I listen to real people, and each character speaks in the same way one of those real people speaks. I don't try to fake it, or use rules, I just write dialogue the same way real people I listen to speak.
Giving Characters Unique Speech Patterns
- Thread starter JustGo
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I'm with Bufty-and-others who just pay attention to the way people speak and use word choice to capture that. No gimmicks required.
You're a writer. You need to be able to create dialogue that is believable as spoken language, i.e. not stilted-sounding. And the next step along your personal learning curve is then to create different flavours of dialogue that are still believable as spoken language.
"I don't know if a lady should head on in there. Otis is a mite lean on his housekeeping zeal, and the 'ambience' of that outhouse is a bit robust. You might be happier taking a stroll into the bushes, is all I'm saying."
"Oh, please. I was in hospital last month and confined to bed, on doctor's orders. After a week of scrumming with that bloody bedpan, the stink of urine holds no terror for me."
You're a writer. You need to be able to create dialogue that is believable as spoken language, i.e. not stilted-sounding. And the next step along your personal learning curve is then to create different flavours of dialogue that are still believable as spoken language.
"I don't know if a lady should head on in there. Otis is a mite lean on his housekeeping zeal, and the 'ambience' of that outhouse is a bit robust. You might be happier taking a stroll into the bushes, is all I'm saying."
"Oh, please. I was in hospital last month and confined to bed, on doctor's orders. After a week of scrumming with that bloody bedpan, the stink of urine holds no terror for me."
First, since you recognize other characters should have different speech patterns than the main character and narrator, I think you'll do a good job of avoiding letting them all speak the same.
Many of the subtler methods mentioned to show differences mention are worth working into dialog.
Because I speechread, I watch speakers carefully. I note when they use simple sentences and when some go to compound and complex structures, but I've never, ever seen a person say a comma splice or even a semicolon. Those are markers to help read sentence structures on the printed page, not on lips.
If you're talking about pauses . . . well . . . I have seen people inject ellipses between the words they say.
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What I've found makes the difference just as much as word choice is the way it is said (not talking about grammar here). I give people who have a higher authority or ranking a more "statement like" statement.
For example: An instructor would say to a student, "Come with me," whereas a student would say to an instructor, "If you wouldn't mind following me," or something to that effect. Obviously some characters don't care about authority and speak to everyone the same, but that would only add to this.
For example: An instructor would say to a student, "Come with me," whereas a student would say to an instructor, "If you wouldn't mind following me," or something to that effect. Obviously some characters don't care about authority and speak to everyone the same, but that would only add to this.
Just had to pop in and say on language shaping personality and switch languages = slight (seeming) personality alteration -- this is definitely true. Different languages have different overall "tones." For example, Japanese is obsessed with humbleness. In Japanese there is a specific adjective for "to be good at" and it is NEVER used with "I." You also wouldn't say, for example, "My Japanese has gotten rusty" because "rusty" implies that you were once an expert. Rather, you would say "My Japanese has become just terrible!" There are entire verb forms devoted to emotional nuances, i.e. a state of infliction ("My roommate ate my cake" stated as a simple fact, maybe because I told her it was okay to eat it yesterday, uses a different verb conjugation than "My roommate ate my cake" [[without asking me and I am upset about it]]). When I'm speaking Japanese I'm basically required to pay much more attention to emotions and the emotional state of others, and come off as much more humble than I would in English (where I frequently get in trouble with my friends for being "bitchy" or "know-it-all-ish" ). In Arabic, many basic/everyday expressions are rooted in religious language - I can only imagine how strange it would be to speak Arabic as a total atheist. Anyone raised speaking Arabic would probably be, by constant exposure and reminder, more religious than, say, your average French speaker -- and French people are often thought to be collectively "rude" or arrogant because, in my experience, the language is more straightforward. Listen to an English argument and you'll likely hear "Well, I don't think that's quite true, given the evidence that x x and x." Or, "I'm not sure about that," whereas one of the most commonly used phrases in French is flat-out "Ça n'existe pas" - that doesn't exist. Used both to shoot down another person's argument or even in place of an expression of lack of familiarity about something ("Have you ever heard of X?" "No no, that doesn't exist") - French is great at running circles around "I don't know" and also being wrong about anything. "You're wrong, that doesn't exist" is SIGNIFICANTLY less offensive to French speakers than it would be to a lot of English speakers.
edit- And personally, in languages like Arabic and French where there is no technical word for "it," only he/she (because all nouns are masculine or feminine), I feel like a bit more importance is assigned to objects in general, especially when dealing with things like animals. I cringe whenever I hear people call a dog an "it" and that's one thing you'll never hear in France.
/tangent
sorry, just couldn't resist your friendly neighborhood linguist
). In Arabic, many basic/everyday expressions are rooted in religious language - I can only imagine how strange it would be to speak Arabic as a total atheist. Anyone raised speaking Arabic would probably be, by constant exposure and reminder, more religious than, say, your average French speaker -- and French people are often thought to be collectively "rude" or arrogant because, in my experience, the language is more straightforward. Listen to an English argument and you'll likely hear "Well, I don't think that's quite true, given the evidence that x x and x." Or, "I'm not sure about that," whereas one of the most commonly used phrases in French is flat-out "Ça n'existe pas" - that doesn't exist. Used both to shoot down another person's argument or even in place of an expression of lack of familiarity about something ("Have you ever heard of X?" "No no, that doesn't exist") - French is great at running circles around "I don't know" and also being wrong about anything. "You're wrong, that doesn't exist" is SIGNIFICANTLY less offensive to French speakers than it would be to a lot of English speakers.edit- And personally, in languages like Arabic and French where there is no technical word for "it," only he/she (because all nouns are masculine or feminine), I feel like a bit more importance is assigned to objects in general, especially when dealing with things like animals. I cringe whenever I hear people call a dog an "it" and that's one thing you'll never hear in France.
/tangent
sorry, just couldn't resist
your friendly neighborhood linguist
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Better than calling every dog "she" which for some reason seems to be the default with dogs.
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And in my hearing, it's always been dogs default to he, and cats default to she! See? Different dialects of the same language, and already we think differently.
I'm not finding how this is reflective of "blue collar" ... What do you mean by "less refined"?
Exactly. Real people use repetitions, say um alot, lose the thread of sentences, etc. None of which you want in your actual dialogue.
Write dialogue that sounds real, without actually being real.
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