Speaker 1: Dialogue. It's what we say to each other in conversation. Let's learn how to write about it. For all you storytellers out there, this is skill for how to write dialogue in your stories. I won't keep you waiting any longer. Let's get to it, shall we? Dialogue is when two characters or more have a conversation in a story. There are traditional rules for how to write this stuff. It's the way that most writers do it. There's a recommended syntax. So take a look at this sample to give yourself an idea. This sample has the following. You have your narration here. This is first person narration, I. Then when someone speaks it goes to another line and indents. This job sucks, comma. And it's in quotations to show you that it's being said by Chaz. Then there's the end punctuation, the period at the end of things. There's a comma there. If this was reversed, if it was Chaz said, that would go up here, comma, then the quotes, and then a period at the end here. But since the quote is not the end of the sentence, it's a comma. Let's talk about the specific rules here. These are the standard rules for dialogue. Number one, use quotation marks to indicate that it's being said by someone and it's not in the mind of the narrator. Number two, every time a new person talks, move to the next line and use a new quote set. This helps make things clear for the reader who is speaking. Number three, use commas at the end of the quote inside the quotes if it's not the end of the sentence. I went over that in the previous slide. Four, you can stop identifying the speaker after one back and forth. So you don't have to say, said John, every single time John says something. Once you establish a pattern, the reader will pick up on it. Number five, you can stick to said as your dialogue tag. Dialogue tag is the verb used for how the person is saying it. Said is okay. If you use too much variety, it gets obnoxious. For instance, if he said, then he asked, then he screamed, then he exclaimed, it gets a little bit much. Said is fine. These are the standard rules, but you can always mix things up. The idea is you want to write dialogue so the reader understands who is speaking and it's not confusing. This way your story is more understandable. And there are plenty of writers out there who don't follow these rules though. They use unconventional dialogue. Here's an example of one of my favorite authors, Cormac McCarthy, who wrote a book called No Country for Old Men, that is Javier Bardem in the film. Take a look at how he writes the dialogue without any of those rules we just talked about. Just walked in the door. Sheriff, he had some sort of thing in him like one of them oxygen tanks for emphysema or whatever. Then he had a hose that run down the inside of his sleeve and went to one of them stun guns they use in the slaughterhouse. Yes, sir. Well, that's what it looks like. You can see it when you get in. Yes, sir. I got it covered. Yes, sir. So it's difficult to tell who's speaking if they're speaking to someone in that scene and that's part of this guy's writing style. Some people like it and some people hate it. It's up to you how you're going to write dialogue. The goal is that it should have a purpose though. You want to make it sound realistic and here are a few ways you can keep your dialogue sounding like it's real and not forced or fake. Number one, you can use slang and jargon that this character would use. That's language to a specific group jargon. For instance, Call of Duty people have their own language for all you noobs out there. Two, spell words phonetically, how they sound. So that's another way to add a dialect it's called to the dialogue. It makes people from Philadelphia, if you spell it Wooder, W-O-O-D-E-R, for instance, that adds to the authentic feel to the dialogue. Number three, throw in some natural breaks. When I'm speaking right now I add ums accidentally, I add pauses and uhs. So if you wanted to make someone sound awkward, like me, you could add these to the dialogue to give it that sort of stilted feel. You should use dialogue in a purposeful way. You can use it to reveal more about characters, increase drama between two characters, or advance the plot of the story. Dialogue can be a great thing when used well, but when it's used incorrectly it kind of ruins a story. So if you follow those tips that I gave you, you should be able to craft dialogue that feels legitimate. This is your practice for dialogue for Skill 4 and it's located in the Creative Writing 2 Storytelling folder underneath the How Do I Develop a Story Skill 4 folder. And there are three options for practice here. The first option is to record a conversation you hear exactly as it sounds in real life. Then you'll write it in dialogue form as if it were part of a story below. This will give you a feel of how real people speak and hopefully develop your ear for dialogue. Option two. Take snippets from Twitter, searching the hashtag overheard, which is a hashtag where people share something they overheard that's usually pretty strange. Pick one and write dialogue that branches off from it. Dialogue practice three. The dialogue practice three, this is from a website called We're All Gonna Die, and it's a slider. It's an art project that has a bunch of different images of people talking. You can pick one and write realistic sounding dialogue based off of the expressions of the characters that you find. Let's check it out real quick. Here it is right here. For instance, if you pick these two characters, you'd have to come up with a conversation that they were having in real life. There they are. And you can slide it down and find more people talking.