Meta: The English Language (or, "How People Really Talk")

[catwalksalone]

MJ Panel Mod: RoaringMice

Discussion space - the floor is yours...

Potential points to consider:

What gets your goat when you read dialogue? Is it different for different fandoms, different characters? Why is that?

What, to you, is authentic dialogue? Where can you find it?

How do you feel about ellipses? Do people really talk in full sentences the whole time?

How do you feel about people representing accent or dialect in dialogue? What works for you and what doesn't?

Does the wrong turn of phrase or choice of word for a character throw you out of the story?

Do people have more trouble writing characters from other cultures? Is this just a matter of idiom or is there more to it?

Comments

[secondalto.livejournal.com]

My two big fandoms both have characterss that speak in certain ways and have certain rhythms to their speech that I guess dialogue does matter, a lot.

My first fandom is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So the first big thing is the way Joss wrote the dialogue for the Scoobs, the constant slipping in of cultural references, the rearranging of wording, the changing of actual words.

Then you come to characters. Two of the main characters I write are Giles and Wesley, who are British. That in and of itself presents unique challenges. They have a different cadence to their speech, especially Giles in early Watcher mode. It's so...carefull, so selective. Add in the colorfullness of British swear words and you have a hell of a lot of fun ahead of you.

If we toss Spike into the mix you have another set of problems. He has an all together different way of speaking, forever dropping the 'g' at the end of words or clipping of the beginning of words, which my spellchecker just loves.

Then we have my second fandom, Stargate. I write mostly Jack/Daniel, but there lies the problem. Jack and Daniel both have such unique voices that for the longest time I hesitated to write them. Jack is Jack for lack of a better description. He can be utterly comical or extremely insightful depending on the circumstance. And it's so hard to capture his sarcasm.

Daniel, well with Daniel you have the added bonus that he knows 23 languages (which 23 is a source of some debate. There is canon proof for about 10 of these, the rest are debatable.) He can be both eloquent and short. He gets over excited and spouts streams of information and at the same time can express a world of emotion in a single exclamation of "Jack."

So I would say it takes a lot for me to write dialogue, so I'm willing to give an author a little leeway when it comes to that. I think if you immerse yourself in the show, anyone can do the characters dialogue justice. It's a matter of listening. Or at least it is for me.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

I've spent a lot of time (not by choice) watching reality TV, and I think I've got almost too used to the way people really talk. Not full sentences; not even comprehensible sentence structure, at times. So ellipses are invading my fic like the armies of darkness. Especially since my primary fandom has one main character who talks markedly more colloquially than the other. On the other hand, the interplay between the two speech styles is a lot of fun. :D

Accent and dialect - dialect words are fine, even necessary to convey character, but visual representation of accents or eye dialect sits wrong. It's assuming one accent is the norm, which, apart from being a faulty assumption, can often carry connotations of desirability and status.

And oh, wrong turns of phrase. I perpetrated a few of those before I realised I should get an American beta to kill all my NZ-isms, some of which I didn't even realise were NZ-isms. Thank goodness Fraser's Canadian so I don't have to watch my Commonwealth spelling and word choice so closely.

[ultra-chrome.livejournal.com]

I'm all for dialogue being written like true speech to an extent. Wanna, gotta, that sort of stuff. It can make or break a character. Particularly when you have one character that speaks like that and another who will always say "want to" and "going to".

It helps to define them as well as giving you more options. For instance, if the character that usually says, "I'm not gonna do that." suddenly spits out, "I am not going to do that!" you know he really, really means it.

I draw the line at accents, though. One of my fandoms has a guy with a very distinct accent and I find it off putting when people try to write it the way it sounds. For the most part, it's very difficult to write the sounds. The other major problem is, you spend more time trying to figure out what those letters spell than you do reading the actual story. I can supply the accent in my head, I just want to know what the character has to say.

Also...I love ellipses. They're valid punctuation tools. They have their place. Not to mention the fact that you can't get by without them if you write Ray Kowalski. :)

[kill-claudio.livejournal.com]

I think, for me, the exchanges which sound most natural are not necessarily those which follow the exact rhythms of natural speech. If anyone has ever had to read the transcripts of real conversations you know how impossible they can be to follow, because we rely on hundreds of little visual cues which can't all be described. So there has to be a certain compromise to make the dialogue comprehensible, and I would agree that I'm willing to give authors a little leeway like that.

I also have the same problem as the_antichris, in that I write in a fandom whose characters are largely American or Canadian, and my British colloquialisms keep creeping in. Which isn't a problem for Fraser, but it makes writing Ray a nightmare.