A sentence spoken

Last day for the week of the sentence!  The form of a spoken sentence differs greatly from the form of a written one.  But how do we represent that through our writing, after all, spoken language transcribed is full of "um"s, "er"s, and other idiosyncrasies, that to read it is often boring or distracting.

As writers, we have to tightrope around a line when it comes to dialog.  How real do we make it, how many idiosyncrasies do we utilize in order to fool our readers imaginations?  What I tend to do is give each character his or her own unique idiosyncrasy or two and focus on it.  This may even be killing two birds with one stone, as not only do readers recognize and respond to one aspect of true human speech, it also functions to differentiate characters through their dialog alone.  When pulled off successfully, we should be able to tell two characters apart simply using their speech, without the "roger said", ect.

The trick is, we can't over do it, can't lay it on too thick, otherwise we risk coming across as hammy.  If you want good examples of an author with the abilities to pull this technique off, read "Franny and Zooey", by J.D. Salinger.  Study the devices he uses, and your writing will vastly improve.

Creative Writing Prompt: Today, write a scene which is simply a conversation between two characters speaking in a monologue type format so you can focus on their speech patterns.  Experiment with different sentence structures and lengths, while adding in a speech like idiosyncrasy or two for each character.

If you want to try your skills even further, use a marker such as "he said", "she said", or names, etc., only once for each character.  Make sure you can tell the characters apart even at the end of the conversation.

End of the Week Extra Credit: Looking for a challenge?  Give each character a motivation, perhaps something character A wants from character B, but do not let either one voice the desire, rather hint at it in such a way that the reader can intuitively understand the nature of the conflict, want or need.