My 4-year-old son has been watching the original three Star Wars movies for the past few months. Not too long ago (and not too far far away), he came up to me and said, "Love you I do" in his best Yoda voice. It was hilarious!I am taking a pretty confusing linguistics theory class at the moment -- my fault, not the professor's -- so I used the prompt from my son to write my final paper on "Yoda-speak" and the Jedi Master's use of sentence inversion in The Empire Strikes Back.
What I realized while writing this paper is that Yoda's lexicon defines him as much as his green skin, diminutive size or his masterful use of The Force.
That made me analyze the dialogue in my novel, as well as pose some other dialogue-related questions:- Does my dialogue help define my characters?
- Have I fallen into any dialogue traps? (using useless words, writing dialogue when I could paraphrase, etc.?
- Can individual lexicons be over-used? (Personally, I think Yoda's has been overdone in subsequent films)
- What are some good examples of great dialogue? Some Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind.
- Are there any good dialogue resources out there?
2 comments:
I'm halfway through a novel where NO dialogue defines a character.
There's a guy in Stephen King's "The Stand" named Nick who can't talk or hear.
King devises a lot of clever methods for Nick to express himself to others.
For instance, when someone wonders if Nick will be okay, King writes: Nick made a thumb-and-forefinger circle.
In a lengthy exchange of dialogue, Nick will write on a notepad. One character will have "she said" after her comments and Nick will have "he wrote" after his.
That is awesome. Does it still read well and smooth -- even though King has to explain all of the gestures? I haven't read a Stephen King novel in quite awhile. I've got about eight or so in a box in the attic. I'll have to pull them out and pick one for leisure reading. Thank you for the comment, my friend.
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