Hey, Man..It's Dialogue: Making or Breaking the Text

Writing dialogue within a story is something I rather enjoy.  Perhaps it has something to do with watching a character come alive and develop a personality.  I try to create dialogue that is as genuine and realistic as possible.  It's not always easy to write out sentences that look as good when they're read as they would if spoken aloud.  So often times my characters have many of the little speech habits I may have.  Things like using the words "man" or "dude" are very common in my real life vocabulary.  I've just always used them to emphasize and address, but not every one of my characters should be speaking like I do, so I try and pay attention to other people's speech patterns, in particular when watching movies. 

I love dialogue in movies.  Some of my favorite movies are dialogue driven.  Being a writer, I tend to pay attention to the dialogue from a different perspective than most.  I'm critiquing it the whole time; much like a grammar Nazi may read a heartfelt letter.  Movies like Tape and Spring Forward come to mind.  Tape is filmed with 3 characters, and the entire film takes place in a single, small hotel room.  Sounds boring doesn't it?  It's not.  It's amazing.  Both the acting and the dialogue is excellent.  I bring up movies because the very beginning stage of a film is a written story, a screenplay/script that is often overlooked and taken for granted by a large amount of viewers. 

 Of course for film, if the actor can't pull it off then it's butchered regardless of how well written the script may be.  Actually, sometimes it's the director's fault.  Case in point:  I wouldn't call Mark Wahlberg an Oscar-winning actor, but if you look at his stellar performance in Boogie Nights vs. the laughable tripe that is The Happening, it's clear Mr. M. Night Shyamalan doesn't always get his actor's mojo going, whereas P.T. Anderson makes everyone shine.

This piece of dialogue comes from a story I wrote that will be available early November 2014: 

Forcing myself to cut the healthy laugh short, I replied to Johnny's last statement.  "Okay man, details.  Let's hear them.  Her boyfriend not showing up in the bathroom mirror?"  I started to chuckle again but successfully held most of it back.  Snot nearly shot out my nose in the attempt.

"It's not like that.  That's a fallacy."

"A what?"

"It's not true.  The whole vampires and mirrors thing.  It doesn't work like that.  That's all a myth."

"Yeah, myth is right."  I started to laugh once more.

Johnny shook his head.  "Angela brought him home for the Christmas Eve meal.  He's cold.  He's pale.  He smells like coconuts, wears sunglasses, and he just stood at the door until my dad welcomed him in."

"So, a polite albino with good hygiene, standing in 30-degree weather who isn't a fan of being snow blind and you come up with vampire?"


Though it's meant to be lighthearted and humorous, depending on who reads this and how they read it, it could come across different than expected

This week I watched a video on youtube of Stephen King reading an unpublished short story he had written.  He read it very well, perfect emphasis exactly where it needed to be with tones and mannerisms pointing to dry humor that could easily be missed.  I noticed as I watched, that had I read the story myself I think I would have missed some of the cues to laugh.  Text can do that.  How many of us have gotten our feelings hurt or in an argument as a result of purely text?  They're more than monotone...They're toneless, emotionless, and can easily be read wrong. I suppose reading things differently is just another thing that makes us all unique.

QUICK UPDATE: 

•  My story "Self-Immolation" will be published in Shadows & Light #4 out this September/October.
• I am now the admin for Horror Novel Review's Facebook page.  Feel free to hit the Facebook link and "like" their page.  Along with work, family, and writing, this will add a bit more to my daily schedule.