Hey you. Yeah, you. Over here. Psst. C’mere.
Want to buy a… love letter?
Of course you don’t. As much as it’s awesome to get feedback on your work, nobody actually enjoys finding out that there’s more work to do on a post before it’s ready for publication. So I thought it would be great this month to give everyone a refresher on one of the most common reasons that people end up getting love letters: dialogue.
Yes, I know there’s two spellings and that the other one is “dialog” and that it’s just as correct. I like “dialogue” and today I’m the boss, so I’m going to spell it my way.
Dialogue is great. It can add spice to writing, anchor the reader in the moment, give a character a distinctive voice, or add a little bit of plot exposition or description so that the narrator doesn’t have to bear the entire burden of the story you’re trying to tell. But it can also trip you up in three important ways, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today and try to avoid in our writing.
mechanics
The mechanics of dialogue are something we’ve discussed before in our summer series. They’re also something that I see a lot of writers struggling with. When and where to use quotation marks can trip you up, as can the rules for punctuation around quotes.
Incidentally, folks, the Purdue OWL (online writing lab) is a fantastic resource, and one that you should be using if you’re not already. They deliver clear, concise and easy to digest grammar lessons. Any time something looks a little strange to me, the OWL is one of the first places I go to check the rules.
Another quick note for non-US writers: yeah write adheres to the United States rules for punctuation around quotes, not the European standards. This means punctuation goes inside the quotes. Generally I won’t love letter you for putting it outside, but if there are a bunch of other errors in your post, you can bet I’ll mention this one too.
repetition
If you haven’t stumbled over this post in our writing help section yet, it says what I’m about to say better than I’m about to say it.
Don’t be boring.
If all your characters (yes, real live people are “characters” for the purpose of your essay) sound exactly the same? If the rhythm of their words is the same? If you write 30 lines that all end with the word “said?” You’ve lost whatever driving force your essay or story had to begin with. Remember to change it up. Kids don’t talk like adults, and adults don’t talk like each other, and nobody “says” all the time. Break out the thesaurus – we exclaim, shout, whisper, murmur, moan, groan and whine.
One important thing to keep in mind: don’t be racist. No, really. It’s not ok to use dialectic styles as a shortcut for description. Do not make that one black guy in your story use all AAVE, especially if he’s in a setting where he’s more likely to be code-switching to talk to the other people in your story. If every black person in your story sounds like Jar-Jar Binks, you have a problem.
knowing when to quit
I’m really bad at ending conversations. As long as the other person keeps talking, I keep talking. If you transcribed my conversations, they would be hundreds of single-sentence lines long, and might only convey one or two ideas.
If this is happening in your story, stop. For your own sake, and that of your readers. It’s not actually important to convey every word that happened in a conversation, even if you’re telling a story about the conversation itself. Instead, think about focusing on what’s important and summarizing the rest.
“It’s on top of the hill,” Joe explained. He went on to describe, in infinite detail, the size of the hill, the turns I would need to take, the dirt roads and landmarks, and even how best to catch a trout in the stream I would cross. Looking west, I could see clearly that only one hill broke the neverending flatness of the Wisconsin landscape.
Isn’t that better than actually listing out every word Joe said? It saves you room, too, for the more important stuff that you really want to talk about. When you only have a thousand words, it’s crucial to only put in word-for-word the dialogue that’s funny or important. Everything else can be summarized.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]Now that you’re an expert on dialogue (or you have the resources to become one), jump in! Tell us a story about a conversation that changed your life, or the difficulty of getting your kid to tell you what she did in school today. Talk about first words, last words, or that wedding reading that you didn’t actually hear.
Just watch your mechanics and repetition, and know when to say “enough is enough!”
