Dialogue is, of course, distinct from conversation. While people have conversations, characters have dialogues – and, ideally, every piece of dialogue in a story is a means to a narrative end. In real life, conversations can be purely pragmatic, or solipsistic; sometimes they're nothing more than an antidote to silence, sounds to fill the quiet margins of our social lives.True story, sirs. True story.
3.19.2010
Say what?
Dialogue and conversation are very, very (oh so very) different. Evan Maloney says:
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Back in my dark past I was a newspaper columnist for local newspapers. The most common comment about my written work was the reader felt like I was in the room talking to him/her. This was, of course, because I never could write a grammatically correct sentence. You would think writing like you talk would help one writing dialogue for TV characters. Nope. While I had my "voice" I had problems writing in the "voice" of the series' characters.
ReplyDeleteTodays cozy mysteries are written in first person conversation. Today's conversation has shorten dialogue. Books can still get away with page long dialogue from one character but I see less and less of it. I wonder how twitter will change the length of dialogues.