Overly real dialog--is it bad?

I'm fine with 1 & 3 but #2 feels forced unless the speaker is quite young or uneducated--then I think it would be believable. Most teens would more likely say, Me and Jordan (using the proper name), Both of us or We both, IMO.

Bottom line, as long as it sounds natural, go for it! Keep in mind the attitude & education level of your characters and work within those limits to give them realistic sounding dialogue.

I personally think it's ok. People don't speak grammatically correct (at least most people and at least some of the time). It's all about the character. Now if you have a character that's a professor of English, or a lawyer, or someone who you'd expect to be talking a bit more properly, than I'd say yes, change it.

Another thing, read it out loud. If it really strikes you as weird, then change it. Cause it will probably make the reader stumble too.

My two cents.

Arrgh--my husband insists that it's ALWAYS "and I," and that "and me" is NEVER correct. BLARRRGH!! This is pretty much the only thing we ever argue about.

Anyway. Personally, I find really egregious grammar obnoxious in characters, but I'd be willing to put up with it in one or two characters per novel if it really helped to develop who they were. If they're undereducated or from working-class parents who don't put a lot of emphasis on "book-learning" but who emphasize other good traits instead, I'd probably find that character homey and likable in a sweet, kind of silly, kind of familiar way. A whole book of characters who said things like "There's five cookies in the jar" would drive me insane and I would not buy that book.

I think less is more with this type of thing.

And for the record, there are tons of teen-agers out there who speak properly. They can still be cool and hip and fun and neato with respectable grammar.

Sorry going off topic for a second:

Libbie, you can probably handle the argument on your own, but here's some backup from yours truly. Tell your husband the following:

Both I and Me are grammatically correct. The way to figure out which to use is to say the sentence without the second person. So if the phrase is "Can you help John and _ with the dishes" you say it without John in the sentence. The phrase is "Can you help me with the dishes" not "Can you help I with the dishes". Therefore you use "me" in the sentence:

"Can you help John and me with the dishes."

If he insists he is right (which he just isn't, this isn't a subjective matter. He is wrong.) show him this from the Oxford Dictionaries: http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/meandi

Argh, there is no such thing as 'proper' grammar. There's prescribed grammar (how 18th century grammarticians thought people should speak) and descriptive grammar (how people actually speak). Nobody in real life uses prescribed grammar at all times. There are times when it is expected (speeches, academic essays), but dialogue is not one of them, IMO. All of your samples sound fine to me. I'm a linguist and that's how I speak. There is no proper and improper way to speak, btw. Judging people for using bad grammar is a huge no-no in my community. Sorry, but it really bothers me! Okay, rant finished.

Characters should speak in character. Colloquialism and grammatical sloppiness make dialog fit the scene, as long as it is consistent and not overdone.

Getting "overly real" would mean, to me, every er, um, and like religiously put in, worse than having to listen to dorks speaking; or else weirdly spelled dialect. Auff!

What Matera said. Especially as concerns the interjections. Written dialogue that exactly mirrored the fecundity of "like" in youthful dialogue would be intolerable. I'd also parcel out the swearing judiciously, returning some of their original power to those poor Anglo-Saxonisms now rendered meaningless by being tossed out every other word.

Write dialogue the way people speak in real life. Ok, maybe not with as many "erms" and "uhs" as in real life. But don't make it a grammar lesson. Pay attention to how people speak. I've gotten compliments for my dialogue because of that. One thing I do is read what I've written out loud.

Toothpaste said:

Sorry going off topic for a second:

Libbie, you can probably handle the argument on your own, but here's some backup from yours truly. Tell your husband the following:

Both I and Me are grammatically correct. The way to figure out which to use is to say the sentence without the second person. So if the phrase is "Can you help John and _ with the dishes" you say it without John in the sentence. The phrase is "Can you help me with the dishes" not "Can you help I with the dishes". Therefore you use "me" in the sentence:

"Can you help John and me with the dishes."

If he insists he is right (which he just isn't, this isn't a subjective matter. He is wrong.) show him this from the Oxford Dictionaries: http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/meandi

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Yep, that's the argument I always use. He claims it's just plain wrong. I've even sent him links before, but not this link. Maybe if it has the name Oxford associated with it, he'll listen!

Barber said:

Hmmm, that's the one I was most concerned with. It's because it's the most commonly made grammatical error. Even in TV shows and movies. In fact, I work in a corporate setting, and there's only one other person who ever uses 'there are' or 'there were', and it's not all the time, and when she does say it, she enunciates it as though she's just learned it in Etiquette School.

Click to expand...

I notice it sometimes on TV and in movies, but not that often. Maybe it's a regional thing. I think my head would explode if I heard that type of thing constantly.

Teens and kids may not speak correct grammar but putting in millions of 'ya know' 'and uh' into the conversations etc would be a huge turn off. Like using dialect or slang, a little bit goes a long way.

Those all sound perfectly fine in dialogue to me, especially the "There's" error--my characters (who are actually usually educated enough to know the difference), as well as myself in casual speech and writing (and I definitely know the difference!), use this manner of speaking. (It's difficult to say "there're"!).

When you said "overly real dialogue," I was worried you meant, you know, with all the "um"s and "er"s and "uh"s and such! In that case, it would be kind of bad...but writing a character who has bad grammar is just fine, IMO. We can't all be perfect.

'There's' is wrong?

Well, that's where I stand on that one. I find 'Him and me' to be obnoxious personally, but if it's not done too often I guess it's okay. How about using 'good' instead of 'well'?

I don't think any of those would be a problem in dialog. Just don't start transcribing real conversations, with all the stuttering, puzzlement, ums and ers that would cause.

Nathan Bransford (awesome super agent) talks about dialogue on his blog. Here's a post about what makes good dialogue that might be useful.
http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/05/you-tell-me-so-what-makes-good-dialogue.html

"There's" is only wrong when used with a plural noun. There's five cookies in the jar is technically incorrect. There're five cookies in the jar is technically correct. However, apparently the first, incorrect usage is pretty common in some areas.

Also, Nathan Bransford's blog rocks!

My pet peeve is when people say "myself" instead of "me". Rampant in the corporate world.

You can do anything in dialogue. Then again, too much of a good thing can be a bore. Use good judgment.

The uneducated MC in one of my novels does all these (including the gonna and wanna occasionally). Anything else just sounded wrong. I will trust my betas to let me know whether it's annoying.

If the character would have shoddy grammar (due to lack of education) then them using shoddy grammar in their speech would be fine with me. So long as grammar in other characters' speech and in your narrative is correct. If poor grammar is everywhere, I'm going to think it's not a particular character that's uneducated but rather the writer him/herself. I'd also advise against using as many "ums", "ahs" and "ers" that litter most people's speech because, while it may sound realistic, it's a pain to read.

My instinct would be to go for it and write the dialogues with those common mistakes in. It wouldn't put me off reading the book; on the contrary, the over-use of "my friend and I are" would put me off as frankly, who speaks like that?

As much as I expect "my friend and I" in prose, I don't expect it in dialogue, unless the character belongs to the 5% or 10% of people who actually speak this way at all times, in which case it would be appropriate to use it of course.

As for "there's", I make a difference on whether the noun is before or after "there's". For example, "how many shoes is there?" sounds wrong to me because "is" follows a plural noun and there is no excuse to do that. But "there's many shoes" is acceptable in a dialogue, as you can imagine the person saying "there's" not really knowing what was going to come next. Maybe they thought about saying "there's a lot of mess" but then decided to specify it a bit more and went for "many shoes" instead of "a lot of mess". I've done it before, many people have and it doesn't grate my ears at all. Let's face it, "there's" rolls off the tongue and is overused for that very reason.

If a character uses a specific word all the time, I write it in if that specific word is unique to them. Basically, I wouldn't put in "like" all the time if a teenage used it because it's quite a common thing to say for teenagers and it would become annoying. But let's say an elderly man uses "like" all the time, I would write more of them in, because it would become a way to bring personality into the dialogue, a way to differentiate this elderly man from the other ones, a way to understand that perhaps that elderly man is trying to connect with his grandchildren through language, or maybe he's in denial about his age, or maybe he finds it amusing.

Language is where socio-cultural trends meet with personalities, and dialogue should show that, both by showing which socio-cultural group someone belongs to and by showing how unique that person is. So you might put in a few "like" to show that a teenager is indeed a teenager living in South London who generally fits in with most teenagers in the way he speaks; however, you will also want to put in some more personal and unique expressions he uses, so he doesn't sound like the three other teenagers in your novel.