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I would like to see how well I am doing with conversation between characters. I want to see if I need to work on the chemistry between these specific characters(Alex and Jason). I know the format is wrong but I wanted to get as much of the conversation as I could without going over the 13-line mark.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked.“I’m sorry. That was terrible timing,” Alex responded quietly.“The timing wasn’t the problem, believe me. It’s just…people around me, around my family, they get hurt. Now that you’ve done that, I won’t be able to leave Cretice until I know that you are safe.”“Are you being sarcastic or serious because I don’t like it when people toy with my emotions.”Jason smiled and kissed her again. That was the only answer she needed.“Don’t leave. Don’t leave Cretice. Don’t leave me. After the Raeders are gone, dead or whatever, don’t leave.”“Why? Alex, haven’t you spent enough of your life living in your father’s shadow? If anyone should leave, it should be you. After all this is over go somewhere else. Start over. Finish college somewhere else and become a painter slash art collector.
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There may be much chemistry here, but without knowing the story and getting to know these people, it’s hard to tell. That doesn’t mean it’s not gloriously written with plenty of chemistry. As you may know, the meaning of people’s actions and words towards us changes after we get to know them.
What did Jason “do”?
I didn’t know initially that Cretice was a place; I thought it was a person.
I do have one comment. In your 13 lines, word search for these words: “Right”, “So”, “kind of”, “originally”, “else”, “Well”.
Change “slash” to “or”.
All of these are words real people say all the time. But, dialogue is better (in my opinion) when those “fill-in words” are trimmed out. Your readers will mentally put those words back in anyway, but they’ll put them where they want them to be. This is similar to use of description. You don’t want too much description because you must leave some for the reader to put in as he/she wishes. Dialogue is the same way.
Posts: 92 | Registered: Dec 2013
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Four characteristics make for dynamic dialogue: Echo, colloquy, non sequitur, and squabble. These are how people speak, not entirely saying what they mean, and not entirely meaning what they say, and in most cases withholding and resistant to full disclosure to the point of passive combativeness, contention, clash, confrontation.
Echo dialogue echoes sounds, words, patterns. and sequences. Echoing is a method of persuasion speakers use to align with and encourage alignment through echoing each others speech, or to mock, ridicule, and belittle. Echo dialogue also tests whether speakers' persuasion is effective persuasion of another person or persons. Not just a couple or few speakers conversing, also motivational speakers, public speakers, performance speakers echo dialogue.
Military drill instructors, for example, repeat--echo--themselves to persuade by compulsion. A DI says, "I can't hear you" to instructees. They respond louder than the lackluster first time. The first time this echo exercise happens, it is echoed, repeated, three times. Subsequent occurrences are usually once later, maybe two times to reinforce the lesson. This is echo dialogue.
"What happened to Jane," Lolly said, "happened to Jane. You know Jane."
"What happens to Jane--" Bobby said, "What Jane does to Jane is clumsy and melodramatic. What happens to Jane--Jane does to Jane."
Colloquy is question and answer dialogue. A question asker has the advantage at first. This is like tennis: the question is the serve; the answer is the first returned volley. Volley continues until each are satisfied the topic has been covered or until one misses and loses or abandons the conversation, is distracted or the conversation explodes mid volley. However, most colloquy conversations are more a graceful badminton game played with a live grenade shuttlecock than a tennis match. This example below is courtly irony colloquy, a type of squabble dialogue.
"I love your hooker-chic earings." Edith said. "They come from Goodwill?"
"No," Barb said, "Where you bought yours. Hallmart."
Non sequitur is does not follow. A reply to one person's question, expression, statement, declaration, whatever, does not directly parallel or connect to the first person's lines.
"Today," Laney said, "I gonna make peace with my boss."
"Your boss is a pissant." Nichole said.
Squabble dialogue passive aggressively argues, flirts, pushes away, pulls in, whatever, through emotional appeals or attacks, or both.
"I bet you could chase off every tail in the bar," Leon said.
"Not if they saw you first," Alan said. "You as ugly as a bulldog backside."
The bartender set frosty beers up for the two men. "You-all's come-ons are lame as gnat farts in a storm."
Artful dialogue is dynamic dialogue, pushing and shoving, pulling and tugging, mixing echo, colloquy, non sequitur, and squabble.
Use said or thought for attribution tags as much as practically possible. Said tags are almost invisible narrator voice, thought almost as invisible.
Long attribution tags call undue attention to narrator voice.
Avoid repetitious attribution and sentence syntax.
Use brief, natural, conversational length dilaogue lines interspersed with other writing modes: Description, Introspection, Action, Narration, Emotion, Sensation, Summarization, Exposition, Conversation, Recollection, Explanation, and Transition--DIANE'S SECRET--especially sensation, emotion, conversation, action, and introspection in order to fully realize an imitation of a scene's illusion of reality.
Extended lecture, soliloquy, or dramatic monologue conversation may stall and bog down plot movement.
Include attribution tags at the front of, middle of, or end of dialogue in whichever order makes most logical sense. Internal attribution tags break speech or thought at natural pauses.
Use action attribution as often as practical instead of said or thought tags. The squabble example above uses an action tag to attribute the speech following it to the bartender.
Use action, sensation, emotion, and thought context and texture to _show_ the words' meanings, using non-said or non-thought tag attribution.
Rigorously avoid adverbs in tags, like "quietly"; they _tell_ the emotional meaning of the speech.
Avoid nonsensical interjections, like well, you know, okay, uh-huh, right, now, so, but, and, etc., known as discourse markers that have little, if any, meaning.
Using dialogue to develop backstory and summarize and explain events, settings, characters is one step away from lackluster telling. Maybe one step stronger and clearer and more appealing; however, barely a smidgen.
Any dialogue that can be prefaced with and is easily inferrable as "As you know"--"As You Know Bob dialogue" is artless telling. This is often conversation between two or more characters about information clearly known by each participant.
"As you know, Bob," Marty said, "'the Raeders have been hunting our kind for generations. Well, put it this way, they are very good at hunting.'"
See the Turkey City Lexicon for common dialogue shortcomings, including the ones above.
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