Every writer cringes a little when reading terrible dialogue. I know I do. Don’t you just hate the stiff, awkward characters who speak formally no matter the situation? It’s awful. But what if we’re those writers? Here are three tips to avoid that.
A couple of months ago I attended a reading and book signing with Terry McMillan, the best selling author of Waiting to Exhale. She discussed her upcoming book, Who Asked You?, which contains fifteen different points of view, including one of an eight-year-old boy. With that many POVs, there was no way ALL the characters could be autobiographical, so during the question and answer period I asked her—how did she get in the minds of characters so unlike herself?
Her answer can be boiled down to the following: you must (1) empathize, (2) listen to those around you, and (3) fill out a job application on behalf of your character.
I sat at the computer rubbing my brow. I’d written at least 60,000 words in my work in progress so far and my main character was still giving me a hard time. Others were having temper tantrums, standing in the shadowed corner of my mind with their arms crossed.
No matter what I did, they wouldn’t speak to me and they wouldn’t move from the shadows.
There are a few characters that we’re all familiar with in television and literature. Most lawyers are terrible people, the black guy who lightens the mood in a horror movie will die first, the high school head cheerleader will be catty (unless she’s the main character), and any pair of cops will have one who goes by the book and one wild card.
These character archetypes, when they’re not main or central characters, can tell the reader a lot about what type of story to expect. They’re referred to as stock characters.
Part of storytelling is creating something memorable. You want your readers to remember your characters, the world that you’ve created, and what happens to those characters in that world. This is nothing new; back in the earliest days of storytelling, before we had the written word, those who were responsible for the oral tradition had to make sure it was preserved.
One of the most effective ways to enforce memory is through repetition, and so one of the most common storytelling techniques was born: the Rule of Three.
Close your eyes and imagine you’re walking through the streets on a foggy day. The fog is so thick that you can’t see anything around you—just your feet on the pavement and the dull gray tint to the haze.
You can hear your feet walking along, and you detect distant voices. Are they calling out to you?
