YOU suggest some characters, then we’ll vote on two of them to interact, and build their dialogue from the ground up.
What’s the craziest pairing we can get? You decide!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over the 3 layers of dialogue..
Watch what we did here, or scroll down for highlights.
The Three Layers of Dialogue
- There are many different layers to dialogue: what’s being said, how it’s being said, and how the characters FEEL about what’s being said
- If we break down all the layers, one by one, there is:
- The dialogue itself (what’s being said)
- Dialogue tags/body language (how it’s being said)
- Introspection/exposition (how the characters FEEL about what’s being said)
- Each is equally important when writing good dialogue
- Not only are they important for conveying the right meaning, but also to create the right pacing, and to guide the reader along
After going over that, chat voted that we write a conversation between a witch and a Karen.
Here’s what we came up with:
Margaret the witch sat behind the counter of her shop, shoes up on the display case, flipping through an Animal Familiar magazine. Business had been slow recently, but as long as there were a few customers coming through for the occasional love potion, broom, toad, or spirit candles, things were fine. At least she didn’t have to deal with being burned alive like her ancestors.
The door chime clanged. A woman and her small son walked in. Margaret closed the magazine and slid her shoes to the floor, standing up to greet them like a proper business witch.
“Welcome to Witchy Wares,” Margaret said. “Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
The woman tugged at the small boy, pulling him along on a leash wrapped around his chest, digging her other fist into her side. It looked like Margaret’s first customer of the day had a little demon blood in her.
“Oh, there is most certainly something I need,” the woman hissed. Spittle shot out of her mouth like acid as she enunciated certain important sounding syllables. “And I need it now! Let me speak to your manager, young lady.”
Margaret did her best not to chuckle at hearing that. Her youth potions did a good job of hiding her 200 years. She slowly spread her arms, trying her best to welcome this storm while also bracing against it.
“Um, you’re currently speaking to her. I’m Margaret, I own this shop.”
“Well!” The woman flicked her bobbed hair and focused her dark, sunglassed eyes on Margaret. “Miss Margery, my name is Karen, you may have heard of me as the founder and CEO of Mother Earth.”
There was a silence as it seemed that Karen was waiting for Margaret to acknowledge something.
“Pardon me?” Margaret said. Karen scoffed with her mouth wide open.
“Dear lord! Have you been living under a rock? MotherEarth.mom, the place for moms to get all the real information that big pharma is trying to hide.”
Margaret blinked and didn’t say anything. She let the woman, Karen apparently, finish her monologue, just like a real villain.
“Anyway,” she continued. “As the owner, you must be ashamed to know that you are selling such shoddy merchandise to paying customers!”
Margaret had been right about the demon blood, though far from a little flowing in this woman’s veins, perhaps Lucifer himself had come down to visit her today.
“I’m sorry,” Margaret said, trying to keep her tone from going full sarcastic. “Did you have a bad experience with something you bought here?”
Karen placed her hand over her chest, a peachy, five-legged spider dangling with fake jewelry. “I didn’t, but my little Benjy here was in excruciating pain during his last Cub Scout meeting when he drank your medicine. And I would know, because I’m the local Den Mother, and I heard him crying in the bathroom when he should’ve been making an arts and crafts bird feeder with popsicle sticks!”
Margaret looked down at the boy in his leash, bowtie, and shorts, busy picking his nose and staring at the ceiling. He didn’t seem to be in writhing pain at the moment, so that knocked about half her potions off the list of possibilities already. Margaret pondered racking her brain for the last few: snake extract, newt blood, bat wing, pig tears? No, none of those either.
“What exactly did he consume?” she asked.
“This!” Karen slammed down a vial of white liquid. “What I bought from you a few days ago, Miss Marcie! To think, I was so excited to see an alternative medicine shop finally available in our town, and the first time I patronize it, disaster! Thank goodness I brought my healing crystals with me.”
Margaret picked up the vial and inspected it. She knew every concoction in her shop, and this one was one of her most popular. But it was definitely not for drinking.
“Wait, your boy drank this?” she asked. “Ma’am, this is a hemorrhoid potion, made from toad warts and witch hazel, brewed in darkness for six days and nights. It’s meant to smear on your rear.”
Karen snatched the vial away from Margaret with four fingers, keeping her pointer extended like a lance to stab at her.
“Don’t you tell me how to raise my children, Miss Martel! Little Benjy gets into my bottles of Pulsatilla all the time, and he’s just fine.”
“Pulsatilla?” Margaret said. The name rang a bell, but it wasn’t a magic she was familiar with. Until she remembered that it wasn’t magic at all. In fact, it wasn’t much of anything. “Isn’t that homeopathy? Just some flowers mixed in water.”
“How dare you insult good medicine like that!” Karen thrust her finger again at Margaret. “And how dare you sell something so unsafe for children!”
Karen had survived 200 years never needing to make a deal with the devil, but it looked like today was going to be her first.
“If you’d like,” she said, “I can give you your money back, or—”
“I don’t need to stand here and be patronized by you!” Karen threw her fists in the air, yanking on Benjy’s leash, ignoring the yelp of surprise from the boy. “Of course you will give me my money back. And you’d better have me leaving here a satisfied customer, or else I will leave a one-star review online, and I don’t think my three-hundred and twenty Yelp followers will think very kindly of your store anymore.”
Margaret had to admit, she was right about that. She may not have had to deal with witch burnings like her ancestors, but her ancestors had never had to deal with the horrors of social media either.
“Well, if there’s something in the shop that you’d like, let me know and maybe we can work something out.”
“Work something out? You millenials are so entitled.” Despite her seething anger, Karen seemed content to look around the shop. Her eyes landed on a hand mirror lying upside-down on the counter. “How about that mirror there?”
Anything but that, Margaret thought to herself. That was a Soul Gazer, it showed the true form of the person looking into it. If this Karen woman saw what she really looked like, there was no manager she could ever speak to who could ever remove her internal pain.
“Uh, I dunno about that one,” Margaret said. “It might not, uh, work for you.”
Before Margaret had even finished her warning, Karen grabbed the mirror. She stared down condescendingly at Margaret, her bobbed hair dropping in front of half her sunglasses.
“How about you let me be the judge of what does and does not work for me and my family, Miss Marblo? Don’t you dare try and be like that doctor, scaring poor Benjy with those nasty needles.”
Margaret clenched her teeth and braced for the worst. “How about this. If you like what you see in the mirror, then you can have it for free.”
Karen brushed back her hair and held up the mirror between her and Margaret.
“I hope so. I can’t tell you how much I want to have a place to buy natural remedies. The FDA is shutting down so many honest, hardworking websites trying to get the truth out there. We have to get those lizard people out of the government.”
She gazed into the mirror, Margaret unable to see whatever Karen was seeing on the other side. She leaned over, trying to spy a glance.
“So what do you see in it?” Margaret asked.
“I can’t tell,” Karen said. “Let me bring it a little closer.”
She shoved the mirror right up to her nose, still not bothering to remove her sunglasses. Maybe that was getting in the way of her seeing her reflection?
Crash. A sharp crack came from the mirror, and shards of glass spilled down from it onto the counter.
“You okay ma’am?” Margaret asked, hoping that she didn’t get cut up. Bad Yelp reviews were scary, but lawsuits were even worse.
Karen seemed fine. Physically, anyway. She pulled the mirror away and dropped it onto the counter. It was now a broken mess of shattered glass and warbled reflections.
“I should’ve known better than to come to a store run by one of … your kind,” Karen said. She yanked at Benjy’s leash, the boy still picking his nose, and dragged him away. “You’ve lost a valuable customer, Miss Margarine! Come, Benjy. We’re leaving. Mommy has tweets to post!”
Karen and her boy barged out of Margaret’s shop, clanging the bell and disappearing down the sidewalk. Margaret heaved a sigh of relief and picked up the mirror by the handle, dripping down more broken glass as she brought it up to inspect.
“Huh,” she said, looking over the damage. “The mirror committed suicide rather than show her true form. That’s a first.”
Be sure to watch the video, so you can see what the story looked like when we did it each step at a time: first dialogue only, then body language, then introspection.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso