For some, writing dialogue comes naturally. For others it’s a struggle to walk the line between realistic and flat.
But no matter which side you fall on, having a system to polish your dialogue will tighten your writing and boost your chances of publication.
Today we’re covering a simple technique to ensure your characters have distinct voices.
This is an editing trick. I suggest you read The Art Of Dialogue and work through the exercises to practice writing characters with unique styles of speech, then use the following lesson to check for consistency.
Ready?
It’s called the Dialogue Document.
It essentially involves developing multiple lists of how your characters speak.
The process is simple. Create a new document with the character’s name, or add it to the bottom of their character sheet.
Go through your manuscript scene by scene, copying significant passages to the dialogue document.
Ignore simple phrases everyone says, like yes, no, this way! and so on.
Gathering their dialogue in one place makes it easy to see the whole picture. Patterns stand out, and necessary corrections become obvious.
It’s another tool to add to your batch editing repertoire.
Here’s an example:
This is a side-by-side comparison of Dialogue Documents for two characters from an old draft of mine.
You should be able to easily tell the difference between any two members of the main cast when placing the documents next to each other.
To make patterns even more obvious, and to make sure you don’t overuse catchphrases, you can take this technique one step further.
Go through and highlight their individual quirks.
For example, Muriel (on the left) is an older lady prone to trailing off before gathering her thoughts. She tends to affirm herself with “I” phrases. She is often direct unless prompted to speak on.
On the other side, Harry Walker speaks more eloquently. This character is a master of disguise whose main persona is a gentleman. To reinforce that image he uses two rhetorical devices to make his speech more lofty.
- Diacope – the close repetition of a word separated by another word
- Hendiadys – replacing an adjective-noun combo with a noun-and-noun (ex. good people → good and people)
In scenes where Harry is a gentleman he does not use contractions.
Listing his dialogue out makes it easy to see where I broke my own rules (highlighted in grey). I can easily go in and fix that.
Maybe you have a character from a different culture who frequently uses words from their own language in conversation. Using a highlighted dialogue document, you can quickly decide if it works well or if you’ve overdone it. Colors are easier to see than italics.
This technique may seem tedious, but it will likely save you time versus working through dialogue broken up by paragraphs of prose and other speakers.
Polished dialogue is a key element to a publishable story, and highlighting the spoken habits of each character will keep them consistent and make them shine.
Plus, each time you do it you will be giving yourself a crash course in creating distinct character voices.
Deliberate practice is the key to success.
Happy writing!
