Dialogue 204

“Professor” Rj Waltz

Sorry I’m a little bit early today, class. The space/time continuum doesn’t allow me to paralell park on Wednesay between 6 A.M. and 6:02 A.M. unless my pockets are full of day old spinach and mustard packets. Fun fact, while I was writing this script, the good lines of code over at Nimbus Note decided that it would be a fun idea to grab scripts from other, better episodes of Bang It Out and copy paste them willy-nilly throughout all of the scripts in a random order. It literally gave me the digitized version of untangling christmas lights. Thanks Nimbus Note! Five stars! We’re moving past this now, so I’m going to need you to shape up and pay attention, because I’m only going to say this a thousand times.

By now you should have some sort of character written down for your little story that I have no interest of reading. Don’t have it yet? Good, let’s make one together. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle. Her name is Claire, and she speaks sounds out of her mouth-hole. That’s everything that everyone aspires for in their lives. Claire, darling moron that she is, needs to buy stamps at a grocery store. She doesn’t know how incredibly stupid that is, but she’s going to do it anyway. Here’s where we need another character, in our folly. Matthew is his name. Matthew is a store clerk. He’s tired of Claire’s, your, and my bullcrap. He has a Call of Duty tournament to get back to once his shift is over. Not to worry, Matt, I promise I won’t keep you.

“You’d better not, you dumbass,” he said, irritated. It’s weird, but I kinda want him to step on me.
Claire tapped her foot impatiently, “Enough with your weird fetishes. Can we get this over with?” Sure, sure. Okay, you both have your lines, right? Let’s go. Ready, steady, action!

“That’s not how- never mind,” Matthew grumbled, “Next in line!”
Claire stepped up to the counter, placing her red plastic basket on the conveyor belt. Matthew swiftly yanked bottle after bottle of red wine out of it, scanning each one with a passive irritation. As he scanned them, Claire approached the card scanner. The prompt asking her for a phone number baffled her instantly. In a panic, she tapped in the first number she could remember.
“There’s no info on that number,” Matthew responded with a cursory glance at the register’s screen, “Try a different one.”
“Can I speak to a manager?” she asked.
He stopped, confused, “Are… Are you asking for permission?”
Her face flushed red hot with embarrassment, “Forget about it.”
“Anything else?” he asked.
She shook her head, “Wait, there is one more thing. Can I get a book of stamps?”
Matthew tilted his head to the side, “We don’t sell stamps here, lady. You buy those at a Post Office. Run your card already.” Shaking, Claire hurried inserted her card into the machine. It beeped in error. Matthew, exasperated, flipped the machine around and inspecte the screen. Glaring at Claire, he pulled the card out and re-inserted it right side up.
“Have a good day,” he shooed her away, waving over the next person in line. Embarrassed, Claire gathered her pile of bagged booze and headed for the door.

Okay, you both can screw off, now. Don’t need you anymore. Ah, that poor dumb dumb. It’s a wonder if she can put her shoes on in her own home without getting hit by a car. Since none of you seemed to notice all of the stuff I crammed into that little scene, let me illustrate what’s going on in this. Keep in mind that this is supposed to be about dialogue when you raise your hands to interrupt me and my insane psychobabble.

First up, I want you to open those big anime eyes wide and smoosh them against the glass of your reading device to notice that the example of dialogue I supplied contains a helluva lot more than characters speaking lines. While writing dialogue, it’s important to remember this simple rule; your character is not a floating head. When writing dialogue, the people talking are occupying bodies of some sort. Hair needs adjusted, boobs need scratched, grand gestures need gestured. Get it? You talk with your hands and feet and other limbs, and so should your void-bound word puppets. Onto the next one.Wait, let’s play a little game, first. Who can guess what I’m going to mention about that scene, next? Picture it in your mind before I tell you what it is, and see if you’re right… Quick! Go back and reread it before i tell you that it’s-

Character motivations. My boy Matt there is impatient because, as you and I both know, he’s counting the minutes until he can return to his crummy dwelling and shoot ones and zeroes in the face in exchange for beer money and nachos.
“I’m a vegan, asshole,” Matthew rudely interjected.
Get outta here, you weirdo! Bizarre life choices aside, the scene in question makes no mention of his reasons behind his intense desire to leave his Karen-riddled day job behind. However, this reason is important because it fuels his actions and attitude. Claire isn’t privvy to the reason behind his bad mood, so she doesn’t get to know about it. On the flipside, Matthew doesn’t know bout Claire’s crippling addiction to complete idiocy. Well, not at first, but he learns about that through their brief interaction with the card scanner and the dumb question about stamps. But nowhere in the scene itself is it expressly written that Claire is one concussion away from wearing a snorkel while eating cereal. That, dear student, is called ‘show, don’t tell.’ Get used to seeing that phrase, because I’m bound to talk about it like, a billion times.

Moving on. The next thing I want you to remember about that thing I wrote on paper an left above me is the way that the character emotions are described. This is the proper way to convey emotion in a novel. Anyone who tells you differently needs to be reminnded that I will ball up my fists and punch them several times with bread bowls on my hands until they succumb to my rage-induced gluten assault. You don’t say angry, you shout. You don’t say happy, you grin/smile/laugh/guffaw. You don’t say sad, you pout/cry/morose/upset. Et cetera with other emotions. I’m a busy human; I don’t have time to feel my feelings.

Another thing I need to mention is that the entirety of the scene is written in past tense. What is past tense, you probably ask? It’s what happens when you write words like said, flushed, tapped, etc and so on. It is used to indicate that the events of the story happened in the past. Ninety-nine times out of ten, your neighbors novels will be written in past tense. It’s the industry standard, so there’s not much you can do about it. If you don’t know how to write past tense, you should learn how to do it from an actual teacher, because it’s really important for your narrative voice to be written this way. The big trik and secret, though, is that the chaacter’s dialogue lines are written in a different tense. Did you notice? Man, I should’ve put a ticker for every time somebody scrolls back up to the top of this post. Ha! That’s right, pricks, the characters speak in present tense. Don’t look at me, that’s just how people talk. We all speak about things that are currently happening. Well, unless we’re telling a story, then we might talk in past tense. Point is, don’t think that written dialogue is set in stone like narrative description. It’s much more fluid and situational. If you can remember that, you’ll be able to write passably enough to trick people into buying your book.

Now, I know that my insane rambings about a lush buying stamps at a grocery store mention the word ‘said’ a few times. There are a few people out there that will tell you that this is bad because the word said is flavorless and boring. This, like everything ever involving the human language, depends. Obviously, you’re not going to want to use ‘said’ in every dialogue tag in a scene. When your reader reads similar words, their brain shuts off because it thinks it’s reading the same sentence over again. Why would I say something like that? There’s no way I know if that’s tre or not. Point is, you should treat your dialogue tags like they are normal sentences, and throw some variety in there. You can’t be creative with your past tense narrative voice, so show your creativity with this, instead. Seriously, don’t change your tense. I will slap you with gluten bread.

One last thing, because I am sick of writing about dialogue. The lights in here are too bright, and I already lost a shoe trying to dim those fluorescent bastards. When writing a speaking part, you need to make a new paragraph. Why? Well, it’s polite, first of all. I don’t ram my sentences in with yours while you’re talking, now do I? Show some common curtosy. Geez. Second of all, it makes it a lot easier for the reader to figure out who’s talking. The rhythmic back and forth of a hot piece of gossip stays snappy when the comments are stacked on one another. The good banter pops better this way. Trust me, girlfriend. Thirdly of all, it breaks the flow of your descriptive paragraphs with short sentence paragraphs. Variety is the spice of life, writing, and also probably dance. Don’t jam up your conversations into a stuffy paragraph. Let them puppies breathe. Also, and i can’t believe I actually have to say this, but use the conventional dialogue punctuations.

“Your conversations need to look like this,” Rj said, incredibly handsome and not at all hungover and covered in flies. “Direct speaking needs to be in quotes. Commas come after the dialogue lines when you’re planning to add a tag,” Rj mentioned, gesturing broadly towards the burning classroom.

These are conventions that came before you did. Or, I guess your dad, in this instance. Point is, your readers are used to them, so if you use this punctuation and paragraph structure, you don’t have to explainanything in your novel’s foreward. Keep that in mind next time you want to be incessantly creative. you lunatic, you.
Any questions? No? Good.
Class dismissed!