Thursday with BAD Romantic Dialogue

In my last post, I talked about how to write realistic dialogue.
The problem is that in novels, characters don't talk like normal people, but sometimes they should.
Characters in love should talk like normal people instead of cheesy cheese (not my best word choices).
A few weeks ago, I saw the Host. I had never been to a movie in the theater where people were laughing (more like howling) without reservation throughout the entire movie during "dramatic" scenes. I spent a majority of the film saying things like "if they say/ do this, I'm going to hit my head against a wall" which I actually did. It was that bad.
The problem was that the dialogue tried so hard to sound romantic and ended up sounding creepy.
Yes, theoretically, a guy telling you that he watches you while you sleep should should romantic (sorry for the Twilight reference Meyer fans), but in reality, guys should NOT sneak into your room while you are unconscious.
When you are writing romantic dialogue, think would I find this romantic if you were in the situation. The odds are you would say yes since the dialogue roots from your subconscious (which thinks about that kinda stuff). If you happen to say no, DELETE IT.
If you answered yes, go up to a friend and tell them your romantic dialogue out of the blue. If they don't get a restraining order on you, you can keep it.
Best of luck to you while you try to not creep people out.

Thursday's Observation on Speech Patterns

I really hate when people talk about how to write dialogue by telling me to listen to other people (I might have given this advice, but I could be a hypocrite). This angers me because if this was tried and true advice, they must have tried this and have taken notes on speech patterns. If they haven't, they shouldn't give me this advice. If they have, they should share their notes which is what I'm doing. Here are some dialogue thingys I've notices.
As I've mentioned in a pervious post, I contribute to my school newspaper. For newspaper, I have to transcribe my interviews, so I have accurate quotes. It's so funny to look at the individual words a person is saying and realizing they don't make any sense.
Common dialogue key:

• People don't speak in complete sentences (fragments galore). On the other hand, people tend to use run-on sentences. 
• People lose their train of thoughts and change their idea in thr middle of- btw this is annoying (see what I did there)
• People don'r remember what they use for lists. For the first example they might say 1, but for the following example they will say B. 
• 1. this looks like a mistake when people read it 
• B. I do this all the time
• People aren't always consistent syntactical patterns. For example, if I made a list of object, I might start off by separating each example with a comma and lead into saying "and"between the final examples. (I like writing side notes to clarify what I am saying, separate my description with my example and looks cool and adds something the break the reader form my gibberish description, creates something new)
• People are really repetitive. They like to reiterate themselves, and sometimes they just forgot what they said earlier. 
• People use the same phrases over and over. I'm not talking about catch phrases (which I don't know anyone who really uses those), but people have certain ways to describe what they want to say. For example, I say gibber gabber and heebie gibbies a lot. I wouldn't call them my catch phrases, but they are a part of my dialogue. Most people's key words aren't as obvious as mine. Their safety word can be as simple as "despite" in every comparative sentence. 
• When people are saying what the other person said, they don't always use "like" or "said". I've notice a lot of the time, people don't even use a verb before dialogue. (Mimi not eating her food made mama mad "if you don't like my food, you can go hungry")
• This is unusual, but it pops up every now and then. Don't mention how long a conversation lasted. I hate when books give a time about how long a conversation lasted for. (Example: The conversation with Jackie last five minutes. The most chaotic five minutes of my life). I don't like them. I think they are awkward. Also the times are usually way off. This might be hard to believe, but a person can say A LOT in a few seconds. My voice record is weird, so if I'm a few seconds off, I have to wait for the person to say half a page of information before they get back to where I wanted them to be. I'm not sure if this is 100% accurate, but one of my friends who wants to write screenplays told me that a page worth of dialogue lasts for 30 seconds. In books they will have half a page of dialogue and say it lasted five minutes 
• People like to say "you" opposed to general statements (Saying "you can lose weight if you don't eat an entire cake day" instead of "people can lose weight if they don't eat an entire cake a day")
• Everybody's style of talking is different. I complied this list based on patterns I found bettwen multiple interviews of people of different ages and sexes, but this doesn't apply to every single person in the world

I hope these helped. The best advice is to listen to other people to really learn how people structure their sentences. I just recording a conversation with a friend or interview a friend and transcribe it later for the most accurate results. 

Thursday Covers Religion

I was planning on posting about dialogue, but something I read is bothering me.

I was reading book reviews for a book I was planning to buy, and the major concern in the reviews was religion. The fact that religion was a prominent aspect of the book halted people from reading it made me unbelievably annoyed. 

Tons of bloggers rant about how authors need to push the envelop and talk about "touchy" topics that aren't being properly explored like sex, diversity, etc, but when a book has a religion, that's too touchy for them to handle. 

Religion is is like any controversial topic. It deserves to be explored. 

My WIP deals with religion a lot. It's probably the most prominent idea in the story. I'm not shoving down a religion down anyone's throat, but I'm exploring the aspects of faith. 

I want someone to read my book and relate my character's religious struggles instead of close off reading my book because it has religion. 

I don't know where I was going with this, but basically, I hope people realize religion doesn't mean shoving faith down someone's throat, but it should be feed with the memory that not everyone likes the same food (in less flowery words: not everyone will agree with the religion explored, but they should keep an open mind)

Wednesday Talks Banter

Hello, lovely people! I’m sorry I’ve been missing in action yet again, but the life of an Irish dancing A.P. student in March is not a life with a lot of free time. It’s a sad fact, but a truthful one.


Now that I’m done whining, I want to talk to you about dialogue. One of the things I’ve noticed when reading young writers’ work is that sometimes people kind of...well… screw up the dialogue. Dialogue is conversation, not exposition. It’s not the place to give an entire back story.

And if you can’t remember the correct way to format dialogue, please, PLEASE, go look it up on Purdue Owl. I can’t tell you how distracting it is to read through a short story or novel where people don’t indent dialogue or use quotation marks. French people use dashes to set conversation apart instead of quotation marks and so do some super avant-garde British and American writers. In some books some of the dialogue won’t be in quotation marks. This may be used to create a certain tone or voice for a story and can work beautifully (I’m thinking of A Star Called Henry and An Invisible Sign of my Own), but I wouldn’t recommend doing this unless you are positive you can do it in a way that will be coherent.

Once you’ve got the formatting down, it’s time to think about how realistic your dialogue is. I think the best way to do this is to listen to people talk. Pay attention to speech patterns. If listening to people in real life sounds boring, try listening to some books on tape.

For me, one of the best ways to get an ear for dialogue is watching movies, TV shows, a plays. BBC’s Sherlock does a wonderful job of creating witty, interesting dialogue and I would argue that The Office has some of the best conversations ever. If your piece take place in a historical period, try to read writing from that time or to find a period drama like Downton Abbey that can help you visualize and hear what that period was like. Make special notes of slang that’s relevant to your story-- I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t catch Lady Grantham saying YOLO.

Caroline

Thursday with AMAZING News

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate the fact that... VERONICA MARS IS GOING TO BE MADE INTO A MOVIE. I could not stop freaking out when I heard. My legs were shaking. I couldn't finish a sentence. I squealed.
If you follow anyone amazing at all, you probably already know this fact.
As a writer, I have to appreciate the beautiful craftsmanship from Veronica Mars.
The Dialogue!
The Wit!
The Relationships!
I don't have time for a real post, so I will leave you with one bit of advice (you can thank me anytime): Watch Veronica Mars. All three seasons (you can skip the last episode of season three because we all know it did not end correctly). I don't care if you have already seen it. Watch it again. New comer? Watch it! Watch from a writer's POV.

Thursday Names Her Characters

I prefer to name my characters based on their name meaning. I take history of the name (such as famous people with the name) and origins in to consideration, but I mostly focus on the meaning.
I once read a writer say that most parents don't intentionally name their child "dead sexy manslut love interest", so we shouldn't give characters a name that their parents wouldn't logically give them (obviously that wasn't the name meaning they used, but you get the idea). I like the idea of this: we must take parental influence into consideration, but as a writer I can make the parents any way I want. If I want my LI's name to mean "dead sexy manslut love interest",  can make his mother into a gold digger who wants girls to find her son irresistible.
We have the power to do anything.
I have used my power to name my LI... David. The name works extremely well based on the history, meaning and parental influence.
My only problem...
I know a lot of people named David.
I am no ways naming my character after them, but it's difficult to write a really romantic scene when I remember how my cousin David made fun of me for liking Disney Channel when I was 7.
How do you name your characters/ problems you face when naming characters>?