I listen to people a lot, and I read a lot of books. People in books do not talk in any way like people in real life. This is as well because in real life, people stumble around a lot, have awkward pauses, use no grammar worth mentioning and spend a lot of time making small talk in which nothing of any great significance is communicated. A large percentage of my real life conversations go a bit like this:

“Nice weather, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but the forecast for later is terrible.”

“I left the washing out.”

“What’s your dog called?”

“Gerald. Go on Gerald, sit down. Good boy.”

Drama, it isn’t. But in stark contrast, there are books, and comics, and films where the dialogue is more like this.

“We’ve got twenty four hours to save the entire world.”

“Well, although I appear to be a harmless pastry chef, I have a military background and I know a critically important thing about this problem and I can help you.”

“I’ve just come from another place where a thing is happening and I want to talk to you about a plot point.”

“Wow, your plot point is really hot. I know we’ve only got 24 hours to save the entire world but we should spend some of that time having sex.”

The more plot driven a story is, the less the dialogue sounds like any kind of real person, all too often. But the real life, conversations we have style of dialogue would be painful to read. Somewhere in between is something that sounds plausibly like real people, but does something interesting. It’s not the easiest balance to strike.

In the meantime, I have to use my uncanny weather sense to stop a super-villain’s terrible plan to destroy the city, and I need to find someone I can explain this to so that they will magically divulge a bit of information that I didn’t know I needed...

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