As someone who struggles greatly with writing dialogue, with my past writing often consisting in stiff words, the section of the chapter about stage direction was really interesting. Reading the example dialogue, the conversation felt much more alive when motion or action is added to the scene, something I aim to do more in my own writing. It’s also impressive how much you can do with conservation and without internal monologue. For example, in Camp Emeline, we learn the most about Lawn Boy through his conversations with the narrator, rather than through her internal monologue— he has a kid we’ve never met, he is deeply shaken by grief from his past, and he cares for the narrator enough to make sure she has the chance to get through her grief.
I found this chapter really helpful for figuring out when to use dialogue and when you should maybe use narration or indirect dialogue. I feel like I have struggled with dialogue in the past since I didn’t have much instruction on the different effects that it can have on your story. Now knowing the different ways in which you can utilize it I think is very helpful. I found the indirect dialogue to be a helpful craft to keep in mind. Like the chapter says, it can be a way to get through a maybe boring conversation with two or more characters while still employing dialogue to create the effect that you had in mind. The chapter gives an example of a conversation between an annoying character seeking friends and another character whom we can infer is annoyed and bored of the conversation. It is like the author is saving us the trouble of having to listen to this boring or annoying conversation because the character that is made up doesn’t even want to hear it. This example is very helpful in that it is a simple yet very effective use of indirect dialogue and allowed me to get a grasp on the concept of it. The idea of not using a lot of adverbs at the end of dialogue tags also stuck for me. The chapter says that it could make the writing seem amateur and like you are trying too hard when in reality the chunky adverbs in your dialogue tags are just clogging up the flow of the writing. Obviously sometimes they are good to use in certain instances when used to create an effect but most of the time “he said ” or “she said” works just fine. Also, the fact that the reader does not notice how many times you write the word ‘said’ in your writing stuck with me as well. Like the chapter said, the reader won’t realize how many times you said the word ‘said’ and it almost becomes invisible to the reader. They will not notice or realize that you used the word ‘said’ 600 times in your novel.
Chapter 6 was all about dialogue. I find that often when I am writing I either hate using dialogue and try to remove it completely from my work or I use it to spell out everything that is happening in my story, with no happy medium. I found the section on the illusion of reality quite helpful. It described the ways in which dialogue may sound wrong because it is simply not how real people speak. With that being said, though, it also said you’d likely have to tweak a real-life conversation to keep the reader engaged. I also found the part about stage directions particularly interesting. I tend to like to add action when I have dialogue going but sometimes I feel like my dialogue then gets jumbled in my descriptions of the actions. This section explained how to add action to dialogue without bogging it down.
Dialogue chapter – Something I liked about this chapter is how the author warned about using too many descriptors in your dialogue. I thought this was fun, as it was one of the first tips I learned when I started writing. I also liked how this chapter talked about how to make dialogue sound more realistic. I think it goes really hand in hand with the previous chapter about character. Making your characters distinct from each other in both personality and dialogue is important in making an interesting story, but it’s also important not to fall into the trap of trying to make every character so unique that it detracts from your story.
The most interesting part of chapter 6 to me was the section Amend writes on stage direction and subtext; basically the parts where dialogue and character can be complicated or supplanted, informed upon by using other parts of the story. I love the different ways characters can be shown. No two characters would have the same motion or quite the same reaction to something. While one character might turn on the light, another might turn on the tv and both reactions show something about that character. Similarly, they wouldn’t say the same thing. Certain dialogue can show who a character is, but also the complicated ways they feel without directly telling the reader. When Amend talks about the argument between the narrator and his wife in Cathedral, she explains that the narrator is talking in subtext; he feels that he can comment on the blind man and on his own wife this way, but the wife is not having it at all, speaking in an extremely straightforward manner. There aren’t many stage directions mixed with the dialogue, but what we have shows how she’s trying to keep a handle on her irritation and kind of failing. I think a lot of writing is determining what the reader needs to be told directly and what they can figure out for themselves.
Chapter 6 talks all about dialogue. This section really helped me understand how to create a narration and conversation within the pages of the story. The examples that were given in this section really showed how good dialogue can make a story even better while bad dialogue really takes away from the story that is going on. I really liked how you are able to see different aspects of dialogues and what conversations do to a story line. It shapes the way a story is perceived, it shows what the characters are going through and lets you get into the characters and who they are. I think that after reading this, being able to create the proper amount of space between dialogue and narration is really important. Knowing now how to make that and making it an aspect of the craft of your story is really important.
The first thing that struck me about this chapter was the suggested use of dialogue tags when it comes to making conversations seem curated, but not fake. The author makes mention that using the words he said or she said are more effective than trying to use flowery language. I know it sounds pretty obvious now, but to me, I assumed that using a repetition of said was bland and din’t intrigue readers. In reality, it should really only be 75-25 ratio of only using other tags when completely necessary. Doing too much can read as if your character is too animated or unrealistic. They also mention that this applies to the use of adverbs, and that exclamation marks are a absolute no.
Another small mention in this chapter that I enjoyed was how people watching and conversation eavesdropping can create some of the best dialogue. It really emphasizes how writing, at its core, is about and inspired by the human experience entirely. There is no better ideas to pull from then what you witness every day with those around you. I personally have adapted this into my writing routine and its helped everything from character development, scenes, to dialogue. Some of my favorite places to go are public parks and coffee shops, mostly because they’re often the most populated.
Chapter 6 mainly described how to make the characters an author writes sound authentic. Generally, from what I gleamed from the text; I noticed that there is a healthy amount of moderation when it comes to making dialogue compelling. It detailed that stories can be told with minimum dialogue or be entirely reliant on it. With writing dialogue itself, regardless of how much is added, a balance must be reached. It cannot be too mundane, too much like a stale conversational tone of the waking world and it cannot be too exclamatory. The same is discussed in the terms of dialect and mannerisms of characters. When looking at all of this and taking it into consideration, I find that listening to the way my peers talk and pulling their mannerisms and their intent and combing them. Using a hint of their way of speaking and using the root of what they say with “embossing” can, in theory, be an easy method for sorting out dialect dialogue content problems.
I really liked this chapter because it let me gain a more in depth understanding of dialogue, which is something that I tend to use quite a lot when I’m writing stories. I think that this chapter really helped me understand the balance that needs to be struck between spoken dialogue and non spoken dialogue, and the importance of variance in writing. Too much of one thing is going to get dreadfully boring and interesting to read very quickly. This chapter also goes over how to strike the balance between wanting your dialogue to sound realistic and fluid, like an actual conversation, but also needing to fictionalize it to make it bearable to read. Streamlining it as to remove all of the awkward pauses and filler words often used in real life conversations, but I would just like to say that I believe that there can be a place for those things if you want an awkward stilted feel to your writing for a certain scene or character. I don’t think it should be the whole story or it came become not fun to read as stated before hand, but mundanity and awkwardness can be effective tools to use in certain situations
In my own experience with writing about dialogue, specifically the short story I’m working on for this class right now, it’s difficult. I’ve never been able to grasp how dialogue works- especially when people are arguing. I barely know how to talk to people in real life, so I often found myself looking up conversation topics in middle school on Pinterest. A good rule for dialogue I’ve found that always works is “splitting up” the conversation. What I mean by that is how when your character is talking, it shouldn’t be a paragraph of text- you should let a conversation breathe. I also find just writing a conversation generally hard, it’s hard to make one flow. This chapter really helped me to break down a conversation and know how to write one more naturally.
I really liked a few sections in this chapter. I thought it was really helpful when the author explained how even though you could opt to summarize an interaction, it’s a much more immersive experience if you show the interaction instead. How the characters react during a conversation tells you a lot about their personality. I often feel like I’m repeating myself in dialogue with all the “I said, she said” type of interactions. It was really helpful to see examples where they interspersed dialogue with movement and actions in a scene. It’s also nice to see examples of where the dialogue is not directed from an individual each time (ex: “Line” he said vs. just “Line”). I also really liked the section on subtext. I love when there’s two stories going on at once, the one they’re telling you up front and the one they’re not.
This chapter emphasized the importance of dialogue. I found it very helpful, because I often find myself going a little heavy on dialogue, so it was reassuring in a way. However, it also talked about how to balance narration and dialogue, which I found helpful to consider going forward as that is something I sometimes struggle with and have always had to pay close attention to in my own writing. One quote from this chapter that I found to have stuck out to me was on page 129, and it read, “Baxter alternates scene with summary, using simple portions of each, but he knows when exactly which moments are worth letting the characters speak for themselves.” I resonated with this part, because I feel that allowing the characters to decide when to speak, meaning when it feels natural to have them have dialogue, is important to avoid having the dialogue feel random or unnatural. Something I really value in my own writing when it comes to making dialogue sound real, is first getting to know your characters so that you know not only how they speak, but also how they think. What types of things would they say? Are they witty, shy, bubbly, or blunt, for example? It’s important to know their voice so you know how they interact with the world.
what I liked most in chapter 6 was the section on dialogue conversation because in previous stories I’ve wrote I would try and do dialogue conversations but had a hard time doing it properly. The chapter does a bunch of examples of how to do it and how to give the characters voice a tone. It shows how to do dialogue with emotion like if someone is angry yelling or upset. It also taught how to make dialogue thoughts for the characters. This will definitely be helpful in writing my short story.
13 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 8”
As someone who struggles greatly with writing dialogue, with my past writing often consisting in stiff words, the section of the chapter about stage direction was really interesting. Reading the example dialogue, the conversation felt much more alive when motion or action is added to the scene, something I aim to do more in my own writing. It’s also impressive how much you can do with conservation and without internal monologue. For example, in Camp Emeline, we learn the most about Lawn Boy through his conversations with the narrator, rather than through her internal monologue— he has a kid we’ve never met, he is deeply shaken by grief from his past, and he cares for the narrator enough to make sure she has the chance to get through her grief.
I found this chapter really helpful for figuring out when to use dialogue and when you should maybe use narration or indirect dialogue. I feel like I have struggled with dialogue in the past since I didn’t have much instruction on the different effects that it can have on your story. Now knowing the different ways in which you can utilize it I think is very helpful. I found the indirect dialogue to be a helpful craft to keep in mind. Like the chapter says, it can be a way to get through a maybe boring conversation with two or more characters while still employing dialogue to create the effect that you had in mind. The chapter gives an example of a conversation between an annoying character seeking friends and another character whom we can infer is annoyed and bored of the conversation. It is like the author is saving us the trouble of having to listen to this boring or annoying conversation because the character that is made up doesn’t even want to hear it. This example is very helpful in that it is a simple yet very effective use of indirect dialogue and allowed me to get a grasp on the concept of it. The idea of not using a lot of adverbs at the end of dialogue tags also stuck for me. The chapter says that it could make the writing seem amateur and like you are trying too hard when in reality the chunky adverbs in your dialogue tags are just clogging up the flow of the writing. Obviously sometimes they are good to use in certain instances when used to create an effect but most of the time “he said ” or “she said” works just fine. Also, the fact that the reader does not notice how many times you write the word ‘said’ in your writing stuck with me as well. Like the chapter said, the reader won’t realize how many times you said the word ‘said’ and it almost becomes invisible to the reader. They will not notice or realize that you used the word ‘said’ 600 times in your novel.
Chapter 6 was all about dialogue. I find that often when I am writing I either hate using dialogue and try to remove it completely from my work or I use it to spell out everything that is happening in my story, with no happy medium. I found the section on the illusion of reality quite helpful. It described the ways in which dialogue may sound wrong because it is simply not how real people speak. With that being said, though, it also said you’d likely have to tweak a real-life conversation to keep the reader engaged. I also found the part about stage directions particularly interesting. I tend to like to add action when I have dialogue going but sometimes I feel like my dialogue then gets jumbled in my descriptions of the actions. This section explained how to add action to dialogue without bogging it down.
Dialogue chapter – Something I liked about this chapter is how the author warned about using too many descriptors in your dialogue. I thought this was fun, as it was one of the first tips I learned when I started writing. I also liked how this chapter talked about how to make dialogue sound more realistic. I think it goes really hand in hand with the previous chapter about character. Making your characters distinct from each other in both personality and dialogue is important in making an interesting story, but it’s also important not to fall into the trap of trying to make every character so unique that it detracts from your story.
The most interesting part of chapter 6 to me was the section Amend writes on stage direction and subtext; basically the parts where dialogue and character can be complicated or supplanted, informed upon by using other parts of the story. I love the different ways characters can be shown. No two characters would have the same motion or quite the same reaction to something. While one character might turn on the light, another might turn on the tv and both reactions show something about that character. Similarly, they wouldn’t say the same thing. Certain dialogue can show who a character is, but also the complicated ways they feel without directly telling the reader. When Amend talks about the argument between the narrator and his wife in Cathedral, she explains that the narrator is talking in subtext; he feels that he can comment on the blind man and on his own wife this way, but the wife is not having it at all, speaking in an extremely straightforward manner. There aren’t many stage directions mixed with the dialogue, but what we have shows how she’s trying to keep a handle on her irritation and kind of failing. I think a lot of writing is determining what the reader needs to be told directly and what they can figure out for themselves.
Chapter 6 talks all about dialogue. This section really helped me understand how to create a narration and conversation within the pages of the story. The examples that were given in this section really showed how good dialogue can make a story even better while bad dialogue really takes away from the story that is going on. I really liked how you are able to see different aspects of dialogues and what conversations do to a story line. It shapes the way a story is perceived, it shows what the characters are going through and lets you get into the characters and who they are. I think that after reading this, being able to create the proper amount of space between dialogue and narration is really important. Knowing now how to make that and making it an aspect of the craft of your story is really important.
The first thing that struck me about this chapter was the suggested use of dialogue tags when it comes to making conversations seem curated, but not fake. The author makes mention that using the words he said or she said are more effective than trying to use flowery language. I know it sounds pretty obvious now, but to me, I assumed that using a repetition of said was bland and din’t intrigue readers. In reality, it should really only be 75-25 ratio of only using other tags when completely necessary. Doing too much can read as if your character is too animated or unrealistic. They also mention that this applies to the use of adverbs, and that exclamation marks are a absolute no.
Another small mention in this chapter that I enjoyed was how people watching and conversation eavesdropping can create some of the best dialogue. It really emphasizes how writing, at its core, is about and inspired by the human experience entirely. There is no better ideas to pull from then what you witness every day with those around you. I personally have adapted this into my writing routine and its helped everything from character development, scenes, to dialogue. Some of my favorite places to go are public parks and coffee shops, mostly because they’re often the most populated.
Chapter 6 mainly described how to make the characters an author writes sound authentic. Generally, from what I gleamed from the text; I noticed that there is a healthy amount of moderation when it comes to making dialogue compelling. It detailed that stories can be told with minimum dialogue or be entirely reliant on it. With writing dialogue itself, regardless of how much is added, a balance must be reached. It cannot be too mundane, too much like a stale conversational tone of the waking world and it cannot be too exclamatory. The same is discussed in the terms of dialect and mannerisms of characters. When looking at all of this and taking it into consideration, I find that listening to the way my peers talk and pulling their mannerisms and their intent and combing them. Using a hint of their way of speaking and using the root of what they say with “embossing” can, in theory, be an easy method for sorting out dialect dialogue content problems.
I really liked this chapter because it let me gain a more in depth understanding of dialogue, which is something that I tend to use quite a lot when I’m writing stories. I think that this chapter really helped me understand the balance that needs to be struck between spoken dialogue and non spoken dialogue, and the importance of variance in writing. Too much of one thing is going to get dreadfully boring and interesting to read very quickly. This chapter also goes over how to strike the balance between wanting your dialogue to sound realistic and fluid, like an actual conversation, but also needing to fictionalize it to make it bearable to read. Streamlining it as to remove all of the awkward pauses and filler words often used in real life conversations, but I would just like to say that I believe that there can be a place for those things if you want an awkward stilted feel to your writing for a certain scene or character. I don’t think it should be the whole story or it came become not fun to read as stated before hand, but mundanity and awkwardness can be effective tools to use in certain situations
In my own experience with writing about dialogue, specifically the short story I’m working on for this class right now, it’s difficult. I’ve never been able to grasp how dialogue works- especially when people are arguing. I barely know how to talk to people in real life, so I often found myself looking up conversation topics in middle school on Pinterest. A good rule for dialogue I’ve found that always works is “splitting up” the conversation. What I mean by that is how when your character is talking, it shouldn’t be a paragraph of text- you should let a conversation breathe. I also find just writing a conversation generally hard, it’s hard to make one flow. This chapter really helped me to break down a conversation and know how to write one more naturally.
I really liked a few sections in this chapter. I thought it was really helpful when the author explained how even though you could opt to summarize an interaction, it’s a much more immersive experience if you show the interaction instead. How the characters react during a conversation tells you a lot about their personality. I often feel like I’m repeating myself in dialogue with all the “I said, she said” type of interactions. It was really helpful to see examples where they interspersed dialogue with movement and actions in a scene. It’s also nice to see examples of where the dialogue is not directed from an individual each time (ex: “Line” he said vs. just “Line”). I also really liked the section on subtext. I love when there’s two stories going on at once, the one they’re telling you up front and the one they’re not.
This chapter emphasized the importance of dialogue. I found it very helpful, because I often find myself going a little heavy on dialogue, so it was reassuring in a way. However, it also talked about how to balance narration and dialogue, which I found helpful to consider going forward as that is something I sometimes struggle with and have always had to pay close attention to in my own writing. One quote from this chapter that I found to have stuck out to me was on page 129, and it read, “Baxter alternates scene with summary, using simple portions of each, but he knows when exactly which moments are worth letting the characters speak for themselves.” I resonated with this part, because I feel that allowing the characters to decide when to speak, meaning when it feels natural to have them have dialogue, is important to avoid having the dialogue feel random or unnatural. Something I really value in my own writing when it comes to making dialogue sound real, is first getting to know your characters so that you know not only how they speak, but also how they think. What types of things would they say? Are they witty, shy, bubbly, or blunt, for example? It’s important to know their voice so you know how they interact with the world.
what I liked most in chapter 6 was the section on dialogue conversation because in previous stories I’ve wrote I would try and do dialogue conversations but had a hard time doing it properly. The chapter does a bunch of examples of how to do it and how to give the characters voice a tone. It shows how to do dialogue with emotion like if someone is angry yelling or upset. It also taught how to make dialogue thoughts for the characters. This will definitely be helpful in writing my short story.