I find my characters have this disturbing tendency to go off on a tangent when I'm desperately trying to push my plot, and developing new plot lines when I'm going for a certain atmosphere or attempting to reveal more about said character. Do your characters do that? Hijack dialogue, I mean?
That said, character interviews are one of my favourite get-to-know-your-MC exercises. So it's not like they don't talk - they just don't say what they're supposed to, and they usually like talking to me better than talking to each other.
Another thing about dialogue - you can't be realistic, can you? What reader wants to slough through page upon page of "uhms" and "ehms" and "really?"s? Real conversations don't usually translate well to paper, they need judicious editing.
How about you? Do you like writing dialogue? Do your characters say what they're supposed to say? Any pet peeves when you read dialogue?
5 comments:
It's not my strong point. Thank God I have a test reader who kicks butt with dialogue and he always helps me.
Haha...yes, my characters do that all the time. Sometimes, though, it ends up being for the better. lol
I often feel unsure of my dialogue. I study authors who do a good job with it.
I love writing dialogue (I was once runner up for a dialogue only competition) and I hope it is one of my stronger points as a writer. Description is my weakest.
My golden rules are:
Keep the dialogue tags to a minimum.
Only use 'said'.
Don't use uhms, ehms, and anything like that.
Use contractions.
Try to avoid talky scenes with more than two characters.
Finally, and most importantly, every line of dialogue MUST move the story forward.
@ Ellie - I'm going to have to make a note of those!
@ Alex- Ahoi Ninja Captain! My critique friends are thankfully really good at that, too...
@ SA - hehe yes sometimes the characters know best!
@ Susan - I've been known to copy out my passages from my favourite books to get a feel for them. I find that helps me learn how to achieve a certain mood or the likes.
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