George Angus, Tumblemoose Writer

From: Buena Vista Entertainment

For a lot of writers, the act of writing dialogue binds them up so that they are not able to make any kind of progress in their otherwise pretty good book.  Those writers are the lucky ones.  They KNOW they suck.  For a lot of others, it’s not so much the writer’s bad luck, but their readers.  If you get my drift.

Great dialogue sings.  It moves the story, it builds character and characters and when done well can make for impact like nothing else.  If good writing is “show” and not “tell”, then dialogue is show and narrative is tell.  Which is not to say that narrative is a bad thing of course.  Narrative is necessary and when done well, is the compliment to dialogue.

Bad dialogue is stunted, unbelievable and does nothing to move the characters or story forward.  Remember, The story moves, or the readers move on. A genuine Tumblemoose truism right there folks.  You’re welcome.

When you write a stretch of dialogue, take the time to make it sound as natural as possible for the characters.  You know how your characters sound in your head, it’s your job as a writer to put that down on paper so that the reader gets a true sense of who is doin’ the talkin’.

I remember the very first Stephen King book I ever read.  It was The Shining in paperback.  Do you know why I bought it?  It was because it had a shiny silver cover.  Oh, gimmee a break, ok?  I was all of 15.  What I liked about the book while I was reading it was the unique dialogue that brought all of the characters to life.  Who could forget “Redrum!”?  I was hooked.  Even to this day, I think it is King’s unique ability to dialogue that keeps me coming back again and again.

I’d like some mustard with them biscuits, mmm-hmm

One of my fav movies of all time is Slingblade.  Billy Bob Thornton did such a remarkable job with Karl’s character.  In a movie we have the advantage of being able to see all of Karl’s mannerisms.  I reckon a great deal of those mannerisms contribute to make Karl the unique character that he is.

I would put to you that another large part of the impression has to do with Karl’s dialogue -  the manner in which he speaks, and the words that he uses.

Slingblade was an original screenplay, it was not adapted from a book.  I think it would be an interesting challenge to write a snippet or so of Karl dialogue so I am proposing:

The Slingblade dialogue exercise

Here is my challenge to you.  I think it could be a lot of fun.  I want us to write a continuing dialogue between Karl and any of the other characters in the movie.  I’ll start at the bottom of this post to give an idea of the flavor of the exercise.  I’d like you to post a continuation of the conversation in your comment based on the previous comment left by a fellow Tumblemoose reader.

There is no right or wrong here.  Think of it as an exercise in FanFiction that we are all going to participate in to move a story forward.  Approach it from the mindset that someone is going to read this having never seen the Slingblade movie and at the end, they will be able to pick Karl out of a lineup.

Dan rested his arm on the rail of the rusted old Ford Step-Side, yanked his hat and wiped his sweaty brow with his forearm. “Karl, come on over here and get this tiller out of the truck, will ya?”

The baggy denims were worn too high on Karl’s waist, and in the thick heat, most anyone else would have been sweating bulletts in those stifling jeans.  Karl’s deliberate and hunched cadence got him to the truck and he had not one drop of sweat on his head.

“Thanks, Karl.  Mr. Deeder needs it back by Thursday, you think you can manage that?”

Karl shuffled a glance down and a glance to the right.  “I reckon Thursday will do. I’ve tinkered a might bit with one before, mmm-hmm.”

So, there you have it.  Don’t be shy, give it a whirl.