Crime Writing Tips: Writing Dialogue (Part One)
This month Leigh Russell, our writing expert, and coordinator of the CWA Manuscript Assessment Service, focuses on writing dialogue:
Should you include direct speech in a novel? Why not? Dialogue gives your readers a sense of immediacy. As author, you want to avoid ‘telling’ your readers what is happening. You want to lift them up, metaphorically speaking, and put them down right in the story. Your readers are willing to be transported into another world, via the medium of fiction. It’s your job as an author to work that magic. Dialogue is one means of doing this.
Here’s a quick example to illustrate the point.
Opening A
Two boys stood in the park, arguing vociferously over a bicycle. Alex towered over Tom, who was short but ferocious.
Opening B
‘Take your filthy hands off my bike.’
Tom glared up at him. ‘It’s mine!’
‘No, it’s not!’ Alex yelled.
That’s a very short demonstration. Both openings offer roughly the same information. In the first, the reader is outside the scene. Assuming it’s effectively written, in the second the reader is there in the park with the two boys, watching, and listening to the argument happening in front of him.
‘That’s all very well,’ I hear you say, ‘but how do you write effective dialogue?’
All the advice about writing fiction for crime readers applies to dialogue as well: serve the story, keep up the pace, be believable.
But there’s more to it than that.
Your characters need to develop their own voices. By that I don’t mean you should attempt to create a unique and distinctive style of speaking for each character. That would be tricky and time consuming, and it would appear forced and artificial. Not only would it be hard work for you, it would probably be very confusing for the reader. Your writing has to flow, and sound natural. Yet characters’ speech must conform to their class and background. A woman who has lived in Surrey all her life wouldn’t speak with a broad Welsh accent, to give a really exaggerated example.
Treat spelling with caution, including just enough detail to establish your character’s accent. If I tried to write a sentence as it sounds in a cockney accent, it might appear something like this.
‘Wiw yer jus’ pu’ i’ in me ‘a’, sir?’ It looks daft, and is virtually unreadable. If I wrote the same sentence as ‘Will you just put it in my hat, sir’, the reader has no sense of the speaker. Make your words intelligible, at the same time giving your reader a clear impression of the speaker. ‘Will yer just put it in me ‘at, sir.’
The same general rule applies to dialect, which can add depth, local colour and variety to your writing. As with accent, guard against overdoing it. Readers have to understand what you have written. Just drop in an occasional word, enough to make it clear that your character comes from a particular area. A few well-known terms can make the point. ‘Och aye’ gives your reader a clear signal that this character is Scottish, for example. Of course you may not want to use quite so common a phrase, but it illustrates the point. Think of BBC productions of Poirot where the detective speaks almost flawless English yet still uses the most common French words like, ‘mais oui.’ Watch out for other examples. You might be surprised how frequently you come across them.
