/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19979611]

how do you write dialogue without sounding like an autistic homosexual? dialogue is apart of literature that i really like, and it can be amazing when done right, but i don't know how to do it. i was born in 1999, so i can't just listen to my peers, because they all sound retarded except for the one i have a crush on. she's different

[Anonymous No.19979693]

>>19979611
It's tricky isn't it, because if you write in a somewhat literary way and try to faithfully recreate the way people speak it sounds really jarring due to the contrast. Idk maybe read some postmodernists, see how they get around that problem.

[Anonymous No.19979739]

>>19979611
I have no advice, but I would like to express extreme sympathy.
My writing style has been referred to as 'flowery' (honestly fair) and if I write dialogue for modern people speaking that way it sounds ridiculous, but if I change the style it's jarring and comes off as if I'm trying to make characters sound stupid by comparison.
I've unironically been trying to write a novel with no dialogue but it's difficult.
It could be worth experimenting with setting to place your subjects closer to your dialect, but that might become very limiting and end up placing your story in a setting you don't care for.

[Anonymous No.19979916]

>>19979611
>try writing
>the voices in my head yell at me

[Anonymous No.19979952]

>>19979611
Dialogue is a narrative.tool which takes the form of speech. What is the reason someone is speaking, what do they intend to achieve? Are they truthful, decieving themselves or others? What does it say about their character, are they cultured, smart but uneducated etc. How will it get you to the next scene having conveyed something of value about the current scene? At least that way you can start thinking about psychology and character beyond what you suppose sounds realistic (which is especially hard to achieve in text in a non-annoying way as real speech often involves a lot of halting, overlapping and disorganization, even if the people are intelligent adults.)

[Anonymous No.19979959]

>>19979611
>she's different

[Anonymous No.19979962]

It's actually quite simple.
You write like a total retard on purpose, make yourself laugh, then use that as your starting point and work backwards.

[Anonymous No.19980006]

>>19979611
Read some William Gaddis novels. I really like the way he writes dialogue. It's hard to post a passage as an example since a lot of the appeal comes from within the context of the novel. (Like literally everything Otto says is something that he had heard from somewhere else, for example)

[Anonymous No.19980028]

>>19980006
What book is this from?

[Anonymous No.19980047]

>>19980028
That passage is from The Recognitions. Gaddis also has another novel called J R which is written entirely in unattributed dialogue with almost little to no narration. I think it's incredible how he can write entire conversations based off of people completely misunderstanding each other.

[Anonymous No.19980051]

>>19980047
Oh i've been wanting to read J R for a while now, was just asking in case it was a shirter work since i'm readin The Tunnel rn and don't have another big book in me for at least a week after I finish that.

[Anonymous No.19980656]

>>19979611

OP, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay or autistic (there is)

[Anonymous No.19981029]

Are autistic people even capable of writing dialogue?

[Anonymous No.19981083]

>>19979611
Body language is a huge portion of communication. If you can't envision how the words are impacting the character's body language that is a good place to start. You don't want to record every minutia, but it is the subtle descriptions of body language that both elevate and nicely break the flow of dialogue.

[Anonymous No.19981104]

>>19979611
> she's different

[Anonymous No.19982469]

>>19979611
>how do you write dialogue without sounding like an autistic homosexual?
>i was born in 1999, so i can't just listen to my peers
DAMNKIDS.txt
Podcasts, muggah. Here's one about school teachers, established internet creators, and a random ska band from London

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihACXN0Pe0U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cObxgQ2HE1I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qir9PPhXy8
Personally I find the teachers fascinating. The subject matter is a bit bland but they very clearly don't talk like internet people. It's neat.

Also, stories are fundamentally about conveying emotions.
...M-maybe. Truthfully, I did most of my thinking on this subject while reading weird internet porn and Warhammer novels. But stories people will actually read for fun are fundamentally about emotions. This is why people don't seem to get bored the stereotypical noir detective despite that archetype being over a hundred years old at this point, he's cheesy enough that every new author has fun playing around with him. Because the character is fun, he sticks around.

You can actually get surprisingly good dynamics out of rather simple character motivations once you're aware of this.

[Anonymous No.19982478]

>>19982469
Oh and one more thing: read Doe of Deadwood
https://doeofdeadwood.thecomicseries.com/comics/first/

Easily the best webcomic I have ever found. The dialogue is very floral but it never hits a point where it becomes overbearing. I'm not sure how they do that.

[Anonymous No.19982586]

>>19979611
Read it out aloud. How does it sound? If it's difficult to say, then it's probably wrong.
I come from a screenwriting background but the common wisdom is that bad dialogue is always a result of the writer not having a clear idea of the motivations of the characters in a scene. In other words, if you don't know why the character needs to say something in this exact moment and how they would express it - don't.
Actors report that the easiest scenes to remember are the ones that emotionally flow.
>>19981083
This is also good advice. Imagine you're watching people from behind a window, you can't hear the dialogue at first. This helps you get the broad-strokes of the 'motivation' because you can read their gestures, their body language. Then it's simply a matter of imagining what are compelled to express during those moments you already see them opening their mouth.

[Anonymous No.19982602]

>>19979611
I would suggest watching television. Writers working on the medium do have a fantastic grasp on the effectiveness of dialogue, perhaps more so than their literary peers. Just use your own personal experiences as a way to sniff out the tacky bullshit and you'll find lots to learn.
You could also just write everyone to be terribly autistic and dialogue to only act as an extension to prose. That's what every writer throughout the ages has done.

[Anonymous No.19982609]

>>19979611
>i was born in 1999
:)
>so i can't just listen to my peers, because they all sound retarded
HEY! >:(

[Anonymous No.19982637]

>>19979962
Unironically this, but it also helps to talk to people more and pay attention to the weird things people do and say. If you notice the weird shit that will help your dialogue to sound more realistic and be more entertaining

[Anonymous No.19983000]

>>19982637
Not OP but I feel that the only character I could write well would be a self-insert, That being a spiteful little rat person who just keeps living and does the minimum, and I'm pretty sure someone already did that and did it better.

[Anonymous No.19983003]

>>19983000
Also, a rat person keeps polite in public but curses everyone in his surroundings as monkeys while gorging down on his food.

[Anonymous No.19984267]

>>19981083
The latest Sally Rooney is like this I hear lol

[Anonymous No.19985313]

>>19982609
it's true, you know

[Anonymous No.19985382]

>>19979611
When I write dialogue I do it in a clearly stylized way. It's better for it to be openly stylized than passing the message that you tried to be "realistic" but are too autistic to understand how people actually talk.

[Anonymous No.19985397]

Fuck reading, to understand dialogue better you need to listen to/watch conversations while taking notes. And participate in them of course, while also trying to be conscious of tone and facial expressions.

You're free to stylize your shit all you want, but understanding consciously how conversations work in real life is a great help.

[Anonymous No.19985429]

>>19979611
>>19982609
>zoomers
Just sit in a bar or cafe where older people go. Listen to how they talk and repeat it back in your mind until you get the rhythm.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.19985472]

The trick I’ve learned from analyzing lit I actually enjoy? Stop trying to recreate how real people talk. Dialogue is just an extension of prose just as much as a description of a forest is, the only thing you should worry about is if the dialogue is stylistically/aesthetically consistent and if it elaborates on the plot points and on the personalities you’ve modeled. Thinking of a beautiful natural scene and thinking up a beautiful soul with its various good traits and horrible defects is no different from the forest, light through the branches and horrid boars rushing through it. You will see autism in your writing both because of contrast with your literary writing and because it doesn’t fit the aesthetic and because the average persons mind and your own will not cohere, there is no average person and the common will not be yours if you’re drowning your mind in high art all day, and no one wants to read about common Boring people with nothing interesting about how they speak and how they relate and who they are, people want beauty and people want strangeness, disregard the worship of the mundane and common over the heroic, the moment, the titanic, the monstrous, strange, rich and decadent. The worship of the common is done by empty artfags with no value who do it because they’re either smarmy or have only gotten into lit because they’re sex starved or as a means of creating a small sense of meaning in their nihilistic daily life. It is not filtering you when you read them, it’s boring you, their neuroticism and masturbation on the page is boring you. So why would you possibly want to do what bores you?

[Anonymous No.19985730]

>>19979611
Learn grammar. Start analyzing dialog, conversation, people talking. Diagram sentences. Essentially things anyone who writes should know how to do and do regularly. But /lit/ is filled with dilettantes and people who think writing is just sitting down with a pen and paper.

[Anonymous No.19985813]

>>19979611
watch anime

[Anonymous No.19985827]

>>19979611
Just make them mute or deaf. I'll take my million dollars now.

[Anonymous No.19985910]

>>19985813
All anime has garbage dialogue even if the premise is interestingand that makes me angry.

[Anonymous No.19985971]

>>19985910
The overreactions irritates me, and has made it to where I've never finished, even one of the best in that medium, series.

[Anonymous No.19986092]

>>19985971
That must be a general east asian media thing right? They prefer theatrics, like you'd see on stage.

[Anonymous No.19986101]

>>19985910
i dropped lotgh over this shit and concluded chinktoons were not for me
nips cannot write especially not the sad saps working in anime and manga
soulless bugman land sadly ;(

[Anonymous No.19986108]

>>19986092
I don't know. But in the West, people use body language to convey loudness of their expression, and it tends to be fairly constant, in stage performances. What I've seen in anime, it was everything fine carrying along at a volume of 3, and then boom to 10.

[Anonymous No.19986121]

>>19986108
I think (without having researched it much) that's a result of theatrical heritage combined with them simply being fucking cheap with the animation. Complex poses and expressions require a lot of frames, and most anime is shovelware.

[Anonymous No.19986172]

>>19986121
Makes sense.

[Anonymous No.19986189]

>>19979611
Try not being an autistic homosexual before writing.

[Anonymous No.19987835]

>>19979611
Mimick Plato

[Anonymous No.19988021]

>>19979611
Just read Dostoevsky, or any Victorian lit. It will disabuse you of the belief that dialogue has to reflect in any way the natural speech patterns of human beings. Remember, fiction is meant to be realer than real. You're writing a hyperreality. Don't try to emulate the substance, emulate the essence.

[Anonymous No.19988032]

>>19979611
I am not from an Anglo-culture and i want to write a book in novel. My culture is heavily dumbed down and Americans are almost scholars to my people. What should i do to write dialogue that isn't just dripping with depressing social realism? Maybe just do historical fiction i suppose.. I can't even articulate myself..

[Anonymous No.19988036]

>>19979611
Write about autistic homosexual characters, problem solved.

[Anonymous No.19988384]

>>19985910
Honestly, it's unwatchable

[Anonymous No.19989029]

>>19979611
>she's different