Why won't that character shut up!?

As I stated yesterday, I thought I would blog on a couple of complicated voices often found in dialog.

Stutterers / Lisps -Currently, I'm writing a mystery where one of the suspects stutters. In fact, I'm reading a mystery where one of the suspects stutters. So, I guess it's common to add stutterers to novels. However, do not get carried away. A person in real life may stutter over almost every word but your dialog doesn't need to.
What can you do?

Perhaps write one or two words in the speech as stuttered. Or, write correctly and add a tag: he stuttered.


People with accents/dialects - Have you ever read 'The Grapes of Wrath'? (See below) After reading that book in high school, for a month I spoke with a Southern accent.

Often writers tend to get carried away with writing in dialect. Can you imagine reading this for a whole novel? "Ah reckon ah don' haff ta go dowan tuh th' rivuh tuhday, 'cawse we gots awl th' feeush we gwine need." Yikes!
What can writers do? Well, if you're insistent on writing in the dialect, only use select and common words such as 'ya' for 'you' or 'an' for 'and'. Or, write in proper English but add 'she said in a strong Russian accent' somewhere. Most people know what a British or Russian or Southern accent sounds like, they don't need phonetic spelling.

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Thank you, Charmaine from Wagging Tales
for your award. The Silver Lining Award.

Tomorrow, I will give it to three others...

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Hmmm, also, if you're following me and for some reason I am not following your blog, let me know. I will correct that error immediately.

Listening to the Voices

One of the blog posts I read this morning was about characters. She asked her blog readers how they go about making each character have a distinctive voice. It made me think - long and hard - until I remembered something I read somewhere  - learn to eavesdrop!

In the modern world of technology, the next time you get asked to a party (and it may be sooner than me because of my cheesy salsa incident) take along a voice recorder. Discreetly place your cellphone (mobile) or other listening device on the table amongst the chatty Cathys and press the record button. At the end of the night, go home and listen to the recording.

Write down each person's name and their dialog. It will surprise you (or maybe not) that you will recognize each individual just by the sound of their voice. You will also notice that each person has their own speech pattern and special phrases.

That's distinctive voice.

Now, just because people have distinctive voice doesn't mean we want to write like we speak. Why? Because most of our conversation (I would say at least 50%) is filled with babble and small talk. Whereas dialog in a book should 6 elements:

• 1)It should always move the story forward
• 2)It should make sense to the reader
• 3)It should end. Who wants to read an hour's worth of conversation?
• 4)It should have a point.
• 5)It should tell us more about the character
• 6)It should be interesting and meaningful

Tomorrow I'm going to show some distinctive voice traits and how to write them so they don't irritate the reader. Enjoy the rest of your day! See you later...

 Picture Source: here

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Great post about descriptions at Random acts of Writing.

Elizabeth at Mystery Writing is Murder lists six really important questions you should ask about your plot.

Rayna, uses a great example to show how important it is to know your readers.

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Dialog: Distinctive Voice - the three Vs

Here are the three Vs (hey, that rhymes) of distinctive voice as taken from Brainstormers by James V. Smith:

1) Vocabulary - Each character should have their own vocabulary or pet phrases that separates them from the others

2) Verbosity - You should determine the length of each character's thoughts and speeches. You may not get some characters to shut up while others need prompting to say two words. Stereotypically (so it shouldn't be used much) grandmothers, women or old people go on and on while young teenage boys talk in grunts.

3) Velocity - The pace and rhythm of a characters speech  and be altered. It's in how you arrange words, sentences and ideas. One could speak without pausing for breath (maybe take out some of the commas) or one can pause often (maybe use more '...') or one could stutter (st-st-stut-tter)

Here is a good example of distinctive voices (take from Emma by Jane Austen - a conversation between Emma and Mrs. Bates):

"My mother's deafness is very trifling you see--just nothing at all.
By only raising my voice, and saying any thing two or three times over,
she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice. But it is very
remarkable that she should always hear Jane better than she does me.
Jane speaks so distinct! However, she will not find her grandmama
at all deafer than she was two years ago; which is saying a great
deal at my mother's time of life--and it really is full two years,
you know, since she was here. We never were so long without seeing
her before, and as I was telling Mrs. Cole, we shall hardly know
how to make enough of her now."

"Are you expecting Miss Fairfax here soon?"

"Oh yes; next week."

"Indeed!--that must be a very great pleasure."

"Thank you. You are very kind. Yes, next week. Every body is
so surprized; and every body says the same obliging things. I am
sure she will be as happy to see her friends at Highbury, as they
can be to see her. Yes, Friday or Saturday; she cannot say which,
because Colonel Campbell will be wanting the carriage himself one
of those days. So very good of them to send her the whole way!
But they always do, you know. Oh yes, Friday or Saturday next.
That is what she writes about. That is the reason of her writing out
of rule, as we call it; for, in the common course, we should not have
heard from her before next Tuesday or Wednesday."

"Yes, so I imagined. I was afraid there could be little chance
of my hearing any thing of Miss Fairfax to-day."

"So obliging of you! No, we should not have heard, if it had not
been for this particular circumstance, of her being to come here
so soon. My mother is so delighted!--for she is to be three months
with us at least. Three months, she says so, positively, as I
am going to have the pleasure of reading to you. The case is,
you see, that the Campbells are going to Ireland. Mrs. Dixon has
persuaded her father and mother to come over and see her directly.
They had not intended to go over till the summer, but she is so
impatient to see them again--for till she married, last October,
she was never away from them so much as a week, which must make
it very strange to be in different kingdoms, I was going to say,
but however different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent letter
to her mother--or her father, I declare I do not know which it was,
but we shall see presently in Jane's letter--wrote in Mr. Dixon's
name as well as her own, to press their coming over directly,
and they would give them the meeting in Dublin, and take them back
to their country seat, Baly-craig, a beautiful place, I fancy.
Jane has heard a great deal of its beauty; from Mr. Dixon, I mean--
I do not know that she ever heard about it from any body else;
but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak
of his own place while he was paying his addresses--and as Jane used
to be very often walking out with them--for Colonel and Mrs. Campbell
were very particular about their daughter's not walking out
often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all blame them;
of course she heard every thing he might be telling Miss Campbell
about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word
that he had shewn them some drawings of the place, views that he
had taken himself. He is a most amiable, charming young man,
I believe. Jane was quite longing to go to Ireland, from his account
of things."

Writing Dialog: Bring it on!

In my opinion, when writing fiction, there should always be conflict in dialog.

'Nice day, isn't it?'
'Oh, it sure is. The sun is a beautiful shade of yellow. Copperish, don't you think?'
'Copper would be a wonderful way to describe it. Do you know what this is?'
'No, what is it?'

It's conversation that's boring. There's no conflict, there's no point, the story isn't going anywhere.. 

How can we make our dialog sizzle?

1) Be aggressive, threaten - ('Go ahead, make my day.')

2) Be passively aggressive -submissive characters wreak havoc on dominant ones. (“No, dearest, I don’t mind picking up your socks and putting them in the wash for you,” Susan said, as she threw them in with a red shirt.)

3) Provocation - one character can taunt or dare another. ("Ron," he said. "You have to confront her now. If you don't she won't stop calling you.")

4) Use undercurrents - The words and actions or expressions do not match. (He slammed his glass down on the table. "I would love to go to Bermuda with you.")

5) Be ambiguous - Is there conflict? Isn't there? 

6) Subliminal conflict - While the two characters are engaged in innocent banter, disaster is waiting for them around the corner.

7) Word choices - there are fighting words. ("Want me to kick your butt?")

8) Sentence & Paragraph length - Shorter, abrupt sentences and paragraphs are more confrontational.

9) Repetition - Repeating key phrases add emphasis. "When I talk, you listen and you listen good."

10) Use imperatives. And in case you don't know what that means it's commands. Sit. Lie. Die. Buy. Pie. No, that last one's not really one. But I could sure use some...

And don't think that because you write sappy love stories or children's fiction that you can't have dialog with conflict... take a novel entitled The Three Billy-Goats Gruff:

"Who's that tripping over my bridge?" roared the troll .
"Oh, it is only I, the tiniest Billy Goat Gruff , and I'm going up to the hillside to make myself fat," said the billy goat, with such a small voice.
"Now, I'm coming to gobble you up," said the troll.
"Oh, no! pray don't take me. I'm too little, that I am," said the billy goat. "Wait a bit till the second Billy Goat Gruff comes. He's much bigger."
"Well, be off with you," said the troll.

Pic source: here
Source: Brainstormer

Really good writing:

I am going to post what I think is good writing...it can be in the form of books, screenplays, poems and the like.

Here's the first example: Why is it good? Because it's funny. If you saw this in a movie or book, you'd laugh. Hopefully.

Jeremy Clarkson: You know in the run up to Euro 2004, a lot of people believed that David Beckham had done some practice and been...you know, training... and they've put flags on their cars to kinda show their support for the team. Cause we were in with a shout, we thought anyway... of winning. While everyone had flags on their cars, somebody has done some research on how much drag that created. I'm not joking...

Richard Hammond: Yes?

Jeremy: Yeah seriously, he said, 'You'll lose with two flags, four break-horsepower... uh, and that means that in the run up to the tournament, 4.5 million gallons of fuel was wasted by people flying flags. I actually know the man who did this survey, okay? I will spare him his blushes and wont say his names but I will tell you he has face hair. Okay? So, I've done a calculation of my own...if a mustache weighs two grams, and we think it does...

Richard: Sounds fair enough.

Jeremy: So, if you can get into a Ford Fiesta, you will increase its weight by 0.0000036 of a percent.

Richard: With you...

Jeremy: Which means you'll increase its fuel consumption by, complicated equation here, by 0.000083 miles to the gallon. So over a year, normal mileage, your mustache is costing you an extra five pounds in fuel...

Richard: Five pounds to run a mustache for a year?

Jeremy: That is the kind of information you simply don't get on any other shows.

From: Top Gear (Series 4, Episode 7)

Okay, so why is that good writing? I should say, good dialog? Because it's natural...study it, learn from it.

This is what makes it good:

1) The speakers use contractions where possible.
2) One person may answer a question, the other replies with something complete different, ignoring the question all together...that's natural.
3) You get a real feel for the personality of the characters though their speeches.

Try taking your favorite tv show and typing out the dialog as they speak...you will really improve your dialog technique.

Dialog

I'm sure I'll post many blogs on dialog over the course of the years. It's a problem for many writers, including me.

I hate dialog where the characters speak to me rather than the other characters. Dialog is not the place to convey backstory and information the characters already know.

For example:

"Hi, Jane, what are you carrying?"

"Hello, Martha, I went to Johnson's grocery story on Fourth Street, near your house, and bought groceries. You know the place... your brother got shot in that store with a revolver five years ago, during a robbery. Remember?"

"Oh yes I remember, I went into a deep depression and had to be hospitalized for three years. They preformed shock therapy, did you know? I never thought I would make it out alive. I petitioned to the government to stop such treatment for a year and had no response."

"I helped you with that. We worked long hours, late at night to prepare signs and petitions. I hate the Republicans, they are a bunch of crooks. In 1964, the started a war that I felt never needed to be fought."

This is all made-up dialog. Nothing happened in 1964, to my knowledge. I just wanted to make a point. DON'T tell the reader information that the characters already know. It doesn't sound natural.