Free Dynamic Characters by Nancy Kress

also applies to accents. ''Those are your papers of identification, isn't it?'' is preferable to the fake French of ''Zat ees yourrr papeeyas of. . . how you say it? Bah! . .. l'identification, n'est-ce pas?" Only the staunchest reader will stick with you through pages of that stuff.
    SHE JUST GOES ON AND ON: HOW MUCH DIALOGUE DO YOU NEED TO CHARACTERIZE SOMEONE?
    It depends. Whom are you characterizing?
    You can reveal character not only through what a person says, but through how much they say. Does your protagonist hoard words as if they were gold pieces? Does she have verbal diarrhea? or is she somewhere in between?
    The taciturn character can come across as ''the strong silent type,'' or as uninterested in communicating with other people, or as in a very bad mood. Let us know which is correct through the content of the dialogue. In other words, quality and quantity should work together to characterize. Is this guy Gary Cooper, or is he James L. Page in John Gardner's October Light, who ''was never a great talker—not like her, she'd lecture your arm off'' (her is James's sister).
    Similarly, volatility can indicate nervousness, self-centeredness or just high spirits. Is your great talker like Miss Bates, Jane Austen's spinster lady in Emma, who can rattle on for entire content-free pages, out of sheer pleasure in having company? or is she more like Anne Tyler's Muriel (The Accidental Tourist) who also overwhelms her listeners with a flood of talk, but because she's so desperate to make human connections? or is your talker like W. Somerset Maugham's Hayward (Of Human Bondage), who gives his opinions on and on because in his heart he believes he's the only one who possesses any valid opinions?
    Let us know.
    THE LAST WORD, ALMOST
    Writing dialogue is a balancing act. Dialogue that characterizes is artificially informative—but not implausibly so. It indicates background—unless the character is trying not to do so. It's consistently interesting—except for the occasional brief break to discuss mundane topics that establish verisimilitude. It's emotional and individual—but not so much of either that it becomes parody. How do you learn this balancing act? The same way you learn everything else about writing—through reading authors you admire, and through practice. Write a lot of dialogue. Read it aloud. See how it sounds to you and to other people whose ear you trust. Rewrite it. Write some more.
    And as if it weren't enough to concentrate on the content of a character's speech, you also need to think about its presentation. More on that in the next chapter. Meanwhile, the last word on using dialogue to characterize comes from a master of the art, Mark Twain:
    When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the circumstances, and have a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.
    SUMMARY: USING DIALOGUE TO CHARACTERIZE
    • Rather than telling us what your characters are like, let them reveal themselves through what they say about their own tastes, hopes, dreams, prejudices, goals and worldviews, and their view of the other characters in the novel.
    • Supplement dialogue with punctuation and narrative to fill in nonverbal clues.
    • Make your characters speak consistently—but don't be rigid about it. Everyone alters his speech for different audiences and circumstances.
    • Use dialect and accents with a light hand.
    • Remember that how much your character speaks works along with the content of his speech to create a definite impression in readers' minds.
    Good dialogue, everyone agrees, seems natural. Note the verb: It seems natural. But, in fact, it's not.
    Consider great beauty. The Parthenon, perhaps. Or Sophia Loren. Or Babe