Can they reject me on dialogue alone?

My friend, they can reject you because they don't like the way you spell your name.

Seriously, though, my impression is that they want the best possible book up front. So if there's something that's not so great, you will really have to give them a reason to take you on anyway. That can be an amazingly original concept, a captivating voice, whatever. You might be able to get away with weak dialogue, but you'll have to be twice as good somewhere else to make up for it.

At least you know what you need to work on.

Why do you say it's not your forte? Has someone mentioned it feels stilted or not in character for the . . . well, character? Or is it just a sneaking suspicion in the back of your head? Perhaps you can share a small sample here or in the share your work section. I don't find dialogue all that hard, so perhaps it's something really easy to fix.

You channeling GI Joe there?

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I sure hope not!

As pconsidine indicated, they can reject you for anything. They can reject you because they had a bad breakfast. They can reject you for no reason whatever (and chances are, when you get a rejection, that's exactly what will be indicated).

But, yes, poor dialog is likely to get a manuscript rejected. Stilted, artificial-sounding dialog makes for stilted, artificial-looking, stereotyped cardboard characters. Think about what you enjoy reading. Vivid characters are based almost entirely on vivid, living dialog.

The best cure I know of for making dialog work is to act it out, both out loud in words, and in performing whatever accessory action goes with the dialog. Record it, also, if you can. Nothing will more quickly reveal what's wrong with dialog.

Also, one of the worst sins of dialog is to use it as a ploy to convey information to the reader. Real people simply don't say things like, "You know, Sarah, my father, who made a fortune in real estate and left it all to me before sailing off in his yacht for the Bahamas and disappearing on December 14, 1965, had two mistresses, and collected rare stamps."

You'd be amazed how many manuscripts I've critiqued that suffer from this syndrome.

bird

Where I come from (UK) there's a big deal being made of the fact that these days the traditional role of the editor has pretty much disappeared. Someone wrote an article in the Guardian saying that the blue pencil has gone for ever. I don't think this means that publishers are letting sloppy books through. It means they expect scripts to be pretty much ready to go (which is why agents now are more and more performing the role that editors used to). You could go to a professional freelance editor, but that will cost you money. Maybe others here have views on whether it's worth it. It's something I've never tried.

However you do it, you owe it to yourself to get your book as close to perfect as you can before you put it in that big envelope, and that includes the dialogue.

Of course they can! They can reject you because they're having a sh*t day. Dialogue being good is an imperative. In fact, dialogue being spot-on perfect is an imperative.

blacbird said:

"You know, Sarah, my father, who made a fortune in real estate and left it all to me before sailing off in his yacht for the Bahamas and disappearing on December 14, 1965, had two mistresses, and collected rare stamps."

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Hey! You swiped the opening sentence from my WIP, "Sarah and the Real Estate Heir."

Would you put down a book that has crap dialog?

If dialogue is not your forte, better make it your forte fast, or you won't be published.

Unless you're Barbara Taylor Bradford by any chance?

HConn said:

Would you put down a book that has crap dialog?

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Absolutely. I bought a book which an online acquaintance had written with a partner (and, er, published at iUniverse) and the dialogue was horrible...okay, maybe it was more the dialogue tags, she said saucily. When I started counting adverbs instead of reading the story, I skimmed on past to the next scene, and again, dialogue issues, plot holes (some of which were revealed via dialogue). The book went beyond bad and the dialogue was a big part of that badness, she said disappointedly. (you begin to get the idea). It was stilted, unnatural, and rife with abundantly adverbial tags.

Yes...crap dialogue will kill a book. IMHO--YMMV.

nachonaco_Grippers said:

Dialogue = not my forte.

Can/will they reject me if the dialogue is bad in my MS or will they try to help me by using an editor?

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For a long time, writing dialogue was my weakest crafting element as well, until I took my first poetry course.

I can't say/promise it will work for you, but cross-training, so to speak, with poetry helped to make my dialogue more succinct and productive.

Can't hurt

Sometimes bad dialogue is indication of something else in the quality of writing: plot, character development, pace, etc. An agent wants the best works -- and they have a big pile of material to choose from. Sometimes certain things can compensate for problems in certain areas... for example, a high-concept plot might compensate for flat characters and stilted dialogue (did someone say DVC? ) and sometimes great dialogue or prose might compensate for a slow plot (e.g. A Painted House). As writers, we should all strive to become better. If you know your dialogue is weak, work on it. Improve it. Workshop it. It's a race out there, whether you like it or not, so would you put a horse in a race if you know it's handicapped?

Dialogue

nachonaco_Grippers said:

Dialogue = not my forte.

Can/will they reject me if the dialogue is bad in my MS or will they try to help me by using an editor?

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Writing good dialogue requires a writer with an ear for dialogue, not an editor. Rejecting for bad dialogue is no different than rejecting for bad story or bad characterization or bad plot. Dialogue is an essential part of the story, and good dialogue often makes or breaks everything.

If you really can't write good dialogue, then I'd suggest studying dialogue, and writing as little dialogue as possible.

If you know dialogue isn't your forte, then make it your forte.

Another useful technique besides taking a course is try speaking your dialogue out loud. I found that whenever I'm not sure if what I wrote is any good, I do that simple exercise. If it doesn't roll off my tongue (sorry about the pun ) then I'll rewrite it until it does. Sometimes stuff that sounds good in my head doesn't work when spoken aloud.

The dialogue that you posted didn't seem to bad. I'd rework the tail end of it a bit. But it all depends on the context and if that is how the character talks (i.e. with a bunch of pauses).

nachonaco_Grippers said:

Example of my dialogue:
“About five or six kilometers away…to the east, I think…if you dig you can get to it…there’s a big ol’ box, buried there in case of emergency. It’s a box of a few Project Falcon helmets.”

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Submitting anything you know in advance is bad is silly. It is asking for rejection - you can't expect an Agent or Editor to imagine how submissions would be if they were written better. Bad writing will be viewed simply as bad writing and tossed aside.

Re the above extract - nothing desperately wrong with it at all. Maybe a teeny bit clumsy and wordy perhaps if ,say, the speaker is supposed to be on his last dying breath. I suggest you post a longer extract than this, nachonaco, if you want any constructive suggestions. Use the 'Share Your Work' Forum.

dialogue

nachonaco_Grippers said:

Example of my dialogue:
“About five or six kilometers away…to the east, I think…if you dig you can get to it…there’s a big ol’ box, buried there in case of emergency. It’s a box of a few Project Falcon helmets.”

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This isn't bad dialogue.

nachonaco_Grippers said:

Example of my dialogue:
“About five or six kilometers away…to the east, I think…if you dig you can get to it…there’s a big ol’ box, buried there in case of emergency. It’s a box of a few Project Falcon helmets.”

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This really doesn't need much fixing. The first part is a little long, since a sentence should be able to be spoken out loud in no longer than a single regular breath. When I tried, it was a little wheezy when I got to "emergency," but that's not a big deal. I'd probably only do something like this:

“About five or six kilometers away…to the east, I think… you'll have to dig to get to it…there’s a big ol’ box, buried in case of emergency. I remember there are a few Project Falcon helmets in it.”

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The best thing to do with dialogue is to make sure that it sounds good OUT LOUD. Pretend that a lamp or couch is the other person and talk out the dialogue like a script of a play (not screenplay). If it sounds natural to your ears, it will probably sound natural to the reader.

dialogue

Cathy C said:

This really doesn't need much fixing. The first part is a little long, since a sentence should be able to be spoken out loud in no longer than a single regular breath. When I tried, it was a little wheezy when I got to "emergency," but that's not a big deal. I'd probably only do something like this:



.

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I hate that "rule," probably more so than any other "rule" out there. I think it makes for poor dialogue. Or rather, it means the writer is avoiding writing some extremely good dialogue that's too long to say in a single breath.

A reader should breath according to the punctuation of the sentence, not simply according to its length. If you want the reader to take a breath, put in a pause, such as an ellipsis or a dash. Both are places where a reader can, and should, take another breath. Commas are also a chance for a reader to take a quick breath. So are colons and semi-colons.

There's no more reason to read a sentence of dialogue in a single breath than there is to read a sentence of narrative in a single breath.

Shakespeare, probably the greatest writer of dialogue who ever lived, would be unreadable, and certainly "unactorable," with this rule. Many of his sentences are from fifty to seventy words, and reading them in one breath would sound horrible. So, for that matter, would Ray Bradbury and William Faulkner be unreadable in many places.

Most of use do breath according to the way we punctuate our real dialogue. Ever listen to someone say, "Well, maybe"? Many people put a full breath between those two short words. Readers should, as well.

In nachonaco_Grippers' dialogue an ellipsis is used three times. All three of these are times where a reader can, and should, take a breath. They're long pauses, and reading them without a breath is reading them incorrectly. If yu read this sentence in a continuous breath, you just removed the ellipses. Not good. You change both the rhythm and the flow of the sentence. Also not good. You completely change how it would actually sound if someone said this to you. Really not good.

I don't know who came up with the "rule" of reading dialogue in one breath, but it's a horrid little thing, and doesn't at all reflect the way real people actually talk, or the way a great many of the very best dialogue writers write dialogue. All it really does is make for a lot of short sentences where readers ignore the punctuation.

This mistake isn't writing dialogue that requires more than one breath. The mistake is in trying to read every sentence of dialogue with only one breath.

In fiction, ellipses are usually used for trailing off speeches, so in this case it "sounds" like the person is out of breath.

Now if you punctuate the dialogue this way:

“About five or six kilometers away, to the east, I think. If you dig you can get to it. There’s a big ol’ box, buried there in case of emergency. It’s a box of a few Project Falcon helmets.”

I think it becomes more natural. Obviously, if the person is indeed out of breath, you may use the ellipses. But personally I'd prefer just the say "he said, catching his breath once in a while." But that's just me. I just don't like ellipses in dialogue, in general.

We'll have to agree to disagree, I'm afraid, James. It's a stylistic choice and I believe the rule has a great deal of merit. Of your three examples of excellent dialogue, I'll only agree with Bradbury --- and only in certain stories. My personal opinion is that the others have "stood the test of time" merely because they are foisted off on young readers by force. Fortunately, there are many different styles of writing available in the libraries.

Go with your gut, nacho. You've got several opinions here to choose from. Fortunately, none of them are "dialogue isn't your forte."