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danisnotofire · 6 years

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howdy!! i'm a writer too and i'm searching for some sweet fellow-writer-y advice: what tips do you use to make individual characters' dialogue unique? i'm editing a novel draft (barely lol) and i always love finding out what other people do!

HELLO! i betcha didn’t think it’d take YEARS for me to answer this, but better late than never, right? right?

anyway, here are some things i always think about when doing dialogue:

every single character has a specific way of talking. i don’t mean accent or dialect or lisp or whatever. those things should never be straight-written into dialogue.

that means NO ‘theriously guyth my lithp ithnt that bad’ when writing with a lisp, no ‘wut the fuck’re yew tawkin’ abert’ when trying to convey an accent.

you could try something like, “what the fuck are you talking about?” she asked in a slow and heavy texas drawl.

similarly, stutters aren’t usually “i t-t-thought that we’d b-be able to t-talk?”. they’re easier to read and a lot more effective when written something more like, “i thought that- i thought maybe we could talk?”

but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a character sound different just based on how they speak. think syntax. think speaking patterns. do they speak in run-on sentences? do they stutter? do they go back on what they say halfway through a sentence? are they an ‘um’ or an ‘uh’ type? what words do two different characters use to say the same thing?

“Hey, so, I was walking down the street the other day and I caught sight of you but I wasn’t sure if it was you so I didn’t say anything ‘cause that would’ve been so weird if it wasn’t, but did you happen to be walking by that 7/11 last night?” vs “Hey, were you at 7/11 last night? I think I saw you, but I wasn’t sure.”

you probably got a more bright/excited/rambly energy from the first one right? that’s run-ons. asking questions that they don’t wait to hear an answer for. repeating themselves a little bit. The second one isn’t bad, it’s just a different type of character. probably a little more calm.

learn your dialogue grammar. here’s a handy post about it. your dialogue sounds INFINITELY better right off the bat if your reading isn’t getting stuck on glaring irregularities. in my creative writing class last semester, my prof literally had us hand-copy a page of dialogue from a short story so we could get them down. dialogue rules are like mis-built stairs– the second that something isn’t exactly to standard, it’s going to be brutally obvious.

relatedly, you’re allowed to use words that aren’t ‘said’. But use them sparingly. If you do use them, shake it up by throwing in an action. Even in scenes where you need to use synonyms for said, you can often replace them with actions that convey the same emotion.

“Fuck you.” She slammed the kitchen cabinet, then whirled around to face him. “I want you to leave.”

“Of course.” He swiped his sleeve across his nose, ignoring the coffin that sat two feet away. “I’m sorry.”

word choice. the coolest thing about writing dialogue is that it’s not 100% how we speak in real life. you’re a writer, you lie. you want the reader to be fooled into thinking real people talk exactly like this, but you have the added advantage of knowing exactly how the conversation gets to play out. why did that character use that specific word? why did they phrase it like that? were they foreshadowing this huge event in a line they said off-handedly in chapter 2? yes! you get to be in control of that! people’s words in written dialogue can be chosen so much more carefully than they necessarily are in real life, because you as the author know the story. you can have them imply or foreshadow or reference or insinuate anything. have fun with that power, because it’s awesome!

going off that, what aren’t they saying? think about what your characters are trying to get across. think about what they’re too afraid to say out loud. think about things they want to convey without actually physically saying them. so much can be said by what isn’t said.

i wrote a short story once that focused on hallucinations and what they were telling the protagonist. the whole point of it was that, at the end, she looked at something that she expected to talk to her, but it didn’t say a word. and that spoke volumes.

take dialogue inspiration from everything around you! one of my writing profs told me dialogue was one of my strongest points as a writer, and he thought it had something to do with my theatre experience [which makes sense! scripts are 99.999% dialogue!!!!] i went through a phase when i was younger where i would transcribe every conversation i had in my head into words, just to think about how it would look as text. most of all, practice it. dialogue is just another writing skill. it’s only gonna get better if you, y’know, do it.

the bright side of that is that you do dialogue every day. you see it in movies and musicals and tv shows and in overheard conversations on the train or in the coffee shop. it’s everywhere. it’s how we communicate! talking/communicating is how we get our gossip and our information and our diagnoses and our education! it pushes our lives along! it’s amazing, and getting to control every aspect of those inherently human interactions is one of my favorite parts of writing.

of course, dialogue is a fluid thing. people have been experimenting with it since writing was invented. because there are an infinite amount of ways to hold a conversation, and an infinite amount of ways to interact with each other, there isn’t one single correct way to do dialogue.

of course, if you’re writing a standard novel or fic or piece or whatever, then it’s best to stick to the rules. but if you wanna try something new, go for it! i love experimenting with style and how that contributes to a story. faulkner had some fun with dialogue in the sound and the fury (i’m thinkin chapter 2 with quentin, especially his conversations with his father), where the stylistic blurriness of the conversation said a whole lot about quentin’s state of mind. there’s also some fun dialogue choices in nicole krauss’ the history of love, where she doesn’t always do the standard new-speaker-new-paragraph thing, which adds something to the story as well.

there’s so much you can do with it to make it come alive and make your characters sound unique. i hope these helped, because they’re kinda what i base everything on myself!!

#my favorite of these is the word choice/syntax/speech pattern thing #i think thats 80% of my dialogue is just figuring out the speaking patterns of the character #which can also lead to a lot of problems when i can't quite figure that out lol #writing tips #writing #advice #long post //#crizps

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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Considering the fact that I adore your ds posts, and seeing you now are playing ff7r (oh my, my 3 fave things in one! Haha), I'd definitely like to hear your take on the game overall vs OG (if you played), the love triangle debate, Real!C vs SOLDIER!C. I guess I'd like some fresh insight? I like hearing multiple opinions, even if I do have my own.

Well a few notes: - I actually finished the remake already, I just didn't leave commentary on it, and my verbal commentary the whole way through was mostly fallen on the ears of my wife and adoptive mama (depending on if you go to twitter, you may recognize them respectively as the Honeybadger and Doris Helmick)

...actually this is gonna be long and touch on spoilers so I'ma put it behind a cut.

- Yes, I played the original. In fact it has an anchor point in my life, I think, as to how I consume media, as it was the first game I ever played on my own console. My mom was one of those “video games rot ur brain” moms and my experiences until then were being loaned a game boy by a friend and a few of their games and playing under the blankets when I was little, smashing things with Link or playing pokemon or whatever here or there.

- It’s also one of the best memories of my late mother, who eventually slid into major opiod addiction due to mismanaged health issues. She was a disabled single mother and I was the illegally-working-way-too-young-to-stay-alive kid. She eventually cracked and, around when the PS2 was being freshly released and everybody was selling off their PSX, she went to a pawn shop.

- It’s fresh in my mind to this day. First she had me open the box and I lost my mind, and then, huddled up in her pained position she had, she held out a plastic bag to me that christmas, apologizing because she didn’t know anything about video games but the nice man at the store said they were all very popular. Inside were a spyro game, a Star Wars game, and FF7-9. My jaw dropped. I told her she did better than she could ever understand. Hearing the most about FF7, I grabbed it and ran to the playstation to put it in, and started crying at the initial cinematic sequence.

- I 100% approve of this reboot. It's designed in a way where it maintains the full spirit of the original, and hit on speculation points my wife and I had through the course of the game. (Eg, I hadn't spoilered myself but started addressing the whispers of fate, and the chance to change the course of history, maybe even saving Aerith. She countered with the fact that Advent Children would then be moot. At which point I said, yeah, but isn't that the very point of showing us the fates and making an alternate timeline? And then the ending dickslaps you repeatedly at the Crossroads of Destiny). They made it true to the *full body of work* while still making sure that just because you played the original you don't know what's coming.

- To avoid public spoilers being too specific despite the cut, there is literally a "death” around the Jenova fight I yelled THAT ISNT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN, WHAT THE FUCK, NO, WHY, WHAT THE FUCK and poor Doris was like "????????? what what what???? I mean that's sad but WHAT" because she never saw the original and couldn't figure out why I was flipping out.

- Despite knowing better with the way they were arranging the fates, they arranged it so dramatically that in the moment I completely forgot about that and started panicking and losing my nut. I was yelling it the entire fight too, like, BUT WHY, WHY HIM, THAT ISNT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN while doing dramatic dodge flips avoiding tentacles shitting all over me. Timing and execution is A+.

- While augmenting parts of the narrative, it really just emboldened the original rather than writing over it. I can’t emphasize enough how this game, from 1997, is so politically on point for today, right down to the blackmask avalanche cell, the propaganda, corporatism, controlled government, and the goddamn antifa flag painted in one of the fucking sewers lmao wtf

- when it comes to the love triangle debate, I’m actually not the kind to say, pick one side or the other. As I mentioned in my previous post, I see both sides of the discussion (eg Tifa, Aerith) as valid. Because the weird competitive ship warring in fandom is as hilarious to me in any other place as it is in SPN fandom tbqh.

- I do see them ~possibly~ setting up a potential of even changing or revising Zack’s fate and letting him reunite with Aerith which, long term, would probably slide Cloud -- awakened to his truth and self -- towards Tifa’s court. Original I’d say both are equally valid, despite nobody doing any kissing, love confessions, etc. Because again, when I talk about not holding my queer pairings to unequal bars, this is exactly what I’m talking about -- and I think part of what I said about sculpting how I receive media at a young age. Not only was I buried in mountains of classic literature my entire life, but my engagement with modern media still showed that you don’t HAVE to have some giant make out session or perfectly poised I LUFF YEW to be valid in romance, the same as old books. Hell, this even applies to the few animes I watched, like X. They were always orbiting around complex interpersonal relationships, nonphysicalized romance be it het or queer, whatever else. I don’t know what kind of media diet people grew up with to act like every straight pairing ever gets a humpa-dumpa-horny-scene or perfectly poised confession or whatever the fuck, tbqh.

- In the end though, I do consider it unfair to say, OG!Cloud rather than Soldier!Cloud to also infer any and all attachments he had to Aerith were manufactured. Cloud gained patched over memories for Zack, sure, but he wasn’t really witness to Aerith and Zack to just take that on. Aerith definitely saw the ghost of Zack in Cloud, too. But you’re really not gonna get me to say “Cloud/Aerith > Cloud/Tifa” or the other way around, even if personally, Cloud/Aerith hits on a far more emotionally impacting level to the point I started crying again any time I heard her theme play in the remake, or her being cute, or whatever, or even saw the fates swirling around her because I knew what inevitability they were driving home.

- There’s also other reasons that hits very truly home for me that I can’t even get into in a public post tbh

- I think I answered everything for this but IDK?

- I will type Aerith to appease the nerd crowd but I refuse to say it out loud and I’m sorry. After decades of saying Aeris, I feel like I have a lithp if I thtart thaying aerith. Like no offense to people who have lisps and no judgment but it theriously metheth with my head.

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