McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

God I suck at Dialogue

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kingaling:
The title says it all, doesn't it?

I need some help, quite honestly. My people skills are not that great, in fact I'm relatively anti-social. And as an aspiring writer, that seems to have been a bad choice on my part. I can hardly hold conversations with people, unless it's about movies or something, and because of that I have hardly any idea on how to construct a basic line of dialogue. If it's a conversation about personal/philosophical beliefs, I'm all over it. But I can't write a conversation of significance between two people that is just a typical conversation, or slightly more than that. I've heard all the advice. "Listen to people and how they talk. write down key ideas." that doesn't work for me. Anyone have a better way of making conversations work?

help would indeed be appreciated.

Spectacular Sameth:
Worry about the dialog later. GO through and write the story, adding all the necessary bits through the dialog (stuff that moves the story through) and then when you're done, go back through and read the dialog out loud. If you find yourself laughing at something that's not a joke, then you need to change it. Also, keep in mind what period you're writing for. If I were to write a story about the 1950s, then I shouldn't use works like "krunk" and so forth. (That's obvious stuff, but you would be surprised what you'd find...)

Yes, so the best advice I can give you is to write now and revise. I read this thing by Stephen King on writing and he suggest you do this with everything, especially facts. Can't remember something, make a place holder and then fill it in once the story is there.

Sorry if that's not what you're looking for, but I've never really had a problem with dialog. I've had a creative writing teacher tell me I'm a natural at writing dialog.

kingaling:
Thanks for the great advice, that's actually what I was waiting to hear. Lucky for you being a natural at dialog writing.

any more tips would be great, too.

Spectacular Sameth:
Awesome. Glad I could help.

LizW65:
When I write scripts, I've found that reading the dialogue aloud helps more than anything.  If you find that it flows naturally and is easy to read, chances are it's working.  If, however, it feels awkward and you find yourself stumbling over the words, then some revision will probably help.

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