Dialogue writing practices?
First time novelist, long time writer here. I'm looking for creative writing exercises to help with my dialogue. Any ideas?
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First choose the genre that you intend to write.
Find a good example of this genre. (even better than the printed page is a movie or tv show)
Pick a scene and transcribe the dialog.
It might sound hokey but it will give you a sense of brevity, pacing, cadence, and interchange.
(Monkey see. Monkey do.)
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A scriptwriting exercise that always helps make a nice shape out of dialogue. Follow the instructions without reading them all the way through the first time. Just do each step one at a time:
1) Take a sheet of paper and write in the margin down 20 lines the letters A and B. They don't have to just swap e.g. ABABABABABAB but you can have no more than two the same in a row so AABABBABABABAAB = fine but AAABABABBBBAAABABBB = wrong.
2) Now on each row that has a letter in the margin you are going to draw some dots and dashes. Sort of like quasi Morse code. You may have a combination of up to any three on each line but you are not compelled to put three on any of them. In the end your shape could look like this:
A .
B _ . _
A _ _ _
B . _
B _ _
A . _ _
B . . .
A _ .
A _ _
etc...
3) Now, think of some dramatic subject for a scene. Maybe, a doctor breaking it to a patient they have a terminal disease. Or a husband telling his wife he is leaving her. Or a criminal confessing his crimes to a police detective.
4) Finally, you are going to use the plan you have created to create a short script. By now you may have guessed that the A and the B are character assignations e.g. criminal (A) and Detective (B). The dots represent short sentences or single word exclamations. The dashes represent any normal sentence greater than three words. So to give an example:
Criminal: Is that recording?
Detective: Everything you say in here will be recorded. So... you were telling me about McGann.
Criminal: You've got to understand that he pushed me to this. He got greedy and the greedier he got the less scruples he had. It wasn't always that way.
Detective: It wasn't? How was it before McGann got greedy?
Did you make girl scout cookies? Help old ladies with their shopping?
Criminal: No, it... Look, I'm not trying to justify anything. I just want it to be over.
Detective: I understand. It's okay. Carry on.
Criminal: McGann and I, we've been running a long time. He...
He was a good guy, back at the start. I know you guys don't think so but he was.
etc...
You can of course, do this deliberately and introduce a character C etc. Try not to think about the random part, assigning the dots and dashes, it makes a natural rhythm that mimics the way people speak as they think.
HTH
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Get a video recorder and a few friends.
Explain to your friends what the scene is about, and what you want to have happen. (Eliot and Alec walk into a bar and order a drink. They start talking about inconsequential stuff. Their friend Nate walks in and asks Eliot for the $50 Eliot owes him. Eliot says he already paid Nate. Discussion/dispute/argument ensues.)
Have everyone ad-lib until you finish the scene.
Play back the recording. Listen to it. Listen to the rhythm of human speech. Listen to the ums, the ers, the pauses, the stuttering. Listen to how people talk over each other and interrupt. Listen to how a drunk guy repeats himself and slurs his words.
Then watch it. Watch body language. Watch what happens in the silences. Watch facial expressions. Watch how the bartender reacts when Eliot gets a beer and Alec orders a gin and tonic.
Now transcribe what you heard and saw. Write down every um, every glare, every snort and gesture. Have your friends read over it and confirm or edit what you wrote.
You may or may not use exactly what you ad-libbed for the book, but it will give you an idea of how actual people speak to one another and how they move and react when they're talking.
You could do this off TV as well, but sometimes actors are working too hard at acting, and ad-libbing is more of a guarantee that you'll get spontaneous reactions.
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In a nutshell, two students talk to each other so that each speaks twice. One of them records what they said. That produces four lines of raw dialogue like this:
“Are you practicing with the band tonight?”
“Yeah, we qualified for state, so we’re doing extra time.”
“Congrats! Where’s state this year?”
“Colorado Springs. The same place we did it last year.”
The exercise is, without changing any of the dialogue, to insert thoughts, actions and descriptions so that the reader is in a scene instead of just seeing a record of speech.
It's worth reading the whole entry, for student responses.
The key here is that dialogue, and its effect, are heavily dependent on the surrounding description and action. You can play the same dialogue a dozen different ways - and trying to do that is a great exercise for understanding how to choose which way to play yours.
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