STATUS

Good freakin dialog tutorial: https://twitter.com/JesnCin/status/814839109210566656

  • Sooz
  • 12/30/2016 08:20 PM

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Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Now errybody quit writing everything like it's translated from Japanese, dang it!
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
That's been on my mind all day today. It's IMMEDIATELY noticeable if you just take fifteen seconds to come up with three adjectives for your character before writing dialogue.

*Rewrites entire game*
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Wow, good stuff! :D
But what if it is translated from Japanese?

(Is there supposed to be more of it? I'm only seeing the character-neutral part...)
author=Sooz
Now errybody quit writing everything like it's translated from Japanese, dang it!
Do you have a history of mist abuse?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Honestly, overdoing this kind of themed dialogue is way worse and way more noticable than having character-neutral dialogue. Character-neutral dialogue is unmemorable, but having a character who sounds like they're trying too hard to act out a role will instantly break my immersion and also make me scoff at the unrealistic writing.

I think listening to people and writing down what they say is a great thing to do. But don't just write down the most outlandish things and use those non-stop. Write down everything they say, even if it sounds "neutral" to you, and also how often they say it.
Sailerius
did someone say angels
3214
author=Sooz
Now errybody quit writing everything like it's translated from Japanese, dang it!

This so much. You can always tell when the only exposure to writing someone has is from games poorly translated from Japanese, because they use weird grammar and turns of phrase that never appear in English. The one that always, always gets me is when a character says they "saw a dream." When have you ever seen a native English speaker use that phrase? Every time I see it I cringe, and it's everywhere in indie RPGs and visual novels.

author=LockeZ
Honestly, overdoing this kind of themed dialogue is way worse and way more noticable than having character-neutral dialogue.

I don't think there's any quality that's worse than being unmemorable, though. I would rather experience something that stands out badly with character than something I'll never remember. If I never remember it, then what was the point? Why was it there? Ideally, a player should be able to identify the speaker of every line of dialogue without a speaker tag, portrait, or other indicator. That's the mark of strong character writing.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=karins_soulkeeper
But what if it is translated from Japanese?

(Is there supposed to be more of it? I'm only seeing the character-neutral part...)


Like more than the intro image, or more than the four images there? If it's the latter, no, there is not more.

author=LockeZ
Honestly, overdoing this kind of themed dialogue is way worse and way more noticable than having character-neutral dialogue. Character-neutral dialogue is unmemorable, but having a character who sounds like they're trying too hard to act out a role will instantly break my immersion and also make me scoff at the unrealistic writing.

I think listening to people and writing down what they say is a great thing to do. But don't just write down the most outlandish things and use those non-stop. Write down everything they say, even if it sounds "neutral" to you, and also how often they say it.


Thanks for sharing with us that badly written dialog is bad, I guess.

author=Sailerius
This so much. You can always tell when the only exposure to writing someone has is from games poorly translated from Japanese, because they use weird grammar and turns of phrase that never appear in English.


Well, again, that's a problem of bad translation. The problem I'm addressing (via someone else's tutorial) is the tendency for translated stuff to sound samey, which is mostly a function of how Japanese works (as well as most non-English languages): English is fairly unusual in that we have a ridiculously varied vocabulary, and a massive variety of ways to put things, while the rest of the world tends to just stick with one word for one thing (excluding slangy variations).

As a consequence, unless a translator is working REALLY hard, most Japanese translations are going to be really dry, because Japanese doesn't have a lot in the way of different phrasings or colorful synonyms; at best, you have difficult-to-render tone or slang.

(This is also why poetry in other languages often focuses more on rhythm than rhyme: there's a lot less variety available to make the rhymes work.)

So where English easily allows the variations found in the tutorial, Japanese (and most other languages) goes to different kinds of expression; statements would be phrased almost exactly the same, but with changes in suffixes or added ending phrases to denote a speaker's background. ("wa" for feminine and "za" for masculine, f'rex.) Since we don't have an equivalent in English, translations tend to either drop the nuance entirely or awkwardly add in a word or two to approximate. Rewriting things to properly localize is 1) super time/labor intensive and B) seen in some purist circles as mangling things. (Granted, that's the kind of attitude that leads to "All according to keikaku!* *Keikaku means plan" but it is a thing.)

Once you're aware of this, you start to notice it a lot; it starts becoming obvious which translators are trying really hard, and which ones are just doing the minimum possible for a buck.

HI I LIKE TO NERD OUT ABOUT LANGUAGES
O.o I write super character intensive dialogue and I've probably done this to an extent before but never noticed it. This is a neat technique, thanks!

Varying sentences lengths is something I've done a lot. I'd plan out my characters to always speak, like, two long sentences then one short, terse sentence for example. It's sort of like writing poetry, except you have to decide what character works best for what length.

Assigning punctuation to certain characters is something else I've done too. Introverts get commas, shy guys get ellipses, loud peeps get exclamation marks etc. It would cross over sometimes, but usually it helped.

(But, usually, I'd just feel out my characters for a while and apply more subtle techniques. This'll help make it easier from now on~<3)
@Sooz2> I only see one image; presumably the intro you mentioned. I'll try switching to a different browser...
Now I kinda want to make a game where different characters talk in different kinds of poem.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Sooz
Thanks for sharing with us that badly written dialog is bad, I guess.
I mean, this tutorial is basically just "In this tutorial, I'm going to explain how to avoid writing character neutral dialogue. Explanation: Don't write character neutral dialogue! This has been a tutorial. I drew some pictures so you'd feel like there was more content though."

But sometimes you actually want to write dialogue that's character-neutral. How neutral is too neutral? In what situations and with what frequency should your characters speak more or less uniquely? Which styles of speech are good ones to pick for which types of characters, and which aren't, and why? These are all things that should have been at least touched on even in the most basic-ass tutorial.

I can't write a better tutorial because I'm terrible at writing dialogue. I just know this tutorial was a floppy, empty ballsack with no nuts inside.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
I mean i thought it was alright

LockeZ, you know that scene early in ff9 where Zidane tells Garnet to try using "Alrighty" instead of being so formal? That's why this is so important.

If you're having trouble thinking of situations where you may or may not want to be neutral, I suggest going outside. That sounds mean but, like, you're making this out to be some giant unscaleable mountain of a concept when it's just the difference between saying "how are you" or "what's up" or "how does this day find you, m'lady"?

If you're thinking of something like the DQ4 remake for DS, then that might be over the top. I guess. I loved it, though.

Not everybody needs five vocal tics and a personal trauma that affects the way they say "dog", but you should at least know your characters enough to know how they'd greet the bartender.
One thing you have to keep in mind when doing dialogue for games is that you generally don't have narration or prose providing subtext for whatever's going on. You're relying heavily (even exclusively) on the dialogue for that.

Using expressive face sets act as subtext, or... say, making a sprite jump up and down before saying something angry. But neither of those are as good as prose, so dialogue in games, particularly RPGs, just does a lot more lifting than it does in other mediums.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=LockeZ
I can't write a better tutorial because I'm terrible at writing dialogue. I just know this tutorial was a floppy, empty ballsack with no nuts inside.


I mean given that multiple other people seem to feel like this has useful and actionable advice, maybe the problem isn't the tutorial?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
People like anything if it's accompanied by cute drawings.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
author=LockeZ
I can't write a better tutorial because I'm terrible at writing dialogue. I just know this tutorial was a floppy, empty ballsack with no nuts inside.

*image snipped for being dumb*

Anyway, more serious answer:

No one was saying to ham up the dialogue to insane levels. It's more to help kick up some personality for the character's lines where there originally wasn't any.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
No, I wasn't saying that the maker of the tutorial wanted me to ham it up. Just that people ham it up anyway, because we're not perfect writers 100% of the time. And I'd like a really thorough explanation of when it's ok to do so and when it's not and why it's in our nature as writers to do so when it's not appropriate and what sorts of things the audience will feel when such-and-such happens and how different types of dialects can interact with dramatic scenes vs. comedic scenes and blah blah blah.

This is three paragraphs of instruction on a topic that I think is kind of dangerous to approach in less than, like, an hour long ted talk. And the reason I think it's dangerous is because I think there are many situations going too far with the personalized dialogue can be worse than not going far enough.

Sailerious said, "I don't think there's any quality that's worse than being unmemorable," but that's only directly true for books, where unmemorable writing makes the whole work unmemorable. In a movie/game, I think it's better to have amazing memorable action/gameplay and unmemorable dialogue than amazing memorable action/gameplay and corny dialogue. There's no value in drawing people's attention away from the better-made parts of your game towards the worse-made parts.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
"Dangerous"?

author=LockeZ
And I'd like a really thorough explanation of when it's ok to do so and when it's not and why it's in our nature as writers to do so when it's not appropriate and what sorts of things the audience will feel when such-and-such happens and how different types of dialects can interact with dramatic scenes vs. comedic scenes and blah blah blah.


You... uh... do realise that creative endeavours are more like cooking than like baking, yes? There's a lot of room for variation and rule-bending, and a lot depends on one's audience, so there's not really a hard-and-fast "go this far and no farther," and a lot of it is up to practice and feeling things out.

If you fuck up and make the dialog super dumb, then you've tried, and you know for the future not to do that again. If you make the dialog on the edge of dumb, and decide that enough of your audience is cool with that to ignore any haters, then that's cool and you can keep doing you.

You're also basically asking for a full college course from a Twitter tutorial, so IDK man, here's Robert McKee's book about dialog, maybe that's closer to what you're looking for.
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