Storyteller’s Playbook: Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is perhaps the most important part of any story.  Think about the books you read.  Even if you stumble and skip your way through some of the long, boring explanations and descriptions, the odds are that you read closely every single piece of dialogue.  Why?  Because it’s pure, unadulterated characterization.  It’s the good stuff.  It’s the only time that the characters literally speak to us.  If we’re not open to hearing what they have to say, then odds are that we’re not open to the story at all.  In fact, there are any number of works that work because of dialogue alone.  Look at Shakespeare.  It wasn’t the plots of his plays (all stock, even at the time) or his description that made him famous.  It was what his characters said, and the way they said it.  That’s true in almost any play.  Hell, it’s true of screenplays.  It’s even true in some of the best novels.  For example, the Fletch series is a tour de force of dialogue-based prose.  But even in regular, description based writing, dialogue is the heart soul of the character and the story.

Unfortunately, I think, dialogue is a part of the world of gaming fiction that often gets lost in translation.  Especially in online gaming, the fact of the matter is that dialoguing a scene is kind of a pain in the ass.  And working your way through an online conversation—well, that can take days.  Days during which not much else is happening.  And that’s a problem.  That’s one of the ways that DMs lose players.  And yet, not dialoguing is worse because that leads to a world that’s utterly disconnected with characterization.  And that’s just god-awful.  That’s how good games become boring hack-and-slash-fests.

I have dialoguing in mind this week because the Sellswords are in the port of Athkatla, and I want to do a little characterization.  I want to let in some personality and give the characters a chance to walk around in their skins.  Well, that’s all well and good.  I mean, it’s a good goal.  But I’ll admit that keeping the game moving in what is ostensibly a slower scene is a challenge.  And figuring out how to keep it on course is even harder.

Eh.  That’s why I get paid the big bucks.

Anywho, writing dialogue is tricksy.  As comic writer Brian Michael Bendis says, you have to hear the voices in your head.  Which can be tough.  Because to hear the voices, you need to have a pretty good idea of who the characters speaking are, what they want, and what they’re willing to do to try to get it.  I mean, look, everybody wants something.  And, well, talking is by far and away the most common way in which folks interact.  So a person’s wants and needs simply must come through in their language.  To an extent, what they want and how they want it can even come through in their speech patterns. 

With all of that said, the most useful thing I’ve ever heard about writing dialogue is this: when you write dialogue, you have to remember that most people don’t listen.  They wait to talk.

I work through it by thinking about a radio with a PUSH-TO-TALK button.  One character starts talking.  He has a point to make.  And he’s probably enjoying the spotlight.  But the other characters, they also have points to make.  And if they’re regular humans, then they’re not really listening.  Instead, they’re thinking about what they’re gonna say when the other guy finally shuts his damned mouth.  And while they wait, they’re formulating their counter-arguments.  They’re rehearsing in their heads  And when a break comes—and sometimes even when it doesn’t—they jump on it, seizing their own mikes and pressing their own PUSH-TO-TALK buttons.  The result is static—and a lot of people stepping on each other, everyone trying to be heard.

Folks interrupt each other.  They step on what their peers are trying to say.  They talk at cross purposes, answer questions with more questions, answer illogically.  Hell, most often they don’t answer questions at all.  And if they do, they do it in a way that’s self-serving.  They answer the question they want to answer and not the question that was actually asked.  If you can remember all that—the essential selfish ickiness of the human condition at its worst—odds are that you can write dialogue that works.  You can write dialogue that’s believable.  That’ll have people sitting up, thinking, “Wow.  I totally know people like that.  Man.  People suck.”

To me, that’s where you want to be.

One other thing I’ll say about dialogue is this: if you want your readers to learn something and believe it, one of the easiest ways to get that across is by showing two nominally disinterested characters talking about it.  For example, if I want to get across the fact that Gruuck the Orc is a bad mo-fo, then I can show Gruuck in a fight being a bad mo-fo.  And that’s fine.  But if I then want to drive the point home afterwards, I can have Gruuck sit at a fire and then pan back.  Now two other orcs are looking on.  And the one says to the other, “Man.  That Gruuck.  He’s a bad mo-fo.”  And your readers, having just seen Gruuck in action, will realize how to place that action in the context of the story.  If the other orcs think Gruuck is a bad mo-fo, then he must be one.

And that’s all I got today.  Busy week.  Stay cool, and we’ll come back next week and talk some more.