LEARNING ABOUT DIALOGUE: A Lesson on writing the important stuff with Riverdale.

Artwork by R.B.T

ART by RBT. Check out the artist's website and instagram.

Massive SPOILERS for:

• Riverdale, Netflix television show

An author visited my writing group recently to deliver a workshop on writing dialogue.
It was pretty great.

Her name is Victoria Purman.
And her website can be found by following this link.

Victoria said some pretty interesting things about dialogue during her workshop.

One particular idea I really wanted to share here, using the Netflix show 'Riverdale' (which I totally enjoy possibly despite my better judgement) as the direct example.
​
So here we go...

​During her workshop, Victoria Purman said many things, but for today, I wanted to touch on the following:


'When the stakes are really high you want your characters to talk about it'.
Victoria Purman.


What Victoria  is saying, is that you don't want to describe the scenes leading up to an altercation (for example), only to have your characters go into a different room to resolve the issue off page.

What she's saying is that if a scene within your story matters, then Write It Out.

Readers want to be present when something big happens in your story. They want to watch it unfold.

​If it happens off page then most likely you'll just leave them feeling unsatisfied and infuriated.

​So because Victoria writes romance, I wanted to use romance as an example for this lesson. 
Or to be more specific, a relationship. 

Jughead and Betty.

If you've never seen the Netflix show 'Riverdale', its a teen mystery / coming of age story, based on the Archie comics I so adored as a child.... and kind of nothing like the comics at all.
Which is besides the point.

The point is, there is a couple within the 'Riverdale' story who fall in love, named Jughead and Betty.
(And yes I know Jughead is a weird name but stay with me here).


Here's the events in order:

• Jughead and Betty fall in love. We don't really get to enjoy the leadup to it or anything, because they don't like eachother one scene, and then Jughead just kisses Betty in the next. Which she seems to be pretty cool with.

 

• They start dating and solving mysteries together. They are cute, attractive and totally the best thing about this show. (I love them!)

 

• Stuff goes wrong. We get a scene where everything goes to shit. Jughead is furious at Betty. He doesn't trust her anymore. She's betrayed him! He runs out of the house, ignoring her as she calls for him. But then someone talks some sense into him. Tells him to go back inside and be a man! Tells him to face Betty and resolve the issue.

 

• Cut to...... Jughead and Betty sitting in the local diner.... totally in love again? All their issues totally resolved... ? Totally resolved... OFFSCREEN?

Seriously, if your characters are having an altercation, or developing a romance, or... basically going through any scene whatsoever that will change or show a shift in their relationship, you have to write it out using dialogue.

​For instance, if you want to portray a couple falling in love, like really make the reader believe that they are falling in love, then you can't just write:


'And then they hung out for hours and told each other their innermost secrets and became closer to each other than they were before.'


The above makes me feel nothing.
Sure it works in movies if you use a montage and some moving music. But it never works in novels.
Never ever.
You have to write out the whole scene where they tell each other their secrets.
You have to tell your readers what those secrets are!


In truth, when writing a novel, it's pretty easy to overlook this idea.
Especially if the romantic element within your story is not a main point, and if that's the case you might well find yourself trying to gloss over this kind of stuff.
​But you shouldn't. It will make your novel stronger overall if you don't.

If you want your readers to care about your characters, then you must show them interacting, not just inform your readers that they have. If you want readers to care about a relationship, you have to make it feel real.

​And writing out the dialogue in major scenes, the scenes where something in a relationship shifts, is the absolute best way to make a relationship feel real.

Easier said than done?
Probably.


Do you find writing dialogue easy or hard?
Tell me about your project and what kind of dialogue you like most!
​:)