[ SECRET POST #4025 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4025 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 20 secrets from Secret Submission Post #576.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. https://i.imgur.com/c3W0dH5.png

[(Anonymous)]

Buffy is also outdated now, isn't it? So it could be that.

Anyway, no style is going to suit or impress everyone. Focus on what you enjoy watching and reading NOW and... well, don't copy it outright, but imagine putting one or two of your characters in that mix and see how they would respond.

Hope you find the answers you need :)

[(Anonymous)]

A writing exercise one prof had us do was try pairing together disparate characters to get a sense of how different dialogue can be? Like a dinner table where Xander Harris, Hans Landa, Jessica Rabbit and John McClane all had to say something.

[(Anonymous)]

Read more.

Yep.

[(Anonymous)]

This is almost never a bad idea for a writer.

[(Anonymous)]

Excellent advice. Read a wide range of things too, OP, both in your preferred genre and outside of it. Non-fiction as well. Your writing is only as good as what you put into your brain, and your brain needs lots of variety.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

Came here to say this.

It sounds like you learned to write from TV script dialogue, which is 100% different from writing dialogue for, say, fic or a legit novel. Read more books, avoid mimicking TV and movies, and you should be fine.

[(Anonymous)]

Buffy had some good dialogue, but its actual range of characters was pretty narrow. Basically young white urban 90s teens for the most part. Which is kind of a problem if you're trying to write ancient Amazon goddesses or 50 year old black men or anything that isn't well a young white urban 90s teen

Would it help to try relating characters to real people you know? Your parents don't talk like you, I'm guessing. Neither do 15 year olds these days. Or people from other countries. Or those with very different backgrounds from you. Pick some random people you actually know and try writing things in their voice - they don't all sound like Buffy

[(Anonymous)]

That's a very good advice ! Never thought of that ! (I'm not the OP)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not surprised. That's a common (and not unwarranted) criticism of Whedon's work, too. Snappy dialog and humor is his strength and its a good quality to have. You might just need to shake it up a bit and work on developing more variety in your characters and their voices.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe try, as a writing exercise, imposing some sharp restrictions. Like:

A only says five words at a time.
B doesn't use contractions.
C always tries to make an anecdote about a family member.
D doesn't understand humour, but doesn't want anyone to know.

Sometimes forcing yourself to write really tightly to meet an arbitrary boundary can give you more awareness of the tiny choices you make, and take you interesting places.

**

Or, take a scene you like from a movie or show (with good, distinctive character voices) and write it out in prose. Write the dialogue, write the character movements, their eye flickers, the way their voice roughens on a particular word. The way the shadows shift over their faces as they walk by a slatted blind speaking of hard choices they made in the past. Etc. (As an exercise. I'm not advising passing it off as original.)

[(Anonymous)]

And good luck. I hope you find something that works for you.

[hange_zoe]

I love this advice! Not the secretmaker, but this will help me improve my RP writing, so thank you!

[lovedforaday]

That kind of dialogue/writing was cute 15-20 years ago, now it's just tedious.

[(Anonymous)]

I have the same issue with writing "snappy" dialogue at the expense of distinctive character voices, except I'm too old to credibly blame it in Joss Whedon.

I can't say I've found a miracle fix, but it's something I'm paying a lot more attention to in my current revision.

[soldatsasha]

I think if you're good at writing Whedon-esque dialog that's probably a pretty good foundation to build off of and improve. Writing snappy, clever dialog is actually really hard compared to just writing something in a character's "voice."

I think you just need to focus more on thinking about what each character would actually say and how. I did this is a dialog study exercise a few months ago, where I went through some of my favorite youtubers, podcasters, etc. and tried to figure out how they talk and how they tell jokes. And just kind of listened and brain-stormed. And I came up with things like

Sips: very monotone, jokes are often delivered in the form of dry sentences ex: "do you want 13, 14, or 15 steaks?" while Sjin is counting, rambles a lot, makes obscure references or mixes references, talks over or under people in a constant stream of dialog and jokes while occasionally interjecting into the conversation....

And I did that for a whole bunch of people and then looked at those traits and thought about how they might apply to the characters I was writing. Like maybe the character does always have a snappy comeback but their delivery is really stilted or slow. Or they never have a snappy comeback so when they're talking to a mile-a-minute type person they just get left in the dust. Or some people tell jokes with a really long set-up. Some people don't tell jokes at all. You have to figure out how each person talks, and edit your conversations to reflect that.

[kamino_neko]

Buffy has seriously influenced how I write speech, too, and I often fear this...though I haven't had other people telling me, just worrying myself.

[(Anonymous)]

fanfic and RP has trained me to play extra-close attention to the actual speech patterns and intonation of all kinds of characters, from the taciturn old war general to the chirpy teenage girl. at least in those venues it's easy to get feedback - people leave comments or crit saying that they can hear the characters in their canon voices.

if writing fic isn't otherwise a help to your original work, try the exercise above anon suggested, writing out a movie/tv scene as if it were the novelization, and notice word choice, inflection, sentence length, etc. Characters become distinct by having their own personal lexicon of words they do (and do not) use, in addition to how much they talk, how long they talk, and what tone of voice they use in which situation.

[anarchicq]

I found this with most of Joss's writing. I never watched Buffy, didn't get into Firefly until I was dragged to the theatre to watch something called Serenity, which I had never heard of, thought his Marvel movies were Meh because everyone sounded the same (ESPECIALLY AoU)

The only thing he did I actually liked was Dr Horrible.

Buffy and Firefly work because the characters are literally always together. They're a high school friend's group, or a crew stuck together on a space ship. It makes sense if people adopt eachother's speaking quirks. AoU? Nope.

So, read more yes, but also _talk_ with _Your_ characters. I constantly have to go back and reword dialog because "No, so-and-so is too well read to say that." or "Nope, So-and-so is too dumb to use the word conversationalist. Let's go with talky."

[(Anonymous)]

Try watching different crime shows that focus on one detective? Like Homicide Hunter or I Am Homicide or "Coroner, I Speak for the Dead." And listen to the way they talk. The way they use slang or their facial expressions that help convey tone. Kenda is very uh, Spock meets George Takei, very dry, very technical but also very funny. McFadden is very breezy, very smiley, outgoing, we're having a Sunday dinner african american male chat. Where as Hetrick is very much a North Eastern college educated white guy that dabbles in bhuddism?

Or pick up a Jacques book and see how he write dialect of different British cultures? The hares and the moles are two very good examples. (I don't honestly recommend writing dialogue the way Jacques does because it gets on a lot of people's nerves. I'm used to it. So, I enjoy it.)

Whedon is a good foundation! But you can build on it!

Now that you've been flooded in advice. :)

[(Anonymous)]

I have this problem, but have only seen part of one episode of Buffy. I’ve never had anyone tell me my characters all sound the same, but damn do I notice.

[feotakahari]

Have you ever read Oliver Twist? Dickens is surprisingly good at giving his characters different speech patterns, and he’s pretty snappy by 19th-century standards

[(Anonymous)]

Try watching movies where characters have accents. Watch something with William Shatner. Watch a couple of episodes of Gilmore Girls. These are easy ways to notice different patterns of speech.

Also, watch things were the same actor plays two or more different characters - there's often speech pattern differences. Orphan Black. Dollhouse. "The End" Supernatural episode. Close your eyes and listen to the dialogue. See what distinguishes one from the other.

[(Anonymous)]

Joss Whedon also has that problem, so if you're modeling your writing after his, I'm not surprised.

It might help if you write your story the way you usually do, but reread/revise it a few times before you send it to your beta. Each time you go through it, highlight one character's dialogue and just read that. Does this sound like Character X? If you can do this with all of your characters, you can keep the essence of your witty banter in place while giving each character their own voice.

If you're having trouble writing a specific character, write drabbles featuring just them and have your betas pick them apart. It's hard on the ego, but can be really useful in getting you out of that rut.

[(Anonymous)]

Your problem is actually pretty common to fanfic writers who've tried "translating" snappy one-lineresque dialog patterns which fit canon characters well, over to original characters where they don't work.

A classic example is Sarah Rees Brennan's first book, which tries too hard to be Whedonesquely derivative and fails.