OK, I see where you’re coming from. I think we’re closer to the same wavelength than we realise. We’re just starting from different points on the scale.

Your ‘new writer’ is a lot newer than mine. That’s my mistake. I suppose I’m forgetting that some of the readers of this blog are pretty raw… not that being raw is necessarily bad. Perhaps ‘fresh’ might be a better term, and freshness in writing is almost always good.

I guess I was assuming that writers aspiring to publication would at least be somewhere close to being publishable… and therefore reasonably competent. My mistake again; I can remember how bad (in retrospect) the earliest submitted version of my first novel was (I cringe at the memory).

As I said before, the ‘new writers’ whose work I see have already been accepted by a publisher as being fit for publication once edited. I suppose I’m being spoiled, really. Even then, there are some whose ideas and plots are brilliant, but whose text needs a lot of fine tuning… but the publisher thinks they’re worth it. (Sometimes simply because English isn’t their first language.)

Others require little more than a few typos, and suchlike, dealing with to be grammatically correct, but need the facts in their fiction (if you follow my drift) checking for accuracy, and any credibility and continuity issues sorting out. A good plot (with good dialogue) is no good if the reader doesn’t believe it.

Let’s hope there’s still a readership for the written word in this world that’s fast becoming more and more a world of comic book movies and animated games. Mainstream movies and TV have already, for the most part, become incredible in the worst sense of the word… with a few notable exceptions. With luck, if written fiction survives, it won’t follow suit. Even fantasy needs to be believable to work.

From my experience, if you are a beginning writer, especially one who is having a hard time with dialogue, focusing on contractions is like cleaning up the sawdust before you’ve really got the cut of the wood right. Worry about the mess after you’ve fixed the major issues.

I don’t disagree with your point, but I think the order is important. Is that people don’t talk like they write the most useful thing for someone who is bad at dialogue to think about? I don’t believe so. In fact, my point is I think it’s very important to NOT think about the meta issues and trying to copy idiosyncrasies until it gets to the point where all it “needs is to put in a few contractions,” because otherwise you’ll polish something that will just need to be taken apart, possibly with the wrong varnish, or too merely much use of it. When I discuss with an unsatisfied writer the evolution of the character’s thoughts and state of mind, they naturally start adding in contractions and sentence fragments without it being suggested. Then they don’t have to think about when or where because they organically understand.

The fact that is is a blog for new writers is why I’m so concerned about it. It’s not bad to talk about the fact that you’re not using contractions or sentence fragments, or your dialogue tags are distracting/obnoxious, but the writers who are really going to heed this advice are exactly the ones who need encouragement in being experimental, not flatly told “No.” The ones who need to be reigned in are going to write off technically inaccurate statements like “dialogue isn’t spoken in complete sentences.” From a first glance, it just sounds bossy, closed-minded, and inaccurate. Advice that should be applied in moderation needs to discuss that moderation. Advice that is controversial needs to mention that not everyone agrees, otherwise, for someone who is a good listener but is being inundated with contradicting will just be left even more overwhelmed.

People who really struggle with dialogue struggle with imagining the situation, getting inside it, feeling it. They’re removed from the characters’ heads. Focusing on meta issues like whether or not the grammar is realistic is going to pull them further out of it.

More importantly, the fact that we rarely speak like we read and write is a pretty complicated issue. For instance, I wasn’t even sure if you were suggesting people need to be more realistic or less. Some people have staunchly insisted to me you do NOT use ums and ers, for example. Others, like yourself, disagree. Both state it like it’s fact, like it’s obvious and universal. This is really confusing for someone who doesn’t have any of his own opinions yet.

So when it comes to things that don’t have a universal, concrete answer, the conversation needs to precede the conclusion, or least be mentioned. How much SHOULD we write like we speak? How much SHOULDN’T we? That’s controversial, debatable, and stylistic, something to be thought long and hard about over the course of a career and will be totally different for each and every author. Giving advice that doesn’t leave that open ended – Just write more realistically! – is problematic for writers who are drawn towards the rules, the ones who need to be more open to doing things that not everyone else will be okay with. It creates a glass ceiling, a limitation that, once shattered, knocks the writer back down, forced to climb up again. For perfectionists, people who follow this kind of advice strictly, that’s incredibly hard to do, to stop doing what works acceptably enough and write crap in hopes of finding something better. Instead they find themselves trapped doing something that technically works, but is missing heart, personality, or originality. It is far better for them to take risks early on and understand the rules via insights rather than having someone give them an overly simplified instruction. These are great tools in the aftermath, but inhibiting in the early stages.

Stylistic decisions like whether or not to use “um” and “er” (a pretty controversial issue as you have probably experienced) needs to be thought about, encouraged to be critically analyzed. New authors should feel free to play with surface level choices.

This is a blog for new readers and that is exactly why staunchly black and white tips that try to quickly solve the symptoms of the problem scare me. Brand new writers with no pre-existing opinions need help sorting through the vast amount of information, varying philosophies, and subjectivity out there so they can decide things for themselves, because if you do have terrible dialogue, making sentence fragments and a few contractions isn’t going to fix it. I’ve seen people do just that and you spend a lot of time trying to get them to stop worrying about so they can pay attention to the real problem. I’ve given out writing in which people completely missed the real, pretty big flaw because they were so busy rewriting it in their style.

You say, and I quote: ‘I would never say that’s one of the first things to pay attention to.’
Well, neither would I. I said it was one of the most ‘important’ things to remember, (not the first) and I stand by that.
The first thing is to make sure the dialogue makes sense to the reader. The reader doesn’t have the luxury of visual cues, like facial expressions and body language, to help follow the speakers intended meaning, so it’s all down to the words.

Of course, you’re quite correct in saying that realism is a stylistic choice, but a writer who’s deliberately playing with stylistics is rarely an inexperienced writer and will know how to write convincing dialogue should he so choose. The blog post was intended for new and developing writers (though we’re all developing all the time… or at least I’d hope we are.)

As an editor, the MSS I see have already got past the initial stages of acceptance by the publisher, so those showing really poor grammar etc. have been filtered out by the time I get to see them.
In the books I’m given to edit, which have been accepted for publication, the most common errors where natural sounding dialogue is concerned, are those I’ve detailed.
Very often, all a piece of dialogue needs is to put in a few contractions. I might make a margin note or two to suggest adding ‘er’, ‘um’, and today’s favourite, ‘like’, where appropriate to the speaker, but these kinds of suggestions are for the writer to choose to use, or reject. They are, after all, the author. Occasionally, the ‘voice’ might feel wrong for the character, or two characters might be too similar in their speech. I’ll then tell the author… maybe giving an example… and ask for a piece to be rewritten. It’s no good having a teenaged defendant speaking in the same way as a judge or magistrate. It just doesn’t work. The vocabulary will be completely different.

You do make some very salient points regarding the speakers’ moods and emotions, and their reactions to each other, but then, my post was just a short comment… unlike this reply to you.
I think. basically, we’re both singing from the same hymn sheet. Getting dialogue right isn’t easy for everyone. It’s probably the one feature that marks out the new writer, against the experienced ones. Fortunately, it’s easy to sort out, and I rarely see the same errors repeated when a writer’s second book gets passed to me for editing.

I don’t believe that’s the most important thing to remember if you’re trying to improve dialogue. I think that’s something to consider at one point, but I would never say that’s one of the first things to pay attention to. How realistic something should be is a stylistic choice, and I don’t just mean in a “you have the right to be weird,” sort of way, but a “fact is stranger than fiction,” and there are no real accurate standards for what is “realistic” fictional dialogue.

Good dialogue could potentially be incredibly formal, stylistic, poetic, satirical, or even ridiculous (Tolkien, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett or Calvin and Hobbes) and still work far better than something that is taken directly from a transcript. Good dialogue also might be incredibly realistic, attempting to truly emulate speech, like Tobias Woolf or Hemingway or James Joyce or Mark Twain.

But mostly I think that conventions of speech will come organically with understanding of emotion, motivation, subtext, and narrative, and that if you struggle with dialogue, mechanically “replicating these transgressions” is not the best solution. By focusing on things like grammar, punctuation, dialogue tags, and sentence fragments you’re going to be artificially inserting idiosyncrasies instead of genuinely showing the world as you see it, making your character appear like an alien who is just trying to fake being human, not someone who is actually fueled by his humanity. And I say that having witnessed writers doing so.

Most people talk in full sentences with appropriate grammar far more often than some tips imply, but really the point is understanding WHY and WHEN we don’t (and why someone might be inclined to write formally). Thinking about things like how we breathe, how our thoughts evolve, how we try to not to be interrupted are aspects that are easy to forget about while writing and useful to be pointed out. “Don’t speak in complete sentences,” isn’t going to help your dialogue improve all that much, perhaps even make it worse, but “Think about your characters breath, whether or not someone is going to let them get it all out, or when an idea occurred to them,” is something that many new writers can use and apply organically.

“It’s knowing when and how to replicate these transgressions,” is exactly what should be discussed, not just pointing out what’s those transgressions are. “Knowing when” is the most important thing, and I don’t understand why writers give others overly-simplified instructions and expect them to figure out the application without any additional insight. The insight into the why is more useful than the do.

Understand your character’s fury, relate to his concerns, be on his side, see his humanity, and you will bark like him without conscious effort. Try to tell an audience, “Look how mad he is!” and it’ll read like that’s exactly what you’re doing. “Replications of transgressions” will look like replications, and that’s the issue.

Which is a long way of saying don’t worry about contractions or grammar or dialogue tags until you get the meaning right, the point right, the emotion right. The contractions and grammar and dialogue tags will often follow,. and if they don’t I’m sure you’ll easily find someone to point them out to you.

One of the most important things to remember when writing dialogue is that people seldom speak as they read or write. Many of the rules of grammar are ignored in speech… especially colloquial speech… and contractions are the norm rather than the exception.
Sentence structures often fly out of the window when two or more people are talking, and more so if they’re arguing.
It’s knowing when and how to replicate these transgressions that makes written dialogue sound natural.

Personally I find that limitations like the acceptability of what’s in a dialogue tags are far less relevant to improving dialogue than learning how to play with subtext. Issues like understanding motivation, tactics, and context will much better help a person who struggles with making convincing or interesting dialogue than black and white restrictions on their experimentation.

Asking questions like, “Why did the character choose to say this now? Why is saying it in that way? What does he hope to happen and does he actually think he’ll get it?” (Even just “How would I DESCRIBE his tone?”) makes the writer think critically and naturally smooth over clunky, on-the-nose styles more so than worrying about if they can use “she laughed” as a tag. I think that’s a far better question much latter on and don’t necessarily agree with your philosophy here on what is okay. In fact, I consider it fairly problematic to be staunchly asserting that certain variations are never acceptable rather than discussing some of the controversy, anecdotes, and exceptions behind your philosophy.

Jan, your link is not good.