-1
Overheard a writing teacher say dialogue should sound like a tennis match
I was sitting near a table at a coffee shop downtown where a writing teacher was coaching a student, and he said dialogue should feel like a tennis match with each line hitting back something unexpected. He gave an example where one character asks a simple question and the other responds with a completely unrelated observation about the weather. Has anyone else tried this approach to make their conversations feel more real?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
lee_butler2mo ago
...but I was literally just texting my buddy Josh about this exact thing. He's been trying to write a short story and kept complaining his characters sound like robots reading a script. So he tried the whole tennis match thing where one character asks about dinner and the other goes 'did you see that weird bird on the porch?' It actually made the conversation feel way more real, like how people actually talk when they're not trying to get to the point. He said his beta readers finally stopped saying the dialogue felt stiff.
3
marywells2mo ago
Right? It's like real life conversations are just a series of dropped threads and tangents. I once watched my mom ask my dad if he wanted coffee and he just stared at a squirrel for like ten seconds before going "that's a fat one." People act like dialogue has to be this perfect little tennis match but really it's more like two people throwing rubber chickens at each other in a hurricane. Makes me wonder how any of us manage to order food without somehow talking about the weird bird on the porch.
3
saraho482mo ago
Really good point about the non-sequiturs. My best dialogue came from times I just let characters interrupt each other with random stuff instead of answering directly. Takes practice to get the timing right though.
2