Writing Exercise: Learn to Write Good Dialogue
Today's fiction is driven by dialogue. When checking
dialogue, a good rule of thumb is to have a friend or family
member read the entire conversation without dialogue tags. It
should be easy to hear who is talking, and follow the cadence of
the conversation.
New writers are frustrated when asking a friend or family
member to read a conversation from their book, because it never
sounds right. This is a common problem. The writer does not read
the dialogue they write, they hear the characters carry on the
conversation in their minds. A family member can try to read the
conversation, but without the characters talking in their heads,
it is impossible to have the words make sense.
There are several ways to fix this problem. One is by
associating words with emotions. This is quite common in our
society. What character image comes into your head if you heard
a woman's voice exclaim "gosh?" Now, what image of a man would
come into your head if you heard a male's voice say "gosh?" Now,
change the male's voice to "No!" and the character sketch in
your head changes.
Instructions
This is the kind of exercise you can do while watching
television, listening to a conversation, or in a brainstorming
session at your computer. It is a fun one to do with your
friends. It is amazing how everyone can come up with different
words, but everyone knows whether a man or woman would say them
and how they would be feeling.
Important: Do not use dialogue tags or body language.
Exercise:
1) Think about a character. Give them a gender, age, job,
education level, and put them in a room all by themselves.
2) Have someone come into the room and make your character
angry.
3)Start writing down what they would say. Keep writing until
you have exhausted every possibility.
4) Now, change the character's gender, but leave everything
else the same.
5) Read what you have written.
6) Make a list of the words and phrases that you would
associate with your character.
Note: At first, it will be hard to separate the
character's dialogue from your own. If this seems to be a major
problem then do this exercise while watching television, and
collect a list of angry words. Having problems with this
exercise can have nothing to do with your creativity, and
everything to do with your personality type. A passive, laid
back person will have more trouble with this exercise than an
expressive extroverted person.
Next:
Now try this exercise and list angry words that are associated
with gender, education level, age, social status, and more.
If you need more help, feel free to ask a question in the forum.
Suzanne
