coafftife (imported) wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2003 11:33 am
Is there anyone who is good at writing dialogue?
I am trying to write a story set in the future about a tough new approach to Juvenile crime. It is in four parts, with the first part mostly background, but the bit of dialogue 'that I wrote' in part one is not very good, and I will need a lot more in the other parts.
A couple quick hints:
1) write the conversation you think they say and then remove all the "ordinary" dialogue. the stuff like "hi, how are you?" ... "fine" ... "it's a sunny day" ... is small talk and doesn't advance the story line. So convert allthat small talk and dialoge that doesn't advance the story line to exposition. Screenplays for Movies ot TV shows can do this, but not fiction writing.
2) make sure that the speaker is speaking from his view point. We don't usually say "I can see you feel this feeling" ... we might say "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings" ... but in real life we don't really know what the other person thinks or their motives.
3) read the dialogue out loud. It should sound OK to your ear as long as it isn't trivial.
4) remember dialogue is more exposition than speech. A page of dialogue is really fast readig and represents DRAMA- use it for the exciting parts.
Dave
and hopefully it will work