How to Write Strong Dialogue | Writing Tips

hey everyone its Jalen and I'm here today with another writing video so today I'm going to be talking about writing dialogue I made a video on dialogue a long time ago like two years ago but I took that down a long time ago because I didn't think it was very good and I wanted to remake it today this is going to be based off of a really in-depth tumblr ask that I did a while ago I'll leave that linked in the description if you want to revisit any of this written down there are a few things that I've added to the video but it's essentially most of the same information with most of the same bullet point so just if you want like a written reference for that that will be on my blog so the first thing I wanted to talk about was distinguishing two types of dialogue now I'm going to refer to them as screenwriting dialogue and fiction dialogue this doesn't necessarily mean that you will only ever be using screenwriting dialogue for screen and fiction writing dialogue for fiction I do think that there are cases where you're going to be using this type of dialogue screenwriting dialogue for fiction but for the most part I do think that they are different and it's important to understand the differences this is coming from someone who's been taught how to write dialogue for screen and for fiction and I realized that something that was hurting my dialogue for fiction was that I was writing dialogue for screen I noticed this because in my fiction classes I would never like my dialogue was never really - it wasn't ever awful but it was never really a high point of any story that I handed in but then in screen I was always praised for my dialogue I was always list that was always listed as a high point of my scripts but never as my stories and I was like why is that that I'm better at writing screen dialogue for the screen than for fiction and I realized that it's because I was writing screenwriting dialogue in a fiction context I actually think screenwriting dialogue is a lot more natural and intuitive to write I think it's kind of more in line with what we would think of would make good dialogue so first of all here are some things that make good dialogue overall whether you're writing screenwriting dialogue or fiction dialogue number one is that they avoid feeling expositional this is basically when the dialogue feels like it's just trying to give us information this often comes up when a character is stating something that other characters already know it's not introduced in a natural way a lot of the time it's much more natural to just share this information through narrative if it's something that protagonists already knows then trying to sneak it into the dialogue even when it's like sneakily expositional it can still feel expositional I think readers are quite good at spotting sneakily expositional dialog and this especially can happen when there's a conversation that's really just in place for exposition when the writer has decided to include this conversation not because it advances the plot not because it give us a more complex understanding of the characters relationship but just because it seemed like a good way to share this information number two is that a reveals characters and their relationships for your side characters dialog is going to be the only way that we get words from them unless they're like writing or something we don't have our side characters narratives so dialogue is the primary way we're going to interact with our side characters and it's going to be the way that we see our protagonists interact with other characters so it's hugely important with that number three is it has the characters say interesting thing I think this is so important but writers are often afraid to do it I've definitely been there I kind of would worry that if my characters were saying really intelligent or interesting things the dialogue would be unrealistic and then I ended up with like really flat dialogue that was really really with hell but the fact of the matter is that if it's not interesting the rear doesn't really care about it small talk is just not interesting to read about it's not interesting to have and be like it's not interesting to read about and it's also kind of through that saying interesting things is not unrealistic at all people say interesting things all the time it kind of just matters who they're around some people like to small talk with strangers but when you're around people you know you probably say things that are funny and interesting and insightful and philosophical and rude and all of these things are interesting whereas mundane dialogue that might seem more realistic is actually not realistic at all it's just stripped of anything that makes it relevant you want your characters to be the kind of people who are interesting people so let them be interesting through their dialogue think back to the conversations you've had with your friends and I bet you can think of some straight-up hilarious or insightful things that your friends have said it's not unrealistic to have people say really interesting things at all and those are the conversations we want to read not how was your day oh it was good how was yours no one cares about that it does nothing for the plot and it doesn't reveal relationships at all good dialog is also obviously in character and obviously not cliche unless you're somehow plane with tropes or uh pending tropes I'm not really gonna get into those situations every time I say something like this like it's not cliche people leave comments like unless you're playing with tropes yes if you're playing with tropes maybe you can you're finding a reason for this like if your character is being sarcastic generally good dialogue it's not cliche and if you're putting it in a context where you're playing with the cliche then it's not really cliche anymore because it's playing with the cliche then it becomes commentary nah cliche it also sounds natural and I'll talk about this more in a moment but dialogue that sounds natural isn't necessarily dialogue that is a realistic transcript of a conversation the keys that sounds natural if you have more than three characters in a scene good dialog is often also nonlinear meaning that people won't just directly answer the point above with two characters it's probably gonna be pretty linear but with three or more that's when you start to get more of like a ping-pong ball of a conversation this can be a good thing to play around with to create a very natural rhythm of conversation good dialogue also avoids discussing the mundane or things we've already seen finally good dialogue across the board makes strong use of subtext this is everything that is going unsaid in a scene now obviously I don't just mean anything like in any given conversation there an infinite number of things that aren't being said but I mean things that are relevant that are affecting the situation that are going on said your characters should rarely be saying exactly what they think feel or me characters are way more interesting when they have to withhold something because that means that they have a goal so if you're struggling with subtext and you're wondering how to incorporate subtext mainly it just comes back to giving your characters of goals because as soon as a character has a goal they have something they need to reach for that means they have to tailor what they say they have to think about how they speak because they can't just say anything because they have a ball within this conversation the end of the conversation the end result of the conversation they now have stakes in it because if it doesn't go the way they want they want to achieve their goal so let's talk about good dialogue for the screen now I will specify right now that there are cases in fiction where you're going to see this type of dialogue this screenwriting type of dialogue you will often see this in Y a in more lighthearted scenes or light-hearted books genres like you know like light-hearted romance kind of not always not consistently throughout the entire book but sometimes this kind of dialogue is useful in a scene so in screen dialogue plays a very different role than in fiction because in screen you don't have a narrative really you have visuals and dialogue in fiction you have description which would be equivalent to visuals you have dialogue and you also have narrative and you're missing that with screen which means the dialogue and the visuals have to take on all the weight of the narrative so in a screenplay in most cases the dialogue is kind of the greatest engine of the story this means your dialogue has to be really efficient but it can also be a bit looser the dialogue has to sound natural when spoken which is very different than when read but it also has to be pushing the plot forward so some qualities of good screenwriting dialog are number one it advances the plot number two it reveals information subtly without feeling exposition you can usually avoid this kind of expositional feel if the dialogue is serving a purpose other than exposition if it's doing other things the exposition becomes a means of achieving those other things good screen dialogue also feels natural without trying to do the acting for the actor adding every single um or pause or yeah is trying to do the acting for the actor do this too much and your directing from the page the actor will do this for you and screenwriting you want quick exchanges so there's lots of motion and energy the dialogue should be really efficient and punchy and always moving very rarely will you have a character talk for more than three lines you want to avoid speeches unless they're really earned you also want to avoid bridge phrases like yeah you can make use of them occasionally but if they're in the majority or even a substantial amount of your lines they're not really necessary and they're just going to be bogging down the dialogue all in all screen dialogues should be snappy quick and serve multiple purposes it's the fuel that is igniting the story and moving the story forward to the dialogue is really really important here now let's talk about good dialog for fiction this screenplay the dialogue has the responsibility of furthering the plot in fiction it doesn't always because in fiction you have that extra tool and that is narrative narrative can do a lot of the plot furthering and while dialog will do some it doesn't have the weight of having to do it all in fact trying to make every single line of dialogue further the plot can actually really harm it for the most part the role of dialogue in fiction is to set up and reveal character relationships yes it will be there to advance the plot sometimes but not always so fiction dialogue has a lot less plot weight but it's also not being read aloud so it has to be written a bit differently now you are going to have characters who are going to be a bit voice here and others but I would recommend to an extent editing your dialogue the way you would edit your narrative cutting weasel words cutting unnecessary words even if it's natural again you're not writing perfectly natural speech you're writing natural speech that is all the unnecessary stuff cut out so good fiction dialogue usually has the following traits first of all the characters have distinct voices this is obviously also important in screen but it's especially important in fiction because there's no actor associated with the character's voice it needs to be really distinct therefore because it's the only distinction other than a dialogue tag which can sometimes come after the line is spoken you can veer into longer dialogue sections or speeches more often than in screen it's still not great to have them often but they're a bit easier to earn I think the most helpful way to think of fiction dialogue is as a shorthand for real dialogue I remember reading an essay I don't remember what the essay is called honestly in my second year fiction workshop and the argument of this essay was basically when writing dialogue write it as if the character has an eavesdropper and they know they have an eavesdropper so they're speaking the way they would normally speak it's all fine they're saying the things they normally say they're just being a little more polished about it this especially involves avoiding trigger phrases now this is also very applicable to screenwriting dialogue these are things like and then what or what do you mean even the very unassuming yeah or what our trigger phrases they don't really add anything they're just there to connect lines that are obviously already connected one really good way to help cut your trigger phrases is to think of it this way and this is a tip that I learned from a playwright and if anyone can write great dialogue its playwrights they really know how to write awesome dialogue so the tip is that in most cases you're going to write three lines of dialogue and you only need one of them the first line is going to be a response to the previous characters line of dialogue the middle line is going to be the actual purpose of the line is what you actually want to say the last line is going to be to kind of summarize that the dialogue is over cap it off and then introduce the next characters line of dialogue so I wrote out a little example here this is with all of the extra phrasing that you don't need hey Jane said it's a dilemma what's going on no Sally gave the animal Pat it's an alpaca you [ __ ] why would you think it would be a llama because not all of us can be experts on camelids okay Jane said well you're clearly an uneducated swine get away from my alpaca I I don't wanna be friends with you anymore got it so there's a lot of alpaca drama going on here so the actual important lines in this conversation are is that ulema it's an alpaca you [ __ ] not all of us can be experts on camelids and you're clearly uneducated swine get away from my alpaca and I I don't want to be friends with you anymore these lines are in there but they're totally unnecessary and that was hey what's going on No why did you think it would be a lamb up because okay well and got it they're all just bridge phrases there to tie the dialogue together even though the dialogue is already clearly tied together so we could just keep the relevant lines now this is with none of those bridge phrases occasionally you have one but this is with none of them is that a lamb ah Jane said Sal liking it the animal path it's not packet you [ __ ] not all of us can be experts on camelids okay Jane said you uneducated swine get away from my out pack and I I don't want to be friends with you anymore here we have all the same alpaca drama the same alpaca friend falling out but without all those unnecessary lines this saves you words it makes your dialogue more punch and it doesn't hide all the actual important lines under all this meaningless fluff that we don't need so the final thing I wanted to comment on in this video is a piece of advice that I don't agree with and it's because it's probably the most common piece of dialogue advice I see and I think it's terrible when you write a line of dialogue ask yourself would someone actually say that I think that this is terrible advice obviously you want your dialogue to sound natural um but I don't think this is a great way of expressing it I don't care if a hypothetical someone would say this I only care about this character and I want this character to be an interesting person I don't care if any random person would say this my characters not any random person they're themselves they're an interesting complex human being and maybe they literally are the only person in the world who would say this that's great I want them to be the only human in the world who would actually say this interest you think because that means they have a unique worldview and they're in a unique situation you don't need to pull your character back to this lowest common denominator as long as it's in character and it sounds natural and it fits within the context that's fine so that's everything I wanted to say I'm writing dialogue thank you so much for watching and if you have any questions you can always send me an ask on tumblr [Music]

Channel: ShaelinWrites

Views: 47,071

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Keywords: writer, writing, author, novelist, creative writing, writetube, writetuber, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, writing vlog, creative writing degree, books, nanowrimo, dialogue, how to write strong dialogue, how to write dialogue, dialogue tips

Id: R02uucarLjg

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 14 2018