32. Writing Great Dialogue: How to Make Sure Your Characters Sound Right for the Story

THE TOP TEN PRINCIPLES FOR WRITING GREAT DIALOGUE – PART 3

EPISODE 32: How to make your dialogue sound just right for your character & story

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:     

Last week’s episode gave us number 5 of the top ten principles for writing great dialogue. This week, we dive into two more principles. 

Principle #6: Good dialogue sounds just right for the scene, story, or movie; 

1. Dialogue should not "stick out" with brilliant dialogue that your characters would not say, or otherwise detract from the story moving forward. Vocabulary is varied by education, upbringing, regionalism, favorite words or expressions, and the syntax of the character (how they put the words together: Will you close the door, please? vs. You will close the door, please. 
2. Anytime your character says something that doesn't fit with the characteristics they've been given, you undermine the integrity of the story and risk alienating your audience.
3. At the same time, you want to come up with at least one gem of dialogue per act. This should be a concise, character-relevant "soundbite" that succinctly expresses a primary idea or the character's inner emotional state in a memorable, quotable way.
   
   

Principle #7: Good dialogue sounds just right for each character. 

1. The concept here is called "orchestration," where each character sounds different, yet adds to the overall "sound" of the story (like a single instrument in an orchestra).
2. One of the best ways to help accomplish this is to understand who your character is in conjunction with the other characters in the piece. How much power do they have? What is their status? Status determines a lot about how people speak and behave.

UP NEXT

Next week, we will go over principles #8, 9, and 10.

Principle #8: This is not real life speech. Watch the hesitaters.

Principle #9: Good dialogue should be short and compressed, and contain appropriate familiarity between characters.

Principle #10: Good dialogue should include subtext.

QUESTIONS OR TOPIC REQUESTS? 

If you have a question or a specific writing related topic that you would like Zena to consider addressing in a future podcast, click on the link below to leave a voicemail recording with your problem, question, or issue.

https://www.speakpipe.com/ZenaDellLowe

SPECIAL THANKS

The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe would like to thank composer Carla Patullo for the original music she graciously permits us to use in the intro and outro of this podcast. To find out more about this amazing talent, go to  www.carlapatullo.com

TAGS: Artist, Artists, Dialogue, How to write good dialogue, characters, Writing tips, Writing, Writers, Story, Storytelling, Storytellers, Zena Dell Lowe, Mission Ranch Films, The Storyteller’s Mission, The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe

Transcript

Ep. 32 - Dialogue Principles 3

Mon, 10/12 9:22AM • 15:59

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

character, dialogue, speak, sounds, line, feels, people, quotable, podcast, totally, status, paid, episodes, repeat, gem, act, tv series, pretentious, orchestration, most iconic moments

SPEAKERS

Zena Dell Lowe

Zena Dell Lowe  00:04

INTRO: 

Hello, and welcome to The Storyteller’s Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story.

Zena Dell Lowe  00:13

PRESENTATION:

For the last couple of weeks, we have been diving into dialogue. Anybody who's trying to write great good stories knows that in order to write a great story, you must know how to write great dialogue. To that end, we've been diving into the primary principles, the major rules of thumb that makes dialogue actually good. Today, we're going to continue unpacking these primary principles, starting with: 

Zena Dell Lowe  00:46

Number six: Good dialogue sounds just right for the scene or story. Whether it's a movie or a novel or a play, it doesn't stick out with brilliant dialogue that is not right for that story. Dialogue should not distract from moving the story forward. 

Zena Dell Lowe  01:06

So, how do you do this? Well, first of all, you have to make sure that your characters are speaking in a way that is accurate and right for those particular characters. You need to understand how much education they've had. You need to understand what they would sound like if they were from that particular part of the country, or that particular area of the world. It has to be consistent with the characteristics that you've given them. 

Zena Dell Lowe  01:32

One of the ways that you violate this is by having characters speak more intelligently than they would. And one of the ways that that happens is that they use a lot of adjectives and adverbs. You know, for the most part, we don't use adverbs and adjectives when we talk. In authentic, realistic, or naturalistic dialogue, we simply don't really use those words. In fact, actors actually get a little embarrassed when they have to say something like this. In fact, they'll almost always put a little slight pause before they say something with an adverb because it feels so unnatural. So, they don't normally go around saying things like, "I'm desperately tired," because it sounds melodramatic. And any character who says, "I'm desperately tired," is being a drama queen, so it feels awkward. Or they're being pretentious snobs. Anytime you use "LY" words in dialogue, typically it makes the character sound like a pretentious snob. "I faintly remember being told that." "Come here quickly." "I am extremely unhappy." "I would happily enjoy some tea." Do you see how all of these things make the person sound like a real pretentious piece of work? So we want to get rid of words that modify our nouns. Just say it as straight as you possibly can. 

Zena Dell Lowe  03:06

Having said that, you also want to have one gem per act, if at all possible. Because the truth is, we love to quote great dialogue. And when a story includes a great line of dialogue, we will repeat it. It will become part of our vernacular. We will adopt it. It's incredible how that happens. So here's an example. "Attention must be paid." You remember this from Death of a Salesman with Willy Loman? That is specifically a cry to human dignity. We are human beings worthy of human dignity. "Attention must be paid." A man is not a piece of fruit you can't eat the orange and throw away the appeal. Attention must be paid. But it's great because it's not esoteric, it doesn't sound hyper intelligent, or like it's trying to be impressive. It is a cry, it is a demand -- attention must be paid! 

Zena Dell Lowe  04:11

Or how about Howard Beale and Network. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Great, great line of dialogue that people have been saying for years. Probably one of the most iconic moments in cinematic history. 

Zena Dell Lowe  04:30

Here's an example that I just talked to a friend about just the other day. What about Michael Scott from The Office? Who doesn't know the saying, "That's what she said." It has become so popularized because of that character. It's a great line of dialogue that we remember. Now, granted, that's from a TV series where it was repeated frequently, but there are other examples of this, where it becomes part of our regular vocabulary.

Zena Dell Lowe  04:58

What about Dirty Dancing? Anybody who is around my age will know exactly what you mean if you say, "No one puts baby in the corner." What about, "Go ahead, make my day." "Here's looking at you, kid." "May the force be with you." "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." "What we've got here is a failure to communicate." "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." Think about Top Gun, and how quotable that movie is; "I feel the need, the need for speed." These are just a few of the lines that are now so common that we use them in everyday, ordinary conversation, and everybody knows what we mean. So, you do want one line of dialogue per act that stands out. 

Zena Dell Lowe  05:52

A bad example of this is Star Wars, not episodes four, five and six because, of course, we do quote those, right? "May the force be with you." But what about episodes one, two and three? Can anybody remember a single line of dialogue from that? I can, and I quote it as a joke. "Hold me, like you did on Naboo." Really? Oh, my gosh, it's so horrible. There is nothing great in episodes one, two or three. There's nothing quotable. There's no gem. 

Zena Dell Lowe  06:29

Now, here's something that has helped me. I got advice years ago from Barbara Nicolosi, when I was working under her as the Associate Director of the Act One Writing for Hollywood program. And she was advising me on how to do a radio interview. And what she told me was to try to give them sound bites. Try to give them succinct quips, quotable lines, short, pithy catchphrases that they can repeat, that capture the essence of what it is that you're trying to say. So, for example, one of hers is, "I would rather see an R-rated truth than a G-rated lie." What a great line. Right? And the reason that you do that in radio interviews, or, I guess, any kind of interview, is so that when they're showing the highlights of the clips, they can show that line. But if you have a character that goes on and on and on and just doesn't stop talking because it's one big run on sentence like I'm doing right now to try to emphasize this point that it's hard to cut in between and out and then da da da da da da da da da... it's really hard for them to quote you. So, you want to be able to BOOM -- say it -- short pithy sentences once in a while that just really captures the essence of what the character is thinking or feeling or what's happening. Something. One gem of dialogue that stands out per act that is quotable. 

Zena Dell Lowe  08:01

Number seven: Good dialogue is dialogue that sounds just right for each character. And each character sounds different. 

Zena Dell Lowe  08:14

This is something that we would call orchestration. Orchestration. Think about an orchestra. In an orchestra, you have all these different instruments playing their own particular phrase of music, their own particular melody, or harmony line or whatever the case may be, but they join the other instruments and it feels full. It's an orchestra. That is good orchestration. You want each instrument to have its own thing that it's playing. Well, that's what we want our characters to do. Our characters have vocabulary that is varied by education, upbringing, regionalism, favorite words or expressions, the syntax of the character. What do I mean by that? It's how they put the words together. There's a big difference between saying, "Will you close the door, please?" and, "You will close the door, please." 

Zena Dell Lowe  09:12

One of the best shows, believe it or not, that illustrates this is the TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you could literally take a script, blackout all of the character names over dialogue, and you would know which character was saying which line because each character sounded only like themselves. And what happens a lot of times with newer writers, is that every single character sounds the same. They all sound like them, the writer. They all sound the same. Or, what writers will do to try to combat this, often, is they will make the characters totally different, so that one is from England, another one's from Australia, and other one is, you know, speaks pidgin English. They radically try to make the characters so far apart because they don't know how to do this. But how interesting to have characters that are from the same exact location, who still sound like themselves. Because we do. We all sound unique. And that's the goal. That's what we're trying to get to. Members of the audience will notice glaring inconsistencies between where a character claims to hail from and the way that they talk. If you're off, they will know. And it will take them out of the story, which is always a no no. So dialogue must match the characteristics you've given them. This is also true if you have a character that's timid. A timid character must speak in a way that is consistent with their character. 

Zena Dell Lowe  10:46

So, the way, then, the key to understanding how your character must speak, is to understand who they are based on what the character believes about themselves in relation to other people. What is their status? 

Zena Dell Lowe  11:04

Most of us have had those experiences in life where, on the one hand, we are completely confident, completely certain in our aptitude, our abilities, our skills, and we walk in that confidence, and we're fine speaking our voice and we're totally comfortable in our own bodies. And then we'll turn around and be in another situation, and the next thing you know, we are totally insecure, totally uncomfortable. We are shy. We get timid. We don't know how to speak to people, and sometimes we're like, "Who am I? How did this happen?" 

Zena Dell Lowe  11:41

For example, when I'm teaching, I am totally in my element. This is my wheelhouse. I am absolutely certain of what I'm doing. When I get around my family, sometimes, I hardly talk at all. I'll never forget the time that my dad came to see me as the director of a particular show. He came to the previews, and I'm directing people, I'm calling the shots, boom, boom, boom. I'm saying, "No, go back to one." I'm directing everybody. And he turns to my then husband and said, "Oh, my gosh. Zena Dell is so assertive." And my ex-husband actually laughed and said, "Have you met your daughter?" But my dad hadn't ever seen me in that context because I come from a family where everybody's in charge. I'm the youngest, so I never spoke up. 

Zena Dell Lowe  12:34

My status in my family affected how I behaved. My status as a director affected my behavior, affected my dialogue, affected everything about who I am. Now, I'm the same person. But depending on my status, depending on my relationship with the people around me, I'm going to behave and speak differently. So, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to understand the status of your character in connection with the other characters. It will grossly impact how they speak. Now, of course, there are a lot of other tools that you can employ to really affect orchestration and how your character speaks, and we'll talk about those in upcoming episodes. For now, the principle I want you to learn is to understand the status of your characters in conjunction with the characters around them. And that will be your starting point, your jumping off point, for trying to find how they speak originally or uniquely for that character. The bottom line: You need to know who your character is. The more you know your character, the better and the more accurate their dialogue will be for that character. One last example of this, which is a glaring mistake, actually, by Stephen Sondheim, when he did West Side Story. During the previews, his friend, Sheldon Harnick spoke to him and said, "Hey, your song, 'I feel pretty' is a mistake. Because it's supposed to express the perspective of an uneducated Puerto Rican girl, but actually it sounds like she stepped out of a Noel Coward play."

Zena Dell Lowe  14:29

And Sondheim agreed. He was blown away. He absolutely agreed. He wanted to change the song. But his collaborators wouldn't let him, because they loved the song and they kept it in. Nevertheless, it was a mistake. It shouldn't have happened. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:46

EPISODE RECAP: 

To recap, then, number six: Good dialogue sounds just right for the scene or movie. It doesn't stick out with brilliant dialogue that's not right for that story. It shouldn't distract from moving the story forward. Number seven: It sounds just right for each character, because each character sounds different. And we're talking about orchestration, making sure each character has a unique voice. 

Zena Dell Lowe  15:14

CALL TO ACTION: 

If this has been helpful to you in any way, would you please consider leaving us a review, and rating the show on Apple podcasts? And also, if you have a particular topic that you would like me to address, would you please go to my website, www.missionranchfilms.com, and on the right hand side of the page you're going to see a link to something called "Podcast Voicemail." You can click on that, leave me a voicemail, and let me know what you would like me to address, and I will do that in an upcoming episode. 

Zena Dell Lowe  15:43

OUTRO: 

Until then, I want to thank you so much for listening to The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.