How do you craft 'natural' dialogue?

[DokiDokiTsuna]

This is basically the missing #6 to my 'top five amatueur comic/novel issues' topic (here, if you're interested). I just realized that 'unnatural dialogue' is also a common criticism of mine, so it's probably worth discussing.

Although I'm not really sure how to fix it, myself. ^^; Unnatural dialogue has never been an issue of mine, not even when I was a kid-- my plot structures may have been rotten, but my character dialogue has always given me goosebumps. If anything, my issue with dialogue is getting too-long winded and ruining the flow of the story by turning each conversational scene into a dramatic short film. ⚆u⚆; But I digress...

If I had to give any advice, I guess I'd say: just copy people. Because that's basically what I did when I was younger: I'd watch some anime or a cool cartoon, think "I want my characters to talk like that!" and just straight-up copy them. I wouldn't recreate their lines word-for-word or anything (most of the time...) but I'd steal their little quips and comebacks, mimic their word choice, absorb their vocabulary, and pay close attention to their line delivery to look for context clues (people talk differently when they're emotional vs. when they're calm, and when the talents of a good writer and a good voice actor come together, this is very obvious).

It's also probably worth mentioning that I've been a fancomic artist since...forever, so in my eternal quest to make characters say what I want in their "canonical" voices, I have literal years of practice doing ^this. And I think it's a large part of what makes writing original characters so easy and enjoyable for me; it's like doing impressions and improv exercises when you're studying to be an actor-- you spend enough time trying to be a convincing version of someone else, and over time you'll learn how to become a more convincing version of yourself. Eventually everything just 'sinks in'.

And y'know, if dialogue is one of your weak spots, I think maybe trying a little fanfic could be a good way to practice and improve. ^^ If you don't want to write full stories, just draft some conversations, or make some memes (like the kind where you take a text convo and replace the people with fitting characters). Just make the effort to understand what a 'character voice' is, by playing around with the concept.

ANYWAY: my challenge to anyone else who wants to reply is to go beyond "read it out loud" and really explain the mechanics of natural-sounding dialogue. I mean, if someone does read their work aloud and finds that all their characters sound like AI chatbots, where do they go from there? How do they improve their characters' speech, and give them believable and unique voices?

[morganicfoods]

1. Listen to how people talk. Study it. Go to a public place and eavesdrop on people (try not to be creepy about it lol). Think about why each person is saying what, what kind of relationship they might have, what kind of people they are. After a while, your brain will be able to spot when your dialogue might sound unnatural.

2. Know your characters inside out. I'm of the belief that people are mainly products of their environment. Everything, little and big, can effect the way your character acts. Pieces of their backstory culminate together into who they are. They are many reasons why someone might be, say, rebellious. A common reason is strict parents, which may give your character different traits than someone who rebellious because they crave attention.
   Often times, taking a trait you see in someone else or yourself, and applying that to your character helps. My characters often end up patchworks of people I know. One character might have my dad's sense of humour, another might have his bluntness, and another might have his chill attitude. Referencing people you know for certain traits can make it easier to write them.

3. Take improv classes! Join a TRPG group! Learn how to easily shift into a different personality and work off of new ideas. This'll make writing dialogue itself come quickly and easily, and you'll be able to practice it more.

Hope this helps!

[HGohwell]

I'm a lot like you in this in that I generally get told my dialogue is very strong, although I'm constantly stumbling when trying to communicate myself out loud, and I've had a decent background in fancontent, and I absolutely agree that it can be great practice for trying to pick out what a character's voice is. And also how to keep a character in character. Especailly with AUs, there's something really special about creating a world where everything is different, so the characters are different, but still recognisably themselves.

I think reading out load is the best way to pick out if something sounds wrong, but it's not always going to tell you how to fix it. The same way a cake tasting disgusting doesn't tell you how to do it wrong. And obviously, this takes practice. I still look back at my old work and go omg what is that dialogue what was I thinking?

So I few things I can think of off the top of my head:

• Definitely with you on the just steal from real life. I keep notes, discreetly, of cool things I've heard people say or read, for future reference and ideas. Like if I hear a funny joke or one liner or story about someone's life. And yeah, not to generally copy word for word, but to spark ideas.
• Get to know you're character practice. One interesting thing I did as part of a writing group was to write "interviews" with your character. Ask the character basic questions and have them reply as if an interview and let them ramble. Or describe the same objective/view/whatever, but as if different characters, as if they're talking. Some characters will have different voices in my the same way pov narration does. Certain people have certain words they fall back on. I use "the point is" constantly, like four times in one single explanation. I can start consecutive sentences with it and still not be done. This also goes with their character, do they ramble or do they just say it in two words.
• I think sometimes, people try too hard. Either trying to hard to sound old fashioned or historical or smart or young. Unless you're deliberately writing a character who's trying to be pretentious or something, most people don't sound like a thesaurus constantly. In the same way "said is dead" is taught in school and doesn't apply to most actual novels, most people don't replace every word they can with a bigger, longer, rarer one just because they know it.
• Conversations don't always flow smoothly. Natural conversations often meander, take detours and then come back. Sometimes, you can have several conversations at once. This can be very difficult to manage, but the point is more that question and answer type conversations sound hideously stilted. Sometimes, much like wikiwalking, conversations will get distracted and derailed (although in fiction, you will tend to derail into something else plot important).

I also think Hello Future Me does a pretty good video on it. It's prose focused but it's got sections on character voices and realism too. (And yes, that thumbnail is book accurate apparently.)

[BLTX]

One thing I started doing recently is talking out loud. To me, dialogue sounds different in your head then it does when you're actually speaking.

[Mallory]

I go a step beyond “read it out loud” and like… commit to acting it out. If I’m writing a snarky, smarmy dude, I manspread in my chair and slouch and deliver the line. I can usually catch a few things - inappropriate word choice, or being too long-winded (slouching and being long-winded is hard, because you compress your diaphragm when you slouch and therefore have less air to start the delivery!). Get into it, become one of those one-wo/man theatrical acts.

There’s also a difference to how people actually speak and how we write pleasing dialogue. Fictional characters tend to have distinct cadences to their dialogue that reflects their character. Like someone who is shy/quiet might speak in shorter, more abrupt sentences relative to the chatterbox. IRL those people will speak however long a sentence they need for what they’re trying to say, but we as audiences are conditioned to expect fictional dialogue to be like a wardrobe. This is where listening to people comes in handy - you can listen for distinct fragments in someone’s speech that might remind you of a particular character and mimic it. Like, I have a much easier time writing male dialogue because I listen to and talk to men all day, so I can hear the distinct voices and cadences in my head. When I worked with kids, I used to write pretty good kids, but I’m forgetting stuff and it’s becoming more challenging.

[AmysGames]

1. Pay attention to the character you're writing. e.g. a smart character is likely to use more complicated vocabulary, a timid character will probably stutter and mumble a lot, someone who grew up in a specific area will probably pick up on the dialect, stuff like that.

2. Avoid unnecessary details. People don't tend to bring up things in conversation that can be assumed from context, and it's really obvious when a character is narrating something for the sake of the audience.

3. That said, "natural" dialogue in fiction doesn't usually reflect natural dialogue IRL! People IRL tend to stutter, mix up words, and all sorts of stuff that would be really grating to read in a story. And anyone who speaks Japanese can tell you that anime characters don't sound at all like real people. So it can be okay to push things a bit for the sake of the character, especially if you're going for a more comedic tone.

4. Pay attention to how characters speak in your favorite media. Listening to conversations IRL is helpful, yes, but as I said above, sometimes you have to deviate a bit from reality for the sake of the character. Seeing how other authors handle this can help you figure out the best way to handle it, yourself. (And yes, writing fanfic can be a good way to practice this!)

Dialogue can be very situational, so it's hard to give generalized advice, lol. Like anything else, though, it's something you can get better at with practice!

[cherrystark]

To add to what others have said - there is more to dialogue than just cadence or syntax. People's backgrounds effective how they talk. I grew up in a western US town. For the most part, we all talked the same. But then you had people who were born and raised in the area but were heavy into the cowboy scene and sounded like they belong in the deep South. Families/found families will also adopt their own set of vernacular for everyday conversation. A person also might change their speech patterns when going through a major life change. From an acting POV, your voice changes how you behave. The disconnect a lot of people have with dialogue is that it doesn't fit the situation/energy. It's like your parents using modern slang. It can get weird.

Things to Consider When Writing Dialogue:

• How old are they?

• Where are they from?

• How educated are they?

• What is their family life like? Does their family group use nicknames or slang for one another?

• What hobbies do they have? ie. Are they involved in any subcultures that will change their vocabulary?

• Does their career require a certain set of vocabularies/behaviors?

The list might sound like a lot and there are more things to consider, but these are a huge part of character building.

[NickRowler]

Something I like to do is to get a line of dialogue and see if I can write it again but different (and hopefully better).

“You’re late!”
Is a line someone might write a teacher saying to a student. But growing up, I remember teachers often pointing out what time it was or that the late student was distracting the class or sometimes humiliating the student.
So why not instead say…
“Hey! My class starts at 9! What time is it now?”

Also, maybe an unpopular opinion, I do enjoy writing dialogue for people with broken English or they speak unnaturally. I have a character who is selectively mute so he only speaks is very short sentences or not at all.

[BoomerZ]

Here is a couple things to make dialogue in a story.
1: Story dialogue is different than real dialogue. Real dialogue is chaotic and lots of stutters (as pointed out by others). You don't want this type as it doesn't read well. If you really listen to two people talking, there is a lot of starts and stops as they try to get their point across. That is not story dialogue. Story dialogue has a purpose, to tell a story. Not to fill up time.
2: You should write the dialogue to end with a point. People are not reading your story to hear 2 people talk about the weather. It has to progress something. The plot, show a personality of a person, set up a future plot point, there should be no wasted scenes of people just conversing.
3. Do not write slang unless you know the audience will get it and you know how it's used. This always comes off bad when the 50 year old dude tries to write hip dialogue for a bunch of teenage girls or the like. And if your audience is not in tune with the latest slang, they will lose your point. Tread carefully here.
4: Talk in circles with your dialogue. This is a technique of closing a dialogue exchange with something pointed out at the beginning. This closes the conversation. This tells the reader the point of the dialogue is over. Then it opens them up to the next scene. opening dialogue "Hey, I haven't seen you in ages. I tried to get you to go to diner couple months ago. Never heard back from you." ending dialogue "I'll call you for that dinner date."
5: Don't keep calling characters by name.
"Hi, Dave, how you been"
"good, Jake. I have been looking forward to this"
"What do you mean Dave?"
"Well, Jake, it's been a while since we have gotten together."
Dave and Jake know who they are talking to, they don't need to point it out to the reader. This is a normal mistake for new writers. Unless the person is trying to get the attention of a person they don't have the attention of, people don't call each others names out.
6: Use contractions. can't, won't, shouldn't, etc. Unless a person is putting a point to make that word stand out such as "I can not believe you did this.", most people talk in contractions.
7: sarcasm only works if the reader knows its sarcasm. Without pointing this out with visual (webcomic) or dialogue description ("ok" he said sarcastically.) the reader will read it as true.

[GodbreakerComic]

Never start a sentence with "Dammit!" because nobody talks like that. Just avoid Dialogue clichés in general.

"We've got company!"
(someone says something smart) "Uh, in english please?"
"There's no time to explain!" (Yes there is.)

Even pointing out that its a cliché isnt funny, you're just pointing out your own bad writing.

[GodbreakerComic]

I go a step beyond “read it out loud” and like… commit to acting it out. If I’m writing a snarky, smarmy dude, I manspread in my chair and slouch and deliver the line. I can usually catch a few things - inappropriate word choice, or being too long-winded (slouching and being long-winded is hard, because you compress your diaphragm when you slouch and therefore have less air to start the delivery!). Get into it, become one of those one-wo/man theatrical acts.

I do this, too! It really does help, especially with body language.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

When your casts are a bunch of weirdos who can't communicate normally, you don't have to worry about anything sounding unnatural.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

"Dammit, Jim, I'm just a simple country doctor!"

[morganicfoods]

you forgot "He's right behind me, isn't he?"

[powerplantanimations]

YOU HAVE TO HAVE A FIRM GRASP ON REALITY.

Your universe has a voice. Your universe is a living character. It's going to add flavor to how your characters speak. Once you have this mentality, you should have consistency.

Transitions are important. Ghostbusters (the original) is the king of that. Everything has to floooooooow.

@GodbreakerComic Gonna have to disagree there since the people I've met people who have spoken in dialogue cliches unironically. When doing these cliches I do recommend people to like... show how people have used it in real life? I've heard someone say "We've got company!" in a stressful situation. I've heard mean teachers say "english please" to students and yes... I've heard "no time to explain!" MORE TIMES than I can count. I feel like you can do this, but only do it if you heard it from experience or if you REALLY have a good grasp (or if you're doing something with a heightened sense of reality).

I feel like a lot of writing boils down to "this is how it's like in my environment and the people I've met". What sounds unrealistic to one person may sound realistic to another.

[darthmongoose]

I don't write "natural dialogue" . In my opinion, "natural dialogue" is something amateur writers get way too obsessed with, like "cliches" and "tropes" and "mary sues".

I write dialogue that:

1. Gets across the meaning as efficiently I can with limited space.
2. Puts a spin on it that gets across as much personality as possible, and no, it doesn't matter if everyone talks like a cartoon, this is a freakin' cartoon.
3. Gives the audience clues about the characters' emotional states that create tension.

Now if the question is how to write entertaining dialogue or compelling dialogue, the key things are points two and three. If you only nail point one, you'll get functional dialogue, where it does the job of getting across the meaning, but it won't do anything else. If you add point two, you'll get dialogue where each character has a distinctive way of speaking or a different "voice". This makes a subtle difference, and people are more likely to notice when it's absent and you feel a nagging "wrongness" as the protagonist's grandma speaks in exactly the same neutral, casual modern English as the protagonist. Having different voices makes the cast feel much more distinct from each other. The difference can be subtle or cartoony; personally I like a mixture, with some people who have quite a "normal" way of speaking, while others are big cartoon characters.
Then you add the third point, and then you get characters being influenced by their emotional state. Obviously the drawings help a lot with this, but the phrasing of the dialogue can too. Gushing praise, babbling, coldness, passive-aggression, that sort of thing adds a lot.

There is a fourth level that can be added too for absolute Galaxy-Brain-Level dialogue, and that's where you successfully communicate, through the art and wording combined, that the character is trying to project that they feel a different way from how they actually do. This is where cliches can be a surprisingly effective tool you shouldn't have thrown away! Because when a person uses a cliche, it comes across as a performance or as something fake, and if you can get the writing just right and the drawing just right... you can get across that the person is acting to cover their true feelings, and create some really good drama or dramatic irony.

The trick with dialogue, much like really good panel composition, is to stop and think about how much information you can get across in this moment. A functional panel composition gets across that Jim is in the room and he is talking; a great one gets across that Jim is in the room and he is isolated from the person he's talking to. A functional bit of dialogue communicates that Jim is a young American man with a relaxed way of talking, asking Robin out for coffee; a great one gets across that he wants to ask Robin out for coffee and he's trying to be smooth, but he's obviously terrified.

[cherrystark]

I don't write "natural dialogue" . In my opinion, "natural dialogue" is something amateur writers get way too obsessed with, like "cliches" and "tropes" and "mary sues".

For myself, I amended it to be "natural for them". I've read characters who speak in modern slang and "technically" its normal speech, but it's not at all appealing and the MC is usually flat. But if the character speaks normally for a 30 something Oxford scholar - they wouldn't use the slang of a teenager.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

In my opinion, "natural dialogue" is something amateur writers get way too obsessed with, like "cliches" and "tropes" and "mary sues".

I feel like it might actually be coming across ^that way, so I just wanted to address this.

Personally, when I say "natural dialogue", I mean "fitting for the world and the setting"; dialogue that's immersive, or at least appropriate, rather than distracting. Dialogue is one of the main avenues through which the reader is going to experience your world (especially in comics) so it really needs to feel like it belongs in that world.

And y'know sometimes, this does include clichés. ^^ It includes stale jokes and predictable monologues and silly things that no real person would ever say. Like I said, It just depends on the world and the setting.

Sometimes you're making an edgy comedic story and someone does say "Dammit! We've got company!" and it feels fun and fitting for the character's personality and the tone of the scene. And/or, it just gets the point across well enough, even if it feels a little sillier than what you usually write.
Other times, you're making a relatively somber, realistic story, and having a character say a line like that immediately breaks the reader's immersion and makes them dislike that character, see them as a joke, or worse: question the author's judgment. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ As usual, context is king.

So yeah, like I always say, pretty much any writing decision CAN work as long as you make it work. 'Natural' dialogue isn't always 'normal' or 'realistic' dialogue, it's just dialogue that fits seamlessly into what you happen to be doing.

P.S. I think it's also worth noting that, most of the time when I criticize a story for having 'unnatural dialogue', it's not even about stylistic word choice or phrasing/vernacular. It's about BASIC basic stuff, like writing something like:
"My name is John Sidecharacter," said the man. "I think you look lost. I know how to get to the place where you're going, and I have upgraded weapons you can keep forever, if you want. Here, take one and follow me. Also, even though we've just met, I think I know what your biggest problem is..." --> proceeds to psychoanalyze someone they don't even know, and conveniently 'guess' key aspects of their character and backstory

...Like, ^this kind of thing isn't so much 'dialogue' as it is 'a woefully inexperienced writer using a character as a vehicle for plot progression and exposition'. And that's usually what I'm calling out when I say dialogue is 'unnatural'. Simply choosing to have a character use a slightly annoying cliché is like, 10 EXP levels above this, and it's honestly something I'm kinda glad to come across in amateur works, because it shows that "at least this person knows how to write A Personality, even if it's not necessarily a unique one". Basically, the bar is much lower than I may have made it seem. ^^;

[darthmongoose]

Yeah, that's a fair clarification. You meant "natural" as in the opposite of "wooden", not "natural" like "it sounds like ordinary real people talking."

One of tricky things for people whose introduction to comics was manga tends to be writing dialogue that reads like it was translated from Japanese. It's just this funny thing, where manga has a very specific sort of flow to the dialogue, due to having been translated, and there's always this decision to make on how much to treat that as a stylistic feature of manga that a manga-style comic feels somehow weird without, and how much to decide to keep only the manga visual aesthetic, but in all other respects to write the comic like you're writing an English Language thing.

Some people might say, "well, obviously, you should write in just plain English! Don't be a weeb!", but it's then worth considering that comics of other styles do also come with certain stylistic conventions to the dialogue that feel natural if you read a lot of them, and will even feel "missing" if they're absent, but come across silly and unnatural if you're not into that type of comics.

When I was in my early twenties, doing one of my first bits of paid comics work for a UK hardware store, on a piece of work designed to help sell the shareholders on a new digital ordering system, I was given this very straightforward script that simply described what the man in the story was doing in each panel. He went to the website, he ordered his stuff, he got his notification, and then he went and picked it up. I drew the panels and lettered it all, got paid, all good.
...But then later, the client came back to show me the version he'd "improved" with "better" writing that "felt more like a proper comic", and this is where this phenomenon struck me. The man in question was about the age of my parents, maybe just a little younger. So what was his idea of what "comic dialogue" should sound like.

"By jove! This is a spot of bother! It seems the queues at the local [hardware shop] are endless!"
"But this doesn't bother our man!"
"He whips out his trusty mobile phone..."
"And sorts it right out in a jiffy!"

...Because this man grew up reading old British "for boys" comics in the 1960s and 70s, and that's what the narration was like. To him, a comic with a perfectly instructional, neutral, modern writing style didn't feel like a comic.

And the same phenomenon affects all of us, reading and making comics. Korean webtoons also have a very distinctive writing style, Canadian and American indie comics definitely have one (if you read Scott Pilgrim, Lumberjanes and The Girl From The Sea, you'll notice it), and you can often spot a Homestuck just by how they write. It means we all kind of have to decide, "okay... how comicky do I want to be? Or do I want to be more naturalistic? Or do I want to draw in the style of this sort of comic, but write in the style of this sort of comic?

In a way, the style of the writing is just as much of a choice as the style of the drawing!