As someone who struggles a lot with dialogue for not only canon but ocs as well, how do you go about writing it? With complex characters like Jacobs and many of the SCPs, it seems like it'd be hard to capture the "why" in their words.
Oh gosh, now we’re getting to the tough questions. You kinda have to break it down into multiple layers in your head.
A character’s dialogue, their tone and intention, the lies and multiple meanings, usually stems from their motivations. A person will enter a scene with a motivation that is unique to them. Sometimes, their motivations overlap or run parallel with each other. Other times, they don’t, or someone has no relevant motivation.
Once you’ve got that figured out, you have to consider how those motivations can start being explored by the characters. Who is leading interaction? If someone doesn’t want to be part of it, are they trying to leave? Are they bored? Being polite? Is the other person perceptive enough to notice? Desperate enough to keep going? Are they successfully able to convince the other party to open dialogue? If so, how?
The how is the next part. How do these individual characters communicate? What’s their style of communication? Or are they trying to approach differently because they know they need to? Do they want something and are trying to hide it? Are they good at that? Do they have a specific intention with where they want to lead the other character? Have they nefarious intent? Or are they shy? Is it sensitive? Perhaps their heads are so far up their own arses, or they love the sound of their own voice, that they’ll trample over the other person’s words to get there.
How are they feeling in the moment? Do they like or dislike this emotion or place they’re being taken? Is this opening ideas up in their minds, or closing doors?
Really, you gotta just write a path out and try to see if you can naturally have the characters shepherd themselves along that path. Literally like herding sheep. Otherwise, you might as well write:
“Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
or
“Let’s go.”
“No.”
Look at how your own conversations play out, how they evolve from one subject to the next because of a subject, a comment, a phrase, a word, or because it came to an end and the next conversation ends. People have habits in communicating. Figure out what your characters’ habits are, and what they want to say, and how they want to go about getting to that end goal.
Mostly though just have fun with it. And remember: you can always edit later.
