Dialogue

Chao- How characters speak to others or themselves is one aspect that defines them. Readers get a sense of these characters by this, and it sets a bit of a standard for them. Do they talk with a southern or foreign accent? Do they prefer slang or large vocabulary? Are they goofy with friends and proper with parents? Are their tones chipper like a preppy or downer like an emo? What fits best for each character, and how do we type what we hear?

Ideas to Try Out:

• Watch TV shows, online videos, or movies with closed captioning/subtitles. See how a character's speech and background noise are written.
• Review how characters speak in your favorite published works.
• Analyze how you, your family, and your friends speak to each other and people they know.
• Envision and experiment your characters with how they speak.

Chao- And with dialogue comes certain ways to punctuate them like any other piece of grammar in English. Here are some web links you may want to look at.

Punctuating Dialogue (About.com)

Punctuation in Dialogue

Chao- Sometimes the program we use will tell us what we have is incorrect. That's ok. As people, we don't always speak in perfect rhetoric one hundred percent of the time. So here's another matter.

Ideas to Consider:

• Don't always be concerned with being proper. Example- "What about me and you?" and "What about you and I?"
• Be careful how you punctuate your dialogues. Example- "I'll get going soon" and "I'll get goin' really soon."
• Combining words can show how the character speaks, which does include contractions and possession. Example- "I shoulda done that" vs. "I should have done that" vs. "I should've done that."

Chao- We sometimes tend to write our characters depending on we speak. An easy example is that some people in America address a group of people as "you", "you guys", "you all", "y'all", etc. Here's a quiz from the New York Times. Take it and see how you speak!

How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk (New York Times)

Chao- You know what is fascinating? Just for a quick note. English is spoken all over the world, yet there are so many varieties thanks to what is needed for each distinguished region. American English is different from British English with simple words like "mail" vs. "post", "cookies" vs. "biscuit", and "apartment" vs. "flat". So even if there is one decided language, there will always be variation based on need and popularity. And how people talk does give them an extra characteristic, often something overlooked unless it pertains to making characters a southern, a prep, or a foreigner.