Another good way to develop your dialogue skills is to write in 1st person. 1st person is dialogue. Every sentence you write is conversational and must remain true to the voice of the character. When I write in 3rd person, I feel a distance between myself and the reader. Right now, I’m in 1st person, and the words flow as if you and I were sitting down, having a cup of coffee together and chatting about our writing secrets. It’s more intimate, and it’s more realistic.
I journal about a hundred thousand words a year, and all of it, as you would imagine, is in first person. Granted, it’s in my voice, rather than a character’s, but it is still a good exercise for writing dialogue. When I look back through these entries, I’ll hear whatever mood I was in at the time very clearly conveyed. I was hopeful… in love… young(er)… agitated… lonely…
As writers, we’re told to write what we know. So employ some method acting in your dialogue. When a character is drunk, or heartbroken, or violent, or passionate… Meditate into your own psyche and bring that mood to the surface. Then, mix that meditation with the character’s background that you wrote in the previous entry and I promise you that what you come up with will be surprisingly rich.
If you relate strongly to your characters, your audience will, too.
What’s the exercise here? First of all, journal every day. Personally, I write my dreams down when I first wake up and go from there. Other people I know write at the end of the day. Whatever works for you is fine, but keep a journal, and keep a routine.
Next, rewrite the character’s background that you finished writing in the last entry, but this time use 1st person. Having a 3rd person POV and a 1st person POV of the same thing will give your character more dimension. If you’re a super workaholic, write yet another character bio from the POV of another character in the book.
Dialogue = characterization.
In my next entry, we’ll look at ways to establish good characters.
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