# Dialogue



## M. LeRenard (Jun 28, 2008)

(copied and pasted from way back when)
Tips on writing good dialogue:
1.) Don't write predictable responses. Example:
Man A: "Good morning."
Man B: "A good morning to you, too."
That was terribly boring, right? No tension, no progression of events. Let's try it this way instead:
Man A: "Good morning."
Man B: "Why do you keep saying that?"
Ah-hah! There's something interesting. Why is Man B in such a pissy mood? You keep reading to find out. A hook for the reader and progression of events. Much better, right? Tension is the key; stuff has got to be happening. Hell, that should be something you incorporate into things other than dialogue, too; if it doesn't progress the story somehow, it needs to be out of there.

2.) Different people from different walks of life speak differently. You may be one person as the author, but you don't want that to show in your writing. Maybe Johnny is polite and says a lot of 'shall's and 'I do not's and 'why yes's, but that doesn't mean everybody should. Johnny's friend Jack lives in the dumpster behind his house and was raised by an opossum; he's not going to talk like Johnny. It's a pretty simple concept, but a lot of authors seem to have a hard time with it.

3 v.1.01) And no, I am not giving you permission to start flinging apostrophes around to create different 'dialects'. The important things are word usage, mannerisms, catch-phrases, things like that. Maybe Laura always starts her train of thought with an 'ahem'; maybe Ashley has a habit of interspersing 'I don't know' throughout her sentences. It doesn't have to be complicated to make it interesting.

3 v 1.02) DON'T USE APOSTROPHES TO CREATE DIALECTS, EVER. It's annoying, and it makes things hard to read. If someone or other MUST have a dialect, just say that so and so has a dialect. "Good day," JÃ¥rdiÃ«gwordle said in a heavily accented voice. Perfectly sufficient to get your point across.

4.) Real people use contractions, colloquialisms, bad syntax, bad grammar, and don't speak in whole sentences. Real people lose their trains of thought, stumble over words, wave their hands around to get their points across. Real people have expressions, bodily reactions to things people say. Fictional people should talk like real people. If they don't, you've got a card-board cut-out on your hands.

5.) Most important: Dialogue is the main entryway for the reader to understand who your character is. Always keep this in mind. If you have boring dialogue, you're going to have boring characters. Simple as that.

(That's the original.  Anyone wants to add anything, go right ahead.)


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## dietrc70 (Jun 29, 2008)

Good advice.

I get confused by too many characters very easily.  One of the reasons I like Tolkien so much is that he has relatively few, and it's easy to tell who's talking.  I got completely lost when reading Rowling's later books because there were too many characters that weren't really distinctive, and I'd forget who they were.

Dialect can be good if you know the dialect you're using perfectly.  I've seen it used effectively.  Mark Twain is probably the best.

I agree about using realistic syntax and grammar for "real" people.  One of the ways I make my fox/wolf gods stand out as otherworldly and somewhat sinister is that they always speak in perfect classical English, while my human characters speak normally.


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## M. LeRenard (Jun 29, 2008)

> I get confused by too many characters very easily. One of the reasons I like Tolkien so much is that he has relatively few, and it's easy to tell who's talking.


Whaaa~t?  Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Sam Gamgee, Gandalf, Saruman, Smeagol, Smaug, Aragorn, Galadriel, Oin, Gloin, Biffur, Boffer, Bombur.... the goes on and on.  If you managed to keep all of the dwarves in The Hobbit straight, I respect you more than you can imagine.

I just found that particular sentence amusing, is all.


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## TakeWalker (Jun 29, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:


> 3 v 1.02) DON'T USE APOSTROPHES TO CREATE DIALECTS, EVER. It's annoying, and it makes things hard to read. If someone or other MUST have a dialect, just say that so and so has a dialect. "Good day," JÃ¥rdiÃ«gwordle said in a heavily accented voice. Perfectly sufficient to get your point across.



I'm really going to have to call you on this one. When did apostrophes become sinful, I ask you? :O Though the same could be said for writing an accent phonetically, isn't saying that someone has a 'heavily accented voice', even if the accent is specified, just telling? What if I've never heard a Samoan accent? What if it's an alien accent with no basis in Earth language?

Personally, if you tell me someone has an accent and then write their dialogue without any defining characteristics, I'm not going to be able to 'hear' it. Their voice is going to sound to my head just like any other character's voice. You need those oddly spelled words, the apostrophes, the bizarre turns of phrase to set up a believable mode of speech.


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## twilightiger (Jun 29, 2008)

Inferral and inflection aren't necessarily implied without the use of modifiers. Assuming your reader will understand the underlying context of a sentence without them is a far worse mistake to make than setting the wrong tone. Besides, all languages have their own unique idiosyncracies. If you want dynamic dialogue, understanding the ins and outs of syntax is one of the best ways to go.


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## lobosabio (Jun 29, 2008)

I think I'm going to have to argue with point one.  I think that to make a realistic character you are going have to sometimes use boring dialog.  For instance:

"'How are you doing?' Joe asked.
'Fine,' Ed spat back."

The dialog in and of itself is uninspired; instead, it's what comes after that catches the reader.  On top of that, it's real world stuff.  I very much doubt most people would respond to the question "How are you doing?" with something wordy.


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## dietrc70 (Jun 29, 2008)

lobosabio said:


> I think I'm going to have to argue with point one.  I think that to make a realistic character you are going have to sometimes use boring dialog.  For instance:
> 
> "'How are you doing?' Joe asked.
> 'Fine,' Ed spat back."
> ...



Actually, that's not boring.  I know that Joe and Ed know each other pretty well, and Ed in probably NOT doing "fine," and so I want to know what happens next.

You've got a good point, Le Renard.  I guess what makes LOTR easier for me is that the characters are introduced slowly, and developed very well.  I can often tell who is speaking just by what they are saying and how they say it.  A lot of fantasy/sci-fi has a lot of characters, and they often speak in similar ways or lack memorable personalities, so I lose track.

For me, a sign of really good character development is being able to tell who's talking even if the author doesn't identify the speaker:  Yeah, obviously that's Gandalf--only he talks like that; hmm, nervous and humourous--probably Pippin.  Varying grammar and style can be pretty useful, say if contrasting a very literate character to one who is more informal in their use of language.



"I'm...  I'm sorry."

_Do not be so foolish.  You have done well, as you have said.  As for myself, I am a Fox, and care not for the sorrow of Men._


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## Roose Hurro (Jun 30, 2008)

I have to disagree with point three, as well.  I have a mated couple with a very young daughter, whose dialog is very non-standard and filled with childish turns of phrase:  _"Momma, I's a'thirsty... canna haves some nosey bubbles?"_  This is her, asking for a soda.  Using broken words... marking with apostrophes... creating new words or twisting familiar words by using them in non-standard (new) ways... well, that's part of writing creatively, in a way people can easily read and understand.  Remember, you don't want your reader to have to stop and think about the words, or how they're structured.  You want them to stay immersed in the story.  Just take my above quote as an example.  Was it easy to read?  Was it easy to understand?  Yes?  No?


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## Toonces (Jul 1, 2008)

Better advice is just to not do dialogue, ever, cause it's dumb.


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## kitreshawn (Jul 1, 2008)

There are some other things I would throw into this:

1) It is always easier to write dialogue giving everyone the same voice at first then giving them each their distinct characteristics during a later edit.  This lets you get your ideas for the conversation out up front without having to worry about characters which lets you actually move through the story more quickly.  Just be sure you remember to go back and edit.

2) Don't be afraid to summarize conversations!  There are some parts of a conversation that are so standardized it is not necessary to put them in dialogue.  Good examples are greetings and good-byes.  For example, you could do:



Just as I was about to leave the phone started to ring.

"Hello?  Who is it?" I asked when I answered.

"It's me," said the fimilar voice of my friend, Johnie.


But that takes forever and you could instead go with:



The phone started to ring just as I was about to leave.  It was my childhood friend, Johnie, calling to ask where I was.



This is much better because it is quicker, everyone knows how the beginnings of conversations go, and I've actually told you MORE with fewer words.  You can also do this sort of thing for long conversations like the ones that might happen in a car during a road trip.  A good rule of thumb is that if the dialogue seems boring you should probably try summarizing it instead.  Oh, and it is perfectly fine to go from actual dialogue to summarization (and back!) if you do it correctly.


3) Avoid using phonetic spellings.  If you do use them be careful because most of the time they are poorly done and become confusing to readers.  Slang is another good thing to avoid in most cases.

4) Probably 80-90% of the time you should only be using said, asked, replied, answered, and told when you are doing dialogue sign posting.  Often times I see a lot of new writers start throwing in things like exclaimed or shouted or some other nonsense all over the place.  These really weaken your work and make every character seem overly energetic and excitable.  Most normal people generally just SAY stuff.

If you feel like you are doing too much he said/she said stuff you can try spicing it up in other ways.  Show the character doing something as they speak instead of putting he/she said.  This has an added benefit of breaking up the dialogue for the reader so something else is happening.

And be especially careful with things like growled or snarled or hissed.  Make sure that what is being said is possible to say that way.  For example you cannot hiss a word without any S's (to a lesser degree F's can work... a little).  Go ahead and try to hiss this:  "I wouldn't do that if I were you!"  Doesn't work too good does it?

5) Regardless of what you think your story will have dialogue so you might as well learn how to write it well.  Either you have several characters, in which case they will need to speak to each other, or you have one character who will be thinking about stuff (internal dialogue), or you are in the first person in which case you are speaking to the reader (again, a type of dialogue).  Just remember each is handled differently.

EDIT:

6) I am going to have to disagree with Renard on his point 4 (or at the very least, clarify).  Real people do talk with bad grammar and so forth but your dialogue should avoid most of this!  Read most books dialogue out loud.  It does not sound anything like what people talk like.  That is because the way people reason things out is different for what they read and what they hear.  If I were to transcribe a real conversation into a story exactly the way the characters actually said it it would be confusing to read.

Perhaps this is nit-picking since I consider dialogue everything inside quotation marks with everything else being actions or descriptions, but it is worth saying.  The worst thing you can do is have your characters dialogue (again, the stuff inside quotes) be written so that when read out loud it sounds like a real conversation.  Put most clearly, in the words of one of my teachers (as best as I can remember):

"Written dialogue is never a faithful rendering of the way human beings speak.  It can be poetic like Shakespeare or have the vernacular of the Mississippi Valley in the 1840's like in Huckleberry Finn.  Both avoid hesitations, reiterations, repetitions, false starts, meanderings, aborted phrases, and a whole slew of other meaningless dead wood that is the hallmark of real human conversation and renders it less compelling.  The most compelling things ever said are nearly always scripted and lack all these "conversational" hallmarks.  Read or listen to a transcript of testimony or conversation then compare it to any author's dialogue and you will quickly realize that fictional dialogue is only an APPROXIMATION of real human speech that has been shaped, pointed, rounded, and concentrated to fit the writer's needs."  (or something to that effect)

Basically if you have written your dialogue like a real conversation you haven't created life like characters.  Instead you have created weak conversations for your characters that weaken your story as a whole and likely failed in your task to create a compelling conversation.  This is not to say you should never use some of the conversational hallmarks listed above, but it is best to know WHY you are using them, if what you are trying to accomplish can be done another way, and to use them as sparingly as possible.  Think of it kind of like adding salt to a dish.  You sprinkle it on top, just a little bit.  You don't dump it on by the cup full.


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## Chanticleer (Jul 1, 2008)

I'm not sure I can get behind any kind of list of rules for dialogs.

Don't get me wrong you make several valid points, but the problem is that dialogue is a very complicated medium often used for several different reasons in a story.

Take your first rule: 


1.) Don't write predictable responses.

Now the second I saw that I thought of one of my favorite books, "The Grapes of Wrath" In the book Steinbeck used predictable dialogue to ease you in and out of scenes and to give the narrative a realistic feel. 

A rule like that is just too general to work in all situations.


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## M. LeRenard (Jul 8, 2008)

Internet back... had some technical difficulties for a moment there.


To address the issue with point three... honestly, it's a pet peeve of mine.  I hate it when authors start flinging apostrophes all over the place to try to get an accent across.  I think there are other ways to do it without them that would lead to a lot less confusion.
But I might just be saying this because I once tried to wade through one of Brian Jacques' books, and the fact that every other creature has some code you have to decipher in order to understand them made me rather edgy indeed.  I think this will fall under the following point I'm going to make.


> I'm not sure I can get behind any kind of list of rules for dialogs.


I think it should be noted at this point that any of these things I post don't contain any 'rules' for writing, because, frankly, there are no 'rules' in writing.  If you want to screw with the basics, go right ahead: just make sure you know what the basics are and how to screw with them correctly.  So these aren't rules; they're suggestions.

I'll get back to the rest of the responses maybe tonight... I've got sort of a limited internet capability right now.  Thanks for the interest, though.
Ciao for the time being.


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## Gren (Jul 8, 2008)

Just to add my two bits to this conversation.

I largely agree with M. Le Renard, especially on the subject of accents. For myself, the thing I believe is most important in any piece of writing (in dialogue or out) is that it be readable: if I can't tell what's being said, then I'm not going to care about the character's accent, or anything else. For my own writing, I am willing to tone down any other element to make sure that the writing is clear.



Roose Hurro said:


> _"Momma, I's a'thirsty... canna haves some nosey bubbles?"_



(I think you actually meant noisy bubbles? Though I've not found soda to be very noisy, myself.)

Taking the above as a example, if I had found this in a story, I would not have realized the child was asking for a soda. If a story has a lot of dialogue like this I would probably lose track of what was going on and give up reading. I'd be more inclined to word it thusly:

_"Momma, I is thirsty; can have bubble drink?"_

Which, being composed of regular words, is much easier to read, but still has a broken feel to it (though, I admit, not as much). This is, of course, presuming that one intends the reader to understand the dialogue. If its not supposed to be understood, than it ranks with including dialogue in foreign languages, which some people find extremely annoying.


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## Roose Hurro (Jul 8, 2008)

Gren... no, the proper word _is_ "... nosey bubbles."  Nose-y, not noise-y...haven't you ever had soda bubbles "tingle" your nose?  The whole thing I've tried to do with this child character's speech is give her something unique and defining as a person.  Her other favorite expression is "Pleasey cheese?"... when asking for something.  But, she is relatively new, so she's still a work-in-progress.  I might come up with something better, but... for now... I think this confusing nature to her speech fits.  I've even used her parents to clarify things she says... when she asked for "nosey bubbles", her father told the lady behind the counter to add a root beer to their drink order.  Really, dialog is better understood in context, so my bringing an example out of context probably didn't help.


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## Gren (Jul 8, 2008)

Roose Hurro said:


> haven't you ever had soda bubbles "tingle" your nose?



No, I haven't.



Roose Hurro said:


> Really, dialog is better understood in context, so my bringing an example out of context probably didn't help.



True, context can provide a lot more information, especially if someone else is effectively restating the line of dialogue. I still wouldn't be fond of it, but it would be clearer.


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## Roose Hurro (Jul 8, 2008)

Gren said:


> No, I haven't.



Next time you drink a soda, try drinking it fast....




Gren said:


> True, context can provide a lot more information, especially if someone else is effectively restating the line of dialogue. I still wouldn't be fond of it, but it would be clearer.



Let's just say such a method has its risks... and what I do is not restating so much as having the characters actions, the setting, and other character responses working together to point the way... or something like that... ummm... I think....


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## Muawiyah Hirate (Jul 9, 2008)

I admit, I've been guilty of using apostrophes in excess to denote a specific accent, but it's a habit I've long since grown out of. Now, I just write things out phonetically, a lot like Lovecraft or Zora N. Hurston. 
I writes it as I hears it, yessuh.
However, I will pollute dialogue with apostrophes on one specific occasion:
When it deals with Romanizing a language.
Arabic is a prime example.
Romanized Arabic tends to have quite a lot of apostrophes in it. Mainly because Arabic is a very poetic language with a lot of glottal stops, which are represented with apostrophes. It's the only time I've used it recenty, and it's considered "proper fom" to represent Arabic glottal stops with apostrophes.

And there really is no way to "learn how to write dialogue", it's not something you pick up and read a book about. What I've found to be effective is to "people watch". Head to the local mall or wherever your local place of mass congregation is. Grab a pair of polarized sungalsses, have a seat and listen. If you must, take notes. But that's how I would do it; listen to how people talk in order to write hafway decent dialogue.


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## M. LeRenard (Jul 9, 2008)

> I am going to have to disagree with Renard on his point 4 (or at the very least, clarify).


I don't in any way mean write out transcripts for dialogue.  After having taken a class in 'orality' in French, I became quite aware of how utterly confusing and complicated it would be to write everybody's dialogue like that.  BUT: you also don't want to write everything so that it sounds completely scripted.  J.R.R. Tolkien pulled that kind of thing off, but that's because he's J.R.R. Tolkien and was an expert on all things linguistics, whereas the average writer is going to be using plain ol' knowledge; as such, he should write dialogue as he hears it.  But in an artful manner.  Don't have John the average salesman say "I am very glad you came into my shop on this lovely day", because he's more likely to say "Happy you decided to come on in here, bud.  Nice day for it, too."  Note the lack of good grammar in the second makes it sound a hell of a lot better, but it's not quite a transcript.
It's something I think you should do more than just 'sprinkle', but yes--it goes without saying, I think, that you shouldn't overdo it.


> But that's how I would do it; listen to how people talk in order to write hafway decent dialogue.


Or perhaps just use this experience to get a general feel for it, which is really all you need.  And pay more attention during conversations you have with others, then take what you hear in these situations and turn it into a work of art.



> I think I'm going to have to argue with point one. I think that to make a realistic character you are going have to sometimes use boring dialog


Well, but in a sense what you've got there isn't boring dialogue.  It would be boring if you replaced 'spat' with 'said', certainly, but the 'spat' gives it something else.  Mostly I just mean that you shouldn't have any dialogue that doesn't add anything to the story.  And that's where the aforementioned shortening of conversations comes in handy (whoever posted that... late and tired and can't remember half of what I just read).


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## Anbessa (Sep 1, 2008)

I think I can add a few things to this discussion.

one thing to keep in mind is, don't have them utter out complicated, overly long, sentences (unless you want to describe a genius scientist describe something complicated, but within a story readers would pass out while trying to sort it out), because no normal being speaks like that. I have read dialogues where I, as a reader, ran out of breath because of endless sentences. they also failed to bring the point across (aka. further the story), thus rendering them useless.

another thing is to loosen up dialogues by having the characters do something inbetween, like sipping a drink before speaking, scratching the head, stepping lively sotosay. so every say we, three or four sentences something like this might be helpful. especially since soem authors can lose track of who said what, and attribute a sentence to the wrong character after eight or ten exchanges. I have seen this several times over the years, and while I was trying to figure out who said what I had to re-read it multiple times, only to find out the author lost track, too.

if you want your readers to understand what is actually being said (unless context clarifies it; if it's not important there is no reason to confuse readers with it), avoid heavy slang, especially if it uses different words, grammar, and spelling. not everybody out there is native english speaking (although many americans seem to think like that), and much less are familiar with say we, gangsta speak. or maybe sailor idioms, if you wanna be more classical, gov'nor. such subcultural languages are annoying, and a pet peeve to many people, since nobody else understands 'em, knowhutimsayin?
hell, they even thought about teaching german subculture idiom at school. o my, we ran out of more important problems to solve, didn't we?

just my â‚¬2.95 ^^


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 1, 2008)

> if you want your readers to understand what is actually being said (unless context clarifies it; if it's not important there is no reason to confuse readers with it), avoid heavy slang, especially if it uses different words, grammar, and spelling. not everybody out there is native english speaking (although many americans seem to think like that), and much less are familiar with say we, gangsta speak. or maybe sailor idioms, if you wanna be more classical, gov'nor. such subcultural languages are annoying, and a pet peeve to many people, since nobody else understands 'em, knowhutimsayin?


I'm actually gonna' have to stick up for Americans on this one.  The chances that you get published in this country are pretty low, which makes the chances that your book is going to be popular enough to start sending copies overseas even lower, almost zero.  For that reason, most American writers don't write with 'I sure hope this is understandable to a native speaker of Swahili' in the backs of their heads.  The target audience is always Americans, and all Americans are familiar with these kinds of idioms (or at least can guess what they mean).
I would expect the target audience for Germans publishers would be Germans, and hence there would be a similar amount of German idioms that no one else would understand.  Not the case?


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## kitreshawn (Sep 1, 2008)

Slang is fine so long as it is not really obscure slang.  For instance there should be few problems with using "Gimme" or the like.  Even vulgar slang is fine so long as it is common (though sometimes vulgarity of any sort can turn off a publisher).

What should be more importaint to keep in mind is culture specific things.  This is because even your culture changes so rapidly that if your story is not read in the context of that culture it looses meaning.  The best example I have of this is a story where the main character visits a friend's house  and finds the friend's wife has the whole bathroom medicine cabinet stocked with the same brand of soap bars.  Reading that today just makes the wife sound really weird, but at the time the story was published (during the age of Leave it to Beaver) this implied the wife was easily influenced since in early TV shows all the products a wife used were for sale and she would always have her home stocked in such an insane way in order to ensure the audience noticed the product.


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## Anbessa (Sep 2, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:


> I'm actually gonna' have to stick up for Americans on this one.  The chances that you get published in this country are pretty low, which makes the chances that your book is going to be popular enough to start sending copies overseas even lower, almost zero.  For that reason, most American writers don't write with 'I sure hope this is understandable to a native speaker of Swahili' in the backs of their heads.  The target audience is always Americans, and all Americans are familiar with these kinds of idioms (or at least can guess what they mean).
> I would expect the target audience for Germans publishers would be Germans, and hence there would be a similar amount of German idioms that no one else would understand.  Not the case?



of course, US stories are for the US market solely, I can understand that. what I meant is heavily subculture-related slang which wouldn't be understood one block down Main Street. there ain't no prob with everyday slang terms; everybody who follows US literature for a brief moment knows them. like, short stories published in the 'net.
but, since the market is saturated everyhwere chances are high an author will publish say we, first chapter for download, and have people order the complete book via say we, lulu.com. and if people from overseas can't comprehend what your characters said even though they might be fluent in english you'd severly cut down the number of audience yourself.

as for german dialects, they can use an entirely different set of grammar and wording rules, up to the point were it becomes an entirely language of it's own within german; and of course, barely anybody else understands it. this is also a part of culture, and shouldn't be used in any published work that's meant for the whole german language area.
there are exceptions, though, as for some issues of Asterix the Gaul being published in a number of german dialects. it worked surprisingly well, but only if the reader has the dialect "in the ear", or else the sense of disbelief will be destroyed. they also provided a dictionary, which shows how different dialects can be...

english language is somewhat international. if you can speak it, chances are high you won't be lost in a foreign country. now, with german it wouldn't be as easy, really. so, if you want to publish literature to be read and comprehended by everybody sotosay, both sides should be on the same level, somehow. or else you could write it in Swahili, which not many people outside of central africa would be able to read.... I'm not expecting any author to go down on my level of english, but it should be a bit more common than gangsta speak. so, if I can't translate it myself I can at least understand intuitively what's been said.


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## dietrc70 (Sep 2, 2008)

Muawiyah Hirate said:


> I admit, I've been guilty of using apostrophes in excess to denote a specific accent, but it's a habit I've long since grown out of. Now, I just write things out phonetically, a lot like Lovecraft or Zora N. Hurston.
> I writes it as I hears it, yessuh.
> However, I will pollute dialogue with apostrophes on one specific occasion:
> When it deals with Romanizing a language.
> ...



Hebrew is exactly the same way.   I think both our readers probably would prefer apostrophes than having us use Hebrew and Arabic characters!


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## ScottyDM (Sep 10, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:


> 3 v 1.02) DON'T USE APOSTROPHES TO CREATE DIALECTS, EVER. It's annoying, and it makes things hard to read. If someone or other MUST have a dialect, just say that so and so has a dialect. "Good day," JÃ¥rdiÃ«gwordle said in a heavily accented voice. Perfectly sufficient to get your point across.


Monsieur, do you mean to suggest I rewrite John's dialog in the following example? It is only an early draft, so I need to edit. Clue: Cheri is playing the part of "dumb animal" and does not speak, and Dirk and Hope have given her the name Squeaky.


> ... Cheri took a step back. _I am serene in my fur, at one with nature. I am not embarrassed._ She lifted her chin.
> 
> Hope was half-way through the door and she glanced back at Cheri. â€œWell come on, donâ€™t be shy.â€ She stepped through the door and pulled Cheri in behind her. The two men were sitting on the couch waiting.
> 
> ...


Story takes place in the southwest corner of Virgina, pretty close to West Virgina, but the characters come from all over that part of the country. It'd probably be useful to actually study a few dialects from that region.

When trying to give different characters different voices, I've found it useful to mark each character's dialog and internal monologue in a different color. Then read only that color. That is, skip everything that is not the exact words or thoughts of a particular character. Read it aloud too. Try to find that character's rhythm and the flow of their words. Haven't done that to this story yet.

Scotty


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## Poetigress (Sep 10, 2008)

ScottyDM said:


> Story takes place in the southwest corner of Virgina, pretty close to West Virgina, but the characters come from all over that part of the country. It'd probably be useful to actually study a few dialects from that region.



Uh... yeah, I think it would.  I grew up in Virginia (sort of central western, but rural) and now live in West Virginia, and while I'm sure there are some people who talk like John in both states, accents that broad make me wince.  If you mean John to come across as a stereotype of an ignorant hillbilly or some relation to Larry the Cable Guy, that's what he's sounding like to my ear.  If that isn't your intention, I'd pay more attention to turns of phrase, grammar, and the like (more like Dirk's "She don't need clothes") and less to broad pronunciation of individual words ("gee-nomes" and so on).  In general, a lighter touch.

Also, you have "You outta put some clothes on her" -- I would pronounce that as "out - a", like the word "out," the way it's spelled here.  You might want "oughta" instead.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 10, 2008)

> Monsieur, do you mean to suggest I rewrite John's dialog in the following example?


Yes.  Mostly because of what PT said, that being because it makes the character sound like a moonshiner from the Ozarks.
You're only responding to this thread because I used apostrophes to make a dialect of sorts in my entry to your contest, aren't you?  This thread was in the back of my mind the whole time I was writing it.  In any case, I used apostrophes rather sparingly; just enough to get the point across.  I'm coming to realize, though, that saying you shouldn't EVER write dialects like that is a bit confining, so allow me to revise that statement:
3 v1.02) Don't EVER throw apostrophes around like confetti in order to create a dialect.  When your characters start talking like this: "'Owdy, y'all!  Ah'm dun gla' 'appih tah see 'uh!  Hur hur!" people are going to start getting annoyed with you.

I also don't think you need to misspell words to get a pronunciation across, though.  "Git" is just how the word "get" is pronounced in certain parts of the United States.  If you make the dialect clear through other means, people should automatically think the guy is saying it like "git".  Context, in other words.


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## ScottyDM (Sep 10, 2008)

Poetigress said:


> Uh... yeah, I think it would.  I grew up in Virginia (sort of central western, but rural) and now live in West Virginia, and while I'm sure there are some people who talk like John in both states, accents that broad make me wince.  If you mean John to come across as a stereotype of an ignorant hillbilly or some relation to Larry the Cable Guy, that's what he's sounding like to my ear.  If that isn't your intention, I'd pay more attention to turns of phrase, grammar, and the like (more like Dirk's "She don't need clothes") and less to broad pronunciation of individual words ("gee-nomes" and so on).  In general, a lighter touch.


Needs a touch of refinement. Got it!

I feel John is a bit more broadly traveled than some "country bumkin" and should probably sound a little less like I've written him. I have another character who's pretty much come straight from the holler and she should sound like she's her own grandma (to misquote a famous song). I need to do Georgia too.

There's not a lot of info on the web about how a particular region of the country speaks, how they construct sentences, etc. But I did find these on the PBS site: http://www.pbs.org/speak/ http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/ Unfortunately, they only skim the surface. There's a book too, but if I remember correctly it's quite expensive.

I've my work cut out for me.



Poetigress said:


> Also, you have "You outta put some clothes on her" -- I would pronounce that as "out - a", like the word "out," the way it's spelled here.  You might want "oughta" instead.


More better! Thanks. 



M. Le Renard said:


> You're only responding to this thread because I used apostrophes to make a dialect of sorts in my entry to your contest, aren't you?


Actually... no. I posted that because I disagreed with your blanket, absolute statement.



M. Le Renard said:


> I also don't think you need to misspell words to get a pronunciation across, though.  "Git" is just how the word "get" is pronounced in certain parts of the United States.  If you make the dialect clear through other means, people should automatically think the guy is saying it like "git".  Context, in other words.


Yes and no. There's a real danger that in misspelling a word you could create collisions with other words and badly confuse your readers, but some misspellings work. E.g. your example, although my electronic dictionary says it's a real word in the U.K. 





> An offensive term for somebody regarded as annoying, troublesome, unpleasant, or thoughtless (informal insult).


Context should separate the two uses. "Git that dang blasted git outta here!"  Okay, no one would say that.


I still regard myself as a baby writer and I reserve the right to change my mind. 

Scotty


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## dietrc70 (Sep 11, 2008)

Just wanted to mention if you're interested in Ozark dialect, a famous folklorist named Vance Randolph did a lot of research on it early this century.  You can probably find some of his books in a public library.  If you have access to the online database Jstor, you can get his original papers on grammar, pronunciation, etc.

For example:  "If I had taken"==>"Ef I had of tuck"
"He caught it."==>"He ketched it."

Dialect can really make dialogue come to life, but it is one of those things you need to research, otherwise your characters run the risk of sounding like bad Hollywood stereotypes.


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## ScottyDM (Sep 20, 2008)

Ladle Rat Rotten Hut (Little Red Riding Hood) in the Anguish languish (English language).

Enjoy! Or not.

Scotty


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## Anbessa (Sep 20, 2008)

this... hurts. I couldn't read past the furst foo paragraphs, but I'se got ye feelings not a single word is spelled as it should be, groin-murder.

interesting, still. I can barely make out what's been meant, but only because I know the story.


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## ScottyDM (Sep 22, 2008)

Yea, it does hurt!

I posted that link as a prime example of what NOT to do.  


Scotty


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