소설 쓰기에서 흔히 저지르는 대화 실수

### 소설 쓰기에서 흔히 저지르는 대화 실수와 이를 고치는 방법
* ✍ 효과적인 대사를 작성하는 것은 스토리텔링에서 캐릭터의 상호 작용을 보여주고 줄거리를 발전시키는 데 매우 중요하지만 **올바르게 실행하는 것은 어려울 수 있습니다.**
* 📖 자주 발생하는 오류 중 하나는 어트리뷰션이 일치하지 않는 경우로, **대화 대사 뒤에 나오는 행동 대사가 독자에게 누가 말하는지 혼동**을 일으켜 장면의 흐름을 방해할 수 있습니다.
* 😮 또 다른 일반적인 실수는 **캐릭터의 반응을 생략**하는 것입니다. 대화 중 캐릭터의 감정과 행동을 포함시켜 내러티브를 풍부하게 하고 대화의 역동성을 반영하는 것이 필수적입니다.
* 📜 단락 나누기가 잘못되면 어떤 인물이 말하는지 혼동할 수 있으므로 명확성을 유지하기 위해 **같은 화자의 모든 대사를 같은 단락에 넣는 것**이 중요합니다.
* 🗣 산만한 방언은 가독성을 저해할 수 있으므로 때로는 진정성을 위해 필요하지만, **독자가 이해할 수 있는 방식**으로 아껴서 사용해야 합니다.
* 👥 대화에서 이름을 부르거나 이름을 떨어뜨리는 것은 부자연스럽게 느껴질 수 있으므로, **캐릭터 이름을 어트리뷰션 대사나 내러티브 맥락**을 통해 전달하는 것이 보다 진정성 있는 대화가 될 수 있습니다.
* 📝 이러한 일반적인 실수를 해결함으로써 작가는 **보다 매끄럽고 매력적인 대화**를 만들어 스토리텔링의 전반적인 품질을 향상시킬 수 있습니다.

효과적인 대화는 스토리텔링을 향상시키지만 일반적인 실수는 독자를 혼란스럽게 하고 흐름을 방해할 수 있습니다.

If you're writing a novel or even a piece of short fiction, then dialogue is likely going to be a component of your storytelling. Nearly all novel-length works include some amount of dialogue to illustrate how the characters interact with each other and propel the plot forward. But writing dialogue effectively can be really, really challenging, and if you don't do it right, you run the risk of alienating the reader or looking amateurish. So today, I'm going to walk you through the five most common dialogue mistakes that I see when I am editing novels, and also go through some real examples with you, and show you exactly how to fix each of those mistakes so that you can go back through your own manuscript, your own story, and fix all of those errors with your dialogue. If you're interested in fiction writing, if you're working on a book manuscript, or you're interested in the publishing industry at all, I recommend subscribing to my channel. Every single week, I post a new video covering a topic under one of those umbrellas, and I would

love to have you around. So now let's dive into the very first dialogue mistake that I often see in manuscripts: mismatched attributions. The attribution lines are so, so important when you're writing dialogue because that is what the reader is looking for in order to determine what character is saying what line. So whenever something is off with the attribution, if it's incorrectly placed or incorrectly worded, then the reader can just get confused, and that can throw off your entire scene of conversation. What I mean when I say mismatched attributions specifically is that the action line that comes after a line of dialogue is actually following the other character, not the character who just spoke that line of dialogue. So this is something that you really need to see to understand. So let me go through the first example here: Where did Ryan go? Joey asked. I thought he told you. Joey looked concerned. Kelsey's eyes widened. Can you tell which character, Joey or Kelsey, is saying that second line? It's quite confusing because the

attribution line is. Joey looked concerned, but does that mean he said, I thought he told you, because Joey also is the one who just answered the question. So, did Joey just ask the question and then answer his own question, or was that actually Kelsey responding? But for some reason, we saw Joey's response before we heard anything about Kelsey. This is something I see all the time, and I think it happens because you, as the writer, know exactly who's saying what. And in this case, you know you did the correct thing by putting the other speaker's response on a separate line. So, you might think, Oh, the reader's gonna register that that's Kelsey speaking, but Joey looked concerned when she said that. It might be confusing to read. So, what you really need to do here is ensure that the speaker is the first person that you mention after the line of dialogue, whether it's a simple attribution like Joey said or Kelsey said, or it's some kind of action line about them looking a certain way, doing

something you need to make sure that that first sentence after the line of dialogue is focusing on the speaker of that line of dialogue. Then, after you've established what the speaker said or did, then you can talk about the other character and what they're doing in response. So, let me show you what a revised version of this exchange would look like. Where did Ryan go? Joey asked. I thought he told you, Kelsey said, her eyes widening. Joey looked concerned. Now, it is crystal clear that Kelsey is the one who is responding, her eyes are widening, and Joey is looking concerned. We know exactly what is happening, as well as who is saying what. The next mistake that I often see in dialogue exchanges, especially in novels, is that you are skipping over the character's reactions. Now, whenever you're writing a scene of dialogue, make sure that you are not just showing the character's lines one after another, but you are also showing what the characters are doing throughout the scene as they're speaking. You're showing

their reactions, you're showing their tone of voice, you're showing their expressions. All of that is going to give us just as much intel about what's going on, the dynamics of the scene, the emotional underpinnings of the scene, as what they're actually saying verbally. So, they are critical, critical components of any dialogue scene. And all too often, you will see pages and pages of dialogue where it's just line by line by line by line by line, and that's it. We're not really getting that extra layer and that understanding of what's going on in the character's broader environment. The character's expressions, tone of voice, and their actions become especially important when there is a dramatic or shocking moment within the line of dialogue. Something is being revealed, something surprising is being said, something consequential is being relayed from one character to another. Those are moments where you really need to take a step back from the conversation just for a line or two and show the reader how the character is reacting. And if you overlook that, then

It feels like something is missing from the scene, so again, let me show you what I mean. Did you hear about what happened at the gym? Steven asked. No, I've been in class all day. Mark replied. One of the treadmills caught fire while a woman was running on it. She had to be rushed to the hospital and everything. Did they know the cause? Mark asked. As I was reading through that, did you register that something felt like it was unspoken? Something felt like we weren't fully seeing the reaction that we needed to from Mark before Mark asks what the cause of the fire is. It really feels like we need him to react to this really shocking news that the treadmill caught fire while a woman was running on it. So make sure that you have a character react at the moment that some kind of revelation or important information is being relayed. So let me show you what that would look like in this exchange. Did you hear about what happened at the gym? Steven asked. No, I've been in class

all day, Mark replied. One of the treadmills caught fire while a woman was running on it. She had to be rushed to the hospital and everything. Mark gasped. He'd been running on one of the treadmills just that morning. Do they know the cause? he asked. This scene flows much more authentically, and we have a much better sense of what's going on emotionally for Mark when he hears about the treadmill catching fire. He gasps, so we register as readers that he's shocked, surprised by this revelation. And then he adds the detail that he was there just that morning, which also signals to the reader how he is personally interpreting the news that has just been told to him. When we don't have those two lines, the scene just feels like something isn't being said, that Mark is being oddly cold and almost inhuman by not responding to the shocking news that Stephen is giving. Another dialogue mistake that I see all the time is incorrect paragraph breaks. Now, just like the attribution lines, where you break the paragraphs and break

the lines of text when you are writing a scene of dialogue are very, very important to the reader's understanding of the scene, as well as the reader being able to track exactly who is saying what. You really, really need to get the formatting of your paragraph breaks right in a scene of dialogue; otherwise, it can be impossible for the reader to follow. So, let me show you what an incorrect paragraph break looks like in an example. When I got to the grocery store this morning, I saw a strange man waiting by the main entrance, Jordan said. I took the long way and went into the other door to avoid him, but then once I got inside, he was right there in front of me. It really freaked me out, so I rushed past him, then made my way to the back of the store to pick up some milk, but he followed me. Can you tell who is meant to be speaking the second paragraph? Because in this text, it seems as though it's a continuation of Jordan's story. However, the formatting here tells us that this is another person speaking.

because we have a full quotation in the first paragraph and then a full quotation in the second paragraph. So, coming across something like this in a novel is just super confusing because now the reader doesn't know, was that Jordan talking or was that the person that Jordan was talking to responding? So, that just will throw off the entire exchange because then you'll be off on who is saying what and it'll just be extremely difficult to get your head back on straight. What you need to do to ensure that your paragraph breaks are correct is to keep all of the text from the same speaker in the same paragraph. That is the easiest way to do so. However, in some cases, like potentially with the example I showed you, you have a really, really long paragraph and sometimes you just need to break it up, especially if a character is telling a very long story. Maybe it is going on for half a page or even a page or more, and you need to break that up into paragraphs to be more digestible to the

reader, what do you do in that case whenever someone's speaking for a long period of time? If you are continuing a line of dialogue into the next paragraph but it's the same speaker, all you need to do is leave off the closing quotation mark at the end of the earlier paragraph so that will signal to the reader, Oh, this line is actually continuing into the following one. So, I'm going to show you the example here on the screen where we just remove that ending quotation mark, and then we know, Oh, Jordan is continuing with her story here. She is still the same speaker. So, make sure that you are doing this if you have someone who is speaking for a long period of time. But as I said in this case and in most cases, just make sure that the lines from the same speaker are all in the same paragraph because in most cases that works just fine. The next dialogue mistake I want to point out is distracting dialects. This is when in order to convey how a character is speaking or how they are saying

something you are writing out their line of dialogue phonetically rather than in the standard English spelling. In some cases, this can be pretty distracting to read, and in severe cases, it can be almost impossible to even interpret what the character is trying to say. And therefore, you're really defeating the whole purpose of your dialogue because we're not understanding what they are saying. It's difficult to follow, and that's just not how you want to engage a reader in your story. In some cases too, if not done well, it can give us a certain impression of the character that maybe we would or would not have had if you didn't write out that dialect in that way. So if you watched my video on writing techniques that I hate, you will have seen that this is one of them, and admittedly, it caused kind of a lot of controversy in the comments. I know you all have a lot of opinions about writing dialects. Some of you came to the defense and said, you know, sometimes it's necessary. So I wanted to bring it back up here.

because I do still think it is a common dialogue mistake. But secondly, I also want to acknowledge the points that were brought up and say that I completely agree. In some cases, it is more authentic. In some cases, it is necessary for you to write out a dialect in dialogue to do that character justice. And if it is someone who's from the south, so you write out a light southern drawl in the dialect, that is not likely going to be super, super distracting, especially if you do it well. So, I definitely think there are cases where it can work. However, if it's not necessary and if your characters don't have a specific trait that really requires them to speak in a dialect, I say avoid it entirely because you can really make for a bad reader experience if you do it poorly. If it is totally necessary to write a character's lines of dialogue in dialect, then make sure that you do not go overboard and that the lines are always still perfectly readable. Ultimately, my approach to this is do it right or just

don't do it at all because in most cases it's not necessary. The final dialogue mistake I'm going to go over today is what I'm calling name calling or name dropping. This is when a character is either directly calling the person that they are speaking to by their name when it really isn't necessary and it's very clear that they're speaking to one another, or they are dropping the name of another character where it's also very clear that they would both already know who that person is and there's not really a need to speak their name aloud. I am a big stickler for having dialogue really sound authentic and how we actually speak and also be true to the situation. So, if I'm speaking to my mom, I'm not going to call my mom by her first name, for example. These techniques of name calling and name dropping are often used by the writer whenever they are trying to convey another character's name without using an attribution line. So, for whatever reason, you don't want to say Jane said or John said, and you

instead have Jane and John call each other their names in the actual conversation, or it's the very first time we're meeting that character, and really the only way that we can get their actual name is to hear someone else say it. This happens with first-person stories especially, so there are totally valid reasons for using these techniques. However, I do believe there are other ways you can get this information across more smoothly, so let's go through an example. What are you making for breakfast for you, Mary? I'm making your favorite, of course, pancakes. Now go upstairs and grab your sister Molly, will you? Do you see here how it's a little bit awkward that the person that Mary is talking to is calling her Mary out loud when it really seems like they're the only two people in the scene, so there's not really a reason for her to say her name? And then, too, she's saying your sister Molly. Of course, Mary already knows her sister's name is Molly, so in most cases, that person should just say, Go get your

sister. So, how do you fix this? The first approach is to move the name to the attribution line so you can use the narration to your advantage and have that be the way that the reader learns the characters' names, especially if you're working in third person, or you can reveal the character's name in another action line in the narration that's totally unrelated to the conversation. So, let's see an example of both of those. What are you making for breakfast? Mary asked. For you? I'm making your favorite, of course, pancakes. Now go upstairs and grab your sister, will you? Mary headed upstairs to Molly's room. Doesn't this just sound much more natural, like an exchange between two people who know each other intimately? At the same time, we still get all the same information that we got in the prior example. We learned that Mary's name is Mary because we see it in the attribution line. We also learned that her sister's name is Molly through the narration line that comes after the conversation. I hope these tips help you.

find those dialogue mistakes in your own manuscript and correct them so that your story reads smoother. Let me know in the comments what dialogue challenges you faced in your writing or any responses and questions that you have to the mistakes that I pointed out in this video. Now, I admit that I did hold back on one of the biggest dialogue mistakes that I see all the time because I go through it in a completely separate video called My Biggest Dialogue Pet Peeve. So, go check that out for one more big bonus dialogue mistake, and I promise it'll be worth it. As always, if you found this video helpful, please hit that like button and subscribe to my channel. It really means a lot to me and makes me that much more excited to put out these videos for you every week. Thanks so much for watching, and happy writing. [Music] You

Dialogue Mistakes You Might Be Making (with Examples)

Alyssa Matesic

대화의 속성이 일치하지 않으면 독자가 어떤 캐릭터가 말하는지 혼동할 수 있습니다.

혼란을 피하기 위해 캐릭터의 대화 뒤에 나오는 행동 대사는 누가 말하는지 명확하게 표시해야 합니다.

독자가 명확하게 이해할 수 있도록 대화 대사 뒤에 화자를 먼저 언급하는 것이 중요합니다.

대사가 끝난 직후 화자의 행동과 반응에 집중하세요.

장면 전반에 걸쳐 등장인물의 반응, 목소리 톤, 표정을 보여줌으로써 깊이와 맥락을 제공하세요.

중요한 폭로나 충격적인 소식에 대한 등장인물의 반응으로 극적인 순간을 강조하여 더욱 몰입감 있는 내러티브를 만들 수 있습니다.

글쓰기에서 대화와 단락 나누기의 중요성

마크는 특히 그날 아침 러닝머신에서 막 뛰고 있었기 때문에 러닝머신에 불이 났다는 소식을 듣고 충격을 받습니다.

뉴스의 감정적 영향은 그의 숨소리와 사건에 대한 개인적인 연관성을 통해 강조됩니다.

대화에서 올바른 단락 나누기는 누가 말하고 있는지 추적하고 혼동을 피하는 데 도움이 되므로 독자의 이해에 매우 중요합니다.

글쓰기에서 흔히 저지르는 대화 실수

화자의 대화를 다음 단락으로 이어갈 때는 마침 따옴표를 생략하여 표시할 수 있습니다.

등장인물의 방언을 전달하기 위해 대사를 음성으로 쓰면 산만하고 해석하기 어려워 대화의 목적이 퇴색될 수 있습니다.

사투리를 사용하는 것이 사실적이고 필요한 경우도 있지만 캐릭터의 특성에 필수적이지 않은 경우에는 사용하지 않는 것이 가장 좋습니다.

대화에서 이름 부르기 및 이름 삭제의 함정

대화에서 이름을 부르거나 이름을 떨어뜨리는 것은 특히 등장인물이 이미 서로 친숙한 경우 어색하고 부자연스럽게 느껴질 수 있습니다.

이러한 기법은 종종 작가가 어트리뷰션 라인을 사용하지 않고 캐릭터의 이름을 전달하기 위해 사용합니다.

하지만 대화의 흐름을 방해하지 않으면서도 이 정보를 더 매끄럽게 제공할 수 있는 방법이 있습니다.

대화에서 캐릭터 이름 표시 개선

캐릭터 이름을 어트리뷰션 라인으로 옮기거나 관련 없는 내레이션에서 드러내면 보다 자연스러운 대화의 흐름을 만들 수 있습니다.

이러한 접근 방식을 통해 독자는 동일한 정보를 전달하면서도 등장인물의 이름을 유기적으로 익힐 수 있습니다.

이 동영상은 글쓰기에서 흔히 발생하는 대화 실수를 식별하고 수정할 수 있는 팁을 제공합니다.