What novels have you read that have great dialogue? How can I create distinct character voices?
I really love writing dialogue scenes, and something that always helps me is acting out the dialogue before I write it. My favorite way to do this is when I am driving (alone, preferably!). Sometimes I will go for a drive and act out the scene I want to write, going over and over it until it is right. Then I will pull over in a safe place and make a note on my phone with how the conversation went. When I write it down, it usually changes some, but this really helps me get to the point of the dialogue.
Also, I agree with knowing your characters well, like in and out, which can only come from writing them more. I write a lot of world building or background short stories with all my characters and I have really found that helps me give them a good voice.
Such a good question, but a big question! 🙂
Some of my favorite authors for dialogue are John Steinbeck, John Green, and Flannery O’Connor, just to name a few off the top of my head. I’d love for others to comment with some authors you find inspire your dialogue.
We could write a whole book about writing distinct character voices (I’m sure there are several good ones), but I think one key is creating distinct characters, in the first place. If you know who your characters are, their language will flow from that. Creating robust, realistic characters will naturally tend towards robust, realistic (and unique) language attributes.
I think the real challenge is to create characters who are distinguishable from each other without making any of them unrealistically weird. Like this guy has a Boston accent, the next guy is Scottish, and the girl has a severe lisp. The better challenge is in making character voices distinct from one another just by using minor vocabulary and sentence structure choices. When it’s done really well, the differences are so minor that the reader couldn’t even articulate what was done, but they do know, intuitively, that they can recognize individual voices.
The Company has a lesson on writing dialogue in the Arche Year series. That’s a good resource too, and elaborates more than this format allows.
Thanks, Brad! That’s a good point about distinct characters!
That’s cool! I had never thought of acting out the dialogue scene! And that’s a good idea to write short stories with your characters before writing the complete novel. Thank you!