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A writing professor told me my dialogue sucked because everyone talked the same
I was so proud of a short story I wrote for my fiction workshop class last fall. Professor handed it back and said, "Your characters all sound like they went to the same high school." Turns out I was using the same sentence structure and vocabulary for every single person talking. Now I read each character's lines out loud in a different voice before I submit anything. Has anyone else had a critique that totally rewired how you approach dialogue?
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eva2432mo ago
Did you ever try recording yourself and playing it back? I did that once and realized my "tough guy" character sounded exactly like my mom ordering pizza. Had to scrap the whole thing and start over from scratch.
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grant.margaret2mo ago
Dump the recording trick. It's a crutch. Fix the problem at the source. Grab a thesaurus and a grammar book and give each character their own damn favorite words. Your mechanic should say "gotta" and "ain't", not "must" and "is not". Your librarian shouldn't start every sentence with "So". If you can't hear the difference on the page, you're not ready to type.
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