Talking to a bartender made me rethink how I write dialogue

I was at this dive bar near my place last weekend. The bartender was this older guy, probably 60s, just wiping glasses and chatting with a regular. I overheard him say something like "you gotta let the sentence breathe before you finish it." He was talking about telling stories, not writing. But it hit me right then that my dialogue always sounds rushed. Characters cutting each other off, no pauses. I started writing a scene after that where two people just stand in a kitchen waiting for water to boil. No big drama. Just the quiet in between. Has anyone else gotten writing advice from a random stranger that actually stuck?

2 comments

2 Comments

blake_black476d ago

Chuck Palahniuk said real people talk in fragments not full sentences.

the_elliot6d ago

Friend of mine tried that out at a party last weekend (you know how writers get with their rules). He walked up to someone and just said "fragments, yeah, the whole conversation" and totally blanked on finishing a point. The other person looked at him like he was having a stroke or something. @blake_black47 probably has a point about real talk being choppy, but my buddy learned the hard way that fragments with no context just sound weird. Palahniuk's characters might pull it off, but normal folks need at least a few full sentences to make sense.