Literary Devices Week Day Two: Devices for Dialogue

Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network, and I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country, including employment, including opportunity zones with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, which is one of the greatest programs ever for Black workers and Black entrepreneurs.

Can you tell me who said that?

I’ve done so much and I say this, historically, Black colleges and universities were out of money. They were stone cold broke and I saved them, and I gave them long-term financing and nobody else was doing it.

How about now? Donald Trump has a very particular way of speaking. He uses a lot of repetition and sarcasm. He overstates everything. He blends slang and colloquialisms with political dialect so overtly you can tell when he’s saying his speech to the letter and when he moves away from it. His speech patterns are so unique that some say they're impossible to satirise.

Today, we’re doing literary devices for dialogue. We all speak differently to one another. Some of us use colloquial speech and some formal. Some of us swear. Some of us are impossibly polite. Some of us like euphemisms. Some of us exaggerate. Some of us make many mistakes. Some use idioms.

When you write dialogue, your characters need their own unique habits. Your readers should be able to read your text and tell you exactly who is speaking. You can’t work out their style of speech until you have a thorough understanding of your characters’ personalities. Your dialogue should also help to show their personality. Let’s get back to Trump:

The world is going to be destroyed because the oceans are going to rise 1/100 of an inch within the next 300 years. It’s going to kill everybody. It’s going to create more oceanfront property. That’s what it’s going to do.

If you were to infer his personality from these three lines alone, you might decide he’s a contemptuous climate denialist with a strong draw towards material things. You might even be able to tell he’s a Baby Boomer. You can draw a lot from dialogue, and if yours is doing little more than tell a story, it is lacking. Your dialogue should be in character, and it should demonstrate that character.

I have two exercises for you today. You can choose one:

• Easy option: Write one to three paragraphs of direct dialogue between two characters.

• Difficult option: Write a piece of satire of Donald Trump. I will put one of my own in the Fet group comments as an example.

I'm @ing @Woody715 @BlackHippyChick @-Junkie_ and @tenebrist for special attention.

Here is a list of literary devices for dialogue if you need a little help:

Colloquialism: Casual speech
Sarcasm: Saying the opposite of what you want to say in order to express contempt.
Vernacular: The common speech of ordinary people in a specific country or city
Slang: Informal language typically unique to a group of people or district.
Jargon: Formal terms and expressions used by an industry. Jargon is usually difficult for laypeople to understand.
Euphemism: An understatement for something harsh, unpleasant, or embarrassing.
Neologism: a new word or expression.