Xenagia: Third Person Perspective #4: No Hablo Ingles

Third Person Perspective #4: No Hablo Ingles

To me, being able to write natural dialogue is one of the most essential skills in writing. Even more so than a character's thoughts and feelings, the way they speak and the words they use can be your most powerful means of portraying them. Often it doesn't even matter what they say; the important part is the character's "voice," the unique pattern of speech that defines the character and belongs to nobody else.

I can't stress enough how important dialogue and character voice are to genre fiction. Everybody in the world has their own way of speaking, so it only stands to reason that everybody who's not from Earth must also have unique speech patterns, developed from the region of their birth/childhood, their line of work and their social situation. Forget anachronistic Ye Olde Englishe pastiche accents or Star Trek-type situations where everybody from one planet talks the same. Unless you're writing about some kind of hive mind, real people don't ever speak like that.

So how do you write good dialogue? Well, that's a little more complicated. In this article I'm going to keep focused on word choices and character voice, because they go hand in hand together and because they're both absolutely vital to creating believable dialogue.

There's no denying that word choices can make or break tension in a scene. It doesn't matter whether the characters are getting intimate or angry, awkward or boisterous. Using anemic language is a good way to ensure you never build any tension in the first place. For example, imagine reading these two examples as opening lines for a story:

"I don't want to do this," she said. "It's bad and wrong."
vs.
"I can't do this," she pleaded breathlessly. "We'll never get away with it!"

Mechanically the second line is only a few words longer than the first, but there's a huge difference in the amount of information conveyed. It implies much more than it actually takes time to say. The words immediately bring to mind something illicit, and thereby help to set the scene with regards to what's happening and outline the general mood or tone of what's going on.

Of course this is just best-practice writing; there's a bit more to using word choices to enhance or define character voice. For that you need to have a character in mind, and you have to know how he or she thinks. Their personality, level of confidence, intro/extroversion and every other relevant facet. Their words have to have the right "feel" and impact on the reader, because in any language—particularly in English with its massive vocabulary—some words are simply stronger or more direct than others. That's why some words are more appropriate to certain characters. After all, a "strong but silent" type shouldn't launch into flowery soliloquies at the drop of a hat, and a normally verbose character shouldn't tend to fob people off with one-word responses. It wouldn't feel right.

To find the right character voice, your number one source of information is everywhere around you. Listen to the people in your life. Go out and hang around places for no other reason than to hear people talk. Eavesdrop shamelessly. Pay attention to how they say things as much as what they're saying, and try to get a feel for the rhythm of their speech.

It may be subtle at first, but if you pay close attention you'll find that certain words, expressions or turns of phrase will begin to remind you of particular people in your life. Then, once you identify someone with a unique and identifiable speech pattern, you have a prime specimen on which to base a character.

Try to assemble an individual vocabulary for that character. Control it tightly based on the character's education and accent, and take your word choices from that vocabulary, matching them to the speech patterns of your chosen research assistant. When you've got the hang of it, slowly take away these aids and try to write the same standard of dialogue off the top of your head.

If you can do it, you've found your character voice. All you need to worry about now is how to make the people in your head stop talking.

Ryan A. Span is a UK-based SFF author, game designer and professional grump. Amongst other things he writes the STREET series of cyberpunk novels and treks out to exotic places across the world just to taste the wildlife.

If you have a question for Ryan or an idea for a TPP article, please e-mail them to cs -at- streetofeyes -dot- com, subject THIRD PERSON PERSPECTIVE