Found a weird trick for fixing dialogue that sounds too stiff

I was stuck on a scene in my coffee shop last Tuesday where two characters were talking like robots, so I read their lines out loud while pacing the sidewalk and realized I needed to add interruptions and half-finished sentences to make it sound real, has anyone else tried reading dialogue aloud to catch the stilted parts?

2 comments

2 Comments

seanjohnson21d ago

Yeah, reading out loud is the best way to catch that robotic stuff. I do it all the time now. It forces you to hear how awkward some sentences actually are. Half finished lines and interruptions make a huge difference. People don't talk in perfect sentences, so why should characters? It's a simple trick but it works every single time for me.

betty_white3921d ago

Read their lines out loud while pacing the sidewalk" - bold move, hope you didn't trip over a crack and land in the next chapter. Seriously though, yeah, it's wild how much dumber you feel muttering to yourself in public, but then suddenly the dialogue sounds like actual people talking.