On a guest post on the argh ink blog (here), Jane Espenson gives some tips on dialogue. She knows whereof she speaks, having written for Buffy, The Gilmore Girls, Battlestar Galactica and more. Here's what she says about learning how to learn to write good dialogue:
"Good dialogue-writing skills are partly inborn, I believe, stemming from a good ear for how people talk. But a lot of it is certainly learnable. If you want a character to tell another character “I missed you,” but that’s just too bald a statement for this particular person to make, have them say, “I really– You were gone a long time.” There. By having them start a sentence they never finished, the audience will figure out what they were going to say and pulled back from. This is actually a special case of a larger rule-of-thumb: people get less articulate, not more, when they’re emotionally moved. Want to write an emotional moment? Increase your quotient of stumbles and restarts."
Great tip!
She also has something to say about exposition (avoiding): "Relax and let the reader figure out what’s going on as the scene unfolds. It’s all right for people to be a little confused. They’ll pick it up. Ever join Law and Order 15 minutes in? It’s a totally plot-driven show, and of course they’re making no effort to catch you up… but you do catch up. Readers and viewers are better than we give them credit for at dredging their own exposition out of our words."
