Had a talk with a librarian that flipped how I think about dialogue

So last Tuesday I was at the public library downtown looking for something to read and this older librarian named Carol asked what I was writing. I told her I was stuck on a scene where two characters are arguing about something stupid. She just laughed and said 'real people don't finish each other's sentences or have perfect comebacks. They interrupt, they trail off, they say the wrong thing.' Then she handed me a book of transcribed court testimony from the 1980s. I spent an hour reading through it and yeah, people talk in fragments and tangents all the time. It hit me that I've been writing dialogue that's way too clean and polished. Has anyone else found a weird source like old transcripts or voicemail recordings that helped your writing sound more natural?

3 comments

3 Comments

rubyk2623d ago

Honestly that bit about court transcripts is genius. I've noticed the same thing just listening to people at coffee shops or on the bus - nobody talks in these neat little paragraphs, it's all "like" and "um" and people jumping in or just stopping mid-sentence. Real conversation is such a mess but that's what makes it feel real.

ruby_henderson3623d ago

My neighbor's dog kept barking at 3am last Tuesday, and I ended up just sitting on my porch with a cup of tea and this weird realization hit me. I was listening to two raccoons fighting over something in the trash can and they were making more coherent conversation than half the people I work with. Like there was this guy at the grocery store yesterday who spent like three full minutes trying to tell the cashier he wanted "the bread, you know the one, the kind that's like... bread shaped" and she just stared at him. Real talk is basically just vibes and hand gestures and hoping the other person gets what you mean.

william_harris23d ago

Fair enough @rubyk26 but messy conversation drives me crazy honestly.