Be Your Own Editor

Contributed by Jurgen Wolff

It’s a truism that dialogue is not the same as actual speech; we are too inarticulate for our speech to serve as an exact model for what fictional characters say. Nonetheless, it’s by listening to real people that we can develop an ear for dialogue.

A great site for any writer who wants to get a sense of the voices of real people talking about aspects of their lives is www.storycorps.net. It features people talking to each other about their lives—some items are light or nostalgic, some are so tragic that even these little segments bring tears to your eyes. Two that I found especially compelling are the two prisoners (one of whom died not long after doing this talk) and the woman who had to tell her parents about the death of her sister in a subway accident.

What are some of the lessons to be learned by listening to these real people, and how can we apply them to writing dialogue for our fictional characters? Here are four:

1) Often the most powerful way to describe an extraordinary event is with ordinary language. Our instinct as writers may be to reach for the most extreme words: the most dramatic or most colorful or most emotional. But when what is being described is already extreme, the language you use doesn’t need to be.

2) Specifics make a story come alive. Often it’s the seemingly irrelevant detail that makes us able to imagine what the person is talking about. We remember the great things, like life and death, by the small things that accompany them.

3) In the midst of tragedy, people find moments of humor. Maybe that’s the only way we can deal with the terrible things that happen sometimes. Doctors and nurses, police officers, and emergency workers tend to have an especially dark brand of humor in how they talk about the things they see and experience.

4) People have a deep need to tell their stories, and sometimes the easiest way to do that is to open up to a stranger they’ll never see again. That’s why sometimes they reveal dramatic, even shocking, facts to strangers that they don’t tell their friends and families.

These four examples from the world of true stories can help you to create fictional dialogue that rings true.

About the Author
Your writing coach Jurgen Wolff shows you how to achieve writing success in his new book, Your Writing Coach: From Concept to Character, From Pitch to Publication (published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing), available now from Amazon.com and bookstores (find more information at http://www.yourwritingcoach.com). He has written more than 100 episodes of television, six non-fiction books, short stories, articles, and plays. He is also an international creativity and writing teacher coach. More tips and techniques are available at his website: http://www.timetowrite.com, where you can also sign up for his free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Also see his blog at http://www.timetowrite.blogs.com

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Writing/Editing Tips: The Big Picture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.