Bleed: Dialogue

I've talked a bit before about the ways things tend to bleed over into other things. Practicing poetry bleeds over into my fiction writing, watching movies bleeds into telling stories, etc. Everyting somehow relates to everything else.

Today, in Comp. we talked about a great essay by Rosina Lippi-Green titled "Teaching Children How to Discriminate: What We Learn from the Big Bad Wolf." The main idea is an analysis of animated Disney movies and how they stereotype characters with accents. For instance, female romantic leads speak American English, baddies often have foreign accents. Coincidence? I think not.

So, we talk about this essay, which bleeds into a conversation about cinema, which bleeds into a conversation about building characters, which bleeds into... and at the end of the line, we're really just talking about stories. You don't hear a character's voice when you're reading a novel, but the way that character's speech is written makes it possible for you to imagine their voice.

Huck Finn, anyone? Exactly.

I love dialogue. I am enamored with the way my characters talk, and it's something I spend a lot of time thinking about. In Oracle, particularly, I have a couple of specific traits for some of the characters - like the one who hardly ever speaks with contractions, except for when she's talking to certain other characters who are the scruffy types.

Joss is an excellent example of character through dialogue - read anything about the Buffy writer's talking about the topic, and it's very clear how that show worked in this regard - and has mastered the art of building characters within the first few lines they speak onscreen.

Listen to the commentary of Blood Diamond where he's talking about Leonardo DiCaprio's use of accent.

There are plenty other examples, but you get the idea. It's got my brain wheels turning today.