Writing Distinctive Dialogue

Scott asks:

“A question on making dialog for individual characters unique to them. It is very common for all characters to sound so homogeneous that attribution is the only way to know one speaker from another. Awkward accents aside, what are some techniques that help separate social classes and regions in speech?”

Accents aren’t a great way to differentiate characters in books. (That’s different in audiobooks, of course.) Varying sentence structure and length and vocabulary are better.

Like, a teenager girl might talk in long complicated sentences that usually reference the opinions of her friends, while an elderly farmer might speak in laconic sentence fragments. A professor might have more complex sentence structure with greater vocabulary, while a human resources professional might talk entirely in business jargon. (“I’m reaching out today to touch base on performance evaluations…”) An actor or a stand-up comic or a performer might talk entirely in emotive-based language (“I feel that” or “My feeling is that”) while a doctor or an accountant might be more clinical in their speech. Police officers and members of the military will often have their own jargon with a lot of acronyms that can be impenetrable to outsiders or people unfamiliar with the culture.

Profanity is a tricky one. It is a very easy way to distinguish speech patterns among characters, but profanity often rubs readers the wrong way. I had someone complain that Nadia says “goddamn” a lot in the CLOAK MAGE books, and the truth is I dial down her profanity. I think that if Nadia existed in Real Life, every third word would be a profanity once she got ticked off.

It’s also important to remember that people rarely give direct answers in conversation and frequently go off on tangents.

For that matter, the subtext of a conversation is often more important that the actual words that are actually being said.

Like, for example, imagine a detective is investigating a murder in a bank lobby, and asks five witnesses where they found the body. The way that the five witnesses talk can provide insight into their character. In this example, we’ll have Tanya, a teenage girl, Braden, a teenage boy, Rick, an imperious bank executive, Janet, a candidate for state senator, and Robert, an elderly farmer:

Tanya the teenage girl: “Like, I came inside, because I needed to withdraw some cash and the stupid ATM wasn’t working, like, again, and OH MY GOD this dead guy was just on the floor in the middle of the bank, so I texted Zoey, and Zoey was like we need to get this on Facebook Live like, right now, but then Zoey’s mom heard what was happening and she told me to call the police, so I called 911 and the guy was like ‘what’s your emergency’, and I’m like, ‘dude, there’s a dead guy on the floor…’”

Braden the teenage boy: (Mumbles, looks at floor) “People started screaming. I saw this guy on the floor. He was like, dead. (Checks his phone) Can I go now?”

Rick the Bank Executive: “I heard a commotion in the lobby, and I got up to see what was happening, and the dead body was on the floor. I want to assure you that Mutual Fidelity Credit Banking takes all criminal matters very seriously and cooperates with the authorities to the fullest extent of the law. However, any further questions will need to be referred to our corporate counsel, and I’m afraid I have several other meetings scheduled this afternoon. Good day, officer.”

Janet the state senate candidate: “The thoughts and prayers of my family and I are with the victim’s family in this terrible time. This tragedy only further proves that the policies of my opponent are actively harmful for the most marginalized communities in our state. When I am your state senator, I will proudly stand for all communities. (Pause) Is that the victim’s parents? I need to get a picture with them for my Twitter.”

Robert the Elderly Farmer: “Came in. Fella was on the floor. Poor bastard looked like he’d been shot in the head. Checked his pulse anyway, and then called the cops.”

As you can see, all five characters talk in different ways, which provides insights into their characters.

-JM