What is Dialogue?

I know, I know...some of you are going to say, What do you mean, 'what is dialogue?' But it is a serious question, not a rhetorical one. I just finished reading someone's response to that on a literary board, and I was blown away by that post. It was so...hmm, for once, I'm at a loss for the right word. It was unknowledgeable, unprofessional...even that description is not right. It was amazingly bad.

The post said something about 'dialog' ( not even spelled correctly) being the 'backtalk' by a person. And then an example was given from the poster's work, and it was also amazingly bad...no punctuation, repetitious...hmm, just bad. ( Yes, I'm also being repetitious.)

Maybe a better question for this post would be, not what is dialogue, but how do you write it? Do you use a lot of tags? Do you use slang?
Do you use regional speech characteristics, and the misspellings and partial words that often go along with that? Do you allow your characters to play "verbal ping-pong?" So, let's talk about dialogue for a minute.

What does dialogue do? It paints a picture, it tells something about the story, but most of all, it allows the reader to get to know the character. A character's dialogue needs to be unique to her, just as our own dialogues are unique to us in real life. It needs to tell the reader who this person is, what she is like, what kind of personality
she has, and most of all, it needs to be indicative of the age and life experience of the character. The last is important, because you don't want to have an eleven year old talking like a 16 year old...unless, of course, you have a character who is a genius...for example, Millicent Min, Girl Genius, written by Lisa Yee. But not many of us have that kind of character.

Slang is definitely something to watch out for. Those of us who know teens know their everyday language is full of slang. But it never stays the same. Something that is 'cool' today is 'awesome' tomorrow and 'solid' next week. Slang changes faster than one can become accustomed to it, so the best thing is not to use it except very sparingly, and then only the words that have remained in the teen vocabulary for a long time. And at the moment, I can't think of even one slang expression that has been around for awhile...except, perhaps, 'cool.' Although I heard some kids talking not long ago, and the word for 'cool' now seems to be 'distant.' "Distant?" Don't ask, I have no idea !

How about 'ping-pong' dialogue? That's when you have a couple of characters talking back and forth like this:
"So, what do you want to do?" "I dunno. What do you want to do?" "I dunno. How about a movie?" "Okay, which one?" "I don't care. What one do you like?" "I don't know." "You got any money?" "Nope, do you?" "Nope, I'll go ask Mom."

What do we know about these two? What does the dialogue reveal? Nothing, right? It might be exactly like two kids talking in real life, but for a story, this is nothing but idle chatter going nowhere fast...except to lose the interest of the kids who are reading it.

Dialogue is like everything else in a story, it has to move the story forward and it has to have some direction which will point the reader towards what will ultimately be the climax and resolution of the story. For the example above, wouldn't it be better to have the two boys agreeing on a movie, only to discover they don't have enough money between them, so they need to decide how to get the money without having an adult (Mom) coming to the rescue? As in:
"Let's go see the new Batman movie this afternoon." "Okay, you got any money?" "No." "Well, we need to get some. We can ask Old Man Wilson if we can mow his lawn." "I hate mowing lawns. Let's see if we can clean out the garage instead."

Here we see the boys developing an idea, on their own, about how to earn money, but at the same time, entering into a conflict between the two of them. Maybe they each go their separate ways, because they can't agree on what to do..that can lead to adventures for both of them before they come back together with the money to go see the movie. Much better, much more interesting with all kinds of possibilities in terms of action for both.

Then there is the old bugaboo about regional speech. Especially in the deep South, regional speech is hard to understand and even harder to write. In attempting to convey a country twang, you could write: "wa'al, ah don' rahtly kno'." Do you think a kid is going to be able to decipher this? If you say, "Well, I don't rightly know" you are still using the regional way of speaking, without spelling it out. Kids don't care about how people speak in different parts of the country, they just want to get on with the story and action. Use regional expressions and speech patterns for your characters, but don't spell out phonetically how they talk.

Stay tuned! We'll talk some more about dialogue in the next post.

Writers' Software

How many of you use a software designed specifically for fiction writers? I've heard about a lot of them, but never thought much about getting one...mainly because I didn't want to pay the price for something I didn't know if I would use or not.

But someone recommended a software called 'Storybook', which is on the Internet, and best of all, it is FREE ! I downloaded it, and it is turning into a gem. I also printed out the tutorial and all of the different charts. I took the charts to Office Max and had them enlarged to make them easier to read, as they print out in very small print.

When you first open the program, you are asked to create a new project, which is the book or story you are working on. On this page, you have 3 different areas. The first shows the scenes in chronological order, the second lists all the objects, which are characters, locations, chapters, scenes, etc., and then the third shows "quick information" about a character or location or whatever has been selected from the second area.

When you select a character, you can indicate him/her as a central character or minor character, including giving them names. Here is where you can also name the various locations in your story.

There is a large area designated as the for scenes. Every scene in the program is assigned to a "strand" (or plot-line,) and there is space to write a short summary of the scene, as well as places to write in the characters in the scene and the location. Because most stories/novels have several strands, there is a separate column for each strand.

There are various charts which really help keep everything and everyone straight, particularly if you have a lot of characters and locations. One is titled "Who is Where, When?", and it shows the names of all the characters, where they are supposed to be on any specific day and at any specific time. This is a tremendous help if you are like me, and have to keep going back into the story to find out what day it should be now, and where exactly my character should be. I have an awful time with remembering dates and time lines.

There is another chart that lets you keep track of where the characters are, according to the scenes and chapters. Another chart shows the appearance of the characters by date. This is especially helpful if you have several minor characters who appear early in the story, and then not again until much later on. It sure saves time so that you don't have to go back to your first few scenes or chapters to find out who they are, when they first appeared, and what part they played at the beginning. This also keeps your characters straight, in that if a waitress at a cafe is named Miss Winslow in the first scene she's in, your character doesn't go back to the same cafe with the same waitress whom you now call Mrs. Wilson.

There are many very good things about this software, the least of which, as I said, is that it is FREE. If you download it, don't forget to print out the tutorial, look on the left side where "charts" are listed, and print each of those out, also. They show you exactly how to use them, and it's so easy then to keep track of everything.

One of the best things about this program is that you can have as many stories going at one time as you want. All you have to do is click on the "Create new project" button, and you have all your charts before you, now empty, so that you can begin another WIP.

No, I'm not getting any kind of kickback for talking about this software! It's just something I think is a great help for writers, and since it's free and can be downloaded from the website, if you don't like it, just delete and uninstall, and it's gone.

The website is: http://storybook.intertec.ch/joomla.