The Five Ghosts discussion

Hello there, I am Tristan Wong, former reviewer and amateur novelist coming here to talk about things that make writing rad and stuff. I'm no pro, so please feel free to contradict me in any case and I'm sure we'll work out a good means to an end to help all writers far and wide. I write Soft Science Fiction (Ala Dune and Hyperion), so I'm no artist in the field of young adults, dark fantasy is where I work.

Let me just start off with a basic thing before I progress any further with this feature... how do you write dialogue?

Again, I’m no pro, but these are just things I follow in order to keep myself from hanging myself due to dialogue that makes me cringe in pain every time I read it.

Now don't you dare start saying that it's incredibly easy because it doesn't matter what you do... it doesn't matter who you talk to, you'll never hit the write notes the first time when you write dialogue trees. The back-and-forth between characters can be tough to punch out, especially if they ain't human or they are in a society of hierarch's... or they're dogs, whatever comes first. To create dialogue is simple... hear people. I can never do it on the first try--for me, it starts off with getting the idea down, then coming back later to bloat it so-to-speak.

There are several dialogue trees, but I’ll name just a few—characterization, info dumping (I didn't know what this was called, thank Sean for this heads-up), and bloating I like to call it.

Characterization is pretty basic and it's just to reveal something to another. Now this can be done in a variety of ways, but from what I've seen, a lot of people love to info-dump everything in one scene. And speaking from a logical point of view, that isn't how people carry out their daily lives. In fact, that makes no sense whatsoever. For it to sound natural, you have to have effective back and forth for it to "lead-in" to the characterization. Don't just go and do this...

"Hey Johnny," said Jim.
I shot Jim a hard glance. "Hey Tim--I mean Jim, fuck was your name again?"
He shrugged, grimacing as he did so: "Jim."
"Oh yeah." I ate a chocolate bar, it was good.
After a moment of silence, I bite my lips and say: "So how's the wife?"
His skin sparkles in the sunlight, why? I don’t know… it sounds interesting though, don’t it? "She died,” Jim the sparkling man said. “She was a good person who was born on 1987—she knows who killed your husband… I mean wife. Sorry, I'm very dyslexic today."

Now see what I did there? No lead in, I just dumped some information inside someone for no good reason at all... you must remember that there has to be some sort of flow in-between these various dialogue trees, or otherwise it gets chopped up into bits unrecognizable. It almost seems robotic—nearly forced in nature. A better dialogue back and forth would be something like…

“I’m just curious really,” I said. “Mother or—?”
“Well since you are so interested Allan--father took me to the ‘Briska,’ when I was about ten.” Packrat began segwaying away from my train of thought. “Met this hairy fucking chap over here as a result.”

“Yeah I remember your ugly mug at the drop port,” Ghost muttered, a smile infectious to cross his face. He bit his lip, a hidden mass chewed upon in his leather bound face, “with that sexy beast of a father holding your hand down the aisle.”

“Anyway," Packrat chuckled, cracking his knuckles as he did so. "Dad met this… this chick, who I thought was pretty hot, aye?”

“She’s was pretty cool,” Ghost muttered to me. “But hey, my standards aren’t exactly high at the same time—‘Locdus’ woman are awesome, if you can find them around at the strip-clubs… they’re a popular bunch. Gave the furries something to mull over last time I checked.”

It was the only fact men of the Orionis looked into—women are a treasure out in space and to get the ones of another race was a gift. It was a looked down upon principle yes… but desperation come to play and well the only thing they were ever going to get out here—outside the jurisdiction of our Empire—was the females of another species. Locdus were no exceptions (honour system based on the hierarchs, the purity of a race divided only by skin) and thousands sold themselves to support themselves.

“Fuck you,” Packrat said. “I caught you wanking to photos a couple times over.”
“To your father maybe,” he smiled meekishly and chuckled.
“Then why is the photo of my mother missing?”

Face flushed and Ghost’s smile wryly of any sort of thought. He stroked his beard and kept his expression aloof at the time, his gaze turned back to me and winked a couple times over.

“Maybe—” he shrugged. “Erm… so how you doing Allan?”
“Thought so,” Packrat nodded. “Hand it over…”
“So you can jerk off with it?” Ghost snapped. “I think not.”
“You son-of-a-bitch…” Packrat chuckled.

Mannerisms, segways, anything to keep the emotion and the playful nature of each character in play (this was taken from my work. Not the best example, but it was the closest I could find to back and forth anywhere within). Don’t be afraid if your word processor gives you shit for such, it can’t tell the difference between dialogue and sentence organization properly, which can be annoying… I hate seeing green squiggly lines everywhere just as much as the next person. For the back and forth I just gave you though, I sprinkled information around and about, never packed into a huge paragraph. Logically if these two are friends, they will be making some sort of sex-joke here and there… depends; aircrews tend to have a weird sense of humour.

Bloating is dialogue for the sake of dialogue—bloating to get a page or two out. There isn’t anything wrong with it, but there is a very fine line that keeps the sane from the sinful. While the rule is quite bendable, it still remains resilient to separate crap dialogue from meaningful dialogue—crap dialogue is tough to realize… and it comes from perspective and personal taste. Let me try and make something up off the top of my head to give you an idea of what I’m getting at here.

“Why hello there Jacob,” I said.
“Why hello there Tristan,” he replied despondently.
“Can I have some cereal?”
“Yes, you like cereal, so I will get it.”
“Thank you there Jacob. Are you my friend?”
“Yes you are my friend, I like noodles.”
“Your mine too, and I too enjoy noodles.”
“I like chocolate.”
I smile. “I like Penguins.”
He grins back and looks at his cereal. “I like cereal.”
I shake my head and ask. “We just said that… a couple seconds ago.”
“Oh… right.”

After much consideration, I decided to ask him. “So, what’s the plan for tomorrow? With that whole Rachel-breaking-up-thing?”

Now, unless Jacob likes him some cereal and chocolate, there wasn’t a point in putting that there less it becomes a factoid and plot-device building to something. In all honesty, this dialogue tree didn’t make sense, and would only fit in a surreal plot (I don’t know… dragons come eating shit and the only way to defeat them is through cereal mixed in with chocolate, fuck hell would I know? It’s a fucking dragon! Man the harpoons and yank out the teeth so it don’t kill nobody no mo’). In fact, I found it distracting and personally for me, it had no right being there, assuming this wasn't some sort of hard-boiled comedy from hell.

It ain’t a common problem, but there are fan-fictions and a couple novels I’ve read that did just exactly this. It prolonged the inevitable and predominantly, I wanted to punch the author square in the nuts for stalling me from getting through the book with the message and story. The only reason I use this in my writing is to give ideas and conversations that have the idea's hidden inside some depth and some organic feel.

More to come soon if people find this useful.

I love dialogue, but I find I've only gotten much good at it by the time the story's over and I know my characters inside and out. That's what rewrites are for, I guess.

The best thing I ever read about character, and it relates heavily to dialogue, is that 'a character cannot be at heart what they seem to be at face.' No one *I* know talks directly from the heart all the time. Often you have to read between the lines to see the meaning behind the words. This is why it's literally painful for me to read romance novels - well-written dialogue is SO hard to come across in romance. In an effort to convey the profound, authors fall back on cliche. "You're my whole world," "you complete me." In efforts to be unique they sometimes go the wrong way and make the ULTIMATE CHEESE (aka Twilight 'you're like my own unique brand of heroin *chorus of groans*). Now, The Notebook has good romantic dialogue. 'Now say you're a bird too.' 'If you're a bird, I'm a bird.' They're not talking about birds, he's saying he belongs with her, but if he just said it frankly like that it would just sound contrived.

Similar advice, from the same author (Robert McKee). "If the scene is about what the scene is about you're in deep shit." Scenes are not about the text but their subtext, and it's the same with dialogue. If all the character's inner thoughts and feelings are expressed out loud they diminish in their meaning. As the audience we don't want to be treated like idiots, we want to hear 'if you're a bird, I'm a bird' and figure out for ourselves that that means 'I love you with all my heart and will for the rest of my life.'

Different example: a wife yelling at her husband because he forgot to get milk before he got home like she asked. Is she REALLY angry about the milk? As the writer, you'd better hope not. You'd better hope she's angry because she got her hair cut and he didn't notice and lately he notices nothing - at least not about her - and she's feeling neglected and alone and the milk is just another thing to prove how little he cares.

The WORST dialogue I ever read came from the Book 'Immortal' by Gillian Shields. Oi vei.
"I told you we would meet again."
I whipped around. He was standing there in the moonlight, the boy with the haunting eyes.
"You terrified me!"
"And you enchanted me." He smiled teasingly. "You looked like a water nymph saying her prayers. What were you dreaming about?"

I almost gagged. I dog-eared this page as reference for what not to do and immediately called my best friend to tell her about it, because please god let me not be the only person to find this utterly repulsive. Everything that could be wrong with it is. 'Terrified' is the wrong word, if you're legitimately shocked or surprised you'll blurt out 'scared' or 'startled' maybe, but not 'terrified.' The response is GROSS. He sounds like a right creep and I don't know a single boy who would talk like that, even if he was trying to seduce a girl.

This is a hilarious but pretty accurate definition of subtext, and painfully true for anyone whose written one of these e-mails http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=400w4X...

And that's... what I have to contribute to the subject of dialogue.

I think I just died a little inside reading the references you just put up--be right back, I'm going to get my brain-washed by the local neuro-surgeon. Oh good-bye world, been nice knowing ya! Ugh :P

Just think of it this way: that's published, so you can be.

Awfully optimistic of you, don't you think?

Maybe, but what the hell's the point in being pessimistic?

Keeps the recipient from expecting far too much. How I see it, if you head to the local deli and buy a turkey, pessimism has you expecting only a skeleton left in the package, optimism has you expecting only the leanest of meat. Being that I'm more so a pessimist, I'm never disappointed. Believing as such took years of cultivation, and it wasn't pretty.

But hey, that's just me! I take it your the positive one, aye? Must've been a great ride up till now :)

I'm not an optimist about everything ;) I just don't think there's much point in even attempting to get published if you don't believe you're better than that rubbish. I'm more of a 'shoot for the moon and you might land among the stars' kind of person, rather than a 'maybe you're going to hell but if you're not then at least it'll be a pleasant surprise' person.