Question:
How do you find out if your dialogue works, or sounds natural or appropriate to your character?

Choices:
Try bits of it out in your own conversations
Talk it through to yourself (and try not to get too many funny looks from passers-by
Get a couple of blood-pact friends (c'mon, it's gotta be someone you really trust, eh??) to do a reading
When I get going, the characters pretty much write themselves
Something else (do tell! ;) )

 

I always put out a call to my local AmDram groups. I don't count this as getting a few 'blood buddies' as I will always get an unknown quantity turn up. It's these people that give me the most - as they don't know me and can only interpret the dialogue from what is on the page.

I also thank whatever higher being you believe in for Audacity and a laptop. I record the entire reading as an MP3 (my corrections and all) so that I can use it as a tool to revisit the MS.

Does that mean that I remove all the typos from my MSS? You've only got to see what I have online to see that isn't true - but at least the dialogue sounds good!

I'm very lucky to be a memmber of a couple of Amateur Dramatic groups where I live, so a lot of my friends are actors. They're a kind and indulgent bunch who are always willing to read my stuff and (even better) give it to me straight.
As a result, my scripts are very much 'working documents'! Stuff gets changed/moved/added/struck out throughout rehearsals and I'm quite open to sticking in any of the best adlibs they come up with - with their [permission of course.

So, not not quite blood-pact, but they're all people I trust enough to get over that initial vulnerability 'emperor's new clothes' moments I have when I first hand the scripts over.

A lot of the time dialogue does just start running when you get started and it feels like the characters are writing themselves. And not always when you're actually writing it either. The blighters can sometimes kick off in my head!

Sometimes as my lack of parental discipline with the characters becomes more evident, characters sometimes end up in a completely different place from where I thought they would go or be... Going with the flow, then paddling when you hit a weir.

I guess my answer to my own question is probably 'all of the above'.

Thanks Jay for the reply - it's nice to know there's somebody out there!

Okey-doke. Thanks to Jay for the response.

Now what about the rest of youse?