Writing Blog Number 2

20250924 Believable Use Of Dialogue

Believable Use Of Dialogue

I recently beta read someone’s novella for them and watched an episode of WWE Raw (I normally don’t because WWE sucks as a wrestling company) and came up with what I am going to call:

People Don’t Talk Like That!

People talk. Now, when we write a story, we use dialogue. And we do NOT write dialogue as she is spoken. Don’t believe me? Record a conversation some time. You will be surprised at the amount of umms, errs, ahhs, pauses, incomplete sentences, etc that, for a reader, would be tedious or confusing to read. So, already, the dialogue of the usual writer is not realistic. But these are sacrifices we make for an easy read.

Time passes…

However, there are some other issues that come up. Some I have mentioned before, and I was umming and ahhing about doing this after the novella and the WWE Raw show. It felt like flogging a dead horse. So the previous paragraphs were written and I put this away. Then recently I was asked to watch a couple of recent movies and the following were everywhere! So I thought I’d come back to this and look at it again because if film-makers are doing this, then it must be all over the place.

(For those playing at home, the films were the new War Of The Worlds – an easy 2/10 film – The Electric State – 3/10 – and Red Sonja – maybe 3.5/10.)

1) “As you know…”
This phrase (or variations) indicates we are about to get an exposition dump. One person is going to tell another person something that they already know in order to inform the audience. Some films use a newbie (e.g. the first Hellboy film) so the information is told to a person who doesn’t know, but even that feels a little like a cop-out. Still, a character telling another character something they already know… people don’t talk like that.

2) Definition giving
This is when a character will use a technical term, then give the meaning, or mention something plot-important, then describe why it is plot-important. It is okay-ish when someone asks what that means, but even this can seem out of nowhere or not the time or place for that. An example would be in Triassic World (no, that is its title; it’s from Asylum Pictures) when one of the characters says something like, “It’s an allosaurus, a large theropod dinosaur that eats meat!” while running away… People don’t talk like that!

3) Expansive greetings
“Hello, Elizabeth, my daughter.” Sure, in a courtly drama set pre-Victorian at a debutant’s ball, maybe, but set now? You both know she’s your daughter! And then, if the person is referred to as ‘Liz’ from then on, why the Elizabeth at first? And, yes, one of the three films I watched recently did just this! Introductions are fine, of course, but (paraphrasing), “This is Elizabeth Browning, my daughter, a PhD in viral patterning, from my first marriage, which is why we don’t have the same last name.” People don’t talk like that!

4) Asking questions they know the answer to
This the sort of thing like in an old Fantastic Four comic where a person asks, “Is that the Baxter Building?” upon seeing a large building with the words ‘Baxter Building’ clearly emblazoned on the side. A biological scientist asking if that is a DNA double helix, an apparently intelligent man asking if the drone can be flown remotely, so the film can explain how Amazon’s drones work (hi, War Of The Worlds!), or asking who a person is when we have just seen them all over the media, so it can be explicitly explained. People don’t talk like that (unless they are really stupid)!

Just four, but I am sure there are others out there. But these films were just really poorly written and, after the novella and Raw, it sparked this rant.