Four Kinds of Dialogue Jude Tresswell
Hello Everyone. It’s good to be writing another Love Bytes post.
I recently had the pleasure of chatting to Brad Shreve on his Gay Mystery Podcast. One of the things Brad asked me concerned writing dialogue for Mike, Ross, Raith and Phil, the four men who comprise the polyamorous quad of my tales. How do I avoid tediously typing “said Mike” or “said Ross” every time I want to indicate who’s talking? This post develops what I told him…
I’d say that Mike and Raith often speak for themselves. By that, I mean that their speech echoes their background and their characters. Mike can be very blunt, and he swears a helluva lot. Also, he has a local accent and, for example, he leaves off his ‘g’s . I don’t write him in the vernacular, but I include enough, I hope, to ensure that he can always be identified. Here is an example… (Mike’s nephews will be staying, and Raith is complaining that because they’ll have exclusive use of a bathroom, he’ll have to shower in his studio and he’ll get his (long) hair wet.)
“Then take a bloody hair drier with you… If you don’t like it, stay bloody dirty. A bit of muck won’t harm. We’ve got two kids comin’ for a fortnight. Not forever. You can manage. It’s not the middle of winter. The studio is literally across the road. You won’t catch your death of cold, and you can stop moanin’.”
Raith’s a joy to write. He’s what Mike (bluntly) calls “a lateral non-thinker”. Unless Raith is focused on his work, he jumps from thought to thought. Raith is not a non-thinker though; he speaks a lot of good sense. He just finds it hard to stay on track. Also, he often takes statements very literally, like this… (Raith has asked Phil to help to get a friend, Kyle, a job at the hospital. Kyle is stunned, and grateful. There are two ‘he said’s in this; I know!)
“I don’t know what to say,” said Kyle.
“Well, you’ve got to say you’ve known him for at least a year,” said Raith, misunderstanding, “cos that’s what he told them. He said you’re one of my friends and that’s how he knows you. Well he knows of you so it’s a bit true. Actually, it’s a lot true.”
It’s much more difficult to establish if Phil or Ross is speaking. They are both well-educated. They are both what here in England would be described as middle-class. One is a surgeon; the other is a business man and gallery owner. The content of their speech might be different— Phil is by far the greater worrier—but I think that their speech patterns would be similar. I don’t think that either of them would display individual traits in the way that Mike and Raith do. So, I often use what might be termed “the illusion of speech”.
A lot of the men’s conversation occurs around the kitchen table. If I was talking with friends around the table, I’d get their attention with eye-contact. (Appreciate that cultural norms and personal fondness of eye contact varies.) It would sound false and formal if I addressed the person by name. A bit like school : “Jude, stop talking!” So, what I often do is use a subsequent sentence to indicate the speaker of a previous one. Here’s an example of what I mean, with Mike back-referencing Phil.
“And the boys. Are they supposed to keep quiet too? How are we meant to stop them saying they’re staying with us?”
“I don’t know, Phil. I mean, it shouldn’t fuckin’ matter, but it does.”
I don’t think that’s what would happen irl, which is why I regard such back-references as the illusion of speech. I hope it sounds natural, but it isn’t. I think that, irl, one wouldn’t bother with the ‘Phil’.
I do enjoy writing dialogue, and I hope that the fun I have with it comes through on the pages of the stories. All the quotes above are from Book 5 of the County Durham Quad tales, A Share In A Secret. It was published in mid-April as an eBook and a paperback.
Thank you for reading, and thank you Dani…
Jude
Title: A Share in a Secret
Series: Book 5, County Durham Quad Series
Author: Jude Tresswell
Publishing details: Self-published
Length 63,000 words; 228 pages
Formats: ebook (Kindle) and paperback
Release date: April 2020
blurb
Mike, Ross, Raith and Phil are a gay, polyamorous quad who live in County Durham, North-East England. Mike’s nephews visit, and launch the quad into a tale involving inclusivity and investment scams, false arrest, and a desperate attempt to keep a dangerous secret hidden.
Nick Seabrooke is now living and working in the village. Can the quad navigate the complexities of a sexual-asexual relationship? They’d risk their safety for each other. Are they willing to do so for Nick?
This is the fifth story in the County Durham Quad series. Background information is included within the story-line for new readers.
Buy link:
Jude Tresswell is married and has grown up children. She lives in South-East England, but like her four gay protagonists, she is from Northern England. She misses the wild, moorland scenery that is the stories’ setting! Unlike the quad, she identifies as asexual. She introduced Nick Seabrooke (in Book 3, Ace in the Picture) partly because she wanted to see more aces represented in fiction. Jude is particularly interested in asexual/sexual relationships and has recently produced a YouTube video that explores the issue. It contains 200 photographs of Northern England. They form the backdrop to a short audio story. (https://youtu.be/M6xSuQ9utWg )
Jude blogs at polyallsorts.wordpress.com There are posts about polyamory, asexuality, queer history – all sorts of off-shoots from the stories.
Goodreads Author Page link: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17706061.Jude_Tresswell