Writing Treatise VIII. Dialogue:
Writing Treatise VIII. Dialogue:
The point of this section is not how to write dialogue or how to write good dialogue. I’ll be honest; I am not the best at the endeavor itself. I just wish to discuss some aspects of dialogue mechanics.
You do not need dialogue. Wait what? Yep, you can write a story completely without dialogue. That is the power of the word. As human beings we expect talking as it is our means of communication. However, in the story nobody or anything has to talk. This is the power of the word in the story. The story can take care of itself without being told. Films, comics, etc. can all be silent too. I feel people lose themselves into dialogue too much at times. There is a beauty in silence, a beauty in things, and a beauty of happening that can be expressed without the spoken word.
Some small things to hash about dialogue:
Dialogue and tags:
You do not always have to tag your dialogue, but it is good to show who is talking; especially if there is a lot of dialogue happening. Tags also help break up dialogue. You do not need to tag with he said, she said, etc. You can tag through description and action. It is a great place to get some character or environment description in by interaction. Dialogue can express a lot about character. We do far more than just talk. We have ways of talking, habits, ways we stand and sit. We do things, fidget, walk around, look at, and feel with things. So keep this in mind to aid your dialogue and your tagging. Better to tag then not, but if you tag a lot then you can throw some non-tags in there.
Dialogue chains:
Seriously break up dialogue chains. Nothing kills a story more than people just talking. Watch people talking and see how they talk. I don’t mean a movie I mean in real life. Human dialogue is a strange thing. It’s hard to write like we talk, but it can be a great building block to show character and world. There are two layers to this. What needs to be said and what does not need to be said. Sometimes saying nothing all can just be important for the dialogue. Stories cannot always have real dialogue as it would be strange and interrupt flow, but a little groundedness can go a long way. Dialogue chains are also a bad habit of telling instead of showing. Actions speak louder than words so do so.
Telling the obvious:
There is a bad habit; probably taken from hand holding in movies to state the obvious. If the audience knows you do not have to. There is a balancing act. If your audience knows, but the characters don’t they have to be told to learn of a thing. So think of how you can mitigate this without wasting your audience’s time as much with this. Back to showing over telling. One thing that helps is thinking of how many times in a class room or work meeting and someone tells something or asks if anyone has anyone has any questions and nobody has one. That is a source of real life that can really help move things along.
Pretty much dialogue needs to have its purposes. So think of what needs to be said, why, what is says about world, what it says about character, what is expresses akin to real life, the depth of what is being said, and does it need to be said at all.
