That one dude at the open mic who changed how I write dialogue

Last year at a poetry slam in Austin, this older guy named Phil came up to me after I read a piece. He said "your words are pretty but they don't sound like real people talk." Then he told me to eavesdrop at a diner for an hour and write down exact conversations. I did it at a Waffle House on 6th street and realized my characters all sounded like me instead of themselves. Has anyone else had a stranger give them writing advice that actually worked?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_thea27d ago

That diner trick is gold. Phil nailed it. I did something similar after a writing workshop in Nashville. The instructor made us go to a bar and just record people at the next table. Felt creepy at first but it worked. My characters went from sounding like college essays to actual humans who interrupt each other and forget words. You're right about that survival trick too. I caught myself doing it on Reddit for years. Wrote the same bland way everyone else did. Polished. Safe. No edges. It kept me from getting roasted but it killed any real voice I had. Real talk is messy. People ramble. They repeat themselves. They say "uh" and "like" and trail off mid sentence. That Waffle House conversation changed everything. Now my dialogue has pauses and stutters and people talking over each other. Sounds like life.

murphy.aaron27d ago

Man, it's wild how we all talk in the same voice until someone points it out.

lindag3327d ago

Has it ever crossed anyone's mind that this "same voice" thing is actually a survival trick we all picked up online... like how animals blend into their surroundings? We learned to talk this way so we wouldn't stick out and get picked on or ignored. It's kind of sad when you think about it, because it means we're all hiding our real selves behind this safe, generic tone. Makes you wonder what we're all really thinking when we're not trying to sound like everyone else.