Some observations on dialog in my story A Far Sun

In listening to the podcast Writing Excuses, episode 35, this morning (don't tell anyone!), I was moved to do a little research into "said bookisms" and "Tom Swifties." These resources led me to some tips on writing dialog, which I want to discuss, here.

Learn how people talk to each other. Dialog should convey the person's intelligence/education, culture, and personality, without being too distracting. One thing I've struggled with continually is "translating" into English the conversations native sun-skin speakers have, in sun-skin. They would have excellent command of their own language, but if the English words I use are not typical for most native English speakers ... that is, if I have made them sound too educated, with large vocabularies, or worse (and more commonly) made them sound pompous or posturing ... well, you get the idea.

Furthermore, there are some words and concepts lacking in the sun-skin language, that if left out would make the English translation sound very odd or broken. And vice versa. My approach has been to insert the English words and constructions, even if the actual words the speakers use are different.

Dialog is not exactly like real speech, but it should read like real speech. Except that I intend my dialog to be spoken aloud in a podcast. Regardless, I take it into account. So, when my characters talk they need to sound good out loud as well as when read. In constructing the novel, later, I will probably recast everything to be read, and not spoken.

I do have a really bad habit of inserting ... ellipses to indicate pauses into my characters' spoken dialog. I use ellipses in place of "uh" and "ah" (though I do use "ah" as an interjection, like one would say "uh-huh" instead of "yes") Yeah, my ellipsis is just a long, long comma (with a silent "uh" in the middle). And I do use full stops, sometimes, in place of commas, just to put pauses where I think they belong.

I could write a complete post discussing comma use alone, since I've waffled on this idea quite a bit. My current rule is to put a comma where I want one when I'm reading the story aloud. If it was only to be read, I would use far fewer commas. Such as in the previous sentence, where I would not have used the comma unless I wanted it to read better aloud. After a while it becomes habit to put in commas to break up the words into speakable chunks. Otherwise I tend to get tripped up when reading it, and that's a bad thing. If I can't speak my own writing without stumbling, then there's something wrong with the writing.

Cut words and phrases that don't serve the conversation's purpose. As I'm writing the story, I read everything aloud, mainly because it will be read aloud. I pay special attention to things that don't sound right, except that I have not (yet) translated every conversation in sun-skin into the actual sun-skin language. Many of them are, and it occasionally causes me to modify the English to more closely match the actual sun-skin. That's right, I have invented a language (the sun-skin language) and can arbitrarily translate anything into it. Of course I need to invent words, but I have a grammar and a syntax, and even some colloquial expressions.

Beyond the language, I try not to have any gratuitous conversations. Every one of them serves at least two purposes. Usually it's character development (or character relationship development), plot development, and/or exposition. Having something of all three is better, of course. I don't have a character talk about sun-skin culture or philosophy just to talk about these things. It has to come out in the course of discussing something else more important to the story. I never have two characters talk about things they already know. That's bad. It's the "show, don't tell" method.

Don't try to provide too much information at once through dialog. No monologues, in other words. I have only one place where a character does this, and it's wonderfully relevant to the story. He spends an entire chapter talking, because he's telling my heroes the history of how he got there, and what happened along the way. I just chose to make it into a first-person passage in a third-person narrative. He even answers implicit questions that my heroes are asking, though I have left out the actual questions. Maybe I'm not explaining it well, but when you read it it will make sense.

Break up dialog with action. I do this. I rarely have more than two or three lines before interspersing some kind of action. People don't just stand still and talk. They move, they shrug, they frown, smile, pick things up, and perform all manner of non-essential things indicating their current mood.

Don't try too hard to vary your tag lines when writing dialog. Maybe I do too much of this. A tag line is the "he said" thing used to identify who is speaking. My only concession to the "Adam says" tag line is to simply eliminate the "says" part (since I am writing in present tense). So, when needed, I say:

Adam, "Are you sure you want to do that?"
Jane replies, "What do you mean?" Grins, "Of course I want to nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

The jury is still out on this, because I get very tired of always saying "Adam says," or "says Jane." When I only use the character's name, it seems more like I'm reading a play (which of course, it is, somewhat). What's a boy to do?

Avoid stereotypes, especially when it comes to dialect. My concession to this is the unknown stereotype of the native sun-skin speaker, who when speaking English would not use the word "the" (sun-skin has no definite article) except in special cases. They also don't use contractions. I shy away from most slang or colloquialisms for my native English speakers, except for the occasional "gonna" and "sorta" and "kinda" kinda thing. Heh.

Don't overuse profanity and slang when writing dialog. I hardly have any profanity. My story is for a PG audience, so I only use the occasional "damn" or even "shit." Actually, I think I took out all the expletives. I don't remember. But suffice it to say: I don't use profanity out of respect for my younger audience. Of course, adults tend to slip when they're angry. That said, my natural tendency is to write for adults, so I am quite conscious of the language my characters use.

Slang? I covered that, above. Also, I have to be aware my characters would not say things the way we would say them, today. They left their world in 1979, so they really wouldn't be "all over that." You know? It's been a long time, and I'm no longer hip with 1979 lingo. I mean, I hardly remember the late 1970's, but not for the reasons you're thinking.

Read widely, noting both good and bad dialog. This is very generic advice. It means "know your craft" and understand the difference between cheesy dialog and good dialog. I think I recognize cheese rather well. I guess I don't read too many bad books (anymore), but bad movie dialog ... Oy!

Punctuate dialog correctly. Yeah. This is the one that says put the period inside the final double quote, among other things. The only concession I make to this is in sun-skin speech. I use the double angle quote «I do not believe so» and place no punctuation before the speech, or at the end of the speech. Now, if there's a needed comma or period inside the quote, then it absolutely needs to be there. For timing reasons. I decided not to invent special punctuation for the language, especially since it's not even a written language--their history is entirely (or almost entirely) an oral history. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Of course one can break all the rules when writing, but you absolutely must know what they are, first. You need to demonstrate you understand the difference between being ignorant and only sounding ignorant. Deconstructionism is all well and good, as long as it has structure.

Go forth and conquer. Be fruitful and multiply. Live long and prosper. So sayeth the shepherd, so sayeth the flock. Now go get the flock out of here.