I have had a problem with trying to write a fic. I haven't done anything for the past two weeks and it's annoying. I have the whole story idea and premise down; it's the dialogue that bothers me and it's preventing me from doing this. I haven't started to write yet because I've been distracted.
Ah. Yeah, dialogue. I know how that is. That's still one of my greatest challenges. The key to dialogue is that it's got to accomplish a number of things. Not only does it need to move the plot along (thus, no need for dialogue that's only there to be cute) but it must key us into a character's personality/background and be believable, if not perfectly realistic. Lot to keep in mind in order for dialogue to be effective. So biggest piece of advice? People watch. Listen into conversations. Focus on how people speak, convey information. Focus in on the quirks and slang, the idioms and personality of the speaker. Read fiction. Pay attention to what dialogue feels natural and what strikes you as forced. For instance... "I am Richard. I am from Mississipi. I have six cats." is a world of difference from "I'm Richard from Misssissipi. I've got six cats." Hope this helped.
Dialogue, huh? Always a killer if you need it and can't get it. :/ My main piece of advice is-- know your characters. Picture them as movie actors. Who would you cast? How old are they? What do they wear? What are their backgrounds like? Etc. ad nauseam. The more you know about your speakers, the more naturally the things they say will come to you. Cooking up dialogue for others through the filter of your OWN personality is sure to come out badly. But if you can temporarily inhabit the mind of somebody else, your conversations will shine. EDIT: ^^Agree with the poster above me of course. I didn't even think about "respecting" your raw ideas of how realistic speech sounds in writing. It won't necessarily be formal (with tons of contractions compared to your narration) and doesn't even need to be grammatically correct, as long as the character would believably say something incorrectly or lack the education to know better. Shameless plug here for my own work but I think I made a good contrast with an academic speaking semi-formally, a highly educated yet young student who speaks casually, and her mostly average friend who is hardly one to care about correct speech in talking to people he knows.
I don't know a whole lot about writing. That being said, have you tried acting out the parts? Like closing your eyes and picturing yourself in the story? Maybe being your characters you could feel what you would want them to say.
I find writing is dialogue can be tricky as I tend to have problems keeping the plot rolling. However I find you can always use it to add character and show what people do more in actions and expressions. I am not a writer at all, but some of the best stories I have read are ones where what the characters are saying is off from what they are. If you can show the reader that a character is completely torn about something, while they are hosting a party and saying it's wonderful, you have good writing skills. For dialogue I normally try thinking about only what one person would say, and the other one just reacts. So think of one character talking, and think right away about what the other one would say. Good luck
