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A beta reader told me my dialogue was too "on the nose" and it wrecked me for a week
She said none of my characters talk like real people, they just say exactly what they're feeling and thinking. I spent 3 days just listening to how people actually talk at a coffee shop in Portland and realized she was right. Has anyone else had that moment where a piece of feedback completely flipped how you write something?
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margaret9917d ago
wrecked me for a week" lol yeah i get that. here's the thing nobody talks about though: real people actually DO talk on the nose sometimes, especially when they're angry or scared or drunk. my beta told me the same thing and i went overboard making everyone talk all vague and weird. but then i watched my roommate get into a fight with her boyfriend and she literally screamed "YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME" which is like the most on the nose thing ever. people in real life are bad at communicating but they also just blurt stuff out when emotions are high. so now i save the direct stuff for big moments and let the small talk be all roundabout and boring. has helped a ton.
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the_patricia17d ago
Nah sorry, I gotta push back on the "YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME" thing. That's not real dialogue, that's a script. Real people in fights don't shout complete sentences with perfect grammar. They stutter. They repeat themselves. They trail off. My sister and her husband argue all the time and it's mostly "you just... ugh FINE" and "whatever" and slamming doors. That fight you watched probably had like five minutes of build up before she screamed that line. And your roommate was probably crying and shaking too. The line alone sounds fake without the mess around it.
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