Approaching character diologue problems and style

[Bear]

Hi everyone,
I want to discuss a problem that most of you have probably encountered, especially considering how many languages are spoken throughout Mizahar. How do you handle a character who doesn't speak perfectly?

This could be through upbringing or habits, such as they use slang. Or maybe they use terms or phrases that are only well-known to their race or their family. A more common problem may be that your character is of a different race and simply doesn't understand other languages.

And of course, there's the problem of making your character sound like a genius by writing as if your writing, not as if your speaking. If a stranger asked you casually in the grocery store whether red or green apples tasted better, most people wouldn't say, "I love red apples because when I was younger my father used to eat apples with me beneath the big tree on our lawn. Every time I take a bite of a red apple, it reminds me of my father and the warm Summer's we spent sitting with each other."
You might answer instead with, "I love red apples," or, "Red apples, but that's personal preference/because of my father."

How do you approach expressing a character through dialogue when they don't even know how to express themselves? And how do you keep yourself "in character" not just in action but in words? Do you ever find yourself making diologue too technical, too automatic, or too 'detailed' for your character to sound as if they were actually speaking the words you were writing?

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I personally have a hard time finding the correct wording for my Zith when she is speaking in Common. She knows 'basic' common but it's very basic, and I have to remind myself that she wouldn't know such and such word, or she wouldn't know past tense vs present. It's difficult at times, especially switching between perfectly understandable descriptions and hard-to-understand diologue.

I find it easier to write what she would say if she knew how to communicate perfectly in Common, and then trim it down to what she's limited to saying. The meaning changes sometimes, but I figure that's better than giving her sudden knowledge of how to communicate.

[Gossamer]

I think you bring up great points here. I'd love to see other's thoughts on this. I think I fall into that realm of perhaps misdialoging when I put a big thought into a reply rather than truncate it to a more natural form like your apple example. But I also kinda excuse my PC for doing this since I secretly suspect she has a big soap box she drags around and hops up on whenever she gets a chance to make a point. So far I've been lucky though. Most of her threads haven't struggled with foreign language or issues that require intense concentration as a writer on dialog. But its still a very valid point to think about. I wonder what other people think on this?

[Iskessah]

This is semi-related, but writing for my Dhani is hard, because she's trying to hide the fact that she's a Dhani. She does this by limiting the number of words she uses that have an 's' sound, which sometimes leads her to not say much at all. And then when I write description, I think I overcompensate with s's, simply because I'm so relieved I can say them without hissssssing <.<

Oh, I also avoid any word with a soft 'c', because I can't figure out how to add extra s's without making it look weird x.x It sort of puts unfortunately ooc-based limitations on the vocabulary I can use in dialogue, but I cope....

As for my Zith, I haven't actually written a lot for her yet, but I've speculated about Zithanese dialogue. It seems to me that there are certain words that just don't exist in the Zith language (mostly anything to do with culture), so if I have dialogue in that language, I plan to make sure the words I'm using make sense. I feel like using the right dialogue is about really getting into the mind of your character, and into the moment of the scene, and just seeing what would come out of their mouths.

Then again, it might be that either my imagination is vivid enough or that I've had enough practice that this sort of things doesn't seem too difficult to me....
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Another way I keep things in character is that in my description, I label people based on how my character would think about them. For example, my human character tends to think about people by name, whereas my Dhani and Zith would go more by their description (meat, inferior being, etc.). I also try not to use idioms that don't make sense. As an example, I think I wanted to say "kicked into high gear" once, but I didn't think Mizahar had the technology widespread enough for that phrase to have even come about.

Staying at least partly in character even in description makes it easier for me to keep a similar mindset when writing dialogue as well.

/endsoapbox

[Bear]

That's very interesting about limiting words that start with s, I never considered that it would be difficult for a Dhani to hide what she is if she's hissing at every s. I guess I enjoy the challenge of writing this kind of character more than if I deliberately had her grow up learning Common fluently just for ease of writing. With my Symenestra I don't worry too much about becoming too descriptive or wordy, for the most part he wants to make an impression so he would want to be noticeable and say a lot.

It is hard to break that habit with a Zith though, who from my understanding have a native language that are more screeches and echoes than actual 'words', and don't even really name each other. I haven't had a chance to write a post where she's actually spoken in Zithanese but look forward to it even though it will probably be very different than other diologue.

[Dumo Groneaud]

As for my Zith, I haven't actually written a lot for her yet, but I've speculated about Zithanese dialogue. It seems to me that there are certain words that just don't exist in the Zith language (mostly anything to do with culture), so if I have dialogue in that language, I plan to make sure the words I'm using make sense. I feel like using the right dialogue is about really getting into the mind of your character, and into the moment of the scene, and just seeing what would come out of their mouths.

That is rather clever, actually. If you take a look at it in terms of real life linguistics, for example, you will notice that a language that was developed by a culture of cattle-herding mountain people will have most of its sea and agriculture-related vocabulary limited and borrowed from other languages (of peoples they had contact with), while mountain-related ideas, fauna and flora will most likely be rich and diverse on the amount of words, and those will be more like to have ancient native origins. Foreign (basic/poor) speakers are likely to have a bit of trouble remembering about all of the specific and detailed concepts/words exclusive to that language and its particular niche. I guess that's a good way to RP this situation out when it occurs. Even nowadays IRL, it is sometimes hard to figure out a way to express a specific word in a different language. Some words require almost a whole sentence in a different language to express the same idea.

Anyways, this interests me a bunch, as my character will have to bear with basic Common, as soon as I overhaul my sheet to start playing, I mean. Maybe I should stop posting so much and get writing already.