The Importance of Realistic Dialogue in Fiction

When reading fiction, especially popular fiction written within the last fifty years, one thing that I look out for is realistic dialogue. Writers and readers alike may underestimate the importance of realistic dialogue, but for me it can be the difference between loving a book and deciding it's nothing special. Many times I have picked up a book and found the blurb on the back or on the inside cover fascinating, but upon opening it to read a few pages, found the dialogue unbearably stilted and unrealistic. Why, you may ask, if a book is so interesting, would I put it down only due to affected dialogue?

The answer is simple. The stiff dialogue tends to be so distracting to me that it takes away from the entire story. Using eighteen syllable words in the narrative is not distracting at all, but using those words when a character begins to talk is near senseless unless that character is a highly educated one and speaking within the context - meaning said character is either pompous or has occasion to use such words in conversation. This is not to say large words should be altogether avoided in dialogue - I only think it is a mistake made by many otherwise good authors. For instance, though I did enjoy the V.C. Andrews' "Flowers in the Attic," at times Andrews wrote the children's dialogue as though they were fifteen years older than they were and had issues with using contractions in everyday speech. As the series continued, the dialogue seemed to become more natural; I found the books got easier to read as well.

A character who is part of a gang is not likely to describe someone as "lovely." It is not entirely impossible that this would occur, merely very unlikely and not quite believable. Even a highly educated character is unlikely to say "He crept about until he located the jewelry." It would be more probable that a regular Joe would just say something like "He sneaked [or the more commonly used, but somewhat incorrect 'snuck'] around till he found the jewelry." The difference is that one piece, when read quickly, sounds much like the narrative and might well be confused for the narrative. The second piece of dialogue is a bit more realistic and you can tell it is not part of the narration.

Antiquated novels can get away with this because people did, in fact, speak differently then, and we don't have a precise point of reference to indicate what conversational vocabulary and patterns were like. Thus, when we read books from that period of time, we cannot and do not automatically compare the speech to that of today, being fully aware that our conversational language has evolved so much since the printing of the book. Stilted dialogue coming from a hundred-year-old book is to be expected (though I must state that Mark Twain's incredibly written dialogue is a notable exception). Stilted dialogue coming from authors who grew up after a certain period of time is actually somewhat surprising to me - all it takes is a good listen to what's going on around you to understand how people talk.

Authors I have noticed who write particularly good dialogue are always in my good graces because believable dialogue can be more evocative than SAT type words scattered throughout the story. Stephen King, for one, is quite talented at the art of dialogue - like him or not, most of the dialogue he has written since his earliest novels has been quite realistic. A character simply says what he or she means (unless, of course, this is not in their nature), and we understand it because that is how we speak. James Patterson, another popular author, has mastered fairly well the art of realistic dialogue. In a series he wrote about children ("Maximum Ride"), I was impressed by his understanding of what words children will and won't use, and the context in which they will use them. Patricia Cornwell (if you aren't reading about the characters at work) also writes dialogue fairly well.

Amazingly enough, many of the authors who write dialogue well are either popular or write what may be widely considered to be "trash." The reason why may be that realistic dialogue so increases the readability of books that it also affects the popularity. The better the dialogue, the easier it is to read, and the more likely people are to buy it. J.K. Rowling's phenomenally popular "Harry Potter" series is a great example of this - her characters spoke eloquently and even colorfully at times, but rarely did they speak as though they had lived in an enclosed room for the entirety of their lives and only been given nineteenth century books to read. Romance novelists and today's equivalent to penny dreadful authors tend to be rather artful with dialogue, at least in the sense that they only write dialogue the way we talk. They don't try to make it fancy because neither do we, unless we're trying to impress someone. I think all authors (even the pretentious or "artsy" ones) could take a leaf out of the books of the bestsellers.