Hey. I've only watched the first 90 seconds of the video but felt I had to comment. Even level 1, "the most basic stuff" is not trivial. I've kinda figured this out on my own, over a long time struggling with a good way to format dialogue, but having it detailed in this manner is very helpful. Don't underestimate the ignorance of the beginner.
I think it is also important to know which characters will use subtext. Some characters will be very direct in what they say, others will be subtle enough to talk around the edges of what they mean.
That's a creative idea! I can imagine how much humor and poignancy it can add when used right. If it's a related idea, I also believe one exception to your characters saying exactly how they feel is if they secretly feel something else.
How do you have so few views? Your commentary is not just insightful but also to the point. Very few wasted lines, good editing, clear voice. Nice channel bruv
I just finished Pride & Prejudice and Direct/Indirect/Summary was all over that book. Jane Austin gear-shifted through all three like she was a rally driver. Moving from direct to indirect based off of who was speaking and what information was conveyed. Summary was for catching up the reader or for reiterating what was already said or written.
In Canada, periods and commas are always inside quotation marks, and colons and semi-colons always outside. Question and exclamation marks are inside unless only the last part of the sentence is in quotes. Then they're in if they apply to the quoted part and out if they apply to the whole sentence. "Hello?" He said "Hello?" Did you just say "Hello"?
Came here to say the same thing. Only really might do that if I was using the quotation marks to bracket something and at the end of the sentence. The sign read, "keep off the grass". Or, Janet came home and said that they needed to, "talk about the baby".
Indirect and summary dialogue are telling, direct is showing. Everyone for the last 50 years has been saying, 'show, don't tell' and so, few know how to tell. Erle Stanley Gardner is good at using both to keep a fast pace in Perry Mason stories. The main aim of mixing telling and showing is to maintain pace, as far as I have gotten. There are probably more purposes. I would say witty dialogue is harder than subtext. You have to enjoy playing with words for the former. The latter is just a matter of editing with a purpose. Write a normal dialogue and when you go back to edit it, decide what not to say directly. You do have to give both speakers their own goals, esp. goals that clash. Thus, character A wants character B to do something but does not want to be responsible for forcing them to do it. Character B wants an excuse, like a direct order. Edit your dialogue with that in mind and subtext is easy. You simply need to find the right reason to have them avoid saying something AND make it realistic. The latter you do on the next editing pass. Mark each character's words in a different colour and read them as one text. That will help you to achieve consistency, which is oddly missing in the criteria.
Everyone has been saying also that you almost always use the active voice versus the passive. Okay. Indirect is probably (or literally) the dialogue counterpart to the passive voice and I suspect most writers avoid using it.
@@delstanley1349 That's why I mentioned Gardner. (I don't bother deep diving into style often.) It is actually common and used for pacing, but our brains, because indirect and summary are, by definition, not calling attention to themselves, just stored in our brains as background facts. If you want to see an example of that, look at the scene in Harry Potter when they enter the main hall for sorting into houses. You remember the film, but the book uses indirect dialogue there, not direct.
another thing Hills like white elephants does well is the characters talking across each other instead of directly answering each other. They have reasonable misunderstandings. When they do get direct, they get defensive like real people. it creates the atmosphere of tension, worry and conflict in the scene. this is a verbal fight scene with circling, back and forth, parries, dodging, lunges... great example of good dialogue.
Just working over some dialogue this morning. So many awkward phrases and dumb jokes that were funny in my head. But it's so much fun going over them now that I have a body of material to work with.
Very useful distinctions, thank you. BTW, I'm British and I've never put a comma or full stop on the outside of the quotation marks, nor have I ever seen it suggested or printed like that in books!
Oh my god. I was doing all that the moment I started writing dialogues. Not well enough, of course, but I have all those elements. Good to know I am on the right path.
Level 1 "I got this, why do I need to know this?" Bro I'm always gaslighting myself into being unable to tell how punctuation is supposed to work. It's harder than you think.
So, sorry I know I've commented a lot here BUT this is literally a MASTER CLASS in dialogue although it doesn't get into the nitty gritty of HOW to actually accomplish it. I am going to go through my entire manuscript and analyze all of my dialogue to look for area where I might be able to use subtext or indirect dialogue because it really does change things up. It changes the pace that the reader is expecting. It varies the rhythm, and that's what you want!
As someone who is guilty of overusing direct dialogue, this video has given me much to think about. I need to use more summary dialogue as too much dialogue can kill pacing. Amazing video, it’s taught me to rethink how I write.
Excellent material, well organized, well presented, well filmed. To make this even more betterer some visual variety would go down well. What about a lampoon video in the style of Bulwer-Lytton that commits every imaginable dialog error? Non-Americans are frequently astonished at the reverence accorded to Catcher when it is only a chronicle of whining self-pity. Ditto the reverence accorded to the tedious Atlas and Fountainhead.
one of my favorite ways to use indirect dialogue is to start with it then drop into direct dialogue for the stuff that really matters or lets the character's voice shine. i find you can sorta reverse pyramid by going from summary to indirect to direct as the content gets closer to the character's voice.
This video made me feel a lot better about my dialogue! I don't always write at the same level, particularly in rough drafts, but I was familiar with the concepts
This is an excellent, engaging, informative video. Thank you for making it. I enjoy all your videos, and I learn a lot from them. I look forward to more! I do, however, have three minor (and somewhat pedantic-so please forgive me) quibbles. 1. The s at the end of bris isn't silent. That is, it's not a homophone of the soft French cheese, brie. Bris, in fact, rhymes with kiss. 2. The e at the end of Hercule in Hercule Poirot's name, however, is silent. It sounds like "Herc, you'll". 3. Al Jolson's last name rhymes with Molson (the popular Canadian beer). If that doesn't help because you've never heard of Molson (few outside Canada have), it kind of rhymes with "whole sin" as well.
This lesson and nearly all lessons in dialogue make me think about The Expanse and the Belters with their cajun style dialogue. I yearn to create a hybrid speech like that in my next novel and it even makes me consider Idiocracy and doing a dystopian style story that is comedic and talks about the dumbing down of our "American" language.
Yey! You've validated my predilection for writing the sort of dialogue that requires a warning not to consume beverages whilst reading, lest the poor, unsuspecting reader run the risk of expelling said beverages violently out of their nose. I just can't help myself. Maybe I need an intervention?
Cool! Can I add level seven? Quantum subtext. It's when the meaning of a monologue or a section of dialogue can be taken in one, two, or more different ways, and the story unfolds differently for different readers depending on their life experiences and knowledge base. It's when the reader also becomes a writer in the story they're reading.
People rarely say what they want, unless it’s important to them in the moment. To characters driving the story, most moments will be important to them and they will be more direct than they typically are in their day-to-day life. In a downbeat scene, where the characters are distracted or living their everyday life, it’s more likely that a character will be indirect. Another scenario would be a character meeting someone new that the character doesnt trust or doesn’t want anything out of.
I consider my writing beeing level 5 to 6 but only to some point. And I feel like beeing much better at level 5 or 6 rather at level 4. How can I improove writing funny or clever? And thank you so much. Your explanation is always so professional. So rare to find videos about dialogues, explaining when they're interesting or boring. while most others focus on the content of the dialoge rather than the structure. This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks again 😊❤
I think a good place to start with humour, is with the unappropriate or unexpected. Try to think out of the box, when youre thinking what a character would say in response to another. Another fun trick is using inner dialogue/lines of thought, that differ from/contrast what the character says out loud. Like this. "Do you think I can make it over that fence, without hurting myself, Freddy?" He definitely wasn't gonna make it. Not without hurting himself. "Sure, Jimmy. Y-you can make it... Definitely."
I think part of the indirect issue is also all the advice to 'show don't tell.' Since indirect is telling. Though telling some times is a good. Also, you can have indirect dialogue in a movie, it just isn't that common.
Nice! I already have places where I should use indirect and summary and speed things up. Another thing I do to speed things up is I use what I call "transports". A short summary to bridge between two scenes of action. Some might call it a sequel, but I feel a transport is different from a sequel in that it just summarizes what happens between the scenes (no need for reaction-dilemma-decision + the ton of other stuff some people feel should be in a sequel...) And a transport be as short as a single sentence. (And yes, some of these also gets completely removed in editing. It's a process...)
Just as a note - Crumby is just an alternative spelling of crummy (it’s the one I would expect in the UK still). The ‘b’ is not pronounced - same as crumb. Great video!
currently on 3:54 I gotta say I love this video :D, although I am not sure about the levels and stuff bcs I am just thinking about writing, but I definitely agree about things mentioned. I just remembed one book where author just dumped info into the story and the MC out of nowhere just KNEW...
To me, character voice is the hardest of the six. While the other aspects of dialogue are subject to deliberate choices, I feel like whenever I let my characters talk, they express themselves freely, sometimes mirroring each other or worst, my narrators voice. I need to get a grip on that. Thankfully it's something that's easy to fix, most of the time.
Hi John. I'm not sure if the photo of David Mitchell was included as a little joke for us? If yes, lol but if not: just a heads-up that he's the wrong David Mitchell (comedy actor vs. novelist). Also, I'm British and a writer and we definitely DON'T put our full-stops and commas, etc. on the outside of speech marks like that for dialogue. Sorry. The UK vs. USA difference is when quoting from another text in an essay or article; for that, we tend to finish our sentence with punctuation going after the quote marks.
I think you need to include POV when discussing dialog. I prefer a detached, 3rd person limited. Yes, I like camera-like prose. If your character says something about cleaning his kitchen and then goes into 2,000 words about buying the house a decade ago, I'm not reading your book. From a 3rd person point of view, indirect and summary are telling. Personally, I think if you are getting bored with what's happening on the page, then you need to ask yourself you really need it at all. I do agree about the subtext section. The page is your alter - keep it sacred
I suppose there could also be supertext where somebody, say Han Solo, says something in a surprisingly direct way. Learned a lot from this vid, thanks!
0:27 What I do is, if it’s the end of the dialogue, but not the end of the sentence, I but the period on the inside. If it’s the end of the dialogue and the sentence, I put the period on the outside. “It’s sort of like this.” I elaborate, giving an example. “And sort of like this”.
CORRECTIONS: The word “crumby”, is actually just the word crummy. You don’t say the “b”. Crumby is just a variant spelling of Crummy. Also the comma sits inside the dialogue in British work. ‘Do it like this,’ she said. The difference in British dialogue is the quotation marks. Americans use “ and British use ‘.
So I actually didn't know about this fifth level of dialogue, but I was somewhat forced to use it because I didn't want to break my head over fleshing out a bedtime story. In this excerpt I've even used direct and indirect dialogue: "Ooh! Ohh! Tell me a story about... when you were a knight!" (direct) "Another one of those stories? Okay..." Her father then stroked his beard, gasping at his fresh idea. "Have I ever told you of the time I and your friend's father defended the king's quarry?" (direct) "Ummm... if you did, tell me again!" (direct) Her father then rose and retold his legend. With mime-like vigor and playful brows, he acted his scenes out, either throwing the girl into laughing fits, or having her lean in with occasional questions. (summary? maybe indirect) Well, another night of storytelling had finally passed, but the girl had one final question: "Father?" (direct) "Yes, lad?" (direct) "Does being a knight mean you have to die?" (direct) Her father couldn't afford to freeze too long in thought, but ponder the question he did until he assured the girl with a smile. "Being a knight isn't all bad," he remarked, "It's... finding what you live for. That's all." (direct) After some warm seconds of locking eyes, he then kissed her forehead goodnight and left the room. (indirect)
I'm 60k+ words into my first novel and I realized I've been doing step 1 wrong. I got the impression somewhere after starting that I needed to capitalize after every quotation mark, but that seems to be wrong. Instead of "I'm wrong," she says. I've been writing "I'm wrong," She says. So I've got a long way to go.
I know it's a movie, not a novel, but the scene in Doctor Zhivago where Yevgraf (Alec Guinness) first introduces himself to Yuri (Omar Sharif) and the others. Guinness narrates the scene, including 'indirectly' describing his side of the conversation, but the others speak their dialog directly. The whole scene is brilliant, but this exchange still breaks my heart: Yuri: “But what do YOU think of my poetry?” I lied.
"Excellent. I love this," she said wringing her hands together like she had an evil plan in mind. She asked for another pot of tea as her plan was at least a two pot plan. She explained her plan to the rest of the gang, and when finished, she offered to buy some more tea. The gang declined. "Fine." She shook her head. "But I'm having another pot."
I think Indirect and Summary text is in films. The scenes where you see characters in conversation from a distance and there's no sounds except maybe the soundtrack, or a montage. Funny thing, I've long had an understanding of the 3 types, but I still can't grasp Wit because I'm not a witty talker.
I think you are confusing “indent” with “paragraph break” or “line break”. The examples shown do not contain indentation (starting a block of text farther over from the main text); they show paragraph breaks (skipped lines between paragraphs).
I discovered recently that, for myself at least, the techniques for making characters sound unique are limited when writing a period piece. Especially something like medieval fantasy where I can’t rely on readers understanding subtle dialect differences or subtle cultural gestures and references. In the case of the novel I’m writing it’s a given none of them are speaking in English anyway so it’s especially hard to imagine how they would talk differently. I’ve mostly written in modern settings and never considered how much easier it is when you can rely on a reader understanding subtle things like that. Anyone have some good advice on how to broaden what I have to work with or works they can suggest that have done well with it?
Ideas for differences... overall floweriness and length of speech, vs. someone who uses simple words with direct meaning, with not a single word more than necessary. Level of politeness, tendency to interrupt or speak over others. Use of colloquialisms or expressions hinting of their background, swears, oaths or certain exclamations. I get the strain. In one of my medieval fantasy books, one character is multilingual and the language everyone else speaks is not native to him. He is normally short and brusque/demanding, but becomes justifiably more sophisticated-sounding when we've switched to his native tongue. His assistant, who is generally smug and loves making himself feel smart by insulting people without their notice, is not quite fluent in this other language and his speech becomes more stilted to show the change. (And he becomes quickly frustrated when his mistakes are pointed out.) Which language these two characters speak when alone and the other's tendency to suddenly switch when losing an argument creates a power-struggle to their interactions I find very fun. It is tricky to keep it all consistent, though. I have another self-absorbed character given to pearl-clutching and extreme sentimentality. Another who talks coarsely, is often impatient and swears by funny things. A slower, caring, softspoken, often apologetic character. I have a tendency to crank the character up to make dialogue distinctive, though fair warning; I don't know how much is too much. I wonder if it is possible for you to have multiple layers to each character's speech pattern. So, create more obvious distinction between characters A and B to be apparent to any reader, but for those in the know on some of the specialized cultural knowledge they simply become that much deeper. You could even hang a lamp on some of these cultural differences having a character point it out, so the reader will be more aware for the rest of the book. Idk... just trying to give some ideas
Do they: Swear when they talk (yes, there are 'refined' swear words out there) Use catchphrases (like he mentioned in the video). Use long or short sentences when they speak. Use a certain word family frequently. (Harsh words, gentle words, simple words, complicated words) This is the hardest trick in my view. This helps when I write dialogue in my historical/fantasy pieces.
Doesn't matter what one writes if it isn't marketed by manpower, millions of dollars, and massive social popularity. Without those, your work *will* remain invisible. No exceptions. 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge; hope's strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again." 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ --Diamond Dragons (series)
So for level 2, what about going about exposition by having a character explicitly ask rather than a character tell and have the response be more like "ya ya ya, so like I was saying this girl I met..." Just having them kind of blow it of with real quick yes or no answers while they keep trying to talk about something else.
I'm in a weird place where I'm confident in my ability to write dialogue at every level, all the way up to level six...but I struggle with parts of level one. The mechanical parts of how the formatting works on the page weren't lessons my brain absorbed from reading good books.
Well, sounding not the same is hard in an ancient historical fiction. We have no clue about dialects and according to the written sources everybody talked alike. Even if it was the "literature" of that era it's still hard to create unique sounding characters in a novel like that. For example Mika Waltari's The Egyptian. He made the characters talk the same but on that sophisticated way what we can see on papiry. It did not bother me at all, that was the charm of that novel.
I knew about dialogue tags but you telling me to do it the right way made me want to do it wrong. What's that called, an issue with authority? Or regular old stupidity 🤔
This is incorrect, it/is used when there's a quote within dialgue, or a quote at the end of a sentence. You highing the quote with speechmarks, then end the sentence with a full stop. However, it is never used generally for dialogue purposes, ever.
I read the white elephant story just now. I didn't appreciate the subtext. I guess I'm not sharp enough, I couldn't pick up on it. There's no way I would have read that and knew what they were talking about.
"Wisdom has been chasing you, but you've proven to be faster"
HA!
“…you’ve proven the faster” would be SO much better.
@@BooksForever nah
@@TheRecklessBravery How old are you, how deeply read, how well versed in English?
@@BooksForever I'd just go "but you've proven faster."
Hey. I've only watched the first 90 seconds of the video but felt I had to comment. Even level 1, "the most basic stuff" is not trivial. I've kinda figured this out on my own, over a long time struggling with a good way to format dialogue, but having it detailed in this manner is very helpful. Don't underestimate the ignorance of the beginner.
I think it is also important to know which characters will use subtext. Some characters will be very direct in what they say, others will be subtle enough to talk around the edges of what they mean.
That's a creative idea! I can imagine how much humor and poignancy it can add when used right.
If it's a related idea, I also believe one exception to your characters saying exactly how they feel is if they secretly feel something else.
Herculeeeee? Air-kyool.
How do you have so few views?
Your commentary is not just insightful but also to the point. Very few wasted lines, good editing, clear voice.
Nice channel bruv
I'm so early there arent even chapters yet 😭
It can be a separate exercise. We're never beyond practice, right?
The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step
I’m so early, the URL doesn’t exist yet.
I just finished Pride & Prejudice and Direct/Indirect/Summary was all over that book. Jane Austin gear-shifted through all three like she was a rally driver. Moving from direct to indirect based off of who was speaking and what information was conveyed. Summary was for catching up the reader or for reiterating what was already said or written.
Hey Bookfox! I just wanted to say that you seem to have been on a roll recently and to keep it up! I've been loving it.
AHH that's a different David Mitchell!!!! I was stunned, like, no way that british comedian wrote cloud atlas?!?!
Came to say the same.
Holy crap! I had the exact same reaction and had to do an image search
SAME (i'm lying)
I also was gonna say haha, was wondering if anyone else caught it xD
British, and I have NEVER seen the commas outside the quote marks
In Canada, periods and commas are always inside quotation marks, and colons and semi-colons always outside. Question and exclamation marks are inside unless only the last part of the sentence is in quotes. Then they're in if they apply to the quoted part and out if they apply to the whole sentence. "Hello?" He said "Hello?" Did you just say "Hello"?
Came here to say the same thing. Only really might do that if I was using the quotation marks to bracket something and at the end of the sentence. The sign read, "keep off the grass". Or, Janet came home and said that they needed to, "talk about the baby".
Indirect and summary dialogue are telling, direct is showing. Everyone for the last 50 years has been saying, 'show, don't tell' and so, few know how to tell. Erle Stanley Gardner is good at using both to keep a fast pace in Perry Mason stories. The main aim of mixing telling and showing is to maintain pace, as far as I have gotten. There are probably more purposes.
I would say witty dialogue is harder than subtext. You have to enjoy playing with words for the former. The latter is just a matter of editing with a purpose. Write a normal dialogue and when you go back to edit it, decide what not to say directly. You do have to give both speakers their own goals, esp. goals that clash. Thus, character A wants character B to do something but does not want to be responsible for forcing them to do it. Character B wants an excuse, like a direct order. Edit your dialogue with that in mind and subtext is easy. You simply need to find the right reason to have them avoid saying something AND make it realistic. The latter you do on the next editing pass. Mark each character's words in a different colour and read them as one text. That will help you to achieve consistency, which is oddly missing in the criteria.
Everyone has been saying also that you almost always use the active voice versus the passive. Okay. Indirect is probably (or literally) the dialogue counterpart to the passive voice and I suspect most writers avoid using it.
@@delstanley1349 That's why I mentioned Gardner. (I don't bother deep diving into style often.) It is actually common and used for pacing, but our brains, because indirect and summary are, by definition, not calling attention to themselves, just stored in our brains as background facts. If you want to see an example of that, look at the scene in Harry Potter when they enter the main hall for sorting into houses. You remember the film, but the book uses indirect dialogue there, not direct.
Finally someone made video about dialogue (in detail)
another thing Hills like white elephants does well is the characters talking across each other instead of directly answering each other. They have reasonable misunderstandings. When they do get direct, they get defensive like real people. it creates the atmosphere of tension, worry and conflict in the scene. this is a verbal fight scene with circling, back and forth, parries, dodging, lunges... great example of good dialogue.
Yes! I really need something like this!
Just working over some dialogue this morning. So many awkward phrases and dumb jokes that were funny in my head. But it's so much fun going over them now that I have a body of material to work with.
Oops! 9:51 - not that David Mitchell!! 😂 That’s the British comedian, not the author…
I just google this to check 😂
@ be more trusting
This channel is quickly becoming part of my daily routine
Very useful distinctions, thank you. BTW, I'm British and I've never put a comma or full stop on the outside of the quotation marks, nor have I ever seen it suggested or printed like that in books!
Oh my god. I was doing all that the moment I started writing dialogues. Not well enough, of course, but I have all those elements. Good to know I am on the right path.
🙌🏻 Aahhh shhhhnap! You put another one out early! Yay! It’s gonna be a banger, I just know it.
Unfortunately, you showed the wrong David Mitchell. David Mitchell, the comedian, did not write Cloud Atlas. David Mitchell, the writer, did.
Level 1 "I got this, why do I need to know this?" Bro I'm always gaslighting myself into being unable to tell how punctuation is supposed to work. It's harder than you think.
It really is. I still catch myself slipping with each revision hahah
Your best yet! I learned something from Level 1. (Difference between US and UK practice).
So, sorry I know I've commented a lot here BUT this is literally a MASTER CLASS in dialogue although it doesn't get into the nitty gritty of HOW to actually accomplish it. I am going to go through my entire manuscript and analyze all of my dialogue to look for area where I might be able to use subtext or indirect dialogue because it really does change things up. It changes the pace that the reader is expecting. It varies the rhythm, and that's what you want!
I can barely keep up with all the new videos, thank you for your work! A lot of useful information to us!
As someone who is guilty of overusing direct dialogue, this video has given me much to think about. I need to use more summary dialogue as too much dialogue can kill pacing. Amazing video, it’s taught me to rethink how I write.
Guilty of the same. Dialogue is my favourite, so I tend to overindulge in the direct type and my word counts get out of hand.
Excellent material, well organized, well presented, well filmed. To make this even more betterer some visual variety would go down well. What about a lampoon video in the style of Bulwer-Lytton that commits every imaginable dialog error?
Non-Americans are frequently astonished at the reverence accorded to Catcher when it is only a chronicle of whining self-pity. Ditto the reverence accorded to the tedious Atlas and Fountainhead.
Another amazing video with clear instruction and examples.
Your videos are great, I learn so much and get inspired to write the silly little stories in my head.
thanks, this is helping me with my first attempt in writing a draft for one of my ideas
one of my favorite ways to use indirect dialogue is to start with it then drop into direct dialogue for the stuff that really matters or lets the character's voice shine. i find you can sorta reverse pyramid by going from summary to indirect to direct as the content gets closer to the character's voice.
This video made me feel a lot better about my dialogue! I don't always write at the same level, particularly in rough drafts, but I was familiar with the concepts
Thanks muchly, this may be the best youtube I’ve seen on dialogue; and there are a lot. Also, I like your presentation style.
This is an excellent, engaging, informative video. Thank you for making it.
I enjoy all your videos, and I learn a lot from them. I look forward to more!
I do, however, have three minor (and somewhat pedantic-so please forgive me) quibbles.
1. The s at the end of bris isn't silent. That is, it's not a homophone of the soft French cheese, brie. Bris, in fact, rhymes with kiss.
2. The e at the end of Hercule in Hercule Poirot's name, however, is silent. It sounds like "Herc, you'll".
3. Al Jolson's last name rhymes with Molson (the popular Canadian beer). If that doesn't help because you've never heard of Molson (few outside Canada have), it kind of rhymes with "whole sin" as well.
This lesson and nearly all lessons in dialogue make me think about The Expanse and the Belters with their cajun style dialogue. I yearn to create a hybrid speech like that in my next novel and it even makes me consider Idiocracy and doing a dystopian style story that is comedic and talks about the dumbing down of our "American" language.
Yey! You've validated my predilection for writing the sort of dialogue that requires a warning not to consume beverages whilst reading, lest the poor, unsuspecting reader run the risk of expelling said beverages violently out of their nose.
I just can't help myself.
Maybe I need an intervention?
Cool! Can I add level seven? Quantum subtext. It's when the meaning of a monologue or a section of dialogue can be taken in one, two, or more different ways, and the story unfolds differently for different readers depending on their life experiences and knowledge base. It's when the reader also becomes a writer in the story they're reading.
The jousting back and forth with dialogue always makes me think of Kevin Smith's dialogue like in Clerks
People rarely say what they want, unless it’s important to them in the moment. To characters driving the story, most moments will be important to them and they will be more direct than they typically are in their day-to-day life. In a downbeat scene, where the characters are distracted or living their everyday life, it’s more likely that a character will be indirect. Another scenario would be a character meeting someone new that the character doesnt trust or doesn’t want anything out of.
This was an interesting one! Thank you!
I consider my writing beeing level 5 to 6 but only to some point. And I feel like beeing much better at level 5 or 6 rather at level 4.
How can I improove writing funny or clever?
And thank you so much. Your explanation is always so professional. So rare to find videos about dialogues, explaining when they're interesting or boring. while most others focus on the content of the dialoge rather than the structure.
This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks again 😊❤
I think a good place to start with humour, is with the unappropriate or unexpected.
Try to think out of the box, when youre thinking what a character would say in response to another. Another fun trick is using inner dialogue/lines of thought, that differ from/contrast what the character says out loud.
Like this.
"Do you think I can make it over that fence, without hurting myself, Freddy?"
He definitely wasn't gonna make it. Not without hurting himself.
"Sure, Jimmy. Y-you can make it... Definitely."
@@elchiponr1oh thanks for your advices, sounds good ☺️ would you say it helps reading more books where the mc is sarcastic etc?
Great stuff! Very valuable! Thank you.
I think part of the indirect issue is also all the advice to 'show don't tell.' Since indirect is telling. Though telling some times is a good. Also, you can have indirect dialogue in a movie, it just isn't that common.
I'm happy to realize I'm at level six. Also I like to use indirect or summary dialogs to add a sense of mystery or uneasiness to the scene.
Nice! I already have places where I should use indirect and summary and speed things up. Another thing I do to speed things up is I use what I call "transports". A short summary to bridge between two scenes of action. Some might call it a sequel, but I feel a transport is different from a sequel in that it just summarizes what happens between the scenes (no need for reaction-dilemma-decision + the ton of other stuff some people feel should be in a sequel...) And a transport be as short as a single sentence. (And yes, some of these also gets completely removed in editing. It's a process...)
Indirect dialogue: tribute to the best dialog in the world
Just as a note - Crumby is just an alternative spelling of crummy (it’s the one I would expect in the UK still). The ‘b’ is not pronounced - same as crumb.
Great video!
currently on 3:54 I gotta say I love this video :D, although I am not sure about the levels and stuff bcs I am just thinking about writing, but I definitely agree about things mentioned. I just remembed one book where author just dumped info into the story and the MC out of nowhere just KNEW...
To me, character voice is the hardest of the six. While the other aspects of dialogue are subject to deliberate choices, I feel like whenever I let my characters talk, they express themselves freely, sometimes mirroring each other or worst, my narrators voice. I need to get a grip on that. Thankfully it's something that's easy to fix, most of the time.
Sometimes I think I've cranked my characters' distinctiveness up too high and made them outright annoying. Lol!
Hi John. I'm not sure if the photo of David Mitchell was included as a little joke for us? If yes, lol but if not: just a heads-up that he's the wrong David Mitchell (comedy actor vs. novelist). Also, I'm British and a writer and we definitely DON'T put our full-stops and commas, etc. on the outside of speech marks like that for dialogue. Sorry. The UK vs. USA difference is when quoting from another text in an essay or article; for that, we tend to finish our sentence with punctuation going after the quote marks.
I think you need to include POV when discussing dialog. I prefer a detached, 3rd person limited. Yes, I like camera-like prose. If your character says something about cleaning his kitchen and then goes into 2,000 words about buying the house a decade ago, I'm not reading your book. From a 3rd person point of view, indirect and summary are telling. Personally, I think if you are getting bored with what's happening on the page, then you need to ask yourself you really need it at all. I do agree about the subtext section. The page is your alter - keep it sacred
I suppose there could also be supertext where somebody, say Han Solo, says something in a surprisingly direct way.
Learned a lot from this vid, thanks!
0:27
What I do is, if it’s the end of the dialogue, but not the end of the sentence, I but the period on the inside. If it’s the end of the dialogue and the sentence, I put the period on the outside.
“It’s sort of like this.” I elaborate, giving an example.
“And sort of like this”.
Ummm - Brit here. We too put punctuation inside the quotation marks.
Thanks for the interesting ideas.
Thanks John!
CORRECTIONS: The word “crumby”, is actually just the word crummy. You don’t say the “b”.
Crumby is just a variant spelling of Crummy.
Also the comma sits inside the dialogue in British work. ‘Do it like this,’ she said.
The difference in British dialogue is the quotation marks. Americans use “ and British use ‘.
"The only problem of being faster than light is that you can only live in shadows."
Sonic Maurice the Hedgehog
Yay, im level 6 haha I feel better about my writing today 😊
So I actually didn't know about this fifth level of dialogue, but I was somewhat forced to use it because I didn't want to break my head over fleshing out a bedtime story. In this excerpt I've even used direct and indirect dialogue:
"Ooh! Ohh! Tell me a story about... when you were a knight!" (direct)
"Another one of those stories? Okay..." Her father then stroked his beard, gasping at his fresh idea. "Have I ever told you of the time I and your friend's father defended the king's quarry?" (direct)
"Ummm... if you did, tell me again!" (direct)
Her father then rose and retold his legend. With mime-like vigor and playful brows, he acted his scenes out, either throwing the girl into laughing fits, or having her lean in with occasional questions. (summary? maybe indirect)
Well, another night of storytelling had finally passed, but the girl had one final question:
"Father?" (direct)
"Yes, lad?" (direct)
"Does being a knight mean you have to die?" (direct)
Her father couldn't afford to freeze too long in thought, but ponder the question he did until he assured the girl with a smile.
"Being a knight isn't all bad," he remarked, "It's... finding what you live for. That's all." (direct)
After some warm seconds of locking eyes, he then kissed her forehead goodnight and left the room. (indirect)
Much as I admire them both, David Mitchell who wrote Cloud Atlas is not the same David Mitchell you pictured.
that's super funny because he's said before how he always has to tell people they're not the same person
I'm 60k+ words into my first novel and I realized I've been doing step 1 wrong. I got the impression somewhere after starting that I needed to capitalize after every quotation mark, but that seems to be wrong. Instead of
"I'm wrong," she says.
I've been writing
"I'm wrong," She says.
So I've got a long way to go.
For once a video that makes me feel good about where I’m at as a writer lol
Lev's main conflict in The Last of Us Part II is a masterclass in subtext.
This is my second video and writing sounds a lot clearer than before
I know it's a movie, not a novel, but the scene in Doctor Zhivago where Yevgraf (Alec Guinness) first introduces himself to Yuri (Omar Sharif) and the others. Guinness narrates the scene, including 'indirectly' describing his side of the conversation, but the others speak their dialog directly. The whole scene is brilliant, but this exchange still breaks my heart:
Yuri: “But what do YOU think of my poetry?”
I lied.
Cormac McCarthy's dialogue tags feel invisible because they are
God damn, this video is a shotgun of useful information.
Thanks Coach
i find myself struggling a lot more with level 3 than level 5 or 6 T.T
how do you upload so much and its all quality
I feel like, after you reach level 6, you loop back around and level 1 becomes the most difficult thing again
"Excellent. I love this," she said wringing her hands together like she had an evil plan in mind. She asked for another pot of tea as her plan was at least a two pot plan. She explained her plan to the rest of the gang, and when finished, she offered to buy some more tea. The gang declined. "Fine." She shook her head. "But I'm having another pot."
love the book shirt
Raymond Chandler did some good dialog
Cool video!
I think Indirect and Summary text is in films. The scenes where you see characters in conversation from a distance and there's no sounds except maybe the soundtrack, or a montage.
Funny thing, I've long had an understanding of the 3 types, but I still can't grasp Wit because I'm not a witty talker.
Didn’t have “Bookfox speaking like a slave” on my 2024 bingo card
"How do you know what kind of good goddamn morning this is!?"
I KNOW what the three levels of dialogue are... but I still struggle to pick when to properly use any
10:34 I'm Jewish and I laughed my frakking head off!
I think you are confusing “indent” with “paragraph break” or “line break”. The examples shown do not contain indentation (starting a block of text farther over from the main text); they show paragraph breaks (skipped lines between paragraphs).
Ahem, it is 'air-cuel' Poirot. Only two syllables. Use the little grey cells. . . Good video, btw! 😛
QUESTION: Plot based dialog - vs - exposition?
I discovered recently that, for myself at least, the techniques for making characters sound unique are limited when writing a period piece. Especially something like medieval fantasy where I can’t rely on readers understanding subtle dialect differences or subtle cultural gestures and references. In the case of the novel I’m writing it’s a given none of them are speaking in English anyway so it’s especially hard to imagine how they would talk differently. I’ve mostly written in modern settings and never considered how much easier it is when you can rely on a reader understanding subtle things like that. Anyone have some good advice on how to broaden what I have to work with or works they can suggest that have done well with it?
Ideas for differences... overall floweriness and length of speech, vs. someone who uses simple words with direct meaning, with not a single word more than necessary. Level of politeness, tendency to interrupt or speak over others. Use of colloquialisms or expressions hinting of their background, swears, oaths or certain exclamations.
I get the strain. In one of my medieval fantasy books, one character is multilingual and the language everyone else speaks is not native to him. He is normally short and brusque/demanding, but becomes justifiably more sophisticated-sounding when we've switched to his native tongue. His assistant, who is generally smug and loves making himself feel smart by insulting people without their notice, is not quite fluent in this other language and his speech becomes more stilted to show the change. (And he becomes quickly frustrated when his mistakes are pointed out.)
Which language these two characters speak when alone and the other's tendency to suddenly switch when losing an argument creates a power-struggle to their interactions I find very fun. It is tricky to keep it all consistent, though.
I have another self-absorbed character given to pearl-clutching and extreme sentimentality. Another who talks coarsely, is often impatient and swears by funny things. A slower, caring, softspoken, often apologetic character. I have a tendency to crank the character up to make dialogue distinctive, though fair warning; I don't know how much is too much.
I wonder if it is possible for you to have multiple layers to each character's speech pattern. So, create more obvious distinction between characters A and B to be apparent to any reader, but for those in the know on some of the specialized cultural knowledge they simply become that much deeper. You could even hang a lamp on some of these cultural differences having a character point it out, so the reader will be more aware for the rest of the book.
Idk... just trying to give some ideas
Do they:
Swear when they talk (yes, there are 'refined' swear words out there)
Use catchphrases (like he mentioned in the video).
Use long or short sentences when they speak.
Use a certain word family frequently. (Harsh words, gentle words, simple words, complicated words) This is the hardest trick in my view.
This helps when I write dialogue in my historical/fantasy pieces.
I think we were all taught show don’t tell - and that’s why dialogue isn’t summarized more
Doesn't matter what one writes if it isn't marketed by manpower, millions of dollars, and massive social popularity. Without those, your work *will* remain invisible. No exceptions.
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
"Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge; hope's strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again."
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
--Diamond Dragons (series)
So for level 2, what about going about exposition by having a character explicitly ask rather than a character tell and have the response be more like "ya ya ya, so like I was saying this girl I met..." Just having them kind of blow it of with real quick yes or no answers while they keep trying to talk about something else.
Level 6 writer responds: "Du-uh♫."
At 9:50 you have a photo of the wrong David Mitchell. That's the comedian, not the novelist.
Would Free Indirect Style (or F. I. Narrative) be level 5 or 7?
Twain’s spelling variations-so difficult to read. I think he hated his readers 😅
Fine, it can be good to vary technique, but not every story will be improved with indirect dialogue.
Very true. It's just another option in your arsenal to deploy at the right moment.
I'm in a weird place where I'm confident in my ability to write dialogue at every level, all the way up to level six...but I struggle with parts of level one. The mechanical parts of how the formatting works on the page weren't lessons my brain absorbed from reading good books.
Fortunately, that's probably the easiest to fix.
Well, sounding not the same is hard in an ancient historical fiction. We have no clue about dialects and according to the written sources everybody talked alike. Even if it was the "literature" of that era it's still hard to create unique sounding characters in a novel like that. For example Mika Waltari's The Egyptian. He made the characters talk the same but on that sophisticated way what we can see on papiry. It did not bother me at all, that was the charm of that novel.
I knew about dialogue tags but you telling me to do it the right way made me want to do it wrong.
What's that called, an issue with authority?
Or regular old stupidity 🤔
For witty, insulting dialogue, try Steel Magnolias.
I have NEVER seen a period (full stop), placed outside of the quotation marks. Not in English text, not in England - NEVER.
This is incorrect, it/is used when there's a quote within dialgue, or a quote at the end of a sentence.
You highing the quote with speechmarks, then end the sentence with a full stop.
However, it is never used generally for dialogue purposes, ever.
I read the white elephant story just now. I didn't appreciate the subtext. I guess I'm not sharp enough, I couldn't pick up on it. There's no way I would have read that and knew what they were talking about.
LAGHAV CHIHN....TRUTI...PARANTHERSIS...FOOTNOTES....