Thread: Dialogues: How Do You Write/Come Up Them?

I did some search in Scripts & Plays section for some dialogue advices but didn't see any threads on them.

Scenes, characters, and actions always seem to come easy for if I had a plot/idea of what kind of story I'm going to work on but when it comes to dialogs and speeches I have struggled in this department. The thing is, when I try to write a conversation between two or more characters it seems a bit cheesy and cliche.

Two great dialog writers come to mind are Kevin Smith and Quentin Taratino. The dialogs in many of their films are very creative and ENTERTAINING unlike many other films. I prefer their style of movies over big budget action flicks because the dialogs are more intriguing than gunfights and explosions. I understand that scenes and actions are the moneymakers and attention grabbers but the dialogs are the main backbone and definition behind a film.

Anyways, I need to know how writers come up with dialogs without sounding cheesy and cliche.

If it’s any help, it takes about 20 pages before my characters start to find their own voices. I keep tossing them into situations and see how they react and pretty soon they start to find their own voice. For the first couple of pages everyone sounds the same.

I keep writing, picture them in my head, and throw them into really painful or uncomfortable situations and inevitably they start talking to me. I also look at what the other characters need to play off of to build drama or make them stand out.

I can give you some really good examples but unfortunately they aren’t mine. : ) Good luck.

LC

I see your problem, Immigrant.
Sometimes it is a little difficult to produce an anti-cliche/cheesy dialogue text.
But the dialogue usually just makes it self up for my stories.

Perhaps, if you are still having troubles with your dialogue, you should picture the chracter in your mind and how they would react to a situation. Think of it as if it were a movie, that you were watching exclusively in your head.

Or, when a characters are in a conversation or situation, then picture yourself in the atmosphere of your story. Pretend that you are one of those chracters and ask yourself the question; What would I say in that prediciment?

Do they all have different motives per a scene? That can help keep your people sounding different and give them something to talk about. I've had trouble with multiple people talking and realized it was becuase they don't have enough to say. Kevin Smith and Tarantino are clever about this and have characters with opposing viewpoints, odd morals, and whatnot butt heads with each other to create interesting dialogues. I mean, if you didn't have one guy who thought it was stupid to tip waitresses, we wouldn't have that great scene in Resevoir Dogs. And what does that show us? A sense of conflict in the group (important later in the story) and a sense of "psuedo morality" among some of the characters.

Let's say you have 3 People, JOE, who wants to catch the Killer, CANDI, who wants to go into witness protection, and STEVE who wants a sandwhich (all this murder just reminds him of his low blood sugar).
Now, this is a silly and over the top example, but can you see how this might play? Joe's going to try to be telling clues to Candi and Steve...however the more Candi hears, the more she doesn't want to catch her husband's killer, the more she wants to get out of here. Steve clearly could be our cowawrdly comic relief or a seasoned veteran right? Yeah yeah, people die every day, let's get lunch. This is will be fustrating for Joe and an interesting scene.

So, take a look at your characters. Use their personalities to their fullest extent. The dialogue will come out. Also, don't sweat early drafts of dialogue. Sometimes I beat myself up over being witty and I don't write enough. Clever dialogue can take time and drafts even though it seems to effortless up on the screen.

Cheers,
Kay

I like to hang out in coffee shops and other places and listen to the way people talk. Also I read a lot. Especially novels with good dialogue.

When I'm out X-C skiing or running, I sometimes have conversations with my characters.

Watching movies or Sho Time and HBO can help. "Dexter" is a fountain of good dialogue.

Stale's advice is the opposite of stale. It is fresh, organic, and homegrown.

Listen to him.

Ask yourself, what crazy thing would you say under this situation? Put yourself in your character's shoe.

Originally Posted by AnAmericanImmigrant

I did some search in Scripts & Plays section for some dialogue advices but didn't see any threads on them.

Scenes, characters, and actions always seem to come easy for if I had a plot/idea of what kind of story I'm going to work on but when it comes to dialogs and speeches I have struggled in this department. The thing is, when I try to write a conversation between two or more characters it seems a bit cheesy and cliche.

Two great dialog writers come to mind are Kevin Smith and Quentin Taratino. The dialogs in many of their films are very creative and ENTERTAINING unlike many other films. I prefer their style of movies over big budget action flicks because the dialogs are more intriguing than gunfights and explosions. I understand that scenes and actions are the moneymakers and attention grabbers but the dialogs are the main backbone and definition behind a film.

Anyways, I need to know how writers come up with dialogs without sounding cheesy and cliche.

It comes down to two (or more) people TALKING to one another. Do you have an understanding of your protagonist and your supporting charactors? Write like you talk. When you talk with your friends, does it sound "cheesy" and "cliche"? Of course not. Write like you talk... Take away the wall between you and the keyboard.

Maybe you could try writing your characters with specific actors in mind. That's what I do.

You don't have to make the character look like the actor but it's a good trick to picture the actor as your character and it does help when it comes to dialogue.

For me anyway. Then again, I've never really had a problem with dialogue.

Now dialogue is my strong point and I never struggle there but........isn't there always a but?
POV is my biggest problem, as well as grammar. I'm still horrible at sentence structure but isn't that what the editors are for?

Grammar is not important nowadays.

Try thinking about your favourite screenwriters. You love Tarantino's dialogue- what exactly is it that gets you going about it? What makes it different - unique? Think about what you enjoy to watch/listen to yourself and - don't copy their style - but try and see if you can try experimenting with their techniques.

What I personally think is the best thing about Tarantino's writing isn't the flashy confrontational dialogue (which is great too) it is when the characters are just talking to each other without any real plot significance. Honeybunny and Pumpkin bickering, Fabian and Butch's babytalk, Mr. Pink's Madonna speech.

Why not try to develop your characters through monologue or dualogue? Leave your plot alone for a bit and just let them ramble on about whatever they feel like. It almost definitely won't end up in your final script but it's great fun and really develops the character. I find it really useful for developing a character's voice. You will discover vocal ticks and ways of talking that you didn't know they had before. if you just let go and write rubbish sometimes you some out with gold.

I don't know about anyone else, it may not work for you but I really enjoy using this method.

Thanks everybody for your insight and advices, I really appreciate it. Wallmaker and Indigo, thanks for the examples. I agree with you Indigo with Tarantino's dialogue, there's something genuine and realness with his characters through words and conversation. QT doesn't force it to his characters and therefore makes it less cliche.

I had this conversation with my sister a couple of weeks ago about dialouge.

I'm not saying I'm the GREATEST dialouge writer by an streach of the imagination. but this works for me.

What I do is kind of put my self into my characters a little bit. By that I mean that if i have two characters talking to each other I imagine what I would say if I where that character. of course it being a conversation with my sister i joked around saying that i imgagined the characters with a paper cut out of my face on a stick. but anyway.

I'll try and explain a little.

say you have a conversation between three characters, lets call them Sam Freeda and Smilie. Sam is a straight edge, highly trained, assassin waiting on his target to show up while sitting in a diner. Smilie is his business partner, fellow assassin who is a bit off his rocker. Freeda is a cute Waitress who has a little crush on Sam and is going out of her way to keep them happy.

I've only been a waitress once so i can use that to help me a little, but the rest of it I'm just using my imagination, be sure and have a little fun with it just to make it interesting.

(by the way this would be a good starter for a dialouge writing prompt. if you all wanna try doing this you can. )

Sam: Dammit, it's two already. He's Late.

Smilie: I told you he looked a little pale yesterday, maybe he's out sick.

Sam: No, He'll be here.

Smilie: I kinda hope he is sick. that way we can cap him at home.

Sam: The man has a wife and three kids. there would be to many witnesses.

Smilie: bah, target practice

Smilie chuckles to himself. Sam sighs and continues to look out the window at the building across the street. Freeda shuffles up to the table with a pot of coffee in hand.

Freeda: hey there boys. You've been here a little longer than usual today. is everything alright?

Sam: Fine.

Smilie: hey there freebie, can I get some more coffe from your sweet little self?

Freeda pours some coffe into Smilies cup. Smilie grins up at Freeda, then takes a quick glance down her top, Sam looks over and stares at him concerned. when she stands back up he quickly looks back up at her face. Sam is still loking at him.

Smilie(CON'T): thank you sugar.

Freeda: Fuck you, creep.

Freeda walks away as Sam smiles. Smilies grin quickly drops. he then looks over at sam then grins again.

Smilie: Ah, Women. Shoot em' in the head once and they hate you forever.

Have you ever heard the phrase, "if the scene's about what the scene's about, then cut it"?

If you find yourself writing dialogue that doesn't deliver drama then ask yourself why you're writing the scene at all because it might not be necessary. Perhaps reevaluate the entire scene in terms of creating drama. Stories aren't real life and real life scenes are rarely necessary and this might be why you're stuck on a scene that has no drama.

Also, consider trying to understand your scene objective. If you're freewriting, consider this as you write and especially in rewrites. And as everyone is stating, put yourself in the other person's shoes. What does each character in the scene want? It often should conflict.

In dialogue, like in real life, characters rarely say what they truly mean. We speak through filters. What we really mean is discovered in the subtext. Aristotle said, "Speak as common people do, but think as wise men do." This is most important in scripts and plays where the economy of words is essential and the subtext is also what the actors are conveying. But novelists do the same thing but have a bit more freedom because they're not bound by time.

An example of dialogue:

I'm presuming you've seen or read Stephen King's "Misery". There's not much dialogue to this, but you can easily understand the subtext.

Setup: Annie, the nurse, returns from the store with paper for her 'patient' to write a story for her. While she's gone, Paul, the patient, picks the lock in his room and while in a wheelchair franticly goes through her house in an effort to escape but discovers there's no way out. Instead he discovers the pain medicine she has been giving him on the top shelf of a closet. He reaches and steals some of the medicine and hides it in his trousers when he heard Annie's car pull up to the house. He then quickly wheeled himself back into his room and locked it.

She had two packages of paper, and she held one up in each hand, smiling "Just what you asked for, isn't it? Triad Modern. Two reams here, and I have two more in the kitchen, just in case. So you see---"

She broke off, frowning, looking at him.

"You're dripping with sweat ... and your color is very hectic." She paused. "What have you been doing?"

And although that set the panicky little voice of his lesser self to squealing again that he was caught and might as well give it up, might as well confess and hope for her mercy, he managed to meet her suspicious gaze with an ironic weariness.

"I think you know what I've been doing," he said. "I've been suffering."

If you know the story, you know that Paul has no choice but to be submissive to Annie because he's in no position to fight back. He knows that if she finds out he was going through her house that she will hurt him so the subtext to this is that he's afraid and she's suspicious. In the script to the movie, this dialogue is identical except the section where King describes Paul's feelings was cut, of course, and it works without it because the subtext provides the explanation.

If I had more time I'd work out a longer scene with lots of dialogue for you but maybe you can do that on your own.

Try watching a movie you enjoy while looking for the subtext of the dialogue. The audience unconsciously knows it but it will become obvious when you explicitly look for it.

This is a really great thread. You guys all have great input.