• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

Dialogue

I recently let a friend read my profile entries. He's not a writer, but reader feedback is invaluable. He had literally nothing but good to say about it, but I'm not convinced in one aspect particularly, my dialogue. I spent a lot of time describing setting, putting 'links in the chain' as to emotion and so on but my dialogue was long. My characters just started talking a lot and it kind of feels unnatural. Do you guys suffer from this? Advice?
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Not for me, no, but I spent a few years screenwriting what seems a lifetime ago. And that is pretty much all about dialogue. You want dialogue work, look to screenwriting,

Without examples, almost impossible to comment on any possible issues.
 

Peat

Sage
Talking a lot is unnatural? ;)

Yeah. Specific examples needed before anything can be said about yours. My dialogue... like all of my writing, my dialogue suffers from verbosity. Much like my actual real life dialogue.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
One thing I try to remember about dialogue (although I can't recall the source I got it from) is that the question/comment prior should never be answered directly. Dialogue is meant to enhance character, move a scene along, unravel plot. The less dialogue tags present in the scene, also the better. I'm not a huge fan of "oh, you should only use said". I like to use replied, whispered, and stated. Another helpful thing to remember is that dialogue can be a quick sentence or a paragraph, and characters should use props not stand in the same place.

Some dialogue resources I've found helpful: She Sat He Stood by Ginger Hanson and Crafting Dynamic Dialogue (Writers Digest).
 
Here is an example from my portfolio entry, I wanted a real example rather than to write something up. Notice the first paragraph, in this case shorter than others elsewhere in the writing, sets the reaction and some of the backdrop of the scene and that the other two much larger paragraphs are pure dialogue. The dialogue serves to move the story along, but all those paragraphs are is dialogue. Should I be stopping to convey emotion or can you as readers infer? Am I ranting away my story?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unversed, hmmm. This could mean delays in assistance. Already it had been four months since Elyion was dispatched. Things in the Esson had not yet taken a turn for the worst, but fears had more than surmounted that they might, in fact all signs pointed to it. The people had grown into a different people, no longer did Rant or those who actually lived in the Esson know who their neighbors were. Rant began to elaborate, his face full of reminiscences of some time dealing with the ordeal.

“I admit, a name like “The Grays” is not really a worthy name for a people. We have little contact with them in fact, I couldn’t be more precise unless you would count encountering each other in the Esson regularly. It isn’t through any will of our own, as a boy I remember being afraid of the Grays. They are an elusive people. Their skin is of gray complexion, hence the name, and so they blend very well with the swamp. I used to have trouble spotting them and I always thought of the stories of assassins when I thought of a gray man standing against a tree trunk, unable to be spotted for perhaps hours while we sat fishing and foraging. They are not merely stalkers of course, they don’t usually sit in silence around us. They used to toss large stones into the swamp water when we approached near to them. Letting us know they were there, and letting us know we were surrounded if you ask Bairn. I’m not so sure he would be far off the mark either.

“Really they were nothing more than that and whatever the imagination could concoct for as long as we’ve lived near them. Eccentric, and elusive, but nothing more. Their territory within the swamp is well marked. They use the insides of a rather dull melon that by contrast has a bright pasty inside to draw stick figures on the trunks of the trees. The stuff dries hard like a plaster and it’s rather weather resistant. Some of the people in the village tell me it tastes good and you would never know it was so industrial of an element. Anyway that began changing near a year ago now. The behavior of the Grays has been distraught, unpredictable, and to the villagers and mysel, scary.”
 
C

Chessie

Guest
Ok...I don't know the context of this dialogue and its place in the story but...

1. How many people are talking? WHO is talking?

2. That's too much dialogue for one individual. Unless someone is giving a speech, they aren't going to talk that much.

3. Yes, there should be motions, actions, movement of character. And whoever is speaking is basically giving a backstory infodump. That's not what dialogue is meant for.

So how to resolve it? Well...you want your dialogue scenes to look something like this:


Mary swirled a spoonful of sugar in her coffee. "I don't want to go out tonight. Just leave me behind."

Rex sliced up his bacon into fine strips. "You don't have a choice in the matter."

"Oh? Is that so?"

"I won't have you hiding from our friends any longer. If you keep this up, then they'll know for sure something isn't right."

"And who cares if they find out about our divorce? It's your fault anyway."

"I wasn't the one who had the affair." Rex shoved a piece of bacon in his mouth, chewing through his words. "You're lucky I haven't outed you just yet."

"As if anyone would believe you." Mary frowned, looking down at the steaming mug of coffee she no longer had the desire to drink. "I've been the perfect wife to you so far. So don't even try and slander my good name.

"You're going and that's final," Rex said, an authoritative tone to his voice.



You want a mixture of action with speech and a few dialogue tags thrown in there so the reader knows who you're talking about.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Without context... yeah, this is an infodump in dialogue and on the rambling side. Also (to me) the rambling doesn't come off as conversational rambling, which can work when done well. It reads stilted and rather dry, a bit doesn't even really make easy sense. Now, depending on your sub-genre of fantasy, you can certainly get away with dialogue blocks this size. A solid variety in lengths is good to not get monotonous. Here's a tossed out version... compare the two.

"Now I admit, 'The Grays' ain't no name worthy of a people. We don't see much of them, truth be told... 'less you count our running into each other regular like in the Esson. I recall being scared of them as a boy, their grey skin, and how elusive they were slipping through swamp trees. I used to have trouble spotting the buggers, and a boy's imagination, you know, I'd see a gray standing against a tree, maybe for hours, near invisible as we sat fishing, and stories of assassins flitted 'tween my ears, danged near enough to make me soil my britches. They weren't all stalkers mind you, maybe some were, hard to say. But they don't normally sit around, watching, if you get too close they might throw stones in the water to let us know we're getting too close... Although if you ask Bairn, he thought it was a warning, letting you know they had you surrounded. One or the other, maybe neither is much off the mark."



“I admit, a name like “The Grays” is not really a worthy name for a people. We have little contact with them in fact, I couldn’t be more precise unless you would count encountering each other in the Esson regularly. It isn’t through any will of our own, as a boy I remember being afraid of the Grays. They are an elusive people. Their skin is of gray complexion, hence the name, and so they blend very well with the swamp. I used to have trouble spotting them and I always thought of the stories of assassins when I thought of a gray man standing against a tree trunk, unable to be spotted for perhaps hours while we sat fishing and foraging. They are not merely stalkers of course, they don’t usually sit in silence around us. They used to toss large stones into the swamp water when we approached near to them. Letting us know they were there, and letting us know we were surrounded if you ask Bairn. I’m not so sure he would be far off the mark either."
 
Ok...I don't know the context of this dialogue and its place in the story but...

1. How many people are talking? WHO is talking?

See, without quoting my entire profile entry it's hard to establish. The backdrop was established in narrative in the beginning and ending portions, or rather just inbetween dialogue. There are two people talking, and each is relatively-- stop, wait...they are on the same page. The amount of information in the dialogue fits the amount of information that's been explored through the scene, it just doesn't feel right to ramble like that. I'm struggling with editing it though and very much considering leaving it for a second draft to deal with.

"Now I admit, 'The Grays' ain't no name worthy of a people. We don't see much of them, truth be told... 'less you count our running into each other regular like in the Esson. I recall being scared of them as a boy, their grey skin, and how elusive they were slipping through swamp trees. I used to have trouble spotting the buggers, and a boy's imagination, you know, I'd see a gray standing against a tree, maybe for hours, near invisible as we sat fishing, and stories of assassins flitted 'tween my ears, danged near enough to make me soil my britches. They weren't all stalkers mind you, maybe some were, hard to say. But they don't normally sit around, watching, if you get too close they might throw stones in the water to let us know we're getting too close... Although if you ask Bairn, he thought it was a warning, letting you know they had you surrounded. One or the other, maybe neither is much off the mark."

Other than a slight cultural change in the character I don't see any difference between your passage and mine.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
More conversational tone, more so than cultural change, which in my mind fits the rambling dialogue better than the pseudo-formal language that seems like it drops in and out (which might also be a little bit of my hangup with this section). I tried to stay fairly true to the original while nibbling around the edges with word choices. I assumed the info dump was desirable/unavoidable, as well as the rambling style, LOL. There was also a couple of bits I don't think were clear, with some iffy word choices. "I couldn't be more precise..." about what? I haven't a clue. Why the grays is a poor name for a people? "It isn't through any will of our own..." makes me stop to (try) to figure it out also. No will of their own that they meet in the swamp, since they fear the grays? sat for hours foraging also makes me stop. Other phrasings, "unable to be seen" and the like.

It's still a tad on the nose, for my taste, but so goes info dumping in so many cases.
 
Thanks again Demes. On the nose is the indicator light even more than rambling so I guess I'll work to reword some. Thanks.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Over-explanation. Examples:

>Their skin is of gray complexion, hence the name, and so they blend very well with the swamp.
They're called Grays because of their skin.

Over-explanation can get you into unexpected difficulty. In this case, my reaction was: they have gray swamps? Second reaction was: why is it relevant that we know that they blend in with a swamp? The only purpose of the dialogue appears to be to establish whether or not they are to be feared. The blending in bit isn't followed up, so it feels extraneous. Explanation for its own sake, because the author knows they are hard to see in the swamp and maybe somewhere else in the story that's relevant, or maybe it's just a bit of world-building backstory.

Another example:
>We have little contact with them in fact, I couldn’t be more precise unless you would count encountering each other in the Esson regularly.

I can't rewrite this one because it's internally contradictory. We have little contact with them. We encounter them regularly.

This happens with over-explaining, too. The author says a thing, but it feels too simple, too obvious, or just plain insufficient, so the author keeps going. It's like filming extra scenes only to realize you've created a continuity problem. Here, if you had kept it simple, you'd have the declarative. We rarely encounter them. Then the speaker goes on to describe encounters. At which point, the author would like see the problem, and rewrite the sentence, thus:
We often see them in the Esson.
At which point, the author might also realize that the earlier statement about their gray skin letting them blend in with the swamp doesn't really fit.

Another example:
>Really they were nothing more than that and whatever the imagination could concoct for as long as we’ve lived near them. Eccentric, and elusive, but nothing more.
Really, they were nothing more than eccentric and elusive.
This goes to Demesnedenoir's point about rambling. "Whatever the imagination" puts the dialogue into neutral mode--who's imagination? "Concoct" is too arch, unless you've established that this character speaks in this stilted way. "For as long as we've lived near them" is not only unneeded, it raises the question about where else the speaker has lived. The speaker needs only to confirm the point raised--that they are eccentric rather than dangerous. All those extra words dilute the point.

And a final example:
>They use the insides of a rather dull melon that by contrast has a bright pasty inside to draw stick figures on the trunks of the trees. The stuff dries hard like a plaster and it’s rather weather resistant. Some of the people in the village tell me it tastes good and you would never know it was so industrial of an element.

I would strike this entire bit, but let's say it's needed. They use the insides of a melon. That's sufficient. It's not relevant that its outside is dull, and even less relevant that it is rather dull. They use the insides to draw with--presumably what is meant is that the insides are processed in some way to make an ink; otherwise, I'm picturing them pressing the rind of melons against a tree. Drawing stick figures thus would be difficult. So, they draw on trees. "Trunks of trees" is unnecessary; I'm not going to picture them drawing on twigs. That they are stick figures may be relevant, but if not, lose that. The stuff dries hard. Hm. I was picturing an ink but now it sounds more like a kind of applique. Dries hard; do we really need a simile there? Then another "rather". Is it important that we know it is weather resistant? Some of the people in the village tell me it tastes good ... oh dear. Are we licking trees? Just some of the people? Industrial? By this time you have completely lost me regarding the point of the story.

Sorry I'm pounding on this, but I know in my own writing I can be completely tone-deaf to this sort of thing. I rely on my beta readers to hear it and point it out. Also, I wanted to demonstrate what "too wordy" can mean down at the level of the actual words.

Do fix this, but don't fret about it. I takes a long time to develop an ear for dialogue. For myself, I regard the first draft of any story as telling the story to myself. That's where I get wordy, and it's because I have all these ideas and images in my head, and they need to get onto paper. Not as world-building notes, but in actual description and dialogue. Not all of them need to be there, and I'll come back through the manuscript with a shotgun on a second (or tenth!) pass. But for that first draft, I get to be as clumsy and wordy and obscure and contradictory as I wish. Mainly because I don't know how to do it any better, that first time around. *grimace*
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
I'll jump in here :)

Ok, so I think of dialogue as a way of breaking up the large chunks of text that come with exposition and description. Deme will tell you I am a die hard for exposition and description. I love it. Especially in a fantasy because I believe certain fantasies need a lot of it in order to do adequate world building and fully immerse the reader. The is why typical fantasy novels can be hundreds of pages longer than genre novels.

So, dialogue is a way of breaking all that up. It is a way of helping the reader to get a little breather, get into some action, feel connected with the characters. It adds white space to the page. It is true that readers read dialogue differently than they read other parts of text. Their eyes sort of slide down it like a warm knife through butter. Dialogue is a break for the eyes and for the brain.

Suggestions:

- White space/chunking. If you need to give a lot of information in dialogue make sure you are breaking it up with white space and chunking. I'll show what I mean in a minute.

- Actions. It is an old adage of play/screenwriting to make sure the actor always has something in their hand. The last thing you want is actors (or characters) standing in a dark room under a spotlight talking at each other. This is boring. Make things happen on set. Give the characters something to hold on to. To be doing while they are talking. Nobody ever, in real life, just stands around and gives long-winded speeches.

- A sidekick. Sidekicks are helpful if you notice someone is doing a lot of talking with no white space between. A side kick can chime in with comments or questions, which gives you a line break, adding that much needed white space.

Ok, now I'm going to do a huge no-no and rewrite some of this scene to show you what I mean.

Example:


“I admit, a name like “The Grays” is not really a worthy name for a people." Rant twisted his long beard as if lost in thought, then met Martin's brown eyes. "We have little contact with them."

"Not ever?" Martin found that hard to believe. Rant chuckled.

"It isn’t through any will of our own. As a boy I remember being afraid of the Grays." Rant raised his eyebrows when he said it, as if telling Martin a bedtime story.

"Because they are so rare?"

"They are an elusive people, yes, but what terrified me most was their skin. Gray as the mud in swamps they hide in. Bairn and I used to fish and forage at the swamp and I would always imagine them, like assassins, hiding behind the tree trunks, never making a sound. Surrounding us -." Rant winked then, and smiled. He rose from his place at the table and crouched to tend the fire.

"They aren't, they're not -," Martin couldn't even say it.

"Cannibals?" Rant suggested. "No. Eccentric, and elusive, but nothing more. Their territory within the swamp is well marked. They use the bright paste of the melon to draw figures on the trunks of the trees. The stuff dries hard like a plaster and it’s rather weather resistant".

"But things are changing." Martin whispered. "Everyone can see it."

"Aye." Rant nodded, his long beard bobbing, casting long shadows in the firelight. "The behavior of the Grays lately has been unpredictable.”

"Are you afraid?" Martin asked. His hands had started trembling. Rant was silent for a long time. The fire crackled and outside a wolf howled.

"Aye, boy." He finally said. "I'm afriad."
 
Last edited:

R.H. Smith

Minstrel
Hi Spectre,

Nice work. The sense I got from reading that is that he was talking to himself? I don't see any back and forth with someone else to, i guess, justify so much dialogue. You could probably cut that dialogue in half by just removing what doesn't really need to be there, and I'm sure you can keep it how you want and it will pop. I see where you're going with it, and I like. Just trim the fat. Here's what I mean by that:

“I admit, a name like “The Grays” is not really a worthy name for a people. We have little contact with them. As a boy I remember being afraid of the Grays. They are an elusive people. Their skin is of gray complexion, hence the name, and so they blend very well with the swamp. I used to have trouble spotting them and I always thought of the stories of assassins when I thought of a gray man standing against a tree trunk, unable to be spotted for hours while we sat fishing and foraging. They are not merely stalkers of course, they don’t usually sit in silence around us. They used to toss large stones into the swamp water when we approached them, letting us know they were there, and letting us know we were surrounded. if you ask Bairn. I’m not so sure he would be far off the mark either.
 
Cheater, skip, helio thanks. R.H. glad you guys like it, he isn't talking to himself, I didn't post the other characters descriptions and reactions. You can read it in my profile though.

Sent from my NXA8QC116 using Tapatalk
 
Here is an example from my portfolio entry, I wanted a real example rather than to write something up. Notice the first paragraph, in this case shorter than others elsewhere in the writing, sets the reaction and some of the backdrop of the scene and that the other two much larger paragraphs are pure dialogue. The dialogue serves to move the story along, but all those paragraphs are is dialogue. Should I be stopping to convey emotion or can you as readers infer? Am I ranting away my story?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unversed, hmmm. This could mean delays in assistance. Already it had been four months since Elyion was dispatched. Things in the Esson had not yet taken a turn for the worst, but fears had more than surmounted that they might, in fact all signs pointed to it. The people had grown into a different people, no longer did Rant or those who actually lived in the Esson know who their neighbors were. Rant began to elaborate, his face full of reminiscences of some time dealing with the ordeal.

“I admit, a name like “The Grays” is not really a worthy name for a people. We have little contact with them in fact, I couldn’t be more precise unless you would count encountering each other in the Esson regularly. It isn’t through any will of our own, as a boy I remember being afraid of the Grays. They are an elusive people. Their skin is of gray complexion, hence the name, and so they blend very well with the swamp. I used to have trouble spotting them and I always thought of the stories of assassins when I thought of a gray man standing against a tree trunk, unable to be spotted for perhaps hours while we sat fishing and foraging. They are not merely stalkers of course, they don’t usually sit in silence around us. They used to toss large stones into the swamp water when we approached near to them. Letting us know they were there, and letting us know we were surrounded if you ask Bairn. I’m not so sure he would be far off the mark either.

“Really they were nothing more than that and whatever the imagination could concoct for as long as we’ve lived near them. Eccentric, and elusive, but nothing more. Their territory within the swamp is well marked. They use the insides of a rather dull melon that by contrast has a bright pasty inside to draw stick figures on the trunks of the trees. The stuff dries hard like a plaster and it’s rather weather resistant. Some of the people in the village tell me it tastes good and you would never know it was so industrial of an element. Anyway that began changing near a year ago now. The behavior of the Grays has been distraught, unpredictable, and to the villagers and myself, scary.”

I'm a bit late here, but...I'll try to help.

I'll say it straight up; this doesn't sound like dialogue. People don't talk this way in everyday life. To be more specific, you're right; it's long. People usually don't go on for such a long time uninterrupted. Honestly, it sounds in places like said character is reading aloud a research paper they wrote on the Grays. People are not this articulate when speaking. The spoken word is much more informal and concise than this.

Also, the complex sentence structures and formal-sounding words make it sound unnatural. "Of gray complexion..." Just say grey. "Merely?" Who says merely in everyday speech?

Here's the most problematic bit: Despite all this infodump, i really still have no idea how the Grays are relevant to the story, what role they play, why any of this is important, or even what the Grays are. It's probably because i'm without any context, but it still is troubling. How is the bit about the melon relevant?

Also, how does the color gray blend with a swamp (unless their predators are color blind?) I would think a mossy green or dark brown, probably mottled, would blend with a swamp. Is the swamp grey?

HOWEVER...

If this is just one character who talks like this, and the other characters have a much more normal way of talking, I could let its slide. If said character was non-human or immortal or something, it would actually be an interesting way of developing how that character's way of thinking was different from the human one.

Anyway. That's only a possibility.

I suggest breaking this up into smaller pieces, interspersing it with interruptions/questions from the other character, body language, pauses. Also, cut as much as you can. Trim it down. If the speaker is just wordy, that's fine, but i question whether some of this information is even important to the story. Why is this character saying all this?

Also, try reading your dialogue aloud. Even act it out with a friend, if there are two characters talking. It will help.

Hope this is helpful.
 
To answer you, the scene is a meeting between two nations leaders, representatives rather, and one is informing the other of issues and general stuff. The guy talking is a high society aristocrat, in at least as he's the local Lord.

Sent from my NXA8QC116 using Tapatalk
 
The dialogue as written sounds more like narration to me.

Here's my quick stab at revising your first paragraph of dialogue, trying to keep all the info but cutting the word count drastically and attempting to make it sound more like dialogue than narration:

"We've regularly encountered the Grays in the Esson, but not much beyond that. What kind of name is the Grays for a people, anyway? Real imaginative. So they have gray skin." Rant rolled his eyes.

His gaze turned wistful. "I remember being afraid of them. They're an elusive lot, like assassins. We'd be fishing or foraging in the swamp, and one of them would be standing there, blending with a tree trunk, watching us for hours. Or maybe not. We never knew if one was around unless it threw a stone in the water. Bairn said that was their way of letting us know we were surrounded. Can't say he was wrong."
 
Top