Writing Advice

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Re: Writing Advice

Postby gisambards » Wed Aug 19, 2015 11:03 am

I find that - while okay for minor characters - if you're having to do a notebook about who your main characters are and what their personalities are, then it's always going to be a bit forced. The main characters are who the audience are going to be spending most of their time with, and they need to be so much more than just a put-together backstory and personality. They need to be truly organic, and for them to be at their best you pretty much need to believe they're real. Unless you're someone who needs a notebook to remember your friends' backstories and personalities, you shouldn't need one for your main characters.
Also, one shouldn't be afraid to put bits of themselves into a character. Not what you want to be, mind you - that is just going to look like a fanfic-style self-insert - but who you are. Your insecurities, your fears, your view of the world (but make sure to treat that last one objectively, as otherwise it will just come off as preachy). You don't need to put all of yourself in there, but I think an element of it being personal to you is important. After all, you're (usually) the only person in real life whose innermost thoughts you know, so when writing someone else's innermost thoughts yours are the only reference point. This doesn't always have to be planned, either - I find most of my protagonists seem to have naturally picked up my fear of growing up, and a general sort of confusion about sex.
Something else I think people never take seriously enough when writing is dialogue, though this may be more down to my own writing style. I generally find that - while backstory can be explained through narrative exposition - the only way to truly bring out a character's personality is through conversation: what they say, how they say it, other things they do while saying it.
I am also a great stickler for natural dialogue, but I think I may be in the minority there, as the vast majority of famous books, films and TV shows have surprisingly unnatural dialogue (that's not to say the dialogue's bad, but they often don't actually talk anything like real people). In real life, people don't usually know what they're going to say next, so conversations are rarely simply back-and-forth. People often stutter or pause - I've heard it suggested that putting in every "um" or "er" breaks the flow of the dialogue or whatever, but in real life dialogue rarely flows, and it's still easy enough to follow. I find that if your characters talk like real people, it becomes easier to accept them as real, and not just as characters on the page.
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Re: Writing Advice

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Wed Aug 19, 2015 1:00 pm

gisambards wrote:I find that - while okay for minor characters - if you're having to do a notebook about who your main characters are and what their personalities are, then it's always going to be a bit forced. The main characters are who the audience are going to be spending most of their time with, and they need to be so much more than just a put-together backstory and personality. They need to be truly organic, and for them to be at their best you pretty much need to believe they're real. Unless you're someone who needs a notebook to remember your friends' backstories and personalities, you shouldn't need one for your main characters.
Something else I think people never take seriously enough when writing is dialogue, though this may be more down to my own writing style. I generally find that - while backstory can be explained through narrative exposition - the only way to truly bring out a character's personality is through conversation: what they say, how they say it, other things they do while saying it.
I am also a great stickler for natural dialogue, but I think I may be in the minority there, as the vast majority of famous books, films and TV shows have surprisingly unnatural dialogue (that's not to say the dialogue's bad, but they often don't actually talk anything like real people). In real life, people don't usually know what they're going to say next, so conversations are rarely simply back-and-forth. People often stutter or pause - I've heard it suggested that putting in every "um" or "er" breaks the flow of the dialogue or whatever, but in real life dialogue rarely flows, and it's still easy enough to follow. I find that if your characters talk like real people, it becomes easier to accept them as real, and not just as characters on the page.


To be fair, the notebook is for stories with tons of characters (the one I'm using it for has seventeen POV characters with at least ten pages written for each one in this...I keep calling it a notebook, but it's a binder with regular letter paper in it). I don't use it for other things I write with only a handful of people. And of course they should come across in dialogue, I'm not just copy/pasting from notebook to document, but I'm of the mind you need to have everything about them locked down tight if you want both their personality and how their life has affected them to come across naturally (and consistently). As much as it's good to add some of you to a character, not all of them are going to be 'you', if you know what I mean, so it's good to be able to look back and reference. Sorry if that got a bit defensive, just feel like I gave people the impression I use said journal for the purpose of expositing.

Like...I get what you're saying, you think breaking characters down into sheets of paper will make them flat, but I think of it more as the root of a plant (to get really pretentious, here). I've got everything about this character on hand, now I let events, interpersonal relationships, etc grow them further in a way consistent with their background and everything I've created about them.

As for dialogue, I have to agree with conventional wisdom. Written dialogue is written 'perfect ' not just for easier following but because it would get irritating after a while. Inserting some here and there can be endearing or relatable, I know I do it when a character's thinking or confused, but a real conversation carries so many ums, ers, pauses, backtracking and interruptions that I can't imagine how cluttered it would make dialogue.
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Re: Writing Advice

Postby gisambards » Wed Aug 19, 2015 2:52 pm

Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:As for dialogue, I have to agree with conventional wisdom. Written dialogue is written 'perfect ' not just for easier following but because it would get irritating after a while. Inserting some here and there can be endearing or relatable, I know I do it when a character's thinking or confused, but a real conversation carries so many ums, ers, pauses, backtracking and interruptions that I can't imagine how cluttered it would make dialogue.


I honestly believe that the only reason it's conventional to write "perfect" dialogue is simply because most writers can't write realistic dialogue. When you see realistic dialogue done well, it can be powerful - particularly when it comes to emotional stuff: to my mind, someone talking candidly and realistically about how they're feeling will always be more evocative than a well-structured monologue.

Also, when it comes to the whole binder of characters thing, I think it makes sense if you're doing an otherworldly setting (I think you mentioned it was a space opera?), but there is a danger of overdoing it. I prefer to see "backstory" as a minor subset of someone's personality, because unless the events of someone's past have repercussions during the story, then it really doesn't matter beyond how it's shaped their personality.
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Re: Writing Advice

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Wed Aug 19, 2015 3:59 pm

gisambards wrote:
Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:As for dialogue, I have to agree with conventional wisdom. Written dialogue is written 'perfect ' not just for easier following but because it would get irritating after a while. Inserting some here and there can be endearing or relatable, I know I do it when a character's thinking or confused, but a real conversation carries so many ums, ers, pauses, backtracking and interruptions that I can't imagine how cluttered it would make dialogue.


I honestly believe that the only reason it's conventional to write "perfect" dialogue is simply because most writers can't write realistic dialogue. When you see realistic dialogue done well, it can be powerful - particularly when it comes to emotional stuff: to my mind, someone talking candidly and realistically about how they're feeling will always be more evocative than a well-structured monologue.

Also, when it comes to the whole binder of characters thing, I think it makes sense if you're doing an otherworldly setting (I think you mentioned it was a space opera?), but there is a danger of overdoing it. I prefer to see "backstory" as a minor subset of someone's personality, because unless the events of someone's past have repercussions during the story, then it really doesn't matter beyond how it's shaped their personality.


Yet I feel there's a danger in what you're talking about, making it too realistic. Candid and reallistic moments are good, but writing every line of dialogue in the choppy, confused way we speak it in real life? I feel like it'd be distracting and like I'd get annoyed with it. I can see that kind of dialogue in a movie (Tarantino gets close to it sometimes) but in a book I just think it'd irritate after too much of it.

And people's pasts have a very significant impact on the way they are in (and just as importantly, how they react to) the present. It's not just backstory in there, either: physical appearance, hopes and dreams, family and friends, level of education, hobbies, tone and speed of speech, everything I can think that would tie into a character goes into it. The backstory isn't necessarily for everyone else (not every bit of it, anyways), it's more for me to figure out how a character I picture in the present got this way and how it'll drive them and make them react to the world around them. Again, most of what's in there isn't there to be exposited in bulk at people. I've got about a million words I'm going to be clocking into this, so there's plenty of time and room to let them work things in, hopefully in a way that's meaningful and flows well.
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Re: Writing Advice

Postby JamishT » Sun Aug 30, 2015 5:07 am

So I have general question, and I figured this is best way to get answers (besides straight up Googling it for myself [who has time for that? Ain't nobody, that's who]). What's the proper way to write dialogue? I've struggled with figuring it out for...well, life. The only short story I've entered into a contest involved a character I made medically mute because I didn't want to write dialogue (also, I won like $30! #humblebrag). Do you write:

Jill and Jack fought about the name of the hill as they went up its south side. Jill insistently said, "Jack, I'm sure that this is Skull-Cracker Mound!"
"No, it's Happy Hump!"
"Jack, I'm telling you, you might die if you go up there."
"I wouldn't be going up here if you'd go down there." Jack spat back. Jack soon fell and split his perverted misogynistic head open. Jill loved him for some incredible reason, and she tried to help to no avail.


Or is it:

Jill and Jack fought about the name of the hill as they went up its south side. Jill insistently said,
"Jack, I'm sure that this is Skull-Cracker Mound!"
"No, it's Happy Hump!"
"Jack, I'm telling you, you might die if you go up there."
"I wouldn't be going up here if you'd go down there." Jack spat back.

Jack soon fell and split his perverted misogynistic head open. Jill loved him for some incredible reason, and she tried to help to no avail.

Also, what do when it's a one-sided conversation (speaking to a dog, for instance)? Or one audible line in the middle of a paragraph?
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Re: Writing Advice

Postby FaceTheCitizen » Sun Aug 30, 2015 6:30 am

...
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Re: Writing Advice

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Sun Aug 30, 2015 1:39 pm

I'd agree with Gash with my own sidenote.

I've seen dialogue structured all kinds of ways, but what matters is:

A) Its grammar and punctuation is correct
and
B) It makes it easy to figure out who's talking
and
C) It flows well with the way characters talk and is consistent with the rest of the book.

Myself, I generally go the boring "One dialogue tag when a character begins and finishes speaking (or is interrupted or trails off, etc)" for a character, because I've never particularly liked the style of multiple tags thrown in one character's diatribe, nor when it's broken up line for line, but that's something you gotta figure out depending on how your characters talk and what...basically what I just said up there.

*EDIT* Wrote this after shift, quite a few typos that made it pretty obvious that I did
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Re: Writing Advice

Postby CarrieVS » Tue Sep 01, 2015 12:28 am

I've always understood that you should start a new paragraph when a character begins to speak*, but you don't have to start a new paragraph when they finish (unless it immediately continues with a different character's speech). Often a new paragraph will be appropriate at the end of speech, but it's not required: start one if you think it's a natural paragraph break. Your example is fine either way in that respect, but in my personal preference I'd tend towards the paragraph break.

Two bits of speech from a single character can go in one paragraph, but a one-sided conversation may well require pauses between lines as if giving someone else time to reply, in which case starting paragraphs as you would if there was a line from another character in between may well be a natural way to show that - particularly if there's no text between the lines so that it would be in a single set of speech marks if it was in one paragraph. Also, if you write about a silent character's thoughts between lines of another character speaking to them, it's likely to work best with new paragraphs for the thoughts as if they were speech.

When starting a new line for speech, if there's a 'saidism' before the dialogue treat it as part of the dialogue. Don't change paragraphs in mid-sentence. (I.e. don't start a new paragraph after 'Jill ... said,')

I'm not entirely sure on the correctness but I feel that if there's some narrative before dialogue, without any dialogue from another character in the paragraph, starting a new paragraph for 'Jill ... said' is unnecessary (it may happen to be a natural paragraph end anyway - particularly, in my opinion, if the dialogue doesn't start with a saidism - but personally I don't think your example is).




*Except when it just works better without. You can and will break every single rule at some point in writing fiction. Be aware that you're breaking the rule, be sure it's necessary, and then don't sweat it.
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Re: Writing Advice

Postby gisambards » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:00 am

When it comes to whether or not to put a paragraph break between some narrative and a line of dialogue, I think it's technically correct either way. I definitely use a break if the line of dialogue is the start of a conversation, for example:
Lagoshin slowly lowered himself into the seat, his eyes not leaving the barrel of Kath's gun. His hands shook as he brushed back his hair.
'What is all this?' he asked.

Here I use a break because I want Lagoshin's question emphasised, to highlight the shift from narrative to dialogue (assuming Kath responds to his question and they have a conversation).
Otherwise it's purely stylistic, and down to you to decide which you prefer. Either works. Two examples:
A) Kath had just finished slicing the tomatoes when David's car pulled up outside. She added the tomatoes to the salad, and then looked up in time to see Carlos emerge from behind the wheel. She took in his furious expression, his bloodied nose and the gun in his hand, and reached for the knife. He looked straight at the kitchen window, and she knew immediately he had seen her. 'Oh shit,' she whispered.
B)Kath had just finished slicing the tomatoes when David's car pulled up outside. She added the tomatoes to the salad, and then looked up in time to see Carlos emerge from behind the wheel. She took in his furious expression, his bloodied nose and the gun in his hand, and reached for the knife. He looked straight at the kitchen window, and she knew immediately he had seen her.
'Oh,' she whispered. 'Shit.'

I prefer B, but either works.
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