Your colloquialisms are ruining the immersion (or, non-contemporary dialogue)
I am no expert here! Whenever I wrote historical fiction it was anachronistic historical fiction. This advice is from a reader’s perspective and from my experience writing high fantasy.
So what’s the deal with immersive dialogue? I’m going to ignore writing dialects and accents and so-called “old English” with the thee, thy, thou and such. Solely focusing here on the narrative telling me this isn’t set in present times, and yet the dialogue being painfully colloquial like present times.
This is coming from a book I had to read set in HRE times. In it, characters were spouting modern curse words, tacking on verbal tics and crutch words like “or something” and “um” and drawing out words like “daaaamn” and “nooooo”. Rip out the dialogue and toss it in a script with zero context and it would read like two high schoolers from 2009, not two adults from the Holy Roman Empire. Which is a problem, because it completely shattered the immersion. —
1. On so-called “formal writing”
Everybody knows that nixing contractions doesn’t do a damn thing to help your writing look more “formal”, it just looks robotic and stiff, right? We’ve gotten past this as a society? There’s a time and a place for replacing contractions with the full words, but not for every single sentence.
I swear this show keeps creeping into my writing advice but here we go. Transformers Prime. The context for Optimus’ dialogue has a lot to do with his aging voice actor, Peter Cullen, and the perception of the character over the decades from the corny 80s paragon hero everyman type leader to the grizzled and wizened old soul type leader. Optimus isn’t “one of the guys,” he’s old. Very old. He’s the dad of the group (one dad, his grumpy medic is the other dad).
So he gets lines like:
“I fear Megatron’s ambition is at its zenith.”
“But if his return is imminent as I fear, it could be a catastrophic.”
“I bore Skyquake no ill-will.”
He doesn’t curse like the other Autobots. His voice only raises in surprise, horror, or rage. He doesn’t go “um/ah/so/but/eh” and always thinks about what he’s going to say well before he says it. Despite him, Ratchet (the dad medic), and Megatron all being very old, Optimus is the only one who’s “proper” and collected and dignified with his lines. The writers didn’t achieve this simply by omitting contractions, he gets them where necessary and removes them when effective (e.g “We do not.” / “We don’t.”)
2. Thesaurus Rex
Continuing with the Optimus example, no other character in that show would use “zenith” unironically. Or “ill-will”. This doesn’t mean crack open and abuse a thesaurus but there’s a huge divide between:
“Megatron’s gone crazy and he’s going to implode soon” and “Megatron’s ambition is at its zenith”.
I can’ think of a better word to use than dignified, perhaps distinguished to describe his dialogue.
He doesn’t say “what?” when he’s confused, he pauses and says something like “please elaborate”.
This is both word choice and a syntax issue so if you’re struggling to fit a non-contemporary vibe for your work, pay attention to both.
3. When to abstain from cursing
There’s something very special about the dialogue in the Lord of the Rings movies: It’s PG-13 so they can’t curse, but if they had, it would have probably ruined the trilogy. These characters are able to yell in rage and anguish, spit vicious insults at their enemies, and stare down armies that are determined to kill them, all while never breaking the immersion.
Insults like:
“Late is the hour in which this conjurer chooses to appear.”
“Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth, you witless worm.”
“Your words are poison.”
And all three were said by or about Grima Wormtongue.
Characters aren’t dumbasses, they’re fools, with the exception of Gollum’s insults toward Sam, the “stupid, fat hobbit”.
Even devoid of name-calling, Denethor absolutely trounces his second son by asking (and I’m paraphrasing) “Is there any man here willing to do his lord’s bidding?” right after Faramir expresses some apprehension about a suicide charge with his remaining soldiers, completely ignoring him and implying that he’s not a real man.
LOTR is full of juicy lines beyond curse words, too. One of my absolute favorites is: “Dark have been my dreams of late” as opposed to “I’ve been having nightmares lately.”
Do you see?? It’s poetry. The motif of Shadow and Darkness as if they’re real, physical things, all the lines of poetry pulled straight from the books like Theoden’s “where is the horse and the rider” monologue just before Helm’s Deep.
It’s dignified.
—
This one was a bit harder to, ironically, put into words without doing a full-blown case study into either franchise’s ability to write dialogue and monologues. I didn’t even talk about Ratchet’s several monologues (one of which was done perfectly in the sound booth on the first take) because Jeffrey Combs has a voice like ambrosia.
TLDR: Immersion goes far beyond your vivid setting descriptors and the clothing or the names and languages. I mostly write fantasy and sci-fi and whenever I read or watch fantasy and sci-fi that isn’t meant to be a world different from our own, or about characters who don’t speak modern English, and they go off with modern slang, syntax, and verbal tics, it just feels sloppy and weak. Pay attention to the following:
Syntax
Modern slang and jargon
Filler words/verbal tics
Curse words/curses
Flat, unmotivated vocab
*All of the quotes were from memory because I watch both of these franchises way too often. So apologies if I got any wrong.
