#i think thats 80% of my dialogue is just figuring out the speaking patterns of the character

[danisnotofire]

howdy!! i'm a writer too and i'm searching for some sweet fellow-writer-y advice: what tips do you use to make individual characters' dialogue unique? i'm editing a novel draft (barely lol) and i always love finding out what other people do!

HELLO! i betcha didn’t think it’d take YEARS for me to answer this, but better late than never, right? right? 

anyway, here are some things i always think about when doing dialogue:

every single character has a specific way of talking. i don’t mean accent or dialect or lisp or whatever. those things should never be straight-written into dialogue. 

that means NO ‘theriously guyth my lithp ithnt that bad’ when writing with a lisp, no ‘wut the fuck’re yew tawkin’ abert’ when trying to convey an accent. 

you could try something like, “what the fuck are you talking about?” she asked in a slow and heavy texas drawl.  

similarly, stutters aren’t usually “i t-t-thought that we’d b-be able to t-talk?”. they’re easier to read and a lot more effective when written something more like, “i thought that- i thought maybe we could talk?” 

but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a character sound different just based on how they speak. think syntax. think speaking patterns. do they speak in run-on sentences? do they stutter? do they go back on what they say halfway through a sentence? are they an ‘um’ or an ‘uh’ type? what words do two different characters use to say the same thing? 

“Hey, so, I was walking down the street the other day and I caught sight of you but I wasn’t sure if it was you so I didn’t say anything ‘cause that would’ve been so weird if it wasn’t, but did you happen to be walking by that 7/11 last night?” vs “Hey, were you at 7/11 last night? I think I saw you, but I wasn’t sure.” 

you probably got a more bright/excited/rambly energy from the first one right? that’s run-ons. asking questions that they don’t wait to hear an answer for. repeating themselves a little bit. The second one isn’t bad, it’s just a different type of character. probably a little more calm. 

learn your dialogue grammar. here’s a handy post about it. your dialogue sounds INFINITELY better right off the bat if your reading isn’t getting stuck on glaring irregularities. in my creative writing class last semester, my prof literally had us hand-copy a page of dialogue from a short story so we could get them down. dialogue rules are like mis-built stairs– the second that something isn’t exactly to standard, it’s going to be brutally obvious. 

relatedly, you’re allowed to use words that aren’t ‘said’. But use them sparingly. If you do use them, shake it up by throwing in an action. Even in scenes where you need to use synonyms for said, you can often replace them with actions that convey the same emotion. 

“Fuck you.” She slammed the kitchen cabinet, then whirled around to face him. “I want you to leave.” 

“Of course.” He swiped his sleeve across his nose, ignoring the coffin that sat two feet away. “I’m sorry.” 

word choice. the coolest thing about writing dialogue is that it’s not 100% how we speak in real life. you’re a writer, you lie. you want the reader to be fooled into thinking real people talk exactly like this, but you have the added advantage of knowing exactly how the conversation gets to play out. why did that character use that specific word? why did they phrase it like that? were they foreshadowing this huge event in a line they said off-handedly in chapter 2? yes! you get to be in control of that! people’s words in written dialogue can be chosen so much more carefully than they necessarily are in real life, because you as the author know the story. you can have them imply or foreshadow or reference or insinuate anything. have fun with that power, because it’s awesome! 

going off that, what aren’t they saying? think about what your characters are trying to get across. think about what they’re too afraid to say out loud. think about things they want to convey without actually physically saying them. so much can be said by what isn’t said. 

i wrote a short story once that focused on hallucinations and what they were telling the protagonist. the whole point of it was that, at the end, she looked at something that she expected to talk to her, but it didn’t say a word. and that spoke volumes. 

take dialogue inspiration from everything around you! one of my writing profs told me dialogue was one of my strongest points as a writer, and he thought it had something to do with my theatre experience [which makes sense! scripts are 99.999% dialogue!!!!] i went through a phase when i was younger where i would transcribe every conversation i had in my head into words, just to think about how it would look as text. most of all, practice it. dialogue is just another writing skill. it’s only gonna get better if you, y’know, do it. 

the bright side of that is that you do dialogue every day. you see it in movies and musicals and tv shows and in overheard conversations on the train or in the coffee shop. it’s everywhere. it’s how we communicate! talking/communicating is how we get our gossip and our information and our diagnoses and our education! it pushes our lives along! it’s amazing, and getting to control every aspect of those inherently human interactions is one of my favorite parts of writing. 

of course, dialogue is a fluid thing. people have been experimenting with it since writing was invented. because there are an infinite amount of ways to hold a conversation, and an infinite amount of ways to interact with each other, there isn’t one single correct way to do dialogue. 

of course, if you’re writing a standard novel or fic or piece or whatever, then  it’s best to stick to the rules. but if you wanna try something new, go for it! i love experimenting with style and how that contributes to a story. faulkner had some fun with dialogue in the sound and the fury (i’m thinkin chapter 2 with quentin, especially his conversations with his father), where the stylistic blurriness of the conversation said a whole lot about quentin’s state of mind. there’s also some fun dialogue choices in nicole krauss’ the history of love, where she doesn’t always do the standard new-speaker-new-paragraph thing, which adds something to the story as well. 

there’s so much you can do with it to make it come alive and make your characters sound unique. i hope these helped, because they’re kinda what i base everything on myself!!

[kvothe-kingkiller]

wtf is Nephelai

aight so if you’ve been following me for a bit you probably have Noticed me posting about the Thing I am writing which is called Nephelai.

so I thought I’d give a lil primer on it just for uhhh fun? I guess?

anyways. if you want it in a sentence its ‘gays out-science the competition’

if you want a little bit More info than that 4-5 word (depending on ur opinions on hyphens) blurb, here u go. I will put her under the cut so it does not clutter up the dashes of anyone who isn’t into this kinda thing. I am shit at brevity so this in itself is kinda long.

Just as far as vague genre/feeling stuff goes, it’s a sci fi and it kinda combines adventure with slice of life? Idk man. Its very much character based and a lot of it is dialogue. If you’re looking for pretty, poetic writing you’re not gonna find it here, I tend to just get to the point lol. It deals with some pretty heavy/dark stuff but I will tell you upfront that the ending is happy. There’s too many dark edgy books that end sad. Plus we don’t have enough gay stories that end well. It’s also quite R rated, though more in the violence/sweary way than the sexy way. 

Given that it does deal with some Rough Shit (child abuse, racism, depression, etc.) I have a list of all the chapters and their possible triggers here. (its at the bottom of the post)  I just put in general things but if you have a specific/more obscure trigger I would be happy to inform you if/where it shows up.

Also, just so you know, this fucker is Long. its at 180+K and I still haven’t gotten all the chapters out yet. As well as that, this is essentially a first draft. I know its slow to start and choppy in some places but currently Im just trying to get it out, and uploading the chapters as I go gives me incentive to do that, cause otherwise I’d never even get the first draft done. Basically I write a chapter, check for spelling and grammar mistakes, miss most of them because grammar is my kryptonite, then upload it. I will be editing it a Lot in the future. 

anyways.

Setting

The story is set in our universe in The Future. How far in the future? don’t ask because I don’t know. I don’t want a 2001 space odyssey situation. A lot of the technological advancements would take wildly different times to achieve so I don’t want to put a number on it especially because we are very bad at predicting how fast things will advance. It is at Least 150 years I’d say.

Humans have moved on from earth and colonized new planets. They’re still on earth, it’s just that they’re also in other places. Namely Mars and proxima centauri B which has been renamed Salus to keep up with the whole roman god thing (she’s the goddess of safety). Both planets have colonies from multiple different countries. Not all countries, I mean lets be real lichtenstein isn’t colonizing mars anytime soon. The two american colonies on both planets are Lincoln (Mars) and Roosevelt (Salus). The way that people travel between these planets which are v far away is through electromagnetic radiation powered engines and the use of man made wormholes. Let’s ignore relativity and pretend that when you get close to the speed of light your timeline Doesn’t slow down because I don’t want to deal with that.

However, those planets are not where most of the book takes place. The main planet they are on is Nephelai (shocker I know.) It is a planet with a small research colony on it. Before the colony was put in place, it was a barren planet with some water that was in the zone for life, and just didn’t have any. They terraformed the fuck out of it so the atmosphere is the same as earths then installed a Beyersdorf around it. A beyersdorf is basically a time machine. Anything inside it will have it’s timeline sped up. Uses some black hole jiggery pokery I don’t want to explain because it would be... impossible. Anyways, they placed some organic molecules on it and sped it up until life evolved then slowed it back down to normal time to go in and observe. It has tall mountains and a surface that is so hot that water boils. So all of the life lives up in the clouds around the peaks. Most of it is adapted for life in the air. Such as: giant borzois with wings and living blimps that are basically guppies. Its very cold and people have to have specialized gear to go outside.

Plot

I don’t want to go too much into the plot because... thats why you Read books, but I’ll give my best summary. Basically the main character, Nadia, is getting her masters in evolutionary biology and has to do a year long research project. She goes with her professor, Brenley, to Nephelai to do the project. While there, the planet is invaded by uhhhh neo nazis (whoops) and they basically create a hostage situation that is very hard to get out of in order to get the third main, Krupin, a celebrity trash man, to work for them and make some very dangerous biological weapons that his company’s products would be able to produce. Obviously they don’t want this to happen so they have to come up with a plan to escape. However a lot of what happens is more based around the emotional toll it takes to be trapped for so long with no contact to the outside world and the uncertainty of whether they’re gonna make it out or not.

Characters

Alright so now the characters. As I said, this is very much character based. So its more about their interactions than anything else really. Again, lotta dialogue.

Nadia Waters

She is as said before, the main character. A 23 year old dork who is a complete nerd (they all are). She is bi and also a bit of a disaster, naturally. Quite smart but doesn’t think she is, very loyal to the friends she has, and can be a bit shy at first. She is also stupidly brave to the point where its a problem. Her need for adrenaline is Real and she does very stupid things to get it. She describes herself at one point as “just a grad student with a very poor sense of self preservation.” While she doesn’t go looking for fights she will definitely stand up for herself and others and throw down against people who could very easily kill her.

Elias Brenley

Nadia’s professor, also a dork, also a nerd. A lanky french weirdo with an obsession for physics and a love for 80s music. Very spontaneous and doesn’t give a shit about embarrassing himself. He has aspergers and even though he is very smart and can do some savant-like tricks, that isn’t the only aspect of his personality (what a novel idea...) He Also isn’t just a ‘robot’, he cares a lot about others, especially those who don’t mind his quirks. Also I took the expected subplot of ‘male professor gets with female student’ and threw it in the garbage where it belongs cause he’s gay as hell. He and Nadia do become very close but it is 100% platonic

Feliks Krupin

Also a nerd, also gay (seeing a pattern?). He is pretty much a public figure as he owns one of the biggest biotech companies out there, Vozmet. Kinda like if you took elon musk and removed the asshole-ness. Annoyingly perfect in every way, charming, pretty, v smart, all those. Struggles with a good amount of mental stuff that most of the world doesn’t know about and came from a pretty shitty background. Him and Brenley have some History though at the beginning of the story they haven’t seen each other in 9 years. Tends to be noble to a fault and will sacrifice himself for basically anyone. 

Some other characters who aren’t the main three:

Kristina: The president of Vozmet to Krupin’s CEO and his best friend. About five foot nothing and has the appropriate amount of concentrated rage. She’s not mean, she just doesn’t let anyone push her around and knows how to get what she wants. 

Heidi: One of the only sane ones. Was determined by others to be the leader of the hostages so to speak and has Way too much on her plate. Is often the one voice of sanity or the one to actually get the others to stay on task

James: Drinks that respect women juice all day every day. Very nice. Doesn’t deserve this situation. Has a bit of a thing for Nadia.

Scott: Is the other only sane one along with Heidi. The doctor of the group who almost acts as a father figure to all of them even though he’s not That much older than some of them.

Saoirse: Dumb irish lesbian. ‘Nuff said. 

Links

so if you like the sound of any of that you can find it on 

fictionpress: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

or AO3 here

if u took the time to read this massive post, and/or read some, I luv u. *mwah*