# Writing Distinct Dialogue for Characters (1 Viewer)



## Guy Faukes (Nov 30, 2014)

Hey forum,

I gots to ask: how do you write distinct dialogue for each character and make each sound unique?

I have a problem with each character reading more or less the same. The dialogue flows and is structured well and logical, but they could read like the same person talking to themselves. Part of the problem is that they're a new and not entirely formed in my mind, and there is so much information that needs to be conveyed that they inevitably are monotone. 

There are some superficial things like accents, vocab, slang, tendencies that help color each character, but do you have any techniques that you apply to how each person shapes and reacts to the conversation?


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## InstituteMan (Nov 30, 2014)

People of different ages talk differently, and they certainly have different vocabularies. Men and women sometimes talk a little differently, with different phrasings, different pacings, and different metaphors. A timid person may use round about phrasing, but a confident person may be direct. Some people are rude and vulgar, but some are discrete and considered. Mostly, I have to spend some time with my characters to figure out how they'll talk.


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## T.S.Bowman (Nov 30, 2014)

Guy Faukes said:


> Hey forum,
> 
> I gots to ask: how do you write distinct dialogue for each character and make each sound unique?



I'm not entirely sure that I don't have that problem as well. I suppose I would have to ask one of the people who has read the stuff I've been working on.


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## Pluralized (Nov 30, 2014)

I never thought to worry about it. The characters are talking to one another and it just happens organically, and the focus is what is happening to and around them. There's a trap when you start trying too hard to identify everyone with dialects and different mannerisms. Might be useful in certain stories but can come off as a shtick or gimmick if you're not careful. 

Brings to mind the recent thread about dialogue attributions and the use of body movements and observations between segments of dialogue (in lieu of just 'he said,' etc.). Could be a good way to differentiate their characteristics as you move through the scene.


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## TKent (Nov 30, 2014)

The longer the work, the harder this is for me. On my novel WIP, I track things like slang, profanity, etc. that a particular character uses.  I guess you'd say I assign them specific habits, slang, profanity. One has a tendency not to completely pronounce his words, so I've noted that since I forget to do it. That way, I can go back and do a check when I revise/edit.


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## ppsage (Nov 30, 2014)

Write some practice passages from each character's point of view where they say in their own words what they think and feel about the discussed point, and where they also paraphrase, with attitude (not necessarily disdainful), what the others have said to them. The vocabulary needed to distinguish each will be embedded there, it just needs teasing out. Once it's found, it will take a certain amount of repetition to become characteristic.


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## Sam (Nov 30, 2014)

In the current novel I'm working on, I have a soldier who loses his temper a lot. It's conveyed through angry outbursts of dialogue. I have a character who is a psychologist. He uses a lot of medical terms and has a broad vocabulary. I have another soldier who's a Latino. He speaks Spanish words. I have a colonel who's commander of the team. His dialogue is like the smoke off dried ice; he remains cool and collected at nearly all times. I have a woman who is something of a manipulative bitch; she is forever telling people what they want to hear so she can get what she wants. 

Dialogue isn't just about what words you see on a page. It's about the tone, strength, and impact of those words. Somebody lacking in confidence or being soft-spoken is going to probably hesitate. Their dialogue may be sprinkled with an ellipsis here and there. Someone of weaker character than someone else might constantly be interrupted. Someone who loses their temper might be feared by other characters. Someone who constantly complains will be ignored. 

All of these characteristics play a role in establishing the differences in dialogue.


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## hvysmker (Nov 30, 2014)

I believe the best way is to run your characters through a casual conversation. Maybe about the weather, something simple.  Let them alternate at random through half a page or so. You'll probably find a few differences right away.  Then go over it, changing a few words for each of them.  

Nothing drastic.  On something like dialects some writers go overboard. All you need are a few simple words.  One, for instance, might use "like" in every other sentence, or "man".  One might use proper English, another us "an" instead of "and" in every incidence.  One might drop "g"s, such as takin' instead of taking.''

Also, as brought up already, use a lot of action. Not in the form of speech tags,  but between sentences.

You need occasional speech tags, especially if more than two people are speaking at random, but not many.

After studying that conversation, making a few changes and reading it over a few times, you'll have it down pat.  Once you're thinking in those terms, writing it correctly will be a breeze and come naturally.

Charlie


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## garza (Nov 30, 2014)

The only way to write good dialogue is to listen to how people talk, the words they use, the little oddities of speech. Use public transport whenever possible and listen to the conversations around you. Best if you can get a seat two or three rows from the back of a city bus. Ride around town and listen. Replay the conversations in you mind as you hear them, then write them down when you get home.


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## TheYellowMustang (Nov 30, 2014)

For me it helps to write the dialogue as a script in a separate document first. I have pages and pages of conversations like that lying around, most of them useless now since I only wrote them to get to know the characters better (as individuals, or to figure out what kind of chemistry they have together). Oh! And I sometimes "steal" voices I know well for my characters. One character in my WIP, in my head she talks just like Liv Tyler. When I imagine that soft, feminine voice it changes the tone of my writing. I think. I hope. 

I rarely learn much from watching people talk in real life to be honest. I try to learn from movies though. Actors are usually pretty consistent in their body language since they're portraying a character.


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## Kyle R (Dec 1, 2014)

I think, besides knowing your characters' personalities and manners of speaking (which I agree is very useful to know!), it's also vital to know the _motivations_ of each character in your story.

A woman trying to find her missing daughter won't likely spend her time talking about the weather, whereas a meteorologist who's concerned about an approaching storm likely _will_.

Knowing the goals and motivations of our characters can help us build dialogue that's genuine to them.

Actors are always asking, "What's my character's motivation?" In my opinion, we as writers should always be asking the same thing. :encouragement:


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## hvysmker (Dec 1, 2014)

Sam said:


> In the current novel I'm working on, I have a soldier who loses his temper a lot. It's conveyed through angry outbursts of dialogue.



I'm slightly off subject here, but Sam caught my attention:

That alone  tells me a lot about the character.  Namely that he isn't trusted, but is probably respected.  His superiors wouldn't trust him to lead others because he might go wild and not act logically.  he wouldn't be a  team player. 

His peers wouldn't want to hang around with him because he might turn on them, and probably has on others.  He'd be a loner, most likely an embittered loner.

Sometimes it doesn't take much to stereotype a character.  That can be used to your advantage. In one novel I have a small woman who escapes a group of rapists.  She's taken in by a group of survivors in an end of civilization setting.  

While they're sitting around developing a strategy to take care of the villains, they notice the victim is missing, along with a pistol.

She'd taken the gun, gone back, and slaughtered her rapists.  That act certainly showed her character. "It was easy," she told them. "I had a gun and they didn't."

In another story, a former Special Forces soldier is shown to be a coward, leaving the position of MC to a woman.  He's still useful because of his size, strength, and training.

Sometimes you want to change stereotypes. 

Charlie


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## garza (Dec 1, 2014)

The YellowMustang - Movie talk is rarely real-life talk. I'm from the southern U.S., and I've never seen a movie that accurately reproduced any southern dialect. And you can't 'watch' people speak. You must listen with half-closed eyes but wide-awake ears, paying close attention to the words used and to how they are used. Listen to how a person uses contractions. You mention that actors are consistent with body language, but it's not body language you're after. On the bus or in the street or in a bar I don't watch the people speak, I listen and make mental notes.

This is why I cannot write about a place I've never been. If I haven't been there, I can't know how the people sound, what words they use, how they use words, what rhythm they have in their speech. I can't create two characters speaking the same dialect - and all speech is dialect - but with the little differences that identify the two voices so that the reader has no problem sorting out who is speaking. My writing is dialogue heavy, so listening to how people talk is essential research.


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## Sam (Dec 1, 2014)

> Movie talk is rarely real-life talk.



And real-life talk is rarely novel dialogue . . . and shouldn't be.


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## Nemesis (Dec 1, 2014)

Sam said:


> And real-life talk is rarely novel dialogue . . . and shouldn't be.



Because novel dialogue tends to be deeper, wittier, and sexier?  ;D


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## Sam (Dec 1, 2014)

Noxicity said:


> Because novel dialogue tends to be deeper, wittier, and sexier?  ;D



No, because most people in real life talk like morons.


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## John Galt (Dec 1, 2014)

Novel dialogue isn't supposed to be real-life talk, but it should feel like it. 
In my current WIP, each of my characters focuses on different things. One is entirely confident in his plans and just tramples over any problems the other characters indicate. One indicates the problems, and the other indicates the consequences (meekly, and concerned with the number of other people who could die). I break this at certain places to make it feel less formulaic, but it seems to work for the most part, at least for me. 
I have some side characters that speak differently; a drunkard, a boy that says "yer" instead of your, etc. 
I think dialogue should be indicative of the character(s) delivering it. If one isn't confident, he/she wouldn't say "Let's go! It'll work, I know it." in most cases. (doesn't mean they _cant _at all)


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## Deleted member 56686 (Dec 1, 2014)

I think you just have to try to get in the head of each character. Where is he/she from? What is the intellect? How does he/she react to situations, etc. I think with that you can pretty well figure out how the dialogue will go.


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## queenslime (Dec 1, 2014)

I sometimes interview my characters to get the feel how they'd talk and react to everyday conversations, and figure out their manners of speech through that. If I ever get lost and 'lose' someone's 'voice' I just reread those to get back on track. 

But it really depends on the character's background, someone from the UK won't use the same expressions as someone from the US for example.


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## Jeko (Dec 1, 2014)

How do I make characters sound unique? I make them unique. Then I just let them talk the way they want to.

You can't have a character sound different from the rest unless they actually _are_ different from the rest. It's common for the hearts and minds of characters to overlap, but this is something that often needs to be addressed. Unless you're grouping a bunch of people as one 'character', each needs to have distinct goals, opinions, lifestyles, choices, fears, etc. Work on that and your characters should naturally start to differentiate between themselves in speech.


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## Guy Faukes (Dec 1, 2014)

Wow, there are a lot of quality replies here and some excellent ideas. I'll definitely start writing practice dialogue with different combinations of characters and making notes on speech patterns. It reminds me of this guy on the street who pronounced insinuate to his buddy, "I was like, are you IN-SIN-U-ating something? What are you trying to IN-SIN-U-ate"

I think part of the problem is that I don't want to fall into stereotypes or tropes with characters, like making throwing in a Italian American or Latino just because it will fill a role or a stereotypical accent poorly written. But there's nothing wrong with starting with fundamental attributes of people and going from there.

Motivation is also key. What underlying fears, goals, ambitions, and pains move this person?


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## twelvesoswald (Dec 1, 2014)

For my first novel I had their personalities all planed out, and I knew how they thought about each other and so the dialogue reflected that. I think it is a thing of really knowing your characters, and their relationships.


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## Bishop (Dec 1, 2014)

Guy Faukes said:


> There are some superficial things like *accents, vocab, slang, tendencies that help color each character*, but do you have any techniques that you apply to how each person shapes and reacts to the conversation?



Those are what I use. People use different levels of grammatical correctness as well. The MIT educated engineering will speak more correctly than Jeb, the tire specialist at the Kirksville Walmart.

I suppose I just never had this issue... I hear my characters in my head, and they're distinct there, so I transcribe that to the page. Aliens use words from their own languages interspersed in moments of emotion--sometimes I have to remind myself to do that. But aside from that, it's somewhat natural to me, and I've yet to have it mentioned as an issue in any of my beta sessions.


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## K.S. Crooks (Dec 1, 2014)

You could have each character have their own catch phrase, they could have specific words they always use in tense or fun situations, you can have characters speak with certain inflections such as a stammer, use text speech, use nicknames for people. I have also seen where a character is shown to have an accent by having some of their words misspelled to show how it sounds when they say it.
I think the key is in the attitude the characters show in their speech and actions. Think of a situation such as your characters come across an eight year old being bullied on a playground by a ten year old who is much larger. What would each of your characters say to themselves, say to each other, say to the eight year old, say to the ten year old. If words fail what would they do? If you can think of the response for each character then you probably know them well enough and it will come through in your writing. Hope this helps.


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## Tettsuo (Dec 1, 2014)

I guess an easy way to quickly think of each character's specific speech style, is to link it to the finance.

Did the character grow up poor?
Is the character "refined"?
What's the character's level of education?

Obviously, the more educated, the more likely the character will speak well.  The poorer the character or the less educated characters will use simpler language to express themselves.  Characters that may have started out poor, but worked their way up my fall back into more harsher speaking patterns when things get rough.  These characters also tend to have an sharp, aggressive edge to their speech, that'll separate them from others that did not have a difficult upbringing.

As others have stated, you have to really know your characters to develop their speech patterns.


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## garza (Dec 1, 2014)

Sam, let me ask you this. I know you've read some of my stories that are mostly, at times all, dialogue. The dialogue in those stories is modeled directly on the way I hear people talk in real life. Do my characters sound like morons?


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## Sam (Dec 1, 2014)

Modelled on. Not an exact replica of. There's a huge difference. 

Understand that real dialogue is punctuated by a number of features that do not lend themselves to good storytelling. Pauses, stutters, stammers, incoherent sentences, mumbling, random thoughts, small-talk, embellishment, exaggeration, unreliable details, far-fetched details, and so on and so forth. 

I encourage you to pick up a novel and read the dialogue. Pay attention to how it's worded. It sounds like real dialogue, but it omits almost all of the nuances of real dialogue. Why? Because it has to. Great dialogue drives a story forward. It's not there as an ornament. It's usually laced with conflict, activity, and urgency. It's real dialogue with all the dull bits removed. 

If your dialogue is an exact replica of a conversation you'd hear in the real world, you're doing it wrong. 

Seriously.


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## InstituteMan (Dec 1, 2014)

I think an echo of authenticity in dialogue is critical, but writing dialogue as people actually speak is a bad idea as anything other than a writing exercise. Actually, the attempt is not a bad writing exercise, but it's harder than you would think it would be, because I bet you will instinctively edit out the stammering and rambling and most of the rest of the innate flakiness of spontaneous speech.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Dec 2, 2014)

I would agree with Institute. My least favorite book is Sound and the Fury partly because he was so heavy handed with the dialogue that you couldn't really understand where he was going with it. I'm a big fan of making the dialogue fit the character, but you also have to make it understandable for the reader.


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## garza (Dec 2, 2014)

Well, I've been doing it wrong, then.


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## Guy Faukes (Dec 2, 2014)

garza and Sam's discussion sort of reminds me of the greater question of whether or not writing (or art in general) should represent/mirror real life. It's true that we're directing the conversation and driving it towards a purpose, so it's not entirely mimetic of mundane small talk. Then again, it always seems like we're trying to capture just a bit more nuance and spontaneity that can arise from real conversations.


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## InstituteMan (Dec 2, 2014)

garza said:


> Well, I've been doing it wrong, then.



Having read your dialogue, I don't think you are doing anything wrong at all. I suspect, however, that you suffer from the curse of being a natural talent. 

My younger daughter is something of a math savant, so she skips virtually all of the steps in her calculus homework, because she doesn't even see them as steps, and really doesn't even think that she is doing them. 

Your dialogue, meanwhile, rings true but not painful; you clearly appreciate the nuances of authentic speech, but you also clearly (likely unconsciously) edit that authentic speech for clarity and readability. The result is strong writing, not a court reporter's transcript of a conversation.  

There are parts of writing where I arguably suffer from the curse of talent, but dialogue isn't one of those areas. I've had to be very deliberate in learning how to write a conversation. I just don't have the luxury of skipping steps in this area.


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## garza (Dec 2, 2014)

When I say I've got it wrong, I mean the listening part. I never hear the stumbles, stutters, uhs and ahs, and other noise that goes along with ordinary conversation. There's a filter somewhere between my ears and my brain that denies entry to such noise, so all I hear are the words, the occasional unique phrase, the slightly off-key usage that expands a word's meaning, the unique voice that every individual owns. It's that voice I use in writing dialogue.


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## Sam (Dec 2, 2014)

Then you're fine. 

It's when you copy real-life dialogue verbatim that you start to have a problem.


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## Kevin (Dec 2, 2014)

Whew...close call.


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## Optiluiz (Dec 3, 2014)

mrmustard615,

That kind of excessive dialogue is a better fit for stage plays and Tarantino movies


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## garza (Dec 3, 2014)

What is excessive? I have written, and continue to write, short stories that are 75 percent dialogue. I have written, and continue to write, flash fiction that is nearly all or sometimes _all_ dialogue. It's my way of telling a story. If it works as a vehicle for telling a story, what's the problem? A novel I recently sold is just over 80 thousand words. 70 thousand of those words are dialogue. The publisher loved it. The dialogue as written would sound terrible on stage. It works in the book because it was written to be read, not heard. Read some of my all-dialogue flash fiction, and see if you can tell the difference between stage dialogue and printed dialogue. 

That's related to the difference between copy written for print media and copy written for broadcast. One is written for the eye, the other for the ear. This is a point I make whenever I teach people to write for radio and television.


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## mommytozachandgrace (Dec 3, 2014)

OP I have to say this was a good question.  Something I've never even thought about.  Everyone here brings some good points to the table!


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## Kevin (Dec 3, 2014)

g- have you ever seen a Tarantino movie? It's not what you do with your dialog... not your type of story at all.


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## garza (Dec 3, 2014)

Yes, mommyetc, but, as my old English teacher would say, some points are more gooder then others. 

And welcome to WF. 

Same to you, Optiluiz. Welcome. Cool guitar. And I love that RCA 77DX mic, but you might want to tip it up a bit for best voice pickup.


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## bazz cargo (Dec 4, 2014)

Umm, (Scratches armpit and sniffs fingertips), there is more to characters than dialogue.

In the UK it is germ season, everyone is coughing their guts up and sneezing like billyo. How often do you read of a character suffering from these mundane maladies?


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## Optiluiz (Dec 5, 2014)

garza said:


> Same to you, Optiluiz. Welcome. Cool guitar. And I love that RCA 77DX mic, but you might want to tip it up a bit for best voice pickup.



Thanks Garza! I actually had a friend of mine help with the guitar and mic since I'm usually a musical disaster  . Also, I guess you're write about the different kinds of dialogue for different mediums. Besides, if writing is an art I guess we shouldn't get too worked up on the details.


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## Newman (Dec 5, 2014)

Guy Faukes said:


> I gots to ask: how do you write distinct dialogue for each character and make each sound unique?



Distinct character roles.


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## garza (Dec 5, 2014)

Optiluiz - Writing is claimed by some to be an art, and for them I suppose it is. Writing, for me, is strictly craft. I have no knowledge of or interest in art. I am a pure blooded, pedigreed, Philistine.


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## Sam (Dec 5, 2014)

Writing is an art. The same way painting, playing and writing music, and every other creative outlet is an art. Just because you think calling it an 'art' demeans what you've done for most of your life, doesn't mean it isn't an art. 

For a man who loves his dictionary, here you go: 

Writing [noun]: "The act or *art *of forming visible letters or characters".


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## Terry D (Dec 5, 2014)

Art is simply a craft which is appreciated in ways its creator may not have intended.


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## bazz cargo (Dec 5, 2014)

I prefer 'craft.' That makes me crafty....


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## garza (Dec 5, 2014)

Newman has a good, concise, answer to the OP. If you create different character roles, understand who they are and what they think,, all you need do is listen to them talk and write down what you hear. The writer will have no trouble identifying who is speaking. In a two-person conversation speech tags should be needed only at the beginning. When more than two people are talking I use speech tags to be certain the reader does not become confused. 

The key is creating life-like characters, and if you understand your characters then their speech will identify them for the reader.

I've not checked with The Other University, but here's what my desk dictionary says:*

writer - 1*. a person who writes or has written something. *2*. a person who writes books, an author. 

*writing - 1*. a group or sequence of letters or symbols *2*. handwriting 3. (usually in pl.) a piece of literary work done: a book, article, etc.

_The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English_, Ninth Edition, 1995, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 1619

My aversion to being called an artist or having what I do referred to as art dates to the early 1940s, my first crayon scribblings, and my Irish grandfather's profane description of art and artists; a description which has no place on a website such as this where there are young people who might be corrupted and Englishmen who for sure would be offended. He taught me to write, he admired my early efforts at drawing and painting, and often reminded me of what to call whatever I did craftwork. 

For those for whom writing is an art, then what they do is art. For me, The words of my grandfather have guided my life, and I'm proud to call myself a craftsman. 

Truth to tell, I have no idea what 'art' is, and wouldn't know it if it bit me on my ankle. It was in New York I was first called a Philistine and a prostitute because I knew nothing about art and wrote for money.


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## Bishop (Dec 5, 2014)

Only on a writer's forum will you see people presenting and debating the validity of dictionary definitions.

I'm in heaven.


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## InstituteMan (Dec 5, 2014)

I don't want to derail the discussion of dialogue issues with the more general art vs. craft discussion, but I was cutting lose tonight and reading a book I picked up from the library, The Science of Science-Fiction Writing, by James Gunn (I'm crazy on weekends like that). I am not very far into the book, and I can't give a decent review, but on page 7 I read:

Art and craft are terms whose meanings shift as we use them and often overlap; I will use them here to mean inspiration when I speak of art and the shaping of that inspiration when I speak of craft. In fiction, I consider art the conception of situation and the invention of character and incident and the initial choice of word and structure; craft is the shaping of situation, the selection and presentation of character, the description of place, the assemblage of incident into plot, and the refinement of word and sentence--all to the better service of the process that results in the enhanced pleasure of the reader. That is, the process itself, as a psychological equation, can be improved, though its essential nature cannot be altered.​
I think that description comes pretty close to my view on the terms. My experience is that I had to learn a lot of "craft" to be able to write a halfway decent bit of dialogue, and that is craft I am still working on learning.


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## garza (Dec 6, 2014)

To illustrate my way of describing characters by using dialogue, here is an extract from 'Mike and Bernie'::

'The whole scene was, like, totally rad', said Mike.

'Stop doing that', said Bernie.

'Stop doing what?' 

'Trying to talk like a teen-ager. Half the time your expressions are past their 'best if used by' date and the rest of the time your usage is wrong.'

'When we was kids you was the one used more slang than anybody.'

'It was the correct language for the time and place. Speaking of correct language, yours is not.'

'Not what?'

'Not correct, that's what.'

'So? You gonna flunk me, teach?'

'Act your age, Mike.'

'I'm not so old.'

'You're a year older than me. Your Social Security card was signed by Franklin Roosevelt.'

'Man, the kids must have hated having you for a teacher. I bet you had fun flunkin' 'em.'

'Very few kids ever failed my class. I used to get in trouble for that. Too many A's and B's, not enough D's and F's. I never rang the bell.'

'Rang the bell?'

'You know. Skewed grades so they fit the bell curve.' 

'I got no idea what you're talking about.'

'Face it, Mike. You need to get a life.'

'I got a life.'

'Yeah? Is that why you sit on this bench every day, feed stale popcorn to the pigeons, and try to talk like the boarders?'

'I have to get out of the house. My daughter-in-law. She drives me nuts.' 

'So take up a hobby.'

'I did. This is it.'

'Pathetic.'

The two characters have different personalities and different ways of looking at life. We don't need any detailed physical description of either the characters or their surroundings to understand the story. Everything that counts we learn through the words they choose to speak - their diction.

Now, InstituteMan, statements such as that by James Gunn mean nothing to me. The idea for a story or poem or drawing, what I suppose he means by 'inspiration', cannot be separated from the turning of that idea into words or pictures. The raw idea must be chiseled into a shape which can then be used as the pattern for the development of the final piece of work. My inability to understand such concepts as Gunn speaks of qualify me as a true Philistine.


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