by Mike Klaassen

Created on: February 15, 2010   Last Updated: April 07, 2010

“One of the most important functions of dialogue is characterization," states Randall Silvas in The Writer (February 1985).  "Through his own words, a character comes alive.  Through his own words, a character defines himself and reveals who he is . . . ."

Dialogue can provide the reader with critical information about each character:

* Background

* Personality

* Values

* Attitude

* Goals

* Motivation

* Emotion

Nancy Kress, in Dynamic Characters, offers insight into characterization, especially about the relationship between dialogue and a character's thoughts: "What your character thinks about helps to create his personality for the reader.  So does how he thinks: in what words, with what sentence structure, with what level of grammatical correctness.  The result of this matching of diction, sentence structure and level of sophistication to a character's personality is twofold.  First, a given character's dialogue and thoughts will end up sounding consistent with each other.  Second, the closer the distance between author and character, the more alike thoughts and dialogue sound." 

A character's thoughts (what he thinks and how he thinks) help the reader understand the character.  Likewise, a character's spoken words (what he says and how he says them) reflect that character's thoughts and provide insight into the character.  What a character says depends, of course, on the specific needs of each story and needn't be further addressed in this discussion.  But how a character speaks also shows the reader a lot about a character, and that warrants additional attention in several aspects:

* Distinctiveness

* Organic nature

* Mechanics

DISTINCTIVENESS

Many writing coaches agree that each character should have a distinct voice.  According to Gloria Kempton, in Dialogue, “Giving your character a particular manner of speech can go a long way in characterizing him and helping your reader recognize him when he appears onstage.  It distinguishes him from the other characters, setting him apart.”

William G. Tapply (The Writer, October 2008) advises writers to "Give each character - - even secondary ones - - a distinctive voice."  Stanton Rabin (The Writer, March 2009) notes that “If you cover up the names and just read the dialogue, you should still be able to tell which character is talking.  Your characters should be unique and speak in distinctly individual ways.”

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