted by baylink at 10:03 AM on August 2, 2006

Ditto Elmore Leonard for snappy dialogue. And Tom Stoppard plays, Coen Bros. movies, and Brian Michael Bendis' Powers comics. (And Stephen King has had some of the best internal dialogue I've seen.)

Some of the worst dialogue in the world is stock phrases with stock responses, where you know word for word what someone's going to say (see Matrix Revolutions.) A way to avoid this that can be used to good effect is to have one speaker ask a question, and have the response be something other than a straight answer to that question (see, for instance, the Coen Bros. films.)

Theodore Sturgeon would sometimes distinguish characters' voices by having them consistently use a particular rhythmic meter.

And transcribing is a useful exercise, but one of its points is to realize that real dialogue painfully sucks, and to remind you that your job is verisimilitude, not realism.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:13 AM on August 2, 2006

Harold Pinter. He's got an amazing sense of rhythm and subtext.

Ditto on Elmore Leonard.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:49 AM on August 2, 2006

You're asking about subtext; I think it flows from character. I don't know of any neutral formula. I'd say, just resist having people speak exactly on point and, with practice, you'll find convincing ways.

Mainly, write conversations between distinct souls who couldn't convincingly say each other's lines. (This is one thing you can't always get from conversations overheard in cafés, because friends will adopt each other's tones and expressions. They're looking for accord, not contrast.)

An exercise I've enjoyed is to pick two characters I know well and write a scene in their voices. A minor league baseball coach who talks like Rick from Casablanca borrows money from a TV reporter who has Marge Simpson's speech pattern, or my brother's. Mirth ensues. (The source characters' genders needn't match your characters' genders.)

And then there's the Prime Directive: read your dialog out loud. If that's not easy, rewrite it.

Hope some of this helps; good luck.
posted by Superfrankenstein at 11:03 AM on August 2, 2006

+1 William Gaddis.

Try Raymond Chandler, Thomas Pynchon (yes!), the script to Casablanca, Stephen King (really), the films of Quentin goddamn Tarantino (try the script to Four Rooms for instance, complete shit as a film but Tarantino's writing is hilarious), David Mamet.

Your goal is 'naturalistic' which isn't transcription, so how about scripts for the theater? Tom Stoppard writes elegant dialogue, Mamet's a god, Caryl Churchill writes unclassifiable dialogue that's a pleasure in spite of its toughness. Read some poetry. (Try Bukowski for a riveting, clear authorial voice, never mind that as poetry it's largely nothing to write home about.) Read everything!
posted by waxbanks at 11:18 AM on August 2, 2006

Great recommendations so far (i've read nearly none of them so it should really open up a new world). And thanks for putting a term --subtext-- to my inquiry, Superfrankenstien. Also I had not thought of looking to theatre either, hooray AskMe!
posted by iurodivii at 12:00 PM on August 2, 2006

I've always been a fan of the dialogue from Saul Bellow, esp in Henderson the Rain King. He does a good job of having realistic dialogue that gets information across without having characters turn too preachy or lecture-y (something that really annoys me in some novels, like those of Tom Robbins).
posted by rmless at 12:31 PM on August 2, 2006

Looks like the book recommendations have been ably covered. One tip that might help you is to read your own dialogue out loud, either to yourself or with someone else. It helps pull out the parts that don't ring true.
posted by sugarfish at 1:46 PM on August 2, 2006

Look toward movies for help with dialogue:

Some of the best dialogue ever: Pulp Fiction
Some of the worst ever: Waking Life *

* Despite being a good flick!
posted by themadjuggler at 2:10 PM on August 2, 2006

More thoughts:

• Take improv classes, or at the very least read good books on the topic, such as Impro and Truth In Comedy. Consider writing your dialog as a sort of improv exercise in which you're playing all the parts.

• Always consider what your characters are saying and why not something else. Always consider why your characters are saying what they are saying at this precise moment, and not at any other moment.

• Check out Jane Espenson's writing-and-lunch blog for good little tidbits every day. Her blog's TV-centric, but most of the same rules apply.

• As much as I enjoy the Coen Brothers, Tom Stoppard, and Quentin Tarantino, be sure to take the right lessons from them. Studying them to the exclusion of less stylish writers could lead to writerly indigestion, especially if you don't bone up on why the characters are speaking as they do. Don't write dialog to be clever, or for a good line - that's what separates the ripoffs from the real deal. Character character character!

Good luck!
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:51 PM on August 2, 2006

Two thoughts: Carl Hiaasen and "Overheard in New York". If your setting lacks smartasses, get back to us.
posted by rob511 at 5:27 PM on August 2, 2006

Watch your DVDs with the English subtitles on. Watching what characters say, as they say it, helps bridge the performance-to-text gap.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 8:15 PM on August 2, 2006