Compelling Dialogue: It Takes the Human Voice

Quit hitting on you if you can’t give your dialogue the luster it needs and it keeps looking like something invented. You got what it takes to make your dialogue flow naturally: it’s your voice!

The human voice is the best possible medium for capturing the tone, mood and nuances within a line of dialogue. If the lines of dialogue are read aloud with a pinch of sincerity, the writer hears firsthand how his characters sound and can appropriately adjust their speeches to measure up with the convention of real conversation.

Photo Credit: northcoastpsychotherapy.com.au

The bottom line of the whole deal is the attempt to absorb a real life feel into the lines. Speaking out your written dialogues will drag the truth out of the closet so you can correctly evaluate whether your characters’ conversations are realistic or just plain vague and lifeless.

It is also an undisputed fact that hearing our write ups read out loud boosts our egos as writers. We learn the music in our words and are presented access in-between the rhythm and the sound of language to better judge and weed out the superficiality in our dialogue.

The human voice touches a chord within us all, and commands a lovely timbre of fearless daring. This is an achievement the written word can never aspire to. The more regularly we “hear” our art, the more easily we encounter opportunities to embroider our writer's voice with an authoritative edge. We know how close our dialogue is to life. But we are also led to notice the loose needlework–these are the termites that destroy the woodwork. Moreover, we can accurately tie up the loose ends and erase high-sounding phrases, which do not truly represent conventional mode of speaking.

Take a moment and reflect on the wide array of books you have read which have been adapted to movies. You are awakened to a deeper sense of understanding as your favorite characters come to life on television, you see it all in 3D; it is indeed flesh and blood. You no longer have to try and imagine how the dialogues sound. Seeing becomes believing with TV. God bless Philo Taylor Farnsworth!

By the way, Farnsworth invented television.

Maybe, I just gave another tip on giving life to dialogue. Purchase some really good book-to-movies and listen to the flow of dialogue. Then, go through the book all over again and see if you figured out the dialogue the first time you read it.

Words mean more than is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.

– Maya Angelou

So, how about it? Are you prepared to make your voice an instrument for enriching your dialogue?

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

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