Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I like dialogue. I even like the occasional dialogue that takes up two pages with one or two line paragraphs. I don’t have any dialogue that takes up that much space, but it does its share of heavy lifting.

What are some of the dangers of mishandled dialogue?
Do y’all have rules of thumb when it comes to dialogue?
AND (this might be a weird question)
Is there something to be said for how dialogue looks on the page before the reader fully interacts with it?

I can sort of answer the last question - readers like white space - the kind created by dialogue. It feels like there's less of that tiresome book-lairnin'.

I dunno how much dialogue is a good amount - try scanning through someone else's novel (one that has a pace that suits what you're going for).

What are some of the dangers of mishandled dialogue?

Your characters will be out of their very own character and / or you misguide the reader.

Do y’all have rules of thumb when it comes to dialogue?

Yes. I also prefer complex sentences which sound realistic instead following the standard rules of the 21st century where every sentence must be an artificial, simple sentence, like if you would have a vocabulary of 500 words, no more. Simple sentence structures are never going to let you to explain a bit more complex storyline or present an intelligent character as intelligent.

AND (this might be a weird question)
Is there something to be said for how dialogue looks on the page before the reader fully interacts with it?

As above... realistic and not artificial. For example what you should avoid...
"I'm going to use this talisman to destroy the world." - Over explained cliché dialogue, combined with simple sentence structure (Especially if the bad guy is speaking in himself.). So sometimes it's better if your character simply stays silent and not going to explain everything to the reader via these sort of dialogues.

Another cliche, simple structure example.

"I'll kill you!". Another cliché, simple structured dialogue, which is used to appear where it's evident (Usually where the antagonist is willing to kill the protagonist. These sort of sentences used to appear when their weapons are already prepared.).

"I'm doing this to... (Add cliche: take revenge, save the world, destroy the world)... because... (Add cliche: I had a loosy life, I had an evil mentor, the voices in my head are telling it.)" Another simple structured dialogue, where the writer feels the necessity to explain each of the acts, loose story arcs with some dialogues (The worst is when no one is asking the evil about his motives at all.).

And the worst combination, making your characters deaf whose are asking back every single sentences... examples...

“Yer a wizard.”
"I'm a what?"

“I’d like ter see a great YX like you stop him.”
“A what?”

"Would you care for a lemon drop?”
“A what?”

Another simple structured sentence, where there is no problem with the first sentences, but the second part is already a forced element, which is not necessary (These three sentences are actually from the very same book. In this book it wasn't really a problem as only these three appeared there as I recall. But there are novels where the writer is using this, "A what?", or other forced "The 2nd character is asking back" more than twenty times to force the other character to explain everything.). Sometimes these sentence structures are necessary, because there are things what about the readers never read before. But where the answer is evident and the surprise can be presented with reactions and expressions, in those cases it's truly unnecessary to force simple structured dialogues.

Simple structure also can be forgiven if the story is written on that way (i.e. hillarious stories). Such as Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series...

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING, Slippery Jim?" Angelina asked, leaning out of the window of our room above. I stopped with my hand on the gate.
"Just down for a quick swim, my love," I shouted back and swung the gate open. A .75 roared and the ruins of the gate were blown out of my hand.
"Open your robe," she said, not unkindly, and blew the smoke from the gun barrel at the same time.
I shrugged with resignation and opened the beach robe. My feet were bare. But of course I was fully dressed, with my pant legs rolled up and my shoes stuffed into my jacket pockets. She nodded understandably.
"You can come back upstairs. You're going nowhere."
"Of course I'm not." Hot indignation. "I'm not that sort of chap. I was just afraid you might misunderstand. I just wanted to nip into the shops and . . ."
"Upstairs."

Here, the simple structure works very well, because it's giving a really good pacing for the dialogues itself, while the author is explaining the necessary elements in the descriptions. Here there is a chemistry between the two characters, while none of them is asking back and none of them demands any answers (So the characters are also capable to connect the dots in their mind, so as the reader. The first character is giving an explanation, but it's also a false excuse as the reader is capable to figure it out from the dialogues and the descriptions.).

I can sort of answer the last question - readers like white space - the kind created by dialogue. It feels like there's less of that tiresome book-lairnin'.

As a reader if I like and waiting for these sort of white spaces in a book, that means I already have some or great problems with that novel. If you want to grab the audience with some white space, there is a great problem with the novel itself as you can't misdirect the reader's attention. When you're reading, your attention must be misdirected and hooked page by page. If you can't do that, these white spaces are good to ease the pain of the reader.

I know as a reader I almost always skip over the stuff around dialogue, like "I need some coffee," she said, rubbing her eyes and yawning. I usually skip the "she said, rubbing her eyes and yawning" part. It's not that I mean to or that I think it's not worthwhile. It's just when I read dialogue it usually starts playing out in my head and I don't need those cues and I just need to find out what happens. I already know how a girl behaves when she needs coffee so I can already kind of see it?

This is sometimes problematic since I have sometimes gotten past the dialogue and I realize something has happened that I've missed and I have to go back and slow down.

I know that when I write dialogue I put all that extra stuff in there that I normally skip and then I go back and try to rewrite the dialogue so that I can take them out.

I don't mind long dialogue as long as I'm not being wacked repeatedly over the head with a bunch of information that feels forced. Like, I don't want to be force fed information I've already figured out on my own or when it is clear it is information the characters already should know but the info dump is for my benefit only. Don't like.

Guardian wrote:

Yes. I also prefer complex sentences which sound realistic instead following the standard rules of the 21st century where every sentence must be an artificial, simple sentence, like if you would have a vocabulary of 500 words, no more. Simple sentence structures are never going to let you to explain a bit more complex storyline or present an intelligent character as intelligent.

I have that problem. Only, I am trying to make my antagonist look legitimately insane. I've only had one person comment so far that he is not evil enough and he just comes off as pathetic and laughable (which is I guess what I am going for, since he is not evil, just crazy). So now, I'm thinking of re-writing the entire scene. Oh, man.

Cookie wrote:

Guardian wrote:

Yes. I also prefer complex sentences which sound realistic instead following the standard rules of the 21st century where every sentence must be an artificial, simple sentence, like if you would have a vocabulary of 500 words, no more. Simple sentence structures are never going to let you to explain a bit more complex storyline or present an intelligent character as intelligent.

I have that problem. Only, I am trying to make my antagonist look legitimately insane. I've only had one person comment so far that he is not evil enough and he just comes off as pathetic and laughable (which is I guess what I am going for, since he is not evil, just crazy). So now, I'm thinking of re-writing the entire scene. Oh, man.

Just a thought - evil and dangerous are not the same thing. Any obviously crazy (or crazy acting) person is going to at least project an aura of danger. Humor and danger - "Hey y'all there's a party on the lip of the volcano!"

Watcher55 wrote:What are some of the dangers of mishandled dialogue?

It becomes an excuse for info-dump. It becomes no more than a vehicle for passing information to the reader instead of serving the character's objective in the scene. It fails to give the character a unique voice and vocabulary suited to their background. It's too mundane or too melodramatic. It can scan haltingly due to too much incidental action between the lines of dialogue. A solid block of it becomes a monologue, which neither looks nor reads like natural speech.

Watcher55 wrote:Do y’all have rules of thumb when it comes to dialogue?

The character should say only those things that relate to the character objective in the scene. I never open a novel or a short story with dialogue; I establish character first. I pay attention to maintaining conflict and tension levels in the dialogue, utilizing the emotional friction between the speakers. If an exchange is coming off flat, I rewrite the dialogue with all the stuff the characters would say if they were not filtering their true sentiments. Then I go back to the original dialogue and use the info from the second as subtext. I try to avoid bookism tags at all costs. I try to use dialogue to make the reader worry over the scene outcome.

Watcher55 wrote:Is there something to be said for how dialogue looks on the page before the reader fully interacts with it?

Yes. Monologues are a big turn-off most of the time and are easily recognizable as an unbroken wall of text bracketed by quotation marks. As someone else (Louise?) pointed out, the dialogue that allows some white space is appealing to the eye. The same is true to a certain degree with paragraph length. Long long long paragraphs can convey an impression of a droning passage.

Watcher55 wrote:Just a thought - evil and dangerous are not the same thing. Any obviously crazy (or crazy acting) person is going to at least project an aura of danger. Humor and danger - "Hey y'all there's a party on the lip of the volcano!"

That is what I am trying to go for--to show that crazy can and is dangerous. I guess this person was expecting a completely evil antagonist. I can see how the antagonist would come off as pathetic, because the protagonists don't take him seriously enough. They pick on him a lot, actually. Later, they discover that they should have taken him seriously all along.

I have that problem. Only, I am trying to make my antagonist look legitimately insane. I've only had one person comment so far that he is not evil enough and he just comes off as pathetic and laughable (which is I guess what I am going for, since he is not evil, just crazy). So now, I'm thinking of re-writing the entire scene. Oh, man.

In the last year I've read many betas and there was one common mistake in all of them... the evil had only two traits, little volcabulary and they always laughed, many times without any reason (I also pointed these mistakes out, but that doesn't mean I'm also right. It's just my opinion.).

In my opinion evil is always depending from the point of view. When I'm creating an evil character I'm making the direct opposite of the protagonist. Evil can be unpredictible, serious, has a valid, realistic goal what he / she want to achieve (Nope. Not destroying the world.). As one of my beta said, the evil became really evil and realistic at one point, when in one of the chapters, in a great battle he is just watching and studying the protagonist and her actions for 50 pages, but says nothing. He is just watching and studying the protagonist and when the right time comes, he is adapting to the reactions of the protagonist to achieve his goals. There the readers are always wondering what the evil guy really wants, what he is truly planning under those 50 pages. As he is staying silent and do almost nothing, just observing in the battle, he seems much more dangerous and also a very intelligent antagonist as he is forcing the protagonist to make her steps first, then he can adapt to those actions.

So evil can be presented on various and different ways. The way what is used to be overused is the; evil is laughing, evil explains all his actions, evil is intending to destroy the world (There is also an inner joke regarding this matter in my WIP. :) ). Try to forget all of these.

Crazy is the very same (I also use a crazy character. That one is the mix of the protagonist and the antagonist.). Crazy characters also doesn't have to be predictible as crazy is anything, but surely not predictible. Also if you're creating a crazy character always give a realistic goal if you want to use that character as an antagonist; a goal which may sound very rightful from the crazy person's POV.). And also remember, crazy is maybe crazy from one POV, but maybe totally sane from another one.

Cookie wrote:

Watcher55 wrote:Just a thought - evil and dangerous are not the same thing. Any obviously crazy (or crazy acting) person is going to at least project an aura of danger. Humor and danger - "Hey y'all there's a party on the lip of the volcano!"

That is what I am trying to go for--to show that crazy can and is dangerous. I guess this person was expecting a completely evil antagonist. I can see how the antagonist would come off as pathetic, because the protagonists don't take him seriously enough. They pick on him a lot, actually. Later, they discover that they should have taken him seriously all along.

Uh...not to rain on anyone's parade, but in this case my psychology background is red-flagging this. 'Crazy'? In what way? Have you guys seen the diagnostic manual? You could use it as a doorstop. There are lots of different kinds of 'crazy' out there - defined as having a mental illness that interferes with having a happy, healthy, functional life - that are not dangerous. There are kinds that can be dangerous. There are kinds that are frequently dangerous. I hope I hope I hope some research has gone into what mental illness this 'crazy' character actually has, and s/he is behaving accordingly?

Guardian wrote:Crazy is the very same (I also use a crazy character. That one is the mix of the protagonist and the antagonist.). Crazy characters also doesn't have to be predictible as crazy is anything, but surely not predictible. Also if you're creating a crazy character always give a realistic goal if you want to use that character as an antagonist; a goal which may sound very rightful from the crazy person's POV.). And also remember, crazy is maybe crazy from one POV, but maybe totally sane from another one.

He definitely has a goal-- and it is not to destroy the world. He falls in love with his brother's wife and becomes convinced they are meant to be together, and that she loves him back and his brother is brainwashing her against him. So he starts this campaign to get her back, then hide her away from his brother and the rest of his family because he is convinced that every one is conspiring to destroy their love and keep them apart. So, basically, he is delusional.

Dangerous dialogue tip, avoid As You Know Bob recitations, when telling readers information a writer wants readers to know through character dialogue. "As you know, Bob, the fishing season closed last week." That one's patently a tell disguised as dialogue. Interrogatory tells might be a little more disguised but no less Bob. "What did you do with the Zebco 950 fishing rod I gave you for your sixtieth birthday last year?" Oh Bob.

Good dialogue is causal for building complication, tension, and antagonism, meaning it's like playing badminton with live handgrenades. Sooner or later they're going to go off. Weak dialogue is vapid pleasantries, small talk banter, mindless chatter. "Hola, Isabel, como estas?" "Estoy bien, e tu?" "Hi, Beth, how are you?" "I'm fine, and you?"

Dynamic dialogue follows several basic conventions. It's interrogatory, it's echoeing, it's declarative, it's persuasive, it's coercive, it's indirect, or a combination or permutation of several modes. Thing is people rarely say what they mean or mean what they say. Dialogue has an agenda and concealing true sentiments is high on the priority list, but concealment reveals unintended truths, traits, personalities. Misdirection.

Exceptional dialogue avoids numerous attribution tags. Readers rarely read attribution tags, sort of glancing at them to keep track of who's who. They can become burdensome though. Although said is mostly invisible, it can on repetition call undue attention to itself. Thought tags too. Use free direct or free indirect discourse as much as possible.

For free discourse sans attribution tags, causal (cause and effect, action and reaction) action and thought expressing commentary vary the mix. Good dialogue passages judiciously and timely use several writing modes, primarily conversation, action, and introspection, but also other modes favoring sensation and emotion. DIANE'S SECRET, description, introspection, action, narration, emotion, sensation, summarization, exposition, conversation, recollection, explanation, and transition.

Page design is intended to please the eye. White space appeals to the eye. Large blocks of dense text are alienating. However, an unbalanced page of white-space heavy short sentences is no less alienating. Opening dramatic units have page sinks, in part to signal a transition, novel opening pages, chapter opening pages. More so to make new entries or reentries less daunting. Oh, it's only half a page. I can sneak a peek before I have to go back to work.

The basic shape of a page of text most aesthetically pleasing resembles a doorway with windows, like a face. The human eye and mind consciously or subconsciously or nonconsiously process visual cues seeking a sense of pattern recognition. Faces are the most common pattern humans recognize in chaos. Little known or commonly recognized, page shape follows the golden ratio, roughly 1.618 or precisely a + b is to a as a is to b or about the same ratios that make up facial feature proportions.

My human's a tool. "It's after 10. you have to get to work..." Mah mah mah - I gotta go, so I'll have to respond this PM.

Dangerous dialogue tip, avoid As You Know Bob recitations, when telling readers information a writer wants readers to know through character dialogue. "As you know, Bob, the fishing season closed last week." That one's patently a tell disguised as dialogue. Interrogatory tells might be a little more disguised but no less Bob. "What did you do with the Zebco 950 fishing rod I gave you for your sixtieth birthday last year?" Oh Bob.

Yeah, it's a common mistake. A similar is used to appear in movie scripts, where the opening lines are all about to present the characters via dialogues... such as...

LT: "Captain Ellis."
CAPTAIN: "Ah, Lieuteant Brown. Have you seen the Corporal?"
Corporal Mayers enters.
CORPORAL: "Captain, Lieutenant."
LT: "Hello Meyers."

Dry, forced and boring.

I also believe the way dialogue looks on the screen can be extremely important. While my degree is in English and my minor is in communication, I tailored most of my classes around studying rhetoric, persuasion, and communication. I did a lot of projects centered around visual communication because I find it so powerful that what we read can mean one thing but when paired with visual cues can mean something entirely different.

This is most obvious with font choices. We could all talk about how a serif font like Book Antiqua makes us feel in comparison to bubbled and silly party girl font Ravie. I remember receiving an invitation to a wake from an older family member and the invitation font was done in Comic Sans and the disconnect made my skin crawl.

But font is only one way to make words visually powerful. Placement on a page can change a meaning. Take this for example:



There is something about this statement in the middle of a large white space that makes it feel even more lonely, isolated, and hopeless than if it were at a standard left indent.

So if you apply that to the way dialogue looks on a page, a large block of text will feel daunting, heavy, and crushing which is not a good thing - unless what is being said is daunting, heavy, and crushing. It looks like a wall so it will feel like a wall your character is struggling against. I know that sounds crazy, but imagine if a character is being told that they have to cross the world on foot, not be seen by the evil minions populating the countryside, and make it to some remote village and undergo a series of mental and physical tests before being given the Sword of Truth that is the only thing that will destroy the Big Bad. Now instead of a block of text describing these impossible, daunting tasks were replaced with a bit of dialogue that looks like this:

"So what do I have to do to stop the Big Bad?"
"Go retrieve the Sword of Truth."
"Ok. I'm off."

It doesn't have the same feel but word choice is only part of it. Here's another example-

"I haven't seen you around in a while. How've you been?"
"I've been fine."
"You sure? You seem kind of...I don't know. Distracted?"
"I'm not."
"Are you still mad about what I said?"
"No."

Ok, ignore the fact I came up with it in about 30 seconds so it's not very good dialogue, but look at the white space around the words. The first speaker has longer statements than the second. Not only is the second person not saying much, but visually there is the appearance of white space pause after each statement. As if there is space extending out before the first speaker picks up again. One person is clearly more invested in this conversation than the other, which is clear by the word choices but also by the visual cues. Extra explanation is unnecessary.

Check out the book House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It's a crazy, awesome book, but Mark understands that visual cues are just as powerful as the written word and makes grand use of messing with you visually. There is one sentence in the middle of the book where each word has its own page in the middle of each page and there is something about the vast white space surround the hard point of each word that gets me somewhere painfully right in the middle of my chest. Even if you don't read the book, just flip through it. Obviously you'd never use most of his fancy tricks of directing your eye, causing confusion, and creating distraction in a typical fiction novel, but keeping in mind the possibilities, even utilizing advertiser’s tricks, can help when you consider how text looks on a page and if it could alter the meaning you are trying to convey. There's nothing worse than sending out an invitation to a wake using Comic Sans. If you're writing a short, sharp, terse conversation you wouldn't want to muddle up the message with a lot of extra words.

I could write and write and write about this subject forever. I'll spare everyone for now. Good questions! One of my favorite topics!