AVERIL ROBERTSON

Many authors say that creating good dialogue is one of the hardest things about writing. Stephen King had this to say in ‘How to Write’ in The Guardian (taken from his fantastic book On Writing, Scribner, 2000): 

“It’s dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters – only what people do tells us more about what they’re like, and talk is sneaky: what people say often conveys their character to others in ways of which they – the speakers – are completely unaware.

Well-crafted dialogue will indicate if a character is smart or dumb, honest or dishonest, amusing or an old sobersides. Good dialogue, such as that written by George V Higgins, Peter Straub or Graham Greene, is a delight to read; bad dialogue is deadly.”

All your characters’ voices are coming from inside your head. As in life, where no two people talk the same, so in writing: your characters’ voices must be differentiated, and representative of who you want them to seem to be to the reader. That means they can’t all sound like you. 

I read a book last year by a much-celebrated grandfather of Australian writing, and even though the story itself was beautiful and relevant, I struggled with the dialogue. So much of the conversation seemed to have been written as a monologue from the author, which was then divvied up between the characters in that particular scene, then quote marks thrown around the sections. It was highfalutin and unnatural. I was too aware of the author’s hand, of his thoughts.

Strong dialogue is the difference between characters we believe are real, and characters we want to defenestrate. But what makes dialogue strong? In my writing, I include the natural tics of language: the pauses, the fillers words (ums and ahs etc.), the poor grammar, the emphases, the small actions that accompany words. If that’s how people talk, that’s how I write them talking. My dialogue has been praised as “natural” and “convincing”, as “sharp, revealing”.

There are, of course, many approaches that can be followed that net you the outcome you’re looking for: believable characters. There’s no one right way to do it. However, checking the flow and rhythm of your dialogue is an important part of the process. Say each line out loud as though you are the characters. Did your grizzled old man say something was ‘fetch’? Did your disaffected, grunty teenager suddenly swallow a thesaurus? Reading out loud is the perfect way to identify those clunkers, those lines that cause the reader’s mind to stumble. You might feel like a twit doing it but it makes all the difference for having your characters sound like real, unique people. 

You can also capture your characters’ individual verbal tics in your character sheets. What phrases do they use a lot? What slang and swears frequently come out of their mouths? What regional dialectal elements are at play in their lexicon, based on their background? Consistency is key … except when inconsistency in how they speak is purposeful. For example, a person will speak quite differently to their friend than to a judge in court, and a character’s vernacular may change over time as they adapt to living in a new place.

In the real world, how people talk is part of how we relate to them, how we figure out what they’re about. Characters in your writing therefore need to convey the same depths of themselves whenever they open their mouths. By paying attention to these details, you can use dialogue elements to develop well-rounded, believable characters your readers will bond with.