Writing dialogue

[minakichan]

So, I consider myself primarily a sequential artist and therefore, I'll be the first to admit that I suck pretty darn hard at writing dialogue. I feel that my lines either sound too contrived or too spontaneous-- I try emulating the speech patterns of people I hear around me, but somehow that just doesn't translate well to the page for me or I just can't capture it.

The story I'm working on now involves many distinct personalities-- almost to the point of being caricatures-- and I want their voices to be very distinguishable, but I keep falling onto cliche crutches in writing my dialogue-- the valleygirl speak, the rough guy who's al'ays speakin' wit' tons'a'postrophes, the every-other-word-is-a-curse-word type, etc. What techniques do y'all have in writing very diverse dialogue?

[EricTheFred]

So, I consider myself primarily a sequential artist and therefore, I'll be the first to admit that I suck pretty darn hard at writing dialogue. I feel that my lines either sound too contrived or too spontaneous-- I try emulating the speech patterns of people I hear around me, but somehow that just doesn't translate well to the page for me or I just can't capture it.

The story I'm working on now involves many distinct personalities-- almost to the point of being caricatures-- and I want their voices to be very distinguishable, but I keep falling onto cliche crutches in writing my dialogue-- the valleygirl speak, the rough guy who's al'ays speakin' wit' tons'a'postrophes, the every-other-word-is-a-curse-word type, etc. What techniques do y'all have in writing very diverse dialogue?

Sit down with the character and figure it out together. I'm not kidding.

I write paragraphs at a time of random speech from each character, until I have them down. I definitely have them describe themselves (this also helps me get a fix on their general personality) I might also have them describe events in the story from their point-of-view, or talk about their past, or about their opinions, feelings, etc. about other characters in the story. Eventually, I've not only got the character's voice in my head, I have a stock of extra material that might be handy at some point.

[ShiroiHikari]

Yes, doing an "interview" with your characters can really help you find their "voice".

[uc pseudonym]

To be honest, it is my general belief that people in real life aren't incredibly distinctive when it comes to dialogue. Consider everyone who has posted in this thread so far - remove context and it all sounds relatively similar. Sentence structure and word choice make up the largest differences, but these are subtle things that are not, in the end, distinctive.

As far as the usual crutches, my general rule of thumb is that a little goes a long way. If you've use an apostrophe or two per page, people will fill in how that character speaks.

I realize this isn't terribly helpful, so let me give an observation more on topic: most of the time what makes dialogue distinctive is how a person's response to something reflects their personality. It isn't that the valleygirl says "like" four times, it's that her response is cheerfully oblivious. It isn't that the rough guy says only partial words, it's that his thought on something is brief and gruff. It isn't that I use too many commas and semicolons, it's that I'm thoroughly and verbosely negative.

[minakichan]

@EricTheFred: Cool, I'll try that. I think I've kind of subconsciously been doing that with one character whose personality is pretty much plagiarized from my own, and I feel like it's been easiest to write him, so this looks like A Good Idea.

@uc: Yeah, I've been trying to <s>eavesdrop on conversations</s> listen to people talk, and it's been pretty hard for me to find really varying Stuff (although that might just be because all I've been listening to are nerds).

Observant observation is observant. I think I've been mostly relying on speech patterns because, at least in the first couple pages I've been writing, the characters don't get a chance to say much, but I need to establish a couple of groups that are pretty much completely disparate but present themselves and reacting to a situation in a similar way. Something like that. I think I'll sit down and character-study some more...