WIP Challenge: Day 21, Wednesday

[enemytosleep]

Another day has come and gone, so now it's time to check in. \o/



How many new words did you write today? Did you reach your goal? Were you editing instead? Researching? Or was today a day of rest?

...and today's discussion topic:

One of my favorite aspects of reading fanfiction is witty dialogue. I know I strive to keep the dialogue in my own work fresh and natural for the characters involved, and I find it one of the best ways to include a bit of comedy. How do you handle dialogue? Is it something that comes naturally? Or do you struggle to find the character's voice and have it sound like them (and not you instead)? Share some snippets of dialogue, ask questions, or offer tips!

Comments

[enemytosleep]

Yuujinchou Exchange Bonus Treat #3 (due Mar 24): 37 new words. I wrote two sentences, then cut a paragraph that wasn't needed, so yeah. :| Current word count: 645

Yuujinchou Exchange Bonus Treat #5 (due Mar 24): No new words. I have an idea for a little drabble that may or may not happen depending on available writing time this week. Current word count: 0

Help_Japan (due 18 years ago - 750 word min): No new words. I promise to give this love after the Yuujinchou exchange stops eating my brain. O.o Current word count: 3,666


Often my outlines begin with bits of dialogue. I tend to hear stories that way first (as the characters talking to each other), and then I go back and fill in the details outside the conversation. So I guess I find dialogue one of the easier parts of writing.

Here's a tiny drabble nearly completely comprised of dialogue, For Your Entertainment. <--The only thing you need to know to enjoy these 164 words is that Greed and Prince Ling share the same body (so one will be in control of their body while the other makes commentary in the background that only the other one can hear).

[crowdog66]

I didn't get any writing done yesterday due to a production emergency, but today (in spite of feeling immensely UNproductive) I've managed to get about 350 words worth of plotting/dialogue done for the next chapter of "Impulse". Might be able to get some more done over the course of the afternoon, although I'm feeling singularly uncreative right now.

For me, dialogue tends to come pretty naturally: once I have a character's voice in my head it stays there, ready to be called upon at a moment's notice. (Iin fact, the voices often throw dialogue up from the depths of my subconscious with no prompting whatsoever, which means I have to stop and write down the exchanges. Grrr.)

I'll share a snippet from "The Extraordinary Lubricity", which is one of my rare dialogue-only pieces and came to me more or less in one finished piece.

******************************************************

SETTING: The Replimat, Bashir and Garak's regular table.

J: I'm sorry I'm late, Garak, I ran into —

G: "Mister Pego"?

J: I, ah —

G: "Rampant machine"? "Glorious cods"? "The extraordinary lubricity"?

J: Would you —

G: "The rosy-tinted aperture of her cavernous recess"?

J: Keep your voice down!

G: How can I? Everybody should be made aware that such wonders of the Terran language exist and indeed, are still in print! Four hundred years have passed and still they linger, to be inflicted on unsuspecting readers such as myself!

J: …so you didn't like it?

G: "Didn't like it"? Such an expression pales in the face of my amazement and dismay — which, I'm sure you'll agree, are fully justified under the circumstances. Really, Doctor, did you think that was fair? To spring such… salacious content on me without any warning whatsoever?

J: You mean the way you lent me The Oblique Entanglement two weeks ago without saying a word about its actual content?

G: I’ll have you know that The Oblique Entanglement is a classic of Cardassian ve’harnak literature!

J: I see. And by any chance, does ve’harnak translate as taking it up the arse?

G: Doctor! Keep your voice down!

J: You could have at least warned me to be sitting in a stable position when Kertok went to Servet’s tent during the Battle of the Three Knives.

G: And spoil the impact that the author intended?

J: “Impact” is one word for it…

G: Oh, don’t make such a face. The episode in question was key in advancing the plot. Whereas in this Victorian drivel you loaned me —

J: It advanced the plot? You’re joking.

G: …I take it you didn’t read past that point.

J: Not after getting bushwhacked by Kertok’s “massive and majestically ridged thernek” I didn’t!

G: Ah, but you do admit that the phrase stuck in your mind!

J: How could it not? My God! I had nightmares for three days afterwards.

G: Now you're the one who's joking.

J: Well… only a little. I don't expect to be reading Cardassian literature and run headlong into hardcore pornography.

[enemytosleep]

Haha, I love the sense of character we get from this! :D

[roane]

*laugh* I love it.

[riceishere]

Not into the fandom but this was funny. I hope to use "The rosy-tinted aperture of her cavernous recess" in a conversation someday. Just out of curiosity: did these phrases actually come from real books?

[barbayat]

Those two are just great in canon and I think you write them extraordinary well plus the dialogue itself is awesome!

[bay_alexison]

Last night and this afternoon had been doing some editing of my FMA Big Bang. Oh man so many characterization mistakes I made. @_@; I still got around two pages left of the first part of Chapter Six, so I'll get to editing those either tonight or tomorrow. Beta A hasn't returned to me part two of Chapter Six yet, but I hope she'll be able to do that later this evening.

As for dialogue, that's actually the hardest part of writing for me. For instance, the original drafts of my Big Bang my betas would tell me things like this character wouldn't say something ridiculous like that or they sounded too formal/stiff/etc. Sometimes I would say the dialogue aloud sometimes and try to get the character's voice down, but I'm still far from getting the characterization right.

[enemytosleep]

Oh my, so much editing! I hope you can make it through!

Hm, have you ever tried character sheets? Here is a very detailed one for role play games. Sometimes having notes on the characters' motivations, quotes from the source material, etc. can be good to help you find their voice (and you can reference them at will, which can be easier than trolling the manga each time you need to check something). Since you write lot of Roy and Riza, it might be good to start building up a sheet for each of them to help you keep their characters true (you can even copy-paste some beta notes and stuff like that in there, too). We all have our weak point, so don't feel bad!

[bay_alexison]

Haha, thanks. I might be headesking/mulling over the mistakes I did, but in the end I learn from them. I managed to get through most of it already, but yeah as I mentioned still need to look over a couple more pages which shouldn't be too bad.

I have done character sheets/notes on my original characters long ago but never for canon characters, haha. I know Scrivener has a character sketch template, so I just checked it now and it's more or less an abridged version of the link you posted (asked mostly background, habits and mannerisms, personality, external/internal conflicts, and whatever notes you want to put). I might get started on doing the sheets/notes for Roy and Riza (perhaps also other characters too from FMA and even Homestuck) when I get the chance.

[insignia]

I said I wouldn't disappoint the kitty again, but I was wrong. I hardly remember what this "writing" thing is anymore.

[enemytosleep]

Sensei is going to have quite the jar collection what with me and you and a few others. XD Are there any writing warms ups you can try? Sometimes I do the thing where you put an iPod/music player on shuffle and write a drabble during each song that palys, ending when the song ends (so you have to move quickly). There's also Written? Kitten!, where writing words gets you adorable kittens. :D I'm going to try Written? Kitten! again tomorrow - tonight got eaten up by a last minute beta request. ^^;

[insignia]

I'm looking into some ways to motivate myself again. Writing to songs might work--if I can refrain from turning every plot bunny into a sprawling epic--but Written? Kitten! isn't for me (although I do like the idea). I think my main problem is that I've got stuck in destructive thought patterns, and keep trying to bend my writing methods into unnatural shapes--and oh god, that came out sounding more pretentious than I intended! X-D I just mean I have these old ideas of what should work, even though it really doesn't, that I keep slipping back to +_+

[enemytosleep]

Another thing I do a lot is ask my f-list to give me prompts (one time I even made them all gratuitous self-inserts, haha) to write some crap under f-lock that gets me moving again. \o/

[insignia]

Prompts are the last thing I need. Seriously. Every new idea is another story I'll feel bad about not being able to write. I have to limit what I already have, not look for more ._. Yeah, my problems are ridiculous. I know.

[roane]

Dear kitty: I am taking the night OFF. :) Well. Mostly.

I LOVE dialogue. I love writing it, I love reading the good stuff. One of my favorite bits of mine lately is from my Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover, "The Mystery of the Runaway Bride".

“Sherlock, what are we doing? Seriously, what? You cannot possibly believe that the woman who walked in here yesterday is... is an alien.”

“I don't. She was abducted by aliens.”

“Abduct—no. Sherlock.”

“Shut up and listen to me, John. Also, think for god's sake.”

I crossed my arms and waited.

“Donna Noble has, according to her grandfather, been made to forget something, something dangerous. Her mother corroborates this—you'll remember she said Donna would die if she remembered. Both of them are worried. A patch of carpet in front of the sitting room window was excessively worn. It's not in a high-traffic area, so that suggests that someone has spent a great deal of time pacing in front of that window. Sylvia Noble's daughter won one of the biggest lottery prizes in British history, and yet she still lives in a small modest house, with no indication that she's taken so much as a penny from her daughter. That much money, surely you'd let your daughter buy you a house, a car, an expensive television, something. Now, you could write it off as Ms. Noble and her new husband being stingy, but Ms. Noble herself lives rather moderately for someone of her means. No, neither Mrs. Noble nor Wilfred want anything to do with Ms. Noble's money. That suggests they feel guilty about it—something to do with the source, perhaps. Whatever happened to Ms. Noble, this money is a payout of some sort.”

“You're saying aliens rigged the lottery.”

[enemytosleep]

Hee, good dialogue is so fun. :D You anted a night off the other night, but wrote a bunch instead, so I suppose you are due an actual night off. :P

[snowynight]

I wrote 2K, for a potential new fic. It might never see the light, but it was fun to write. In other words, I kept procrastinating on the ficI needed to write.

I usually reread canon to get their speech pattern, and then try to keep their voice clear in my mind, so that the dialogue would come natural to the characters.

[enemytosleep]

Well at least you wrote something? XD

[riceishere]

Wrote another section for the Wrinkle in Time fanfic for this challenge and while I was struggling through a scene transition, wrote a bit on my WIP of Doom. Yey for productivity!

I don't really have major difficulties in writing dialogue for my fics. Often enough if I'm really into the fandom I'm writing in, I've re-watched/re-read the canon so many times I've gotten at least a basic grasp of the character's voice. If I'm stuck or unsure of a line of dialogue, reading it out loud or acting out the scene would reveal the major problems.

My tendency is to stick to humor or witty banter since it's what I find enjoyable in other fics. Which can be a problem. I enjoy it too much and I get carried away. Then I'd have scenes with yes, funny dialogue that I like, but has lost a point and purpose midway.

[enemytosleep]

Woo, good job! \o/

Yes, that can certainly be an problem in a plotty piece! I sometimes address that by removing the extraneous comedy and posting it as a separate drabble, so that I can still have my fun conversation, but I don't sidetrack the big piece so much. ^^;

[linaewen]

I had a fever all day yesterday, so didn't have any reserve energy for writing. However, I had a lot of time for laying in bed and daydreaming about writing, so hopefully something will come of that today! I'm still feeling a bit peaked, but much better than yesterday!

I think if you have a good feel for your character, you will naturally include comedy -- and I agree, it's really fun to read, and also to write. I do think it comes rather naturally if you know your character's voice and know the kind of situations you can put him/her in that will bring about natural humor.

[enemytosleep]

Aw, sorry to hear you were ill! Hope the daydreaming helps you advance some plot, though. :D

Love good dialogue. ♥ Some people have a tougher time with it, though (and for others, it's impossible to get the characters to SHUT UP).