This information is from a panel I listened to a year or so ago. I took notes while attending a wonderful SF/F symposium called Life The Universe and Everything. The panels are very educational. The panelists were: Micha3elbrent Collings, David Farland, Lynn Kurland, Angie Lofthouse, Tyler Whitsides.
– Use of ‘said’. It is invisible. Some authors use excessive huffed, hissed, clipped etc and it diverts attention from the story. One way to distinguish between characters is the manner of their speech patterns.
– Overuse of ‘said’ can also be obnoxious.
– There is a time and place to use alternatives to ‘said’. One good way is to use the beat instead of a tag. For example the original text might be “That’s very cool,” he said. He grabbed the box. Cut out ‘he said’ and just have he grabbed the box immediately after. That can even be done during a rewrite. Another way to add beats is through the actions of the character that serve the story in place of the tag.
– One way to test an excessive use of tags is to go through a text that has all the tags removed where there is only the dialog. The conversation can sound quite unnatural at that point.
– Though tags: Put thoughts in italics and can often satisfy ‘he thought’. Don’t have too many lines in the story in thoughts. Italics is hard to read. Maybe don’t have more than two. Some don’t use he thought in the story. If you’re really deep into the character’s point of view you don’t need tags.
– How to write accents: many will just say he spoke in a Scottish accent rather than illustrating that accent.
– Some will alter the manner of phrasing or word choices to show uniqueness in a character (Yoda).
– if a character has a specific set of skill sets or occupation their language will reflect that. For example a metal smith may use imagery that illustrates his occupation: heat, hit or force. Someone who is a weaver may use words, thoughts and point of views comparisons that illustrate weaving related imagery. Someone who is an aristocrat will use more refined language in their thoughts, perceptions and language than someone who is uncivilized. Someone from the medieval ages, they might use broken and simple phrases. The level of language is also illustrated by their level of education.
– Have people in stories talk like real life but cut out the excess “Ahhs” and stutters etc. also cut out uninteresting parts of the dialog.
– Speech patterns need to be influenced by the story. What is this guy about? One evil character may be very methodical in his villainy and so may speak very precisely. From his point of view he is right and so everything he feels must be done his way. His language depicts that. If someone is more coarse in their personality, their words and actions will depict that.
– Listen to children and note how they talk and pay attention to how they say something. The maturity level of a child will influence how they talk. For example a young child might use shaped like a ball but not use the word orb. Another pattern of language is that some people repeat themselves.
– Different types of people will use different types of metaphors in their language.
– Some authors will free write a story until they ‘discover’ the voice of the character and then go back and rewrite the story with that discovery.
– Read your story out loud and it can help catch dialog that doesn’t work. It will sound funny. It can help discover run on sentences and helps later to present a writer trying to read their writing in front of an audience because they lose their breath in reading something. Reading out loud can help to discover what is important in the story. Than get rid of the excess text.
– How to make characters sound different. Assign certain words to different characters. One person might favor calling someone else ‘chump’ another might often react with “Oh man!”, “geesh” or “You’re nuts!”
– As a writer you need to be a word smith. The larger your vocabulary the more you can talk. Vocabulary limits or helps make characters distinct.
– Character’s conversations makes that person unique. Each person has a separate object and perspective and their view of the world and thus influences their speech patterns.
– Go through your work and cut out words that don’t move the story forward.
– Techniques to present an alien or monster: Speech pattern or a warped point of view. There are many examples where the language of a British aristocrat has been used. Others use high speech patterns. Give a sense of history or halting like Lord of the Ring’s Gollum.
– Conflict and Drama: People read stories about people with different goals and about people who have the same goals as the reader but they use a different ways to achieve that goal.
