How can I fix the stiffness on my dialogue?

I recently received this criticism:

And I completely agree with it. My problem is that I don\'t know how fix it, besides \"saying the dialogue in my head\".

How can I fix the stiffness in my dialogue? thanks in advance!

Forgiveness is beyond justice, faith is superior than hope, redemption is better than perfection and love is greater than them all.

As far as I know, that is how you fix it. That's how I'd fix it. When I want to write dialogue, I have figure out what they're trying to convey, put it in the speaker's words and write it down, then picture them saying it or even mouth/whisper/mutter the words myself. And I repeat this process, until I can say it smoothly after getting into their mindset and I don't get any sudden feelings of 'would they actually say it that way'.

I'm sure this isn't the only way, of course, but I haven't really thought about how else this could be done, so if anyone else found another way, I'd like to hear it.

edited 14th Jan '15 8:51:01 PM by CrystalGlacia

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

I never really thought about this as I've never had to deal with it so I'm not sure, but if I were to take a step in the dark, I'd say the way to fix it would be paying attention and studying to the phrase structures in how people talk, pay attention to details like length, choice of words, slang, and such. Try to identify a pattern (or patterns, as everyone talks differently) and find the best way to use in your stories.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Another thing to remember is that emotions influence speech, and because of that many things we say are completely unplanned and a result of us trying to connect on the fly whatever we happen to be trying to say. If you hear someone say something that you'd think would be said by someone when emotions were flying high, and yet that which is being said sounds ... rehearsed, for a lack of better word, then obviously it is going to end sounding stiff. In other words, speech is not perfect, and we all make mistakes when we say things.

Oh, sure, that doesn't mean that everyone has to speak in the same way we speak (if that were the case, the readers would quickly get bored with all the "err", "hmm", "ah", and other sounds of that sort), but it really doesn't do to have them sound as if they were reading a pre-prepared speech. I'd once read a story in which it all sounded like that, and after a few chapters (I'm stubborn and wanted to give it a chance) I wanted to throw ClusterFBombs into the air just to keep the average level of emotions high because the characters kept sounding emotionless. So remember that the same line spoken by the same character in a different mood or state of mind is going to sound differently, sometimes even completely differently, and sometimes even nigh-absurd.

A good way to get non-stiff dialogues is by stripping down what is being said to the essentials and then simply repeating it out loud, differently each time, until you get a variation that sounds nice. If possible, get yourself into the state of mind that the character is supposed to be in when speaking.

Quick note about verbal pauses and other real-speech artifacts: You can use them if it's for an effect.

Example 1: If you have a character who's caught off-guard, using "um" and "st-tuttering" and "sta-stam-stammering" will go a long way to show that the character's trying to think of something to say really fast.

Example 2: For a character who's depressed or discouraged, have them start every few sentences with an "oh, ..." or a sigh.

Example 3: Buffy Speak. Great for showing a character's brain is working faster than their mouth — so fast that they can't find the right thing to explain the stuff.

Example 4: Accent, dialect, and Verbal Tics. Like how Fargo used "yah" and "jeez" a lot. The Coen Brothers do this a lot in their scripts, and it enhances the feel of it all. This is also part of the general "word choice" advice.

Other "nitty-gritty" language-things to think about:

Poetic meter and speaking rhythm and "feet" — more about pacing, here. Listen to the rhythms people talk in. Do they go HARD-soft-HARD-soft or soft-HARD-soft-HARD or soft-HARD-HARD-soft or HARD-soft-soft-HARD or soft-HARD-soft-soft or some other combination?

It's an extreme example, but notice how auctioneers sound almost like they're singing: they adjust their speaking rhythm to bring up the energy and make people bid more.

Also think about what sounds people are using. Is there a lot of "s," "z," "ch," "sh," and "k"? That's gonna make someone sound more "snakelike," which could make them sound more "evil." Not always the case, but people do make subconscious connections like that.

On top of that, a bunch of S and Z consonants in a row can make a phrase hard to say out loud.

This stuff is pretty complicated, and it gets into the nuts and bolts of language and how writers and poets design what they put to the page. Even so, understanding that stuff can make it easier for people to read a line out loud and not deal with clumsy words.

A lot of this is more of an art than a science, and it takes some thinking and practice. But once you get that down, I'll bet you won't have to worry about "stilted dialogue" criticisms anymore.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

To expand on the third example, sometimes that one causes people to stumble into a situation where they really can't find the word they want to use to mean what they want, and instead of pausing they start throwing around words that don't exactly exist. Well, sort of ... sort-ish of, because they exist from the point when they are used for the first time, even though as a slang rather than any official element of that language. Those words are created by either adding something to another word to up-scale it, down-scale it, or otherwise change something in it, or by mixing two or more words that happen to exist into a monster-word thingy. Of course, throwing words like that is fairly uncommon so they don't do this every other sentence, but the point remains.

If you keep that in mind, speech of characters who do that can be much more yayful than it would have otherwise been.

edited 15th Jan '15 8:56:45 AM by Kazeto

Sometimes being stiff can work as a characterization tool—a very proper, high-status, or educated person will often talk like they've memorized a grammar book. However, a "stiff dialogue in general" problem is, as mentioned, more of an art than a technique tool.

Kazeto and Aw Sam Weston have covered the basic stuff, so definitely read your dialogue aloud and get it to sound natural.

Key word: SOUND natural, not BE natural.

I've gotten comments on how natural my dialogue is, but that's a good thing and a bad thing—if I'm not careful, I have way too much clutter, conversation tangents, and awkward pauses.

Could you show us an example of your dialogue. I like to take these on a case by case basis.

Oooh yeah. Roll with those. I might take a shot too, people who read my stuff usually praise my dialogues if anything.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Thanks alot everyone. I am totally reading everyone's posts.

Here it is an example of my dialogue (it's from an RP game). Though I have to say I play these games, in part, to practice my writting.

and here is another:

other one:

Another:

and this one

edited 15th Jan '15 2:29:30 PM by RPGLegend

Forgiveness is beyond justice, faith is superior than hope, redemption is better than perfection and love is greater than them all.

Huh. Just wondering, is English your second language? There's a lot of little things that aren't WRONG, but native English speakers will instinctively find them strange.

In general, you use very few contractions like "can't," "don't," or similar. Use more contractions and you'll get rid of at least half your stiffness.

You also repeat things a lot, like here:

A much more natural sentence would be "However, she couldn't help giggling a little while she did, and she tried to hide her laughter with one hand."

If your RPG has a word-count, I definitely understand the lack of contractions. Still, you can bulk up your posts with description to meet the word-count instead.

edited 15th Jan '15 2:33:38 PM by Sharysa

Yes I am, what gave me away?

The rp game is here in tv tropes . I will use more contractions thanks for the advice!

edited 15th Jan '15 2:38:10 PM by RPGLegend

Forgiveness is beyond justice, faith is superior than hope, redemption is better than perfection and love is greater than them all.

>> Yes I am, what gave me away?

Hmm ... I don't want to come across as insulting, but put simply, it has the feel of something written by someone who spends too much time thinking what to say, and that's very common for people for whom it is not the native language (because they have to translate what they are writing from their native language and thus spend more time on it).

Generally, that's one of the differences noticeable between people whose English is considered "advanced" and those for whom it is considered "near-native" or better.

Of course, it was still somewhat a guess. One can never be sure if that's the case or if there's some other reason.

That being said, I could try to jury-rig something from the dialogue you provided to serve as some sort of example, but as it is supposed to be role-play and I have to admit I haven't the foggiest how those characters talk, I won't, lest I do something really stupid with it.

edited 15th Jan '15 2:58:25 PM by Kazeto

Funny, nobody asked me that.

You're getting awfully... wordy. For example, this one:

No sign of a pause or beat, you keep going like a Motor Mouth.

Then there's this one:

You're motormouthing again. The character is supposed to be "deep in thought", so slow, fragmented speech would be better, like: "Well, they're not stealing that technology because it's so advanced... More like, they're covering their tracks. But there's something... I think we're missing something. Any idea what else was stolen? That might point us... somewhere."

edited 15th Jan '15 2:59:12 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

No offense at at all, on the contrary any help is apreciated.

Oh I see, you are totally right. To be honest I never gave much thought to pauses between dialogue, I didn't realise that felt as a mothor mouth, thanks for the advice.

I am receiveing so much wonderful feedback from everyone. It's gonna take me a awhile to read all of this and apply it. But I will do it for sure, thanks!

Forgiveness is beyond justice, faith is superior than hope, redemption is better than perfection and love is greater than them all.

Sorry for the double post, but I had to ask. Besides the lack of pauses, my dialogue is like a Motor Mouth becuase I am very reduntant and needlesly wordy, isn't it?

edited 15th Jan '15 3:17:42 PM by RPGLegend

Forgiveness is beyond justice, faith is superior than hope, redemption is better than perfection and love is greater than them all.

Not-So-Badass Longcoat: I don't know how to explain it. I live in an area with a lot of immigrants and I'm first-gen Filipino-American, so barring trolls or the uneducated, I can usually feel the VERY SLIGHT differences between "native English speaker who happens to be wordy/repetitive/stiff," and "non-native English speaker."

edited 15th Jan '15 3:26:30 PM by Sharysa

>> Sorry for the double post, but I had to ask. Besides the lack of pauses, my dialogue is like a Motor Mouth becuase I am very reduntant and needlesly wordy, isn't it?

It may contribute to that feeling as longer words make it stretch if it already is motor-mouthish (so to say), but it does not necessarily make it so. Longer words make the speech appear more formal, but by itself it does nothing more than that, and it's possible to have characters who use longer words for whatever reason and yet sound fairly un-stiff. The same about redundancy, if it is caused by, for example, the character being indecisive and changing what they say mid-speech or listing possible words to find out that which they want to use; both seem redundant but actually make it less stiff and less motor-mouthish because it's pretty much quasi-gibberish spoken out loud (and yet, in spite of being gibberish, it usually makes some sense and is of some use).

It's like a variable-dimensional graph and every bit takes it all in some direction or directions, and you just don't want to get enough stuff that would push where you don't want it. In that regard, it's like cooking, only not exactly (because nobody has a recipe for a perfect word pie, in spite of many recipes for great apple pies).

Great advice everyone, thanks a lot!

Forgiveness is beyond justice, faith is superior than hope, redemption is better than perfection and love is greater than them all.

For some characters, "stiff" dialogue can work, it's only a problem if all of your characters talk that way.

It pays to be able to "hear" the way each of your characters speak - formal/laid-back, Buffy Speak, Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, hesitant, slangy etc - inside your head or at least be able to speak aloud like them.

I'm frequently saying my characters' dialogues aloud - often with the accents and tones they have - so I can then render the words.

I hate to say it, but you are at a distinct disadvantage if English is not your native language and your characters are speaking in English as idiom and word order become very important.

I have a German friend who speaks extremely good English, but his sentence constructions come across as unusual from time to time because they are direct transliterations from German word order.

Likewise a Chinese friend who has been speaking English for many years still says "it cost fifty over dollars" rather than "it cost over fifty dollars".

Even if English is your native language, you can still come unstuck if you're writing outside your own idiom - Gail Carriger's excellent Parasol Protectorate series is set in a Gaslamp Fantasy version of London and the MC is "British" but, as the author is American, she screws up the language occasionally - like "I hit him upside the head" - which is an "Americanism" and not part of British English (nor NZ nor Australian for that matter).

edited 16th Jan '15 10:35:52 PM by Wolf1066

This is a great thread! If I may add my two cents?

• RPG Legend, try watching some You Tube videos with the captions on. I did that to get a handle on an RP character who was a scene girl. I found some videos under "scene makeup" and "scene fashion".

• Like a lot of tropers have pointed out, written english and spoken english sound different. Some people will make grammatical errors as part of their speech. Again, you'll hear this in You Tube videos made by amateurs.

• Formal written english can sound "not right" to native speakers. That's why "To Boldly Go" is a pop culture Catchphrase even though it splits an infinitive.

• Don't forget the Verbal Tic, it's flavor. Some people say "The" as "Tha", people omit vowels, add vowels or even words. Many people have slang and Catch Phrases from other languages. Heck, you could have a character that speaks english and YOUR language so you can write what you know.

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

Well, the joke is, English isn't my first language either. However, a lot of people online seem to think I'm American.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Interesting thread. Here's an unsorted collection of 4 AM thoughts on the subject.

• Saying(/muttering) dialogue out loud is a great idea, and the same goes for all writing. You can generally tell how comfortable a piece of text is to read by checking how comfortable it is to say.

• Judging by your quotes you have an odd habit of explaining what the characters just said, which feels stilted. In the line 'I would like to have sometime to talk with you and befriend all of your teammates. I know you don't like to drink or bars, but we could always have a smoothie there." Kara suggested to Majestic, trying to persuade him to go to the bar..' the nine last words are entirely redundant. In some of the other quotes you're explicitly stating characters' feelings and opinions that are or could be conveyed through their words and actions.

• Varying the lengths of sentences tends to improve the flow.

• On a similar note, every single piece of dialogue provided follows the same sentence structure: '[line] said [character], doing [action]'. I recommend you break it up into smaller pieces and vary the positioning. Compare these two snippets:

• You can, as other posters have said, use things like stuttering and written accents to give your characters more, er, character, but I'd recommend you to do so sparingly. Vocabulary, grammar and styles of expression are more subtle and versatile tools, in my opinion.

edited 18th Jan '15 7:04:34 PM by ArtisticPlatypus

This implies, quite correctly, that my mind is dark and damp and full of tiny translucent fish.

I'm trying to write a novel, and I've been told that my writing style is kinda stiff and informal. Here's what I have so far:

The moon hung high in the night air, occasionally obscured by cloud, and a gust of cold wind blew overhead. Far below, the few citizens who were unlucky enough to have to be out this late made their way to their workplaces or homes, thinking of nothing more important than the workload waiting for them or what they would have for supper. They certainly didn’t think to look above their heads, and if any of them noticed the young woman perched atop a lamppost, they paid her no mind.

She folded her arms across her chest as she stood looking down at the waves of people entering and exiting the various buildings, observing each and every one. Had someone been watching her, they might have mistaken her for a statue. Only upon closer inspection would they have noticed the intensity of her stare, which never wavered, though it also never remained focused on any one thing, fluttering from person to person in rapid succession.

She had to admit - if only to herself - she was a little surprised that humanity still thrived. After all, considering all the wars and attempted genocides, it was amazing that the human race hadn't wiped itself out. And a good thing that was too, she mused as she stood looking down at the glittering lights of the city, or she never would have been able to come to this fascinating planet.

What do you think? Too stiff? What do I need to change?

(And I don't know how to put dialogue in boxes.)

If anything, you're not being informal enough. Let's look at the second sentence.

Far below, the few citizens who were unlucky enough to have to be out this late made their way to their workplaces or homes, thinking of nothing more important than the workload waiting for them or what they would have for supper.

Is it important to make the distinction that the people running about are "citizens"? Usually, people will assume that anyone in any story is a citizen/resident of a given area unless specifically stated otherwise ( usually specified as "tourist" or "spy" or implied by having a globe-trotting protaganist ). It would be much less formal to just refer to them as people, unless there's a plot relevant distinction between "citizens" and "civilians" ( like, for example, Starship Troopers ).

In the section before the word "thinking" , you don't need the phrases "who were" or "to have", as they are implied in casual language. ( That is, a less formal sentence would look like this; "Far below, the few people unlucky enough to be out this late ..." )

Much like the "citizens" thing, do you really need to specify that they're heading to "workplaces or homes"? It would be less formal, and less stiff, to simply generally refer to the places they are going, like "about" or "around", for example; "Far below, the few people unlucky enough to be out this late made their way around ...". This is also because you specify workloads and supper in the next bit, and so you already imply where they would be going.

In second part ( everything in the second sentence after, and including, the word "thinking" ), you don't need the word "important". If you took it out, it would simply be less formal and read easier.

Also, you should use more contractions; they make everything less formal. Such as contracting "they would have" into "they'd have" right at the end of the second sentence.

So, I would rewrite that whole second sentence as "Far below, the few people unlucky enough to be out this late made their way around, thinking of nothing more than the workload waiting for them or what they'd have for supper."

In fact, I would make it more clearly relevant to the subject of the first sentence and lead with "Moonlight shone on the few people ...".

( For the next part, I will be skipping over whole sentences and jumping just to points I feel the need to comment on ).

Second paragraph, first sentence

It's clunky to refer to literally every action a character performs, so you should limit it to one or two actions to refer to per sentence. Specifically, you don't need "as she stood". Either, she folded or arms, or she is standing AND looking. Not all three.

I would also not specify that she folded her arms across her chest ( you would only need to specify something like if they were folding their arms across any other part of their body; it's assumed folded arms are done so in front ones chest ).

You also don't need "the various buildings", you only need to say "buildings" and, casually speaking, we get it. This is the same reason you don't the phrase "each and every", you only need to say "each" or "every" and we get it.

So I would rewrite it as "She folded her arms and looked down at the waves of people entering and exiting buildings, observing each one."

Second paragraph, third sentence

"upon closer inspection" is an unnecessarily formal turn of phrase, I would use "looking closer". Also, the explanation is way too long and specific. I would split this up into two sentences; "If they'd looked closer they would've noticed the intensity of her stare. Her gaze darted from person to person, never wavering while on a single target."

Basically, what I did was used simpler verbs and kept each sentence more concise. Which is part of what makes it stiff; you're putting way too much information in a single sentence, shoving clauses together and inserting, and here is where my knowledge of grammatical language runs dry, little bits in between commas to explain things ( like I just did then with my comment on grammatical language ).

Third paragraph, third sentence

The first part doesn't need "that was", it works just with "And a good thing too ...".

TLDR; 1) Use simpler verbs - if a whole phrase can be removed with a single verb, then use the single, simple verb. 2) Make concise sentences. Too make crap, adding in little comments here and there, and shoving sentences together will slow down how it reads. Or, to quote Shakespeare; "Brevity" ( that really sums it up ). 3) Use contractions. You don't need to use them all the time, but you should only not use them when sounding out each word is important ( there's a difference between "Don't do that" and "Do not do that" ( the latter is a lot more formal and powerful ) ).

Bonus point; 4) The only time that most people will tolerate not just being stiff and formal, but also outright breaking the rules of basic grammar, is in dialogue ( such if a character talks weirdly or is incomprehensible ). Otherwise, you are beholden to your audience ( or, at least, have to square with the fact that you may not have a big audience. For example, heard of "Finnegans Wake"? It's a story written in a psuedo-English that breaks most, if not all, of the rules of English grammar at some point or another. That's not a bad thing per se, but it's also not a book many would read, and that's something that James Joyce ( the author ) obviously squared with ( There's a trope page for it that explains more ). Which is my point; you can write a story however you like, but be prepared to have a small fanbase if you don't put in the effort to meet the audience half-way ( with things like concise language ) ).

edited 21st Jan '15 5:56:34 PM by teolant