(no subject)

[xaara]

I'm reading J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace right now. I rather like it so far; I'm not gripped by it, but I want to know what happens, and I'm willing enough to see it through. I've been having problems reading 'literary' novels recently, though, and I just figured out why.

It's the dialogue.

I am constantly annoyed by the dialogue.

It doesn't sound like people, and it distances me from the characters to the point where I'm no longer really interested in what's happening to them. I want to hear people saying things that don't make sense, interrupting each other, laughing at inappropriate junctures, using improper contractions and verb conjugations and sentence structure, repeating themselves, saying 'you know' and 'I mean,' mishearing one another, speaking in fragments, omitting personal pronouns.

I'm going to pull a line from the most recent SPN episode to illustrate my point, mostly because I have it in front of me as I'm writing this and am too lazy at the moment to track another example down. Anyway. Dean, at one point, says, "Listen, sister, that car didn't try to run you down by itself. Okay? I mean, I guess it did, technically, but, but the spirit can...forget it."

J. M. Coetzee would never write that line. Ever. Okay, so Dean's from Kansas, not Cape Town, and he's anything but literary. But he sounds like a person. He tries to explain something, picks the wrong phrase, interrupts himself, tries to correct himself, and then just gives up.

I don't know if I'm explaining this well. I've just been intensely frustrated by smooth, carefully crafted dialogue lately. It's not what life sounds like, and no matter how beautiful the prose, it doesn't reflect my world.

Comments

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think it's a balance. Sure, people don't speak in perfect complete sentences, but there's still a difference between how our everyday speech would look like if transcribed 1:1, and what looks good as written dialogue.

You may honestly pronounce it "would of," but you should still write "would have," that sort of thing.

[xaara.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and like I mentioned to isobell, it's a stylistic choice that authors are of course allowed to make. It's not even so much individual words, though. I don't really have a problem with having 'would of' transcribed as 'would of' or 'would have' or 'would've.' I can fill in the individual sounds fine in my head.

It's more an issue of rhythm and structure for me, whether I'm seeing more of the author or more of the character. I worked with a guy this summer who was talking about being accused by a woman he'd slept with of fathering her child. "Swear to you, that kid ain't mine," he said. "Ain't my fault I got a face every baby looks like." He would be a much different person if he said, "I swear to you that the kid is not mine. It's not my fault that I have a baby face." So I'm not saying that everyone should talk like him. I'm just saying that people in stories shouldn't all sound alike.

Does that make sense at all? :P

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

It does.