Dialgoue : The voice of the Character       

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

HELLO EVERYBODY!!!

As well know, talking is the most common form of communication for us, but sadly most of the writers, even I, make mistakes writing such natural form. It may be the language disability or because there are too many characters, but we truly all keep making mistakes while writing a dialogue. Most of them are : 

1 - Going for the narration: 

You are better in narrating than in dialoguing? Don't panic! You aren't the only one, I used to do that a lot. But, overusing something over other will break the balance in the story, and you will truly lose consistency.

There is a very easy way to fix that. Write your narration, and try to imagine how the dialogue will go through that part of the narration. I'll set as usual, an exemple for you to see: 

"Baekhyun told Jun Myun that Chanyeol, who was sleep walking, broke every single glass in the suit, the previous night when the team was sleeping over Luhan's place, as soon as the leader came back in the morning. Jun Myun's shock was mixed with amusement and desperation." 

In my narration it is obvious what each one of them will say since it is an easy exemple, Baekhyun will be the first to speak and then Jum Hyun. However if your narration is more complex use a pattern, without narration then add the narration. By the end, you can even add few details in the dialogue, you can ommit even parts if they are unnecessary, like the sleeping over since I am sure that if I did write the scene when Chanyeol did break the glasses, I would have mentionned it before. Why mentionning the same action  twice.

"He broke every damn glass!" Baekhyun growled, as Jun Myun got in the messed up room. "Nothing is left out. I don't even know what got into him."

"Sleep walking again?" Jun Myun asked and Baekhyun nodded, sighing in frustration. "The damage is big, we may end up paying for it the nine of us." 

"I'm not going to pay for his sorry ! He had to do something about his night habit!" Baekhyun scrowled as he kicked the still sleeping man softly. Jun Myun chuckled, between amusement and frustration as he went to call for the manager. 

Did you see how everything went? I seperated them accordingly to how much time the action must have taken. 

I know that most of you will find that the narration part will  be a good alternative because you don't know how pull off a dialogue but if you keep using the narration even for dialogue, the flow will slow down and it may sound boring. I do that only when I think the dialogue can be skipped like a normal chat between a group for characters in a coffee shop or classroom, or similar settings, while it had nothing to do with the events of the next chapter. It is normal to mention that your characters have their moments of chilling around without talking about the topic or the theme of the story, because they are, inside the story, normal people before anything else. 

2 - Going overboard with "Said" 

This was mentionned everywhere : the verb to say is not the only verb that express the action of saying so as long there is alternative, don't go for the commun. Use it, but don't abuse it.  

It happens to find a whole chapter of "said" and normally when I do find something like that I skip the narration because I know it will be written anyway. It kills the flow! Don't do that. If needed, express a moment of pure emotion: 

"I can't." Tears flew down Ilhoon's cheek as he let his sword fall down. 

It is clear that Ilhoon is the one who said that but I didn't need to use the verb said in order to make you guess that. The words he said match his reaction. You can use also other alternatives for the verb to say: 

"I said it is a waste of time to do this, but you still went for it." Taek Woon mumbled as he cleared Jaehwan's wound. the injured man just chuckled and held his hand.

"You know how stupid I can be." Jaehwan teased. 

A slap in his arm made him hiss and Jaehwan looked up to meet Taek Woon's scolding eyes. "You aren't stupid." 

Isn't it easy? I even used the word said without making it sound bad or overused or whatever you can feel about such word.

 Also, don't make your characters giggle  or laugh their dialogue, so instead of "I fell." he chuckled. go for "I fell" he admitted, before chuckling at his own silliness.

 

3 - Bad ponctuation

I'm sorry to break this up to you:  ponctuation truly mess with everybody's writing. Just a wrong use for one coma can change the meaning of the whole paragraph, no kidding. I truly warn you about this. 

So, make sure that your ponctuation is correct and if you have doubts, contact a beta reader or share the section with your friends and see what they think of it. 

"Get some ice cream, on me." is not "Get some ice cream on me."  the first means : "get the ice cream, I'll pay for it" but the second is mostly ert. Also, be careful with the space bar, and check if the upload changed the space between the words because "How beautiful the pen is" will sound very - very- disturbing for some readers otherwise. 

4- making the characters speak with the same tone. 

Do. Not. Do. That! 

I admit that I do it, to my fics, but in my book I made sure that the way they speak give in a little about their personnality. Since everyone in my book come from a different country, they have different backgrounds, different cultures, and different ideologies. They can not speak or think the same way. 

I know that I am not in position to put such advice but, in "meant to be", I somehow followed it. Even if some characters, who get in couples and are so compatible to each other, you can somehow guess characters' personality through the dialogue: cry babies - Just kidding, almost. XD -  Do not forget that we, as humans, don't talk or think the same way. Even if we agree about the same thing, we don't speak about it the same way.

Let me go for an exemple: 

Jaehwan was super excited about the play. "I am sure Hakyeon hyung will look amazing in his costume, I can not wait." He squealed while TaekWoon nodded absently.

"looking foreward it." Taek Woon shyly mumbled as he noticed his friends' eyes on him. He pulled up his cup of coffee, avoiding Hakyeon's happy expression with red cheeks.

Taek Woon is a silent man, who rarely go for speaking, so such character speaks through the narration - but do not abuse it anyway, make him speak, if needed write what he thinks of as a monologue. In the extreme opposite, Jaehwan is a talking buble, he speaks his emotion so his dialogue is longer than Taek Woon. None of them speaks the same way, or express the same way. You can see who is reserved or not, who is shy or not, and try to keep such distinctions even between other characters.

 As well!!! Conflicts , disagreements, and such kind of actions break the tone of the characters if they are similar somehow and hard to differency. Go for a small fight or disagreement and you will probably manage to make two similar characters disagree. Exemple, I made Minseok and Luhan, who in my story "Meant to be" speak with the same tone, many times, because that express their love: they try to be one voice, in other words. However, when they disagree or they react to something, each one of them have a different reaction, because they can't change who they are. 

It seems really hard but no, it is truly not. Practice create the skill, ;)

5 - Expressing the silence wrongly.

I bet you all did see this kind of sentences in the middle of the dialogue: 

"..." He didn't know how to answer that.

I don't say that it's bad thing. Some writers panic when their dialogue get messed up because one of their characters was silent in their mind, so they didn't know what to write. It is ok. It can be fixed. In my  exemple, the easy way is to delete the "..." part and just express his silence, either the character had felt something through his silence or not. his silence is a space for you to narrate more so use that in your favor! 

 

In conclusion, the dialogue is a necessary part of the narration, so you better take care of it, and don't hesitate to ask for help or advice from your friends or beta readers. Also, check those two links : 

How to write dialogue that hooks readers: 10 tips

10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Dialogue

PS: I am using a paid per click shrinker to raise money, K2nblog is gaining a lot from it so I decided to try it. You can go to the website and check everything they offer. It is a good deal, since we share links anyway. Better to get the best of it ;)

 

   

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author's note:

┌                                                                              ┑

I hope it is helpful :D    

┗                                                                              ┘