Bad Dialogue

I’ll be honest here, I have no idea what good dialogue sounds like.  I can’t write good dialogue, and I can’t judge it, either.  But here’s the thing, I don’t think you can, either.

A few years ago I read a book about writing, by Orson Scott Card.  At one point he gave an example of dialogue.  While reading it, I found myself thinking, “Wow, I wish I could write dialogue that realistic.”  Then, after the example, he said it was obviously an example of bad dialogue.  This means one of two things:  Either my own dialogue is so bad that I aspire to one day be as good as a bad example, or my own dialogue is actually better than I think it is, because it’s not similar to that which would be considered bad.  But either way, I’m not a good judge of dialogue, and I’m definitely not qualified to write a blog entry about bad dialogue.  But here we are.

Of course, I don’t really respect Mr. Card’s opinions any more.  Putting aside his political views for a moment, I’m really no longer sure he’s that great a writer.  Ender’s Game was brilliant, but a lot of people have one good story in them.  I’d say he’s more like how most people see George Lucas – he had a few good ideas when he was younger, then he spent the rest of his life milking them dry.  There are nearly 20 books in the Ender’s Game series now, and exactly one good one. 

Okay, I can’t really say that, since I’ve only read six of them.  But from the ones I’ve read, none of the Ender’s sequels and spin-offs match the creativity and fun that the original had.  And I found plenty of examples of bad dialogue.  But I’m getting off track, here.  I didn’t come here to complain about OSC, I came to complain about people who complain about bad dialogue.

First I want to draw a line between “realistic” and “good” dialogue.  Realistic dialogue is not good, and can sometimes render a movie unwatchable.  In real  life, people cough, they stutter, they interrupt themselves when they get a new thought, they repeat themselves, they say sieve instead of sleeve and stop to correct themselves, they skip words in response to their target’s body language, they repeat themselves, they leave sentences dangling like…

This is a realistic paragraph:  “Hey, John, did you… Oh, I see you already have… okay, so… *cough* sorry.  I was wondering if you had the – do you remember last week when I put the red rolder – I mean folder - in my drawer and – no, wait, I think it was the orange one – because it’s not… never mind, I remember Sheryl had to borrow it.”  This is exactly the kind of thing I hear around my office, and it’s awful.  If real life were a movie, half the dialogue would get put in the gag reel.

So no, people don’t actually want realistic dialogue.  For my money, there’s two kinds of good dialogue – invisible and snappy.  Invisible dialogue is just neutral.  There’s nothing distinctive about it, and you don’t notice the writing at all.  This is great for movies where the dialogue isn’t the focus.  I prefer snappy – the kind of bantering you see in Moonlighting or The Road to El Dorado.  This dialogue is in no way realistic, as very few humans are that consistently clever.  But it is entertaining, which is the reason we watch TV and movies in the first place.

It's all relative.  When adults try to write teenagers, they often use what they think is current slang.  But if adult writers think this is how teens talk, then adult viewers might too.  So you end up with teen movies where adult viewers think the dialogue is realistic, but actual teens burst into tears laughing at the same scenes.  When I was a kid in the 80s, I always thought it was funny how kids talked in some movies.  At school we would do impressions of valley girls, but we never met one in real life.  I don’t know, maybe they actually existed in Hollywood, where these scripts are usually written.  Sometimes Hollywood slang is hilariously out of date, and sometimes it actually influences viewers to start using the words. 

Voice acting is probably even harder, because adults are often doing children’s voices.  At least on a sitcom a teenage actor might point out their difficulty with a line, because it doesn’t sound like something a real teen would say.  But in a cartoon that type of situation would fly by unchecked. 

And video games probably have it the worst.  Lines sometimes have to be recorded one line at a time, because different events might trigger the same line.  It’s hard to make dialogue flow when the voice actor isn’t able to directly reply to the last voice actor’s line.  People having an actual conversation tend to match each other’s tone and volume, but video game conversations can be jumpy and erratic.  Thankfully things have gotten a lot better since the first Resident Evil, but they’re still not perfect.

I sometimes hear video game dialogue described as “full of cringe.”  If I saw someone use “cringe” that way on TV, I would dismiss that as bad dialogue.  But I see kids use the term unironically on the internet all the time.  I don’t like to pull the age card, but if you describe bad dialogue as “full of cringe”, then you’re too young to judge the quality of dialogue. 

So where was I?  Anyway, I just don’t think I can trust anyone’s opinion on whether dialogue is realistic, because actual humans range from walking dictionaries to people who randomly shout “Mandibles and Freon!” for no reason.  The only thing less realistic than movie dialogue is actual real life dialogue.  So don’t strive for realism, strive for the minimum amount of noticeable cheese.  If you’re hoping your movie is quotable, fine, just remember that meme-ability can be a blessing or a curse.  For every “I’ll be back” there’s an “I hate sand.”  And you can quote me on that.