Cookout Restaurant Menu

The dialogue is an essential component of a story. Through dialogue, we learn about the personalities of the characters, we see characters react to events, and we understand their relationships with each other. Dialogue allows the reader to visualize the scenes. Authors use dialogue to follow the adage "show do not tell" what is happening.

When we help authors edit manuscripts we often have to solve three common problems with the dialogue:

1. confusion
2. stasis, and
3. displacement.

We use these terms to categorize the three strategies that we use to improve the dialogue. To help understand these problems common dialogue, watch a poor example of dialogue, study how it illustrates these problems and then find solutions.

John and Tom went into the restaurant and sat.
"Do you know what you want?"
"Not really. I'm hungry enough to eat a horse."
"You're lucky. The horse meat is in the menu."
"You're kidding, right?"
"No. Look at the last page under "chef's specials. "
"Holy Cow! You are right. This is serious. "
"Not really. It is quite good, actually."
"There is no way that I w
Ould eat horse meat. "
"You already have." "Huh?"
"Remember these burgers we ate, when I had a barbecue last month?"
"Please do not tell me that it was horse meat."
"Ok, I do not want. But you have enjoyed."
"I think I'll be sick."
"Oh, do not be a snob. I thought you liked Chinese food."
"Yes, but what I have to do with anything?"
"Well, the Chinese eat more than one million each year and a half horses."
"Maybe that Mexican food would be better."
"Same problem. They eat six hundred thousand each year."
"That's it. I'm going home for Italian food. No, do not tell me! "

Obviously, this is a back and forth exchange between two characters, John and Tom. They each speak in turn. In this example, the reader learns about each character and prejudices of the nature of their relationship. In this regard, the dialogue is very good. However, it suffers from confusion, stasis and movement.

1. Problems confusion in the dialogue

Problem: Who speaks? In the sample, the character who loves horse meat and that it is increased to? You do not know because the author does not tell you. In many dialogues in which one sees this problem, the author indicates that speaks first, or at least give the reader an idea. Following this first indication, however, the author leaves the reader understand the speaker, which leaves the reader perplexed.

In this example, it could indicate that the first speaker is John.

"Do you know what you want?" Called John.

Then, because it's a back and forth exchange, we would know who said what. After a number of exchanges, although the player may lose and have to study carefully the dialogue, naming the character of each statement is John, Tom, Jean, is Tom, etc. Basically, the reader does the work of the writer should have done.

When you confuse your reader this way, you drive too hard work to understand the dialogue. You force the reader to pay attention to writing, which means that the reader is not engaged in the story. Fortunately, this problem has a simple solution.

Solution: Label the speakers. Tell the reader who speaks. You do not need to label each line, each a few lines is sufficient for the reader to keep track. In addition, if you want the reader to focus primarily on one character, only the label speech this character. Generally, we recommend labeling of both, or all speakers. Following this adv.