Writing Tips & A Game of Roasts

How to write dialogue and the next installment of A Game of Roasts

Hey Hamanites!

Thank you so much for all of the feedback on my story. I’ve begun the re-writing phase of chapter one and will post that soon. For our paid subscribers, the next installment of my original liberty-themed fantasy novella A Game Of Roasts has been posted. The first chapter remains free to anyone so if you haven’t checked it out you, click the link below. If you like what you read, consider upgrading your membership to continue the Kaffa clan’s battle to conserve their way of life against multiple threats from men and magic. Enjoy!

A while back, I created a “how to improve your writing” presentation that I made to help libertarians write better fiction. Now that I’ve put the rest of the story behind the paywall, I thought I would share some writing tips as part of the weekly newsletter. Today’s tip is on writing compelling dialogue. Take a look at this bit of banter:

“Hi,” Jim said.

“Hi,” Sue said.

What’s wrong with this dialogue? Besides being bereft of any interesting information, this exchange could have been spoken by anyone. Take away the dialogue tags to see what I mean:

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Did Jim or Sue speak first? We don’t know because they each have the same voice. Every person I have met in my life has had a unique voice. My co-worker Jen sounds different from my mother. “Of course they do,” you say. “Everyone’s vocal chords are genetically unique and produce a signature tonal sound unique to each individual,” you say. That’s not what I mean here by "voice". If you were writing a radio play where each character was going to be performed by a different actor, then the subject of this post would deal with creating interesting dialogue instead of creating distinctive voices.

You should aim to write dialogue that is distinctive and recognizable in word choice for each character. To accomplish this, you need to know who your character is. Let’s erase Jim and Sue and start over. The new scene setup is: Billy-jean “a cowgirl from Austin” and she has a friend named Shinzo who she met while studying in Japan. Years later, Shinzo has come to Texas to visit Billie-Jean and is staying in the guest bedroom of her home. The smell of bacon and coffee awakes Shinzo the morning. He wanders out, rubbing jet-lag from his eyes and the following conversation happens@

“Howdy pardner!”

“Ohayo gozaimasu.”

Who do think spoke first, Shinzo or Billie-Jean?

As a creative writer, it is you primary goal to tell an interesting story. But your story is told through characters and if they aren’t interesting, memorable or distinctive, then forget about anyone reading past the first couple of pages. One important way to make characters interesting to make their voices unique. On a side note, notice I did not start this paragraph with “as a FICTION writer”. That’s because dialogue voice is just as important in non-fiction. I meant it when I said that everyone on the planet has a unique voice. Everyone speaks with certain inflections, slang, dialects, grammatical constructions, etc. If your characters don’t, then make it up! That’s what creative means.

In liberty,

Tyrone the Porcupine Hobo