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Warren Ellis on Dialogue
Nov. 19th, 2012 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
faradLast week (maybe?) I posted a snippet from Warren Ellis on writing - this week, he has a good one on writing dialogue that I think is relevant to those of us writing fanfic:
"How does do you write dialogue so well? I’ve always heard other writers say that all it comes down to is listening to how people talk and mimicking that in your writing, but most of time I feel like what I have my characters say either falls flat or isn’t going to be interesting/witty/funny/what have you.
afriendtosell
I’m ignoring the first bit, because my dialogue isn’t great.
Dialogue for comics is a hugely different animal to dialogue in books or film, but here’s a couple of general things to think about:
1) You can’t force being funny. Forced funny is never funny.
2) When you have a character talking, have two things you know about their lives in your head as you let them talk. Two things that make them what they are. What was their childhood like? What was their first job? Do they spend a lot of time alone? Are they guarded around people? Because dialogue is about moving information around and expressing character. What you know about them affects the way they talk. Take a book you like — or, hell, even one you don’t — and select a passage of dialogue, and see what you can learn about those characters from the way they speak. (And, on top of that, see if the way they speak changes during the course of the book.)
2a) Once you know what they think is funny, or what’s funny *about* them, their dialogue will get funny.
I hope that helps a little bit."
I especially like the part about knowing about the character - and what we, as readers, glean from reading dialogue. I think it works when watching dialogue, too, seeing how the guys relate to each other on screen, how they 'move information'.
From FAQ9nov12
"How does do you write dialogue so well? I’ve always heard other writers say that all it comes down to is listening to how people talk and mimicking that in your writing, but most of time I feel like what I have my characters say either falls flat or isn’t going to be interesting/witty/funny/what have you.
afriendtosell
I’m ignoring the first bit, because my dialogue isn’t great.
Dialogue for comics is a hugely different animal to dialogue in books or film, but here’s a couple of general things to think about:
1) You can’t force being funny. Forced funny is never funny.
2) When you have a character talking, have two things you know about their lives in your head as you let them talk. Two things that make them what they are. What was their childhood like? What was their first job? Do they spend a lot of time alone? Are they guarded around people? Because dialogue is about moving information around and expressing character. What you know about them affects the way they talk. Take a book you like — or, hell, even one you don’t — and select a passage of dialogue, and see what you can learn about those characters from the way they speak. (And, on top of that, see if the way they speak changes during the course of the book.)
2a) Once you know what they think is funny, or what’s funny *about* them, their dialogue will get funny.
I hope that helps a little bit."
I especially like the part about knowing about the character - and what we, as readers, glean from reading dialogue. I think it works when watching dialogue, too, seeing how the guys relate to each other on screen, how they 'move information'.
From FAQ9nov12