Help with dialogue!

analyse this

I'm in the process of writing my first novel and I find it really easy to describe emotion, settings, plots etc but when it comes to dialogue between characters I am falling short. None of the dialogue seems natural or fluid. I'll type it and re-read it and I know instantly that its not right. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can improve on it?

rockbeer

I don't know if this is any help, but I think you have to know your characters really well before their speech starts to sound right. This, to me, means being able to hear them speak in my mind... To know them well enough to be certain of how they will react in a given situation. You need to be able to clearly imagine their tone of voice, phrasing, choice of words etc. Try speaking their words out loud yourself in different ways to see if it sounds natural. If it's difficult, try basing a character's speech on that of somebody you know well. Imagine how that person would say what you want your character to say.

I don't know if there's any rules for this, but I'm sure the key, for what it's worth, is to make each of your characters speak not in your voice but in his or her own.

Hope this is of some use, but I suspect everyone has their own way of approaching such things so somebody else may well have other ideas that are more helpful to you.

analyse this

Great advice! Cheers!

elshambo

Give every character a back story.They tell script writers to write a 10 page background of the main characters and less for lesser characters. School, family, mates, jobs etc, you then know them and should then be able to write what they would say more naturally. You will then also be able to liken them to people you know as the guy above said and that again will make it more natural, thats the theory anyhu

hypercrawl

rockbeer wrote: »

I don't know if this is any help, but I think you have to know your characters really well before their speech starts to sound right. This, to me, means being able to hear them speak in my mind... To know them well enough to be certain of how they will react in a given situation. You need to be able to clearly imagine their tone of voice, phrasing, choice of words etc. Try speaking their words out loud yourself in different ways to see if it sounds natural. If it's difficult, try basing a character's speech on that of somebody you know well. Imagine how that person would say what you want your character to say.

I don't know if there's any rules for this, but I'm sure the key, for what it's worth, is to make each of your characters speak not in your voice but in his or her own.

Hope this is of some use, but I suspect everyone has their own way of approaching such things so somebody else may well have other ideas that are more helpful to you.

That is good advice.

I'd also recommend spending time on the bus & trains, or just generally hanging out. When you hear someone say something and get the idea that 'that's exactly what [character] would say', you know you're nearly there and have them planted.