Ha ha, what a story, Mark.

"people die if they are killed" Best dialogue when out of context hit all points 😂😂

You're tearing me APAHT, David!! **throws down water bottle**

Since you mentioned cliche idioms, I have to say, one cliche that I *ALWAYS* like is the person who can never say an idiom correctly. "It is as they say, the bag is now cat-less" "Do you mean, 'the cat is out of the bag'?" "That is what I said, no?"

This is why I initially subscribed, for the creative writing tips.

Confucius say: _”If feline spring from satchel, very hard indeed to return.”_

Rian Johnson and Disney need to watch this video because they fell into every trap you described here with the new Star Wars trilogy.

I did not hit her, it's bullshit! I did nawt!

I’ve been accused of writing cheesy dialogue by an ex girlfriend. I think she’s confusing cheesy and epic

Here's an example of expositional dialogue via 'Better Call Saul's writing staff: "How long have we been brothers?"

About the emotion talk, compare to a masterfully written movie like Once Upon a Time in the West. When Harmonica pays a visit to Wobbles after the initial confrontation of the movie (Wobbles arranged the meeting). Harmonica spends about 2 minutes of screen time beating the crap out of Wobbles, and then Bronson delivers a line... "You know Wobbles.....I'm kinda mad at you.". The delivery is perfect, sardonic and threatening at the same time, and the "here are my emotions" dialogue loses any potential cheesyness by punctuating a 2-minute long beating.

Oh, hey David!

As someone with Aspergers, dialogue is one of the hardest things for me to write.

That last piece of advice on writing good dialogue is golden! We create dramatized audiobooks and the novel is more of a by-product for us. As a result, we have always altered the novel while recording the audiobook! Not the entire plotline, but mostly dialogue. Sometimes things just sound 'off' and you don't know why. You want to fix the lines based on how they sound when you pronounce them. Recording your novel is also a great way to spot annoying word repetitions. That is why we can't publish a novel, not even on Patreon, before all of it has at least been recorded. As for how to avoid writing bad dialogue: just watch The Room and... don't do that. :-)

Love your videos, still have loads to watch and re-watch. Having contemplated with myself on writing a story stepping up from just writing music, I have fallen into so many of these traps already just in my mental framework, thank you for the good work.

I have Facebook friends who talk about their lives sometimes. They'd fit the description of hard men who've seen a lot of violence, but their defining characteristic is how quiet and restrained they are. Of course you get the punk kids who want a reputation but the real scary guys are the polite, softly spoken ones, whose reaction to a loud noise is for one hand to come up towards the sound, deflecting a potential attack, while the other flies to a concealed weapon. They don't go looking for trouble, and trouble tries to avoid them.

This helps my comic loads. Thank you! Really enjoying the storytelling advice videos.

You are tearing me apart David!

Another great video ---with some very valuable tips...

Anthony Stewart Head might be the best exposition actor out there. He had to tell Buffy the world ending conditions every episode or so. He always delivered.

Ah, the Wheel of Time series. The Moby Dick of fantasy.

watching folks talk about movies with bad character development brought me to your channel, awesome info.

These videos are very helpful and informative. Thanks!

I know an autistic heavy metal fan, and it's like his life revolves around metal, and bashing other genres. And once he starts talking about it, he just does not stop.

David, I have no interest in most topics you create videos on yet I cant stop watching :) Bravo

Thanks David this helps a lot!

When you mentioned Spider-Man I was so happy that you explained how and why his quips are good in the comics. I feel like the new content we are getting with Spider-Man just blows that quality about him out of the water. Making him very annoying and silly. I wish they would fix this along with all the other problems he has now adays.

The nutshell about expository dialogue is: don't disrespect your audience. Always be mindful of what your characters know and what they know other people know. Don't take lazy shortcuts that make your story easier to write but make the dialogue sound stilted and unnatural, like a Japanese anime. "Hey Tom, remember when dad died?" "Yeah, he was killed by the Empire, mother was very sad about it." "Now we will take revenge on the Empire." "Yes, we will, Bob."

This is very good advice. I sometimes edit for other writers and the main things they do wrong are over-characterization, small talk, and info-dump. I usually recommend that the author put the dialogue in scene where the characters are in action. If you're writing a fantasy, e.g., the man can sharpen his knife or sword or chop wood while the woman cuts vegetables for the pot.

Complementary videos for those interested in further conversation below. *Channel Criswell* - "The Social Network - Designing Dialogue": kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mt5_eKaA2b_Jipc.html *Jacob Krueger Studio* - "How to Write Great Dialogue": kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oq2ef9d-sK-zipc.html *The Walrus* - "Four Simple Rules for Writing Dialogue by Robert Wiersema": kzfaq.info/get/bejne/raeaZMtyrMmXqqc.html *StoryLogue* - "Robert McKee: 10 Problems To Avoid With Dialogue In Screenplays": kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gs2BlsRlvN6rfWg.html *Robert McKee* - "A Lesson by Robert McKee on 10 traits of faulty dialogue - Part 1": kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rqeYhsZnxtGygKM.html All featured in *Dark Pixel Gaming* channel's video "Writing And Dialogue - Final Fantasy XIII Discussion (Part 1)": kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g8WUjK91pqrbeok.html You're welcome, people. ^___^'

I would like to buy all of your work. This advice is great.

Good point about overcharacterization and Wheel of Time! I think you can see it in the first 4 books (action focused) vs most of the rest.

More story tips please!

Oh, hi David

Great info

Funny how I'm not even a real writer yet I instinctively avoid doing these flaws most of the time (I kinda skip over dialogue tho, but that's during action sequences cuz I'm kinda too lazy to write action sequences, but I can still avoid these problems when I'm doing the effort), at the same time when I was a lil kid I could guess math lessons way ahead of time, sometimes a year or two ahead, so I instinctively did the same with writing movies probably, I just watch stuff, understand the basic logic by connecting the dots and finding consistent rules

Thank you! I had a creative writing teacher who said you need to do all exposition through dialogue. My response was, "But the characters wouldn't stand around telling each other stuff they already know. That's not realistic!" A little exposition in the narrative can make a story so much easier to read.

"Are you an angel?"

Ready Player One made all these mistakes. So naturally it gets a movie. :)

Yep, I do like these tips and lists of stuff NOT to do... Of course, there's PLENTY of technique and tactics to take for building dialogue. I myself have a kind of system, especially for those conversations that are tougher in storyline. I see a few ideals about the methods in writing dialogue, but I haven't seen this listed just yet... First, I scratch out a sort of direction for the conversation. It's going to be helpful to get a firm idea of where you want to go with it. Along this general direction, I take some notes down about what NEEDS to be said, or rather "communicated"... Now, here's where I point out that any scene of interactions, there's more to communicating than just the dialogue. There's also body language, actions and gestures, and even (sometimes) more about what's NOT being said that holds greater meaning that what IS being said... aloud anyways... SO notes about what is COMMUNICATED, doesn't necessarily have to be about what to SAY. Second, I like to dig right into the process of the conversation. I go ahead and include the emotional stuff (knowing it gets removed) as dialogue and tease out how to literally SAY EVERYTHING... In script-writing they tend to call it "On the nose" dialogue, and it's only TERRIBLE technique if you leave it. So this is draft stuff, and you're doing it ENTIRELY to rewrite it better. (don't worry that's not hard...lolz) Third, I (personally) kind of tend to combine this with "forth" but for clarity, I'll separate it as it's own step. I take more notes... See, once I've got everything spoken out "On the nose", I read it and re-do my original notes based on "what's likely workable" (what can be fixed as normal human language) and what's irretrievably STUPID... or even just plain BAD... This set of notes, however, is all about HOW we're still going to communicate the points involved... It helps here, to have either colored ink pens and hilighters, OR you can collect multi-colored note-papers, even sticky-notes are good in multiple colors... You can color-code the notes here for "Stuff being said" and "Stuff being done" and "Essential facial expressions" and "Voice/Tone/Rhythm" and any other way to express a purposeful point where you might find it useful outside of direct speech or obvious character activity. Forth, I get the scene rewritten as a more complete whole piece. Using the second set of notes, I try to get everything said and explained for the reader with the intent of the conversation (goal) accomplished, and in a relatively realistic or human way of doing or saying it all. It's time-consuming and tedious as hell when you deal with stuff that isn't normal or at least "normal to you", but it also doesn't even have to be perfect yet. This is the step that gets the whole process to a first actually functioning scene with dialogue instead of an abstract concept of what you (writer) want the dialogue to say... BECAUSE sometimes what you think you want it to say, simply shouldn't be said "in so many words" with dialogue alone. AND I know, it sounds almost unreasonably heavy in labor. Keep in mind, this is for actually "difficult" conversational scenes. This isn't the obvious parts of story-based dialogue where a couple characters are tear-assing down the street in a stolen car on the wrong end of town in the middle of night being chased by a huge biker gang with machine guns... Everyone knows that kind of dialogue is going to be "overtly punchy" and full of profanity-laced one-liners and witty insults about everyone... This is a process for the deeper and more character-driven or plot-driven dialogue. It's about exposing enough information in a dense enough manner to bring the scene through to its goal, without insulting the reader's intelligence, screwing up the characters in their development or disrupting the whole story to go back and retcon a backstory that's already hopelessly out of proportion to the issues at hand. If you find yourself with a character backstory that's more interesting than the manuscript you're working on, YOU might have a bigger problem than one conversation is ever going to fix... but that's a whole different kettle of fish all together. In any case, I only share what I'd freely and happily give away. This was (after all) freely and happily shared with me... and I do wish anyone who even tries it, the very best of luck with it. Though a tad of caution, it does take practice and work, too. ;o)

Very helpfull!! thank God I found you

Yeah, you know, I really liked Needle and Ash, not for the plot, but for the characters and how they interacted with each other. I’m not going to wrk you off, I vaguely remember the plot barely being there except as a vehicle for the characters to exist. But the exhaustion of the battles, the implied aggravation with that time of desperation in some instances....grrrr, I was there with them, like a another Joe Footsoldier.

Him: talks about characters not shutting up about a certain subject making them awkward. Me who won't stop talking about movies:...

Indeed. The true character of a person is provoked or revealed by difficult or important events, not by the day-to-day, mundane activities.

Record your voice speaking the lines of dialogue and listen to it. If it sounds bad it probably is.

Oh hi, David! What's new with you?

I really appreciate your comment on over-characterization. When I write I often feel pressured to make each character always sound like themselves, so as not to produce "generic" dialogue, but now I'm thinking that might be a mistake. The hardest thing for me though is handling idioms. It's very difficult to write dialogue that sounds natural without occasionally resorting to idioms, but I have the hardest time choosing ones that seem appropriate to the characters without sounding cheesy. And if you're writing say, historical fantasy in a world with a unique religious system, it's really hard to choose the right expletives. They can't exactly say "oh my god!" or "what the hell do you think you're doing!" if you've written god and hell out of the story. Trying to make the characters say "zounds!" or "good gracious!" is just way too cheesy, and if the story's in a medieval setting you have anachronisms to worry about. You can't have a viking say he "blew his fuse" because they didn't have electrical fuses back then, and if you have him say he "lost his s - - -" it sounds like he's using modern slang that would be out of place in the middle ages. See what I mean?

audio books really show up bad dialog, and bad writing in general somehow. My pet peeve is writers who cant use anything other than said. 'hello' john said. 'hello' bob said. 'hello bob and john' fred said.

The thumbnail is so good :) and, as always, great content, David.

Thanks David, have you considered doing a video geared at younger aspiring writers? Young: like high school or jr high age? Maybe even aspiring elementary age kids. I have an 11 yr old who shows a great interest in story telling. So i am trying to translate some of your video topics to his level. (It's More bonding time for sure, hehe) Keep up the great work!!

The last wish, when Geralt confronts that monster at that cabin.. that was engaging. The house moves to the creatures commands, and his ol neighbors run in terror, but even Geralt has to stick around to see wtf this gruesome monster has to say. Gregor the overlander, read that when I was younger and the characters did kinda dull the moment with talking, but the villain-ish character in the group lightens the situation if it gets to dark. Books with depth haha XD

Well i sometimes use lines like "I'm scared" though usually in inner Monologe like thoughts. Or later in dialog. Like i had a scene i still liked despite outspoken emotionsq. Like her being threatened by a fellow student. She clearly states "I've been scared. I'm still scared" while her boyfriend is like "I'll better stay right here. Or I'll do something stupid" though i admit that is just the dialog the scene itself had body language. Like her crying making herself small while he's literally shaking. So here it was on purpose. Cause well that scene is pretty much leading up to the main conflict. Or better the big blow up. Cause the conflict is given it's school life all through the story (in that genre conflict pretty much must be clear on the third line of text) but when finally something happens it needs setup. Like aggression can't come out of nowhere. That scene was meant to build that aggression up. So if talking about emotions makes sense characterwise and is helpful to the plot. It's a good thing as long as emotions are also shown and as long as there are other emotions visible. Or functional parts of the relationship between characters. Like lisa my main character getting closer to her boyfriend. Talking about emotions imho is alright if it is human and it doesn't make the character feel one-dimensional

I have a question: If you have eg. a Isekai world of some sort (Protagonist lands in a different world) and a character gives information on eg the world to the protagonist, that doesn't know anything about that world, is that a dialogue sin and how can you avoid stuff like that without leaving the reader with too many questions about the world the story takes place?

The dialogue test is a good one. "Would a human say this?" could of saved many bad genre flicks.

Robert McKee’s Dialogue and Story novels. There you go I saved you a lot of questions.

Hi. Do you have video about how to differentiate dialog and thought process (thoughts) at the same time for same character? Could I use simple italics for thoughts and normal font for dialog?

I could be forgiving of the Senate expediting to Amidala if Amidala would be like "I may be young, but I know what's going on. Stop treating me like a kid"

an interesting idea of how to find out if your exposition works or not is the "dead mother setting". So basically how it works is you find a way to inform the viewer, or reader, or whatever that a character's mother is dead in the most natural way possible. You change the original message you wanted to give to this dead mother. Does it work? Does it seem natural? If so, great, if not rewrite it. I'm not gonna give any examples ,bc I'm no writer, I just learned this through watching youtube videos

Woop sub, excellent channel

I recite it all in my head, if it feels cheesy or stupid, down the chopping block it goes!

Hey David Stewart, without giving me to much information/personal, how much money do you make it ebook sales? Roughly enough to cover the cost of making more? Or is it really a passion project? I want an idea what I could expect.

What about working with fictional cultural and societal normative traits in dialog, where it is partially influenced by reality (unavoidable) but lax in terms of adhering to it? Like for example I make a fictional representation of something akin to feudal Japan called Yipon or something, allow for some influences like say architecture, government and general popular trends from Japan to signify that but at the same token allow for phrases like "cat's outta the bag" to be said as a typical phrase. Would that be acceptable or would it be too jarring to the audience?

I'm not disagreeing with you at all but as I watched with video I thought of a couple of movies that (at least to me) seemed to break these guidelines but still somehow came across as great movies: "Burn After Reading" and "The Big Lebowski". I still remember walking out of "The BIg Lewbowski" and wondering WTF was the point of that movie but at the same time loving it. In both the movies I mentioned it seems like the whole story was completely pointless and the characters just bumbled about foolishly and almost randomly. It was all characterization with no meaningful plot but still the movies were interesting and entertaining. (I loved both.)

This reading-out-loud thing does only partly work for my story because it's High Fantasy and in that world there are other languages. That means through reading it out loud I only know what it sounds like for the reader, but not for the characters.

Damn i didn't make any of those mistskes. I must be pretty good ( I am). Would love to see some more stuff about realistic novels. Cheers

'The cat's out of the bag' is from Medieval Europe where some produce was sold in sacks. Some merchants cheated and put cats instead, since these would be cheaper than some produce. 'Never buy a pig in a poke' (a poke being a bag or sack) meaning 'Never buy something you don't know what it is' also comes from this practice. Anyway, as the narrator says, using this phrase in Feudal Japan would be incorrect but it is acceptable for historical novels set in Medieval Europe.

When I read the first Harry Potter book (as a dad) it was a bit raw but it was fun with some great ideas and some sound morality. By the time I got to the fourth book and characters were STILL SHOUTING IN CAPITALS instead of using language to explain the mood and I found that Harry had become this whiney brat and that frankly I was hoping that Voldemort would kill him I realised that it was time to read the kids something else.

Actually exposition is something ive been struggling with for a particular book im writing, this ome has an enpurmas backstory and there are certain things that the reader needs to know relatively early into the start of it and i just cant find a way to relay that to them and i definitely want to avoid the page 1 wall of text

Or using using very modern words like Gender for the social sex in a American Civil War era Novel or earlier. They didn't use that word in that sense even in 1926 and now you expect us to believe that a Character in the 1860's talked like that? I've seen that a few times and it just destroy's immersion.

Agree on WOT dialogue. The books could be halved and be a much better story. Some of the books are almost just meaningless dialogue. Two or three books could have been successfully compressed into one book and then some. Need a readers digest edition. :-) Oh and the following books after Dune. Got to the end of one and must have missed the actual story.

I would agree about expositional dialogue. However, I wonder whether some readers actually need stuff spelled out for them. Like if they don't have the intellect to infer things. I remember when I was a little kid I read a book, St Winifred's or The World of School, by Dean Frederic Farrar. When the head boy was disciplining one of the villain boys, another monitor says this: "He's very plucky and firm. But he's so dictatorial and unpersuasive." Even when I was ten, I would have replied: "Shut up. I could infer that for myself." But many audiences can't seem to grasp anything which is subtle. With one of my essay pieces, the heroine has a devious sister, but everyone except my clique on fictionpress took her literally.

Tyler Perry is an example of feelings

I've been working to write only dialogue that drives the narrative and not just because it sounds cool. I read lots of mundane or overly emotive dialogue for the situation. I don't care if Lisa doesn't want to take out the garbage and tells her parents so. I only care if when she's in the act of doing it, she gets eaten midsentence!

Dialogue is one of the hardest things to write rofl.

Now that I think about it, most of the books I've read have a lot more narration, description and monologue than dialogue.

Nice advise, but the entire time, I was a bit distracted by this manly man with these beautiful nails.

Oh Haii David. hehehe...you are so funny David (insert weird accent)

I miss the old plain white cover of Muramasa. :-'(

If you're not familiar with common idiom and slang of the period or people, just write in plain English. Your audience can fill in character with their imaginations.

Star wars is awessome and a great cultural icon. Everybody should see it. However, lets agree, the writting is really just ok

you know what phrase I am always bothered by?: "Fateful day". Just no. NO.

Sad this is 101 stuff and hollywood doesnt do it.

Read it out loud but try not to do it while marching up a hill with your dog with a woman in earshot while you are talking about how your prosthetic arm has a gun in it.

I disagree with what you said about Wheel of Time personally, at least when it came to Perrin, but only because he's my favorite character, I see your point otherwise.

Ahahahahaha. What a story David. Anyway, how is your sex life? In all seriousness, this was a good video. Keep up the good work man.

You forgot the scene where Hux says "We'll destroy the government that funds the Resistance, the Republic. Without their support, the Resistance will be vulnerable". And then Snoke says to Kylo "The droid is in the hands of your father, Han Solo."

I did not hit her!

Not dialogue per sé, but it's very annoying when everything that everyone says is emphasized as them saying it. "I don't see anything." Says Tom. Peter turns and says: "Look, over there, by the bushes." "Oh thére," says Tom and walks over to the contraption. "Careful," says Peter. Etc etc.

oh, hi daaaahvid.

I couldn't disagree more on your Episode I example. Sitting around and discussing what the Trade Federation would do and talking about the corruption of the Senate is exactly what Amidala and her ministers would and I know that because it's the exact kind of conversation that real world people have about politics and current events everyday. "X politician/party/government/company is like this, so they're going to do y in response to this event" is something just about everyone who's ever talked politics has said and heard from someone else whether everybody in the conversation knew what the subject is like already or not.

I have different two kinds of dialogue I've gotten to the point of recognizing enough to dislike. Joss Whedon dialogue is witty or cynical dialogue where the characters are saying something biting and on point in any situation. It's particularly difficult to stomach when the characters are in a life or death situation and coming out with carefully formulated retorts and remarks. But what ruins this kind of story telling is all your characters end up sounding like spoilt teenage girls. I end up wanting to tell them off for being stupid. A far more common and far more annoying kind of dialgoue is the stereotypical stilted dramatic hollywood lines. American media in general has this insanely annoying way of over-pronouncing every sentence coming out of someone's mouth (for ease of understanding perhaps), followed by a short pause, followed by a response that's about as far away from a conversation as one can get. When people are in a conversation, particularly one they're actively interested in, there isn't that sentence-pause-response structure, people tend to intersperse what they want to say or respond immediately after a sentence. Many people go so far as clipping into the presumably last word of a sentence to get their point across. English media and to a lesser extent international media more realistically remove these awkward pauses in dialogue and are more willing to talk in the varied cadence that nearly anyone that isn't a news caster talks in. Some people talk so fast that what they're saying is more implied than certain and youtube auto-generated subtitles is actually the perfect example that people rarely properly speak words, muddling R's and D's, forgetting to apply 'S' and yet we have no issue understanding them. A significant aspect of speech that goes unnoticed is people's innate ability to translate something someone said by understanding the context and direction of someone's speech (something youtube auto-translate does not do, hence being innacurate). On the other hand lots of canned media for TV and film scarily close to a robot pretending to be human. It's particularly egregious that they use this kind of careful cadence and over-pronunciation in dramatic moments, innately removing the vast majority of emotion or intent they're attempting to convey in the character. I don't even need to list any particular examples, once pointed out, the majority of western or Hollywood content is packed full of robotic language, it seems to be trained into media personnel and actors and sounds absolutely awful. In the modern age I'd have to say it's the biggest issue I have with dialogue.

David, keep your stupid comments in your pocket!

do you think i can use "yo mama" in a medieval setting? XD

Maybe George Lucas will Watch this...

Bro! You gotta cut your nails man! :D

So calling someone racist is calling someone a thought criminal--but aren't you calling us thought criminals for calling people racist?

David, you are either really afraid of strike on your channel do to vulgarity or you are really liked mannered. :)

Anime breaks every one of these rules. Finally I have a good, concise video to explain why anime sucks so much. Thank you!

DISAPPOINTED!!!