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Dialogue



Ahhh.... I adore dialogue. I love listening to the characters argue and coo and squabble and banter with each other. When you don't have the on-screen assistance of body language and facial expression to help identify a character and their moods and reactions, good dialogue is the best way to identify "Mulder" as "Mulder".

On the flip side, that naturally means that a story with bad dialogue will run me off faster than anything else. Faster even than song lyrics.

Did you read the characterization essay? Because dialogue is inextricably wound up with good characterization.

Pay attention to speech patterns.

Does the character use long, rambling sentences on-screen, or short ones?

Does the character use big words and sound highly educated (or pompous)? Do they use a lot of slang? A combination of both?

Do they use the jargon associated with their job, whether they're a cop or a doctor?

When asked a question, does the character answer it directly or give some long and winding reply that makes the asker have to wait and wait to figure out what the answer is?

Apart from those patterns , there are other dialogue considerations. No matter what you may have read here and there, Skinner is darned unlikely to call Mulder "honey" or "sweetie" even if they are Doing the Deed every day. And, if he did you can be sure that Mulder would make fun of him for it.

On the other hand, Jim from Sentinel does use nicknames so writing them for him and Blair is perfectly plausible.

Pay attention to delivery. HOW does the character talk? Do they clip off their word, or do they include pauses and stop to think in the middle of a sentence?

Is this story set in historical times? If it's Hercules, then the characters use different words than they do if it's Voyager.

Vocabulary - again. It's important. Alex does NOT sound like Mulder. They don't use the same words. And neither of them sounds like Skinner. Ideally, the reader should be able to figure out who is talking without you having to say, "Mulder said" or "Skinner snapped". Not that you don't want to include those identifiers from time to time, but if you write an exchange of six sentences and the reader can't tell by the words you use who is talking, you could improve your dialogue.

Which brings us to the "he said" and "she said" issue. Due South, we're listening to Fraser and Ray:

"What are you asking me?" He stirred the soup precisely, setting the dirty spoon down on a plate next to the burner.
"I dunno." Plates rattled on the counter, one almost falling off before his visitor caught it in mid-air. "I guess...I wanted to know how you felt about it. You know. What happened out there earlier."
He thought before he answered, the events of the evening clicking through his brain. The stakeout. The growing tension. The finale, gunshots, and finally an arrest. "Was there some difficulty with the Captain? Because if there was...."
"No." Explosively. "That's not what I'm talkin' about and you know it. I mean later." A pause, then, more quietly, "In the car. You know."
"I see." He fussed with the soup pan, arranging it more evenly on the burner. Of course. "Such events are, of course, not uncommon during times of extreme stress."

Okay, any Due South fan knows that Fraser is stirring the soup and Ray Kowalski is the one trying to break the plates. I didn't use any identifiers at all, but Ray wouldn't stir soup "precisely", nor would events "click" through his mind in that orderly fashion. And Fraser wouldn't drop plates or say "you know" in that slangy way.

You wouldn't want to do this through an entire story, you do need to identify the speaker. But you don't have to in every sentence if you have the "voices" right. You can identify the speaker without the "he said" or "she said" by the bits of business, as long as the "voice" of the speaker is still identifiable.

"What are you asking me?" Fraser stirred the soup precisely, setting the dirty spoon down on a plate next to the burner.
"I dunno." Plates rattled on the counter, one almost falling off before Ray caught it in mid-air. "I guess...I wanted to know how you felt about it. You know. What happened out there earlier."
Fraser thought before he answered, the events of the evening clicking through his brain. The stakeout. The growing tension. The finale, gunshots, and finally an arrest. "Was there some difficulty with the Captain? Because if there was...."
"No." Explosively. "That's not what I'm talkin' about and you know it. I mean later." A pause, then, more quietly, "In the car. You know."
"I see." Fraser fussed with the soup pan, arranging it more evenly on the burner. Of course. "Such events are, of course, not uncommon during times of extreme stress."
Again, no "he said" stuff, but it's even more clear who is speaking because I've identified each speaker at least once in the passage. And by identifying each speaker in this way, I've made the "business" fit smoothly into the story which, as I explained elsewhere, helps to keep your story and your people firmly grounded in a physical environment, adding a lot of texture and atmosphere to the story.
Due South fans are now picturing the two of them in Fraser's tiny kitchen -- which helps to place them in relation to each other because from the stove to the end of the counter is only five feet or less. So we know they're standing fairly close to each other. The physical positioning helps create a sense of intimacy in the reader's mind.
Okay, but sometimes, especially in longer dialogue exchanges, you WANT to write some "he said" stuff. Because how someone says something is important.
"What are you asking me?" Fraser asked carefully. He stirred the soup twelve times, clockwise, then placed the dirty spoon on the plate waiting beside the burner.
"I dunno." Plates rattled on the counter, one almost falling off before Ray caught it in mid-air. "I guess...I wanted to know how you felt about it," he said uncertainly. "You know. What happened out there earlier."
Fraser thought before he answered, the events of the evening clicking through his brain. The stakeout. The growing tension. The finale, gunshots, and finally an arrest. "Was there some difficulty with the Captain? Because if there was...."
"No," Ray snapped. "That's not what I'm talkin' about and you know it. I mean later." A pause, then, more quietly, "In the car. You know."
"I see." Fraser fussed with the soup pan, arranging it more evenly on the burner. Of course. "Such events are, of course, not uncommon during times of extreme stress."

The problem with "he saids" is that when you want to use them, you have to be careful to avoid excessive adverb usage. For instance, having Fraser ask "carefully" in the beginning of the passage is okay, but then he stirs the soup "precisely." I eliminated the precisely and managed to give the same impression of Fraser's almost-military precision and even add a bit of additional detail. You see him counting the times he stirs the soup and you can almost feel him stalling for time. At least, that's what I meant you to feel. :-)

So, you have Fraser being careful and Ray snapping. Fraser is controlled, as he is 98% of the time on-screen, and Ray's a bit unsure of himself as well...this is a new situation, obviously and he isn't certain what it means.... When Fraser tries to stall, Ray gets tense immediately, as we see so often on-screen.

Another dialogue point to remember. Characters talk differently to different people. And in different settings, they'll talk to the same person differently. Walter won't talk to Mulder in the office the same way he will talk to him in bed. Tom won't talk to Harry the same way on the holodeck that he talks to him on the bridge.