If I hurry I can get back before I get buried in my house.

[apocalypsos]

If I make a list of rules of stuff that bug me about fic sometimes, one of them is going to be that I'll give any pairing a chance if it's written by a good writer or looks like it's an interesting plotline, even if I normally loathe the pairing with a passion, but not if you're going to be an abject snot about me usually hating it.

And I'm getting really damn annoyed by picking up a paperback and bringing it home only to find out that the dialogue is terrible. Like, no one in their right mind would speak like this. I'm willing to let it slide a little more in fanfic because I didn't go out and pay for it and if the rest of the story is good I'll let it go somewhat. And fantasy usually gets a bit of a pass for a few phrases because some things are really just not going to be things that normal people say. But I hate getting a book home only to find that once you get into it it's patently obvious that the writer has never been informed his or her dialogue is ridiculous and unnatural and/or has never bothered to read it out loud to see if it sounds like real conversation.

I don't know ... dialogue's one of my strong points. It's the first thing I write when I write a story, because it feels like an outline. I can hear the voices better that way, which brings out the characters in my head. And I mean, it's one thing to be a little off. It's not that hard to know when your dialogue doesn't work in a real-life capacity. If you read it out loud and it doesn't sound normal speech, fix it.

And like I said it's one thing when it's fanfic. I've got a bit of a tendency to let people slide anyway since a lot of writing fanfic is practicing and getting better at it over time. After a while most people work the kinks out in their writing through fanfic. But right now I've got a paperback sitting on my nightstand by an author with more than a few published books already and the dialogue is driving me up a wall, particularly how the main character speaks. We're talking about an educated, analytical female character and ... look, normal people use contractions. They say "yeah" and "well" and "okay" at the beginning of sentences occasionally. Unless you're on a superhero team in a 1950s comic book you're unlikely to use ludicrously silly and outdated declarations of surprise. And I have known some highly intelligent women in my time -- God knows that when I was in DC I was up to my eyeballs in very smart chicks -- and none of them were this level of consistently verbose as if they had ingested a thesaurus every morning for breakfast just to prove they could. And they were writers. This character isn't.

I mean, if you're complicating a sentence about a trip to the store for bread with an announcement to the other characters that involves more than one word with two syllables, perhaps you should tone it down a bit.

*rant over*

Sorry about that. I just really had to rant about something. I've spent the past few days feeling like bitching about something and I haven't been precisely sure what just yet. So, you know, that's one thing. :)

Okay, now I am going to throw on some clothes and run to the Chinese restaurant for food before this stupid storm comes and I can never leave my house again.

Comments

[laurelin-kit.livejournal.com]

I hate stilted dialogue like that. Seriously, almost no one uses all these long, complicated words to express their feelings. No one says "I feel disturbed, rejected and oddly irascible." NOOOO ONNNNEEEE. I've seen that kind of emotion listing so many times in fanfiction that it makes me want to shake the three syllable words out of them and confiscate them. When I try writing dialogue, I try to hear it in my head to make sure it's something someone says, not just a description.

What book are you reading that's frustrating you?

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I wish I could reach through the internet sometimes and shake people and say, "Just listen to people, for crying out loud!" I mean, the simplest way of getting dialogue to work if you're having troubles with it is just to LISTEN. I know listening to other people's conversations is rude but if you listen to the way they string the words together and the phrases certain people use you learn more about dialogue than you will trying to read up on it for obvious reasons.

It's "Last of the Red-Hot Vampires" by Katie McAllister. Which ... seriously, I don't know why I picked it up in the first place. I've had problems with every other one of her books that I've picked up, the male lead goes from being a nephilim to being a vampire and if you fold him this way he's a crane and if you fold him that way he's a paper airplane, and the female lead is killing me.

[tigriswolf]

Ooh, bad dialogue gets on my nerves. So much. I'm actually giving up on rereading Christopher Pike's _The Last Vampire_ series because I HATE the way he has the characters talking.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I mean, I know people who have a lot of problems writing dialogue and I get that but it's not a hard problem to fix.

You know what I think helped me a lot? When I was a teenager I barely spoke and was really quiet, so most of the time I listened to everybody else. Plus, I used to carry around a notebook in which I'd save funny things my friends said (and I should really start doing that again) which meant that I was always playing very close attention to everybody else's conversations.

[lyra-wing.livejournal.com]

It's the first thing I write when I write a story, because it feels like an outline. I can hear the voices better that way, which brings out the characters in my head.

You do that too? :)

Seriously, the outlines of my stories (heck, even the bare bones first drafts) look like scripts. Then I fill in blocking and description and setting later. Ahaha. I tend to "hear" a scene before I see it.

Dude, don't read the book. Just give it to someone else for a birthday "present" or something. Life's too short to waste time reading books you don't like. :)

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

HEE. You should see the first few chapters of the last book I worked on for NaNo (which was one of the Books of Boggs and which I also didn't get to finish). It's pretty much five or six straight chapters of dialogue and nothing else. :)

I have a feeling I'm going to walk down to the library and toss it into the donation box. That's crucial shelf space I could be filling with a cheesy yet enjoyable romance novel or something. *grins*

[dragonsinger.livejournal.com]

So, what is the name of the offending book so I can avoid it? :)

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

"Last of the Red-Hot Vampires", by Katie McAllister. Just ... no. The dialogue's bad enough, but the hero apparently starts out a nephilim and turns into a vampire. Okay, if your male love interest is more than one magical creature during the course of your novel you're encroaching just a little too far into Night Travels of the Elven Vampire territory.

[dragonsinger.livejournal.com]

I always suspected Katie MacAlister wasn't very good.

[astrothsknot.livejournal.com]

Glad to know that it's not just me with that bugbear

[lastscorpion.livejournal.com]

I hate it when that happens! Seriously, why are so many professionally written books so bad?

And it's not like there would be any point in sending them a letter of comment, pointing stuff out.

Anyhow, good luck with the weather!

[budclare.livejournal.com]

Mmm...Chinese. *sighs*

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Shrimp and broccoli and crab rangoon, baby. *happy sighs*

[shealynn88.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Yeah, I used to write like that, and I find my brother writes that way, too. Like...everyone's speaking a term paper or something. I thought it was something you grew out of. Apprarently not for everyone. ;)

I find Dan Brown annoys me that way, too, but I seem to be very alone in that opinion. *shrug*

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

My friends and family know not to mention Dan Brown around me anymore. At least, not if they want to hear the delightful sound of my teeth grinding together.

[shealynn88.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yes, there isn't much talk of him here, either, just a lone book that I will never get through...

[openmydoors.livejournal.com]

It is actually hard to get the tone of the story to flow in one nice river-like motion, and diction, as you mentioned, is an important part.
(okay, no, I'm just trying to sound smart)

I'm crap at it, so I edit and edit and edit. But I suck at that also, so.

hee.

[lalalallifer.livejournal.com]

I have trouble with dialog, I'll admit it. When I get it right it's great but it often takes me several days to get the phrases perfect. But dammit, I'll take that time because it's worth it. And that's why I only have three pages of my novel- because it's essential that much of the story be told in dialog, and I don't want anything remotely Paolini-like.