Upon Dialouge...

[deadpunk]

I find the difference between realistic dialouge and grammatically correct dialouge to be... I can't ever seem to find a happy medium and always just go for broke towards the realistic side. However, I then wonder if I'm ruining the continuity of the story by distracting the reader?

[Mike70]

I find the difference between realistic dialouge and grammatically correct dialouge to be... I can't ever seem to find a happy medium and always just go for broke towards the realistic side. However, I then wonder if I'm ruining the continuity of the story by distracting the reader? ok. as a lifelong literature geek, i despise dialogue done in accents (like dickens and his god damn infuriating tendency to write dialogue in accents). i frankly don't give a shit about such things. high english is the way to go with the written word. things that cannot be expressed using standard english don't need to be expressed and only serve as a gimmick. plus, you have to keep in mind that some of your audience is going to be from english speaking areas of the world that don't use the same "slang" as your region does. shit like that only serves to confuse people who aren't familiar with the particular idioms of your region. keep it in standard english, either north american or british, and your audience will stick right with you.

[clanglee]

And to disagree, because I am a contrary bastard, I love accent driven dialogue. As long as it is done correctly. Part of the reason that I always loved Steven King's stuff. Now if it is done in a pisspoor manner however, we have problems. I like grammatically correct prose and interesting and realistic dialogue.

[Mike70]

As long as it is done correctly. Part of the reason that I always loved Steven King's stuff. ah, fark and touche. i guess it's a matter of region. i've never minded king's use of maine idiom. i can understand that quite easily. i'm still annoyed by dickens and folks like him. that dude took it waaaaayyyy too far.

[deadpunk]

I've definitely always been a fan of the way King handles his dialouge. He does tend to go a bit overboard sometimes with his use of Maine idiom, but it has a realistic feel to it. But, I also agree that the use of exaggerated accents has been done to death. It becomes too distracting, imo.

[BillyRay]

I'll agree that the phonetic spelling out of accents can get overblown in a hurry, that's how I got my fill of Chris Clairmont's work. But are we talking literature, or scriptwriting? Although accents can get irritating in a novel, it's a useful tool for an actor to get a handle on the character. Y'know, since you start with the text. What's probably more irritating is when all of one's characters speak in the same "voice". It's not easy to create a subtle, individual point-of-view when writing dialogue, but it makes a big difference.

[rightwing401]

When doing dialouge, I find the best way to do it is to think about the person who's doing the talking. An adult doesn't talk about the samethings or in the same way as a teenager, just as a child will talk differently. Subsequently, a person who's got a chip on their shoulder or is generally an overal ass is likely to curse a lot more often and harsher than an upstanding family person. When it comese to being gramatically correct, I try to keep it as close to being proper as I can without destroying the natural flow of the dialouge. For instance, I don't have any characters speaking- "I am, can not, I would, you are, ect..." Nor do I have them say things like-"You fucking slimball piece of monkey shit cocksucker!"

[deadpunk]

Nor do I have them say things like-"You fucking slimball piece of monkey shit cocksucker!" I really just wanted to quote that Something I've done when struggling with dialouge is go to work and sit back and really listen to the way my co-workers interact. I've written down interesting snippets of conversations, only to reread it and wonder what could have caused such and such comment. "That happened to me the last time I sheared a sheep." What was the conversation that led up to that?!? But seriously, you'd be surprised how often people do use full, correct grammar. Or at how many catch phrases each of your friends have and how often they use them in the course of a day. Or just the strange, strange things people actually say to each other...

[clanglee]

Nor do I have them say things like-"You fucking slimball piece of monkey shit cocksucker!" Hmmm. . .I think monkey-shit should be hyphenated. ---------- Post added at 11:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:04 PM ---------- only to reread it and wonder what could have caused such and such comment. "That happened to me the last time I sheared a sheep." What was the conversation that led up to that?!? ... Ever hear that bit by Lewis Black?. . . "If it wasn't for that horse, I would never have gotten into college." My favorite health club is the International House of Pancakes... Recently, I was there, when from behind me, a woman of 25 uttered the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life ... She said, 'If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.' I'll repeat that. I'll repeat that because that's the kind of sentence that when you hear it, your brain comes to a screeching hault. And the left hand side of the brain looks at the right hand side and goes, 'It's dark in here, and we may die.' She said, 'If it weren't for my horse...' as in, giddyup, giddyup, let's go - 'I wouldn't have spent that year in college,' a degree-granting institution. Don't! Don't think about that sentence for more than three minutes, or blood'll shoot out your nose. The American medical profession doesn't know why we get an aneurysm. It's when a blood vessel bursts in our head for no apperant reason. There's a reason. You're at the mall one day, and somebody over there says the dumbest thing you've ever heard and it goes in your ear. So you turn around to see if your friends heard it, cause if your friends heard it, and you can talk about what the jackass said, then it'll be gone. But your friends are over here, pretending they're gonna buy a cellular phone, and they're not gonna buy a cellular phone, because they don't even understand how the rate structure works. So you turn back, to find the person who said it, because if you can ask 'em a question like, 'WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKIN' ABOUT?!' then it'll go away. But they're gone. And now those words are in your head. And those words don't go away. Cause the way I see it, 7% of our brains functions all the time, because 99% of everything that happens is the same old stuff. We get it. All right. Move on. Get it. Right. But every so often, somethin' like that happens: 'If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college. If it weren't for my horse...If it weren't for my horse...If it weren't for my horse...' So your brain goes, 'LET'S FIGURE IT OUT! Son of a bitch! I wonder what that's about!' I wonder, was she riding the horse to school? No, she wouldn't be riding the horse to school. Maybe it was a polo pony; she had a polo pony scholarship. Maybe she sold the horse and that's how she - she was betting on the horse! WHAT THE FUCK?!! And then you realise that anybody who went to college would never say anything that stupid in public. And as soon as you have that thought, your eyes close and the next morning they find you dead in your bathroom.

[deadpunk]

Ever hear that bit by Lewis Black?. . . "If it wasn't for that horse, I would never have gotten into college." I love Lewis Black. But, I have never heard that skit. OMFG that was priceless.

[Arcades057]

WTF is "dialouge"? I try to keep my dialogue as close to the reality of the speaker as possible. If the guy is a working-class kinda dude, he won't speak the Queen's English--there will probably be a lot of ain'ts in his speech, and instead of saying something like "You had better tell me where she is, otherwise I am going to do something to you..." it'll come out like "Yo, if you don't tell me where she's at I'm gonna fuckin' hurt you..." Now, too many colloquialisms or too much patois in a single sentence can make peoples' heads explode. That's something I try to avoid, unless I'm trying to convey that point to the reader; trying to get them to say "wtf is he on about?" when a character speaks, so they might feel bad for the other characters having to speak to the gibberish-spouting fool.

[deadpunk]

WTF is "dialouge"? It's what the women folk do while the men folk are killin' zombies, in most fiction... Now, too many colloquialisms or too much patois in a single sentence can make peoples' heads explode. That's something I try to avoid, unless I'm trying to convey that point to the reader; trying to get them to say "wtf is he on about?" when a character speaks, so they might feel bad for the other characters having to speak to the gibberish-spouting fool. The story I posted here that was 'members only' had a retarded kid as a main supporting character. My spellcheck and I had a love/hate relationship through the writing of that one.