Question about how I was writing dialogue all wrong for years

I was at a writers group in Austin last month and someone pointed out that every single one of my characters talked exactly the same way. Like, I had a 60 year old fisherman and a teenage girl saying the same phrases and sentence rhythms. It hit me that I've been writing dialogue for like 5 years without ever paying attention to how different people actually speak. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized you were missing something pretty basic in your writing the whole time?

2 comments

2 Comments

kai_west1mo ago

300 bucks says that fisherman talked like a Wattpad protagonist for at least three pages before you caught on. I mean, I did the coffee shop thing too and realized my characters were way too polite and never talked over each other. Kinda makes you wonder how many "he said calmly" moments are just us not paying attention to how real people actually interrupt and mumble.

evannelson1mo ago

Did you ever try recording people in real conversations and transcribing them word for word? I did that at a coffee shop for an hour and it was brutal to see how much I was cleaning up dialogue instead of writing how people actually talk, with all the ums, half sentences and interrupting each other.