All language subtitles for MasterClass Neil Gaiman Teaches The Art of Storytelling - 09Dialogue and Character

So, people talk when writing fiction

about character and they talk about

dialogue. I talk about them as if

they're two different things. And they

are two different things, but they're

two different things that actually

amount to the same thing. And they're

like the the two legs that a character

needs in order to walk. So, in the next

class, we're going to talk about

character and dialogue and what they are

and how incredibly tightly interwoven

they can be.

When I started out,

the most

terrifying thing for me was the idea of

character creation

and who were characters. I didn't really

get characters. I didn't understand

what characters were. And it took a

while for me to learn really how to

write good characters. Characters who

were three-dimensional. Characters who

felt real. characters who felt real to

me.

A lot of the key to it, people say,

"Well, do you do you do those sort of

books and things before you start? Do

you list off lots of things about your

characters?" And and I say, "No."

Mostly what I do is try and figure out

what they sound like,

how they talk.

Sometimes what they look like, but

mostly how they talk. Because

dialogue is character.

The way that somebody talks, what they

say, how they say it

is character. And dialogue

has to show character.

It also has to show plot.

And maybe it can be funny along the way.

And good dialogue is doing all three of

those things at the same time. It's

making you smile or making you see

things you've never seen before. It's

moving the story along.

And more than anything, it's telling you

things about the people who are saying

it and who they're saying it to.

And so for me, the key to writing good

dialogue,

which was the key to character, were the

years that I spent as a journalist doing

interviews.

Um, I would meet somebody that I wanted

to talk to, writers, creators.

Um, I'd have my little tape recorder. I

would talk to them for two or three

hours. I would transcribe the tape and

then having transcribed the tape,

which would give me 10,000 words of

transcription,

my task would be to turn that into a 2

to 3,000word interview.

So, I learned a lot at that point about

economy. How do you make somebody sound

like themselves

without ever necessarily using the exact

words that they used? Because now you're

compressing

and people don't talk like themselves.

People don't use semicolons. People

don't speak grammatically. People

instead they they they start sentences.

They leave words dangling. A few seconds

ago I said people and then I hesitated

and then I changed course because that's

how people talk and you can't do that.

Well, you can't do exactly that

in writing. But you can figure out where

the rhythms are. You can figure out how

to make somebody sound like the person

who was talking to you. And you learn

compression. You learn more than

anything else economy.

And it was that economy

um that actually I think looking back on

it that was the most useful thing for

going out there and writing fiction

because I learned how to compress and

I'd learned how to show character, show

who somebody was by what they said.

The process of writing good dialogue

is a listening process.

Um, it's the process of you write the

line before

and then you listen and find out what

comes back at you. What does the person

say?

Sometimes for me, I need to know what a

person that I'm writing about looks

like. When I was writing Sandman, I

decided that um the title character, the

Sandman, who's also known as Dream,

would be part of a family called the

Endless.

And very rapidly

I figured out for myself who the first

six of the Endless were. And then there

was a young one and I knew there were

seven of them. And I wasn't quite sure

about that one.

And then I thought, delirium.

Delirium seems right.

And I saw a photograph

of a girl

at a nightclub wearing ripped fishnets

sort of all over herself and just

looking very very sweet but kind of out

of it. I thought, okay, her that kind of

look. There's something very fragile

there and very young.

And um that was where I began.

But I thought that when she came on,

in contrast

to the slightly out of it look, she was

going to be angry, she was going to be

in control, she was going to be um there

was going to be rage and and I tried

writing that and it felt wrong and I

wrote about a page of this dialogue and

it felt forced. it didn't really feel

like the character I had in mind. So I

thought, okay, let's listen to that

character. Let's see what we get.

And I thought, actually, let's go for

something much more

gentle and beused and speaking in

sentences in the same way that a small

child

can speak in sentences.

um that is slightly off from whatever

you're expecting.

And suddenly the character came to life

and she would say the strangest things

and it was like finding that part of

your mind that is

gloriously perfectly unhinged.

And every now and again she would just

say things like um you know, have you

ever spent days and days making up

flavors of ice cream that nobody's ever

eaten? Chicken and telephone ice cream.

And green mouse ice cream. I didn't like

that either. And you're going, "Oh, I

didn't even know that could come out of

my head." But once you have a character

who can say that kind of thing, then you

also have a character who is allowed to

say incredibly wise things as well. And

so I could sneak

huge and important things

into Delirium's mouth and know that they

could be taken hugely seriously

along with just the the weird lovely odd

funny little comments she'd make. You

know,

somebody talks about losing time and she

says, "I lost some time once. It's

always in the last place you look for

it." So you have to train yourself as a

writer to listen.

Characters if you are writing them

become part of you and become separate

from you at the same time.

You have to know your characters well

enough to know would they do this?

And sometimes they won't

and at that point mostly I'll trust

them.

Um I have known writers who are like

well you know they have no choice. If I

have written my outline and I have the

character going from here to here and

they don't want to well they do. I tend

to listen to my characters.

It's like a kind of um

controlled insanity.

Because on the one hand, I am perfectly

aware that I'm creating the characters.

I made them up. They start with me.

Everything they say came out of my head.

And on the other hand, the moment that

they are alive, the moment that they are

doing things, the moment that they are

real, I am imbuing them with life. I'm

imbuing them with my belief. I care

about them. I'm interested in them. And

it's almost as if I'm watching them and

listening to them.

And the problem then comes when they

stop, when they don't say anything, when

they don't move. And instead of writing

down what they're doing, you have to

figure it out. You have to figure out

where you went wrong. you have to figure

out why the character isn't saying

anything.

And that

it's always a slightly strange process

because there is something genuinely mad

about it. Um if you are writing good

characters,

believable characters, glorious,

larger than life characters,

um

they do take on a a sort of a life.

You know, Terry Prattet and I used to

joke that we talk about, you know, going

to meet our maker

and if we killed characters in our

fiction, maybe one day there'd be a

knock at the door and we'd open the door

and there would be some of our

characters looking up at us sadly

saying, "Why did I have to suffer and

die?"

And you want to say, "Well, for the

entertainment and enlightenment of other

people." And they'd look up at us and

go, "Is that enough?" And you go, "It

has to be enough."

If I'm doing my job as a writer, if I'm

giving it everything I've got,

my characters are going to be

believable. because I believe in them

and I believe them. They are going to be

separate from me and they're going to be

part of me. And some of that is simply

having come up with a character, knowing

what kind of person that character is

going to be. At the point where you

start writing them,

you are going into yourself

and you have to not be afraid of

yourself. You have to be willing if

you're writing a murderer, if you're

writing a bad person to go and find that

part of you that is the bad person, that

is the murderer that would take pleasure

in this thing and go, okay, what would

you say? What would you do? Who are you?

By the same token, you go and find the

part of you that is female. You go and

find the part of you that is old. You go

and find that part.

Um, and then

you don't think of it as the part of you

that's female, the part of you that's

old, the part of you that's bad. You

think of it as that person.

And you trust them.

You listen to them.

While you're writing a character named

Caroline,

you are always, if you are me anyway,

asking yourself, well, what would I do?

What would I have done?

What would I have done if instead of

being me in my childhood,

I was 7, 8, maybe 9 years old and

this was happening to me now?

What would I do?

And that question,

finding that part of yourself that is an

eight or nine year old girl

and feels right

is is important. Um, it's vital.

On the one hand, if you are an adult

writer, you know a lot of people. You

have encountered a lot of people in your

lifetime. You encountered them at

school. You've encountered them at home.

You've encountered them in the streets.

You have met good people. You have met

bad people. You have met bullies. You

have met angels. You have met um complex

and interesting people. you can and

those people filtered down, flavored

differently, are going to start showing

up in your fiction. But you're also

going to need to write about people you

don't know. You're going to need to

write about people from cultures you

don't know. You're going to write about

people with professions you do not

understand. You may need uh to write

about types of people

who you do not know.

And for them, my advice to anybody

starting out is just go find them. Go

talk to them.

Talk to people. Um,

talk to people with different sexual

orientations to yours if you're going to

be writing them. Talk to people from

different cultures.

Go in, do your research,

do it with respect, know that there are

things to be known. So,

I think

if you are a starting out writer,

probably even if you're an experienced

writer, I have two pieces of advice for

you if you want to to channel a

character, a time period, anything.

One of which is and and they're kind of

opposite and contradictory and they're

both true.

One of which is trust yourself.

do it. You do it by doing it. Just do

it. And the other is do your research.

But I've known too many writers starting

out who would get trapped

in a vortex of research.

Um, and you can't. You have to do enough

research. It's it's like you're a a

smash and grab

robber. You are going to put that brick

through the window. then you're going to

reach in and grab everything that you

need and run away and use it because

honestly you don't want to spend uh 10

years researching

manners and mores in British public

schools of the 1870s

in order to get your story perfect.

There may be some stories that you have

spent your life unconsciously

researching. You know what a heartbreak

is. You know what it's like to work in a

bank. You know um what it's like to have

to walk a long way in the rain.

Whatever it is the thing that you're

writing is, you're going, "Okay, well, I

have that. I have that already. That's

there." Um

and if you don't know what it's like to

walk for 10 days in the rain, you might

know what it's like to walk for a few

hours in the rain. And you can

extrapolate and you go, "Okay, well,

it's going to be like that, only worse.

And what's it going to be like on day

three? And now you're having to sleep in

wet clothes." And okay, and everybody

and everything's going to hurt. And now

you're getting sore. And now you're

getting the athletes foot and the

trench. Oh, this is But imagination

plays a huge amount. Putting yourself in

the place of somebody. But then

there will be places and times where you

go

um

you go I don't know this and I need to

find out.

Go and learn because that's what will

make your fiction good.

Um and that's what will also make your

fiction feel honest

and true.

characters in a book.

There are lots of them. And one of the

things I learned, I think, I may have

learned it from Dickens

or I may have learned it from Jack

Kirby.

Um, but whoever I learned it from,

possibly even from a Milm. Um, when you

have a lot of characters wandering

around,

you need to help your reader.

You need to just give your reader a

hand. And one of the ways that I've

always like to do that is what I call

funny hats.

And by funny hats, I don't actually

literally mean you have a character wear

a funny hat. What I do mean is you give

your character something that makes that

character different from every other

character in the book.

And it's sort of it's something that

reading the work of young writers,

they tend to hesitate to do.

And um and the trouble with that is you

can read a short story, occasionally

even read a novel with a number of

people who are indistinguishable from

each other except for their names.

Which means you have to remember their

names. You have to remember who they

are. And when they show up, you have to

thumb back and go, "Okay, hang on. Is

this Simon

or is this Jack

or is and oh no hang on this is the

other this is the one the other one who

they met before this is Peter and

what's lovely is just and you do this as

an author out of kindness for your

reader is give them funny hats

give them that point you know Simon

wears the bright red bowler hat and

Peter wears the not packed. And

and of course, all of these hats are

metaphorical. You just make sure that

when somebody comes on, they don't look

like anyone else. They don't sound like

anybody else. You can do it in realistic

fiction. You can do it in children's

fiction. You can do it in You can do it

in fiction

aimed at the lowest common denominator.

You can do it a fiction that is elegant

and beautiful. But either way, you just

write characters who are different from

each other. They look different from

each other. They feel different from

each other. There is something about

them that means that the reader is being

you're holding the reader's hand a

little bit. And you're just making sure

that they're never confused.

So in a book like Neverware,

we begin

with Mr. Kroo and Mr. Vandermar.

Um,

and uh, you immediately realize how

different they are. Mr. Kroo had hired

Ross at the last floating market which

had been held in Westminster Abbey.

Think of him, he told Mr. Vandermar as a

canary

sings asked Mr. Vandermar. I doubt it. I

sincerely and utterly doubt it. Mr. Kroo

ran a hand through his lank orange hair.

No, my fine friend. I was thinking

metaphorically, more along the lines of

the birds. They take down minds. Mr.

Vandermar nodded, comprehension dawning

slowly. Yes, a canary. Mr. Ross had no

other resemblance to a canary.

There are four simple ways for the

observant to tell Mr. Kroo and Mr.

Vandermar apart. First, Mr. Vandermar is

two and a half heads taller than Mr.

Kroo. Second, Mr. Croo has eyes of a

faded China blue, while Mr. Vandermar's

eyes are brown. Third, while Mr.

Vandermar fashioned the rings he wears

on his right hand out of the skulls of

four ravens, Mr. Kroo has no obvious

jewelry. Fourth, Mr. Kroo likes words,

while Mr. Vanmar is always hungry. Also,

they look nothing at all alike.

And so we immediately have a couple of

killers.

Um they are very very dangerous and they

do not talk in any way alike. They do

not look alike. Um one of them is

monoselabic, the other is multi-elabic.

um enjoys words, is going to have um

a a relationship with things where the

only thing we ever see him eat is a

piece of very fine tang dynasty,

uh China, whereas Mr. Vandermar um is

always hungry as we have learned and

just eats things as he goes, frogs and

rats and bits of dead puppy and anything

that he happens to find along the way.

And they are the assassiniest assassins

I could come up with. Some of the other

characters

in

um Neverear also are funny hat

characters. The Marquita Carabus who who

deals in favors wears a huge and

glorious coat and is always wearing the

coat until he is murdered and the coat

gets stolen and things in the plot get

very difficult for him. Um, old Bailey

lives on the top of roofs and up on the

rooftops he's dressed and in in a cape

of feathers. He's described as looking

like what Robinson Crusoe in the popular

imagination would have looked like if he

were cast away on the rooftops of London

with nothing but birds to create his

world out of. Um,

so you take these characters and

securing the knowledge that none of them

could be confused for any of the others.

None of them talk the same. And when

they turn up,

um, they,

you know who they are. The reader does

not have to work at that