Talk Like Me
My father liberally sprinkles his speech with the f-word. It's kind of like breathing. Necessary.
When I wrote The Roofer, a lot of the speech affectations of the characters were based on men I knew from my childhood, men my dad knows. Lots of curse words. I was at a book group once, which had chosen it for their reading selection, and I was questioned as to the "necessaity" of that kind of raw language. Damn right, it's necessary. Otherwise, it's not the reality of the Westies and the people depicted in that book.
One of my best guy friends always refers to his apartment as his "crib." Never his place, his pad, his apartment, his house. I guess he takes chicks back to his crib so they can play. ;-)
Details like that always end up in my books. It's not ME. It's not my speech pattern. It's them.
Every single character, in my opinion, should have patterns of speech and affectations and word choices that are theirs and theirs alone. I will always select patterns for different characters. Consistent but different. All your characters should not speak the same. I don't speak like anyone I know. Yes, I string words together to make sentences, but there are oddities. I refer to myself in third person to my kids, "Help mama clean up this room." I liberally use the f-word when discussing certain foreign policy decisions. I will knock wood whenever I say something about death or anything bad. It is me, uniquely my speech.
How about you? Do you have differences in your dialogue for each character? What's unique in your speech?
When I wrote The Roofer, a lot of the speech affectations of the characters were based on men I knew from my childhood, men my dad knows. Lots of curse words. I was at a book group once, which had chosen it for their reading selection, and I was questioned as to the "necessaity" of that kind of raw language. Damn right, it's necessary. Otherwise, it's not the reality of the Westies and the people depicted in that book.
One of my best guy friends always refers to his apartment as his "crib." Never his place, his pad, his apartment, his house. I guess he takes chicks back to his crib so they can play. ;-)
Details like that always end up in my books. It's not ME. It's not my speech pattern. It's them.
Every single character, in my opinion, should have patterns of speech and affectations and word choices that are theirs and theirs alone. I will always select patterns for different characters. Consistent but different. All your characters should not speak the same. I don't speak like anyone I know. Yes, I string words together to make sentences, but there are oddities. I refer to myself in third person to my kids, "Help mama clean up this room." I liberally use the f-word when discussing certain foreign policy decisions. I will knock wood whenever I say something about death or anything bad. It is me, uniquely my speech.
How about you? Do you have differences in your dialogue for each character? What's unique in your speech?
posted by Erica Orloff at 5:15 PM
8 Comments:
I hear voices when I write dialogue. In my mind, I can actually hear the character speak. I guess it's the auditory equivalent of visualization.
Me, too.
Think we need to hit a shrink's couch? All thos voices!
E
Jude and Erica, move over! This couch is getting kinda crowded.
I absolutely hear the characters in my head. It drives me nuts when the copyeditor tries to edit out the not-always-grammatically-correct way they speak. No one speaks like that, anyway!
Mary
Mary:
OMG, yes!!!! I had that problem in Invisible Girl. The book had part of it set in Hell's Kitchen, and then, in addition, one main character spoke broken English (she was from Vietnam). The copy editor took out some subtle things that were SO intentional. I spent seven years teaching English to refugees. I know . . . they don't have "the" and "a" and "an." Anyway . . . you're right. No one speaks perfectly. I sure don't. And I use a lot of ellipses because that's how I speak . . . imagine the ellipses hanging there as I gather my thoughts! :-)
E
Lining up....for my turn on the couch.
Most definitely hear voices. I have a secondary character designed to be annoying. She's hyper, she babbles, doesn't know when to give someone else a turn, talks in circles trying to get all her ideas out at once. The mixture of disjointed or run-on sentences drives my cp nuts and when I read her critiques I find myself thinking, "But that's how she talks. Can't YOU hear her????"
Guess not. Hmm.
When dialogue is done well and kept consistent, I can 'hear' characters written by other people as well ;-)
Uh-oh. Do ya 'spose this means I need TWO turns on the couch?
Lainey:
I'm patting the spot on the couch next to me. ;-)
Want to know something funny? I had a freind from college who had a hard time reading Spanish Disco because the character was too like me and she kept "hearing" ME. LOL!
E
Hah! I have a funny story about that. I based one of my characters' speech patterns on my DH. (I didn't tell him.) Bless his heart, but after he read it, he looked at me and asked, "Why does the hero talk like that? He sounds like an idiot."
I kept my mouth shut, LOL.
spyscribbler, that had me laughing outloud.
I play conversations over and over in my head, and sometimes speak them (when I'm on my own) to make sure they sound realistic. I guess that qualifies me for a place on the couch....
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