How to Write 'Dialogues'

Hello Friends... 

Sure, we all are doing well... Be careful, we must stay fit and shouldn't fall ill getting our studies affected. We shall eat and drink healthy, exercise regularly, and won't avoid our domestic and social responsibilities. And whatever time we get for ourselves at the end of the day, we must study hard for most of the time, so that we learn to think... and learn. We simply cannot afford to stop thinking, for we are learners, and we are the chosen ones who got the scope to learn... 

Let's learn to think first...

Before we start discussing how to write a dialogue, I feel it necessary to discuss the term 'dialogue' itself first. What aspects of meaning do you think are included by the term?

Dialogue

Dialogue is actually a piece of communication [mostly oral as in our common day-to-day social transactions, and sometimes written as in the scripts of a drama or cinema] that involves multiple participants. In other words, to put it in a simpler way, whenever we communicate to share our feelings and thoughts, we build up a dialogue. Whenever you have a chat with your dear friend not paying attention to the classroom activities, you are building up a dialogue, orally of course. And as your teacher tries to get you back to the activities, s/he also requires to build up a dialogue with you. Right?

Participants

Have you noticed the use of 'we'? Yes, a dialogue, in sharp contrast to a monologue, always involves multiple active participants. You can hence have two at the least, or more participants in a dialogue who continually switch between being a speaker and a listener. Obviously you don't expect everyone to speak at the same time [save some occasions, though]. It is not so that it doesn't happen in reality, but whenever it happens so, it ceases to be a dialogue and ends up being a chaotic commotion. 

Form

Is a dialogue supposed to develop differently if it is different in its form,- oral or written? Yes, that’s the obvious question we need to address. Well, you know… in oral communication, we often speak impromptu, but if a dialogue is scripted/written down, we get the chance to edit it. That really counts, doesn’t it?

Playing All the Roles

And when you are writing a dialogue, often you choose to write alone. In the exam hall, you are often compelled to write alone. At the same time you must remember that often authors choose to write their own scripts without collaborating with others. That means you are left all alone to voice on behalf of all the characters you include in the dialogue you develop. Well, it may seem to be a bit tricky, but is not so. We often assume how others will react as we talk to them, don’t we? So you already know what they might say...

Meaning And Its Factors

Now it's time to discuss the aspects of meaning included in a dialogue. We build up a dialogue with the specific objective of negotiating a meaning. Therefore it's not just important for all the participants to speak, rather it's important for all the speakers to speak meaningfully in a dialogue. This obviously requires all the speakers to be good and attentive listeners as well. Otherwise, they won't be able to dispense further meaning into the dialogue they all together are building up. If they fail to add meaning, the dialogue ends up being a noisy commotion, meaning nothing. A successful dialogue is possible only when the participants listen to each other and respond back sensibly.

The Relationship between/among the Speakers

Well, think of any realistic example from your own life where you actually communicated with somebody and built up a dialogue together to discuss something meaningful. It might be a dialogue between you and your teacher discussing some doubt of yours. Or, it might be a dialogue between you and your friend where you discussed the same doubt as above. Do you feel that the relations between the speakers [you and your teacher in the first case, and you and your friend in the other] had some influence upon the way the dialogues were built up?

Topics of Discussion

What happens when the same participants build up dialogues on different topics? Think of the dialogue again that you had developed with your friend on some doubt of yours. Think of some other dialogue that you had developed with the same friend of yours where you just wanted to appreciate your friend's new haircut. Do you feel the topics of your discussion had some influence on the way you build up your dialogues?

The Influences

Cultural Influences

Yes, certainly they do have influences on our dialogues. Dialogues particularly reflect the speakers' relationships. The way we choose to speak with our teachers is different from the way we choose to speak with our friends. The way we speak to others does get defined by our relationships as perceived by ourselves and the society at large. Well, it is obviously a cultural aspect. There are people who may address their teachers [quite respectfully] as 'hey professor', or 'yo professor'. But, I am afraid that these very ways of addressing might be interpreted as insults by many.

Domain-influence

Likewise, the topic of our discussion defines our choice of expressions and other registers used in the dialogue. Often you will find it quite difficult to discuss the newly introduced domains. It happens so because you are yet to learn the appropriate expressions required to discuss such domains.

Organisation

Now that we have discussed the participants and topic of a dialogue, we need to focus upon the way we develop our argument, or to put it in simpler way,- the organisation of the dialogue.

Deciding the Point of Entry

We first need to pick up our entry point to the given topic of discussion. The moment we learn the topic of discussion, we need to think about the different aspects of the topic. We may choose one or two as per our own sense of priority, if we don't get the scope to discuss all due to time constraints. We may prioritise the doubts, or we may prioritise those aspects which are already well under our grasp. And this is going to define our stance/standpoint in the dialogue we build…

The Relationship between/among the Speakers

After we've decided what we are going to point out and how we're going to discuss those aspects of the topic to build up our dialogue, we need to think about the relationship between/among the speakers. We need to decide whether we will be formal or informal, objective or subjective, distant or intimate in our style accordingly.

Domain-specific vocabulary

Finally, we need to have the required expressions to discuss the topic in our vocabulary. If we run short of such expressions, we need to consult dictionaries in such cases. Second or foreign language learners may often experience that it is even difficult to talk about quite common regular activities [like a haircut] when we don’t have the required vocabulary.

Convenient patterns of organising thoughts

Getting our thoughts organised is not quite difficult. You are required to stick to any pattern convenient to you and logical to others. You may follow the linear course of chronology [time sequence], or may opt for the argument of cause-effect, or may choose to explain and elaborate your proposition with suitable examples and analogies as suitable for the context.

Linking up

We need to have a range of linkers in our active vocabulary as well. Linkers help listeners/readers to get all the ideas connected quickly and thoroughly. Thus, linkers actually help us to get the meaning faster. We may use linkers like ‘and’, ‘then’, ‘thereafter’, ‘next’ etc. when we follow chronology. Linkers like ‘but’, ‘for’, ‘as’, ‘because’ etc. are useful when we point out the causality. Likewise, ‘like’, ‘as’, ‘similarly’ etc. are widely used linkers used to exemplify.

Hands-on

Let's try to understand this discussion with an example like the one below:

Suppose your bicycle has a sudden tyre-puncture on your way to school. You have taken the cycle to a repair shop. Write an imaginary dialogue (within hundred words) between the shopkeeper and you. 

(Lesson 5, Activity 12, Class X, ENGB, WBBSE)

You: Hi uncle… I am badly in need of your help right now… (you walk your cycle to a cycle repair shop)

The shopkeeper: Hi dear… I see you have a flat rear tyre. Is that the issue?

- Yes, and I think I'll be late for school today.

- Let's see. It should not take long. (looks at the logbook) But I have no mechanic free at this moment. (You make a gesture of despair.) Why don't you leave your cycle with us? Pick it up on your way back. Ride mine to avoid being late.

- Thank you uncle. (You seem to be relieved)Thank you so much…

- Ride safe…

- I'll. Bye...

- Bye...

The Argument

Now it's time to analyse and study the different aspects of the above dialogue in the light of the discussion above.

The Relationship

Have you noted the relationship between the participants? They seem to be very cordial to each other. They seem to belong to a community where they truly have a social bond. Sure you have not missed the way they greet each other here.

Vocabulary

Expressions like ‘tyre puncture’, ‘cycle repair shop’, ‘flat rear tyre’ etc. clearly indicate the domain. Don't they? These are the expressions you need to have in your vocabulary in order to participate effectively in the dialogue. Why don’t you study the dialogue closely once again to see if you can add to the list of the domain-vocabulary?

Organisation

Have you noted the organisation? The dialogue follows the simple chronological order of events. There are instances indicating causality as well. Would you like to point them out? By the way, don’t you feel that causality also reflects a particular time sequence where the cause always precedes the effect?

Linkers

What about the linkers? Why don't you try to spot them? Would you like to explain how they're functioning in this particular dialogue? Can you replace them with other substitutes without altering the essence?

Your Turn

It's your turn now. Would you like to attempt the same activity and share your dialogues with us. That would certainly help us to understand the possibility of multiple contextual interpretation of the same given situation. I think that would be quite interesting. What do you say, friends?

A Real-life Skill

Maybe you won’t choose to be a script-writer in future. But still, gaining some conversational skills would always be a beneficiary. Hence, if you ask me, I would rather suggest you to take this skill a bit seriously. You yourself admire some friends and teachers of yours for their oratory skills. Do you deny that?

Further Discussion

Hit the link to go through a wonderful discussion on the same topic. Here the author has shared some wonderful tips to master the skill which you will find to be extremely beneficial undoubtedly:

https://firstmanuscript.com/write-engaging-dialogue/

Maxims of Conversation

And advanced learners may study Grice’s Maxims of Conversation and their effective violation to render meaning into the conversation if they are interested to dig deeper. There are plenty of learning materials on the internet, I hope you will find some of them very useful.

More when I hear from you...