Writing dialogue

Because I'm not feeling well I'm going through a book about every six to eight hours and not always my first choices. Thank goodness there are so many books in the house.

Today I started one from an author that has had millions of books sold in many languages. 

I am not jealous that my sales don't begin to match hers. Any writer that can make any money from writing is wonderful. I celebrate her success.

But there is a little itch that her writing is so under-wonderful, especially dialogue. It is banal and doesn't move the plot forward.

Example:

   What time do you want to have supper tomorrow?
   You call it.
   About 7:30.
   Yes. I'll come and pick you up and you can give me a drink before I take you out on the town.

What happened when they were out on the town never appeared. The dialogue wasn't even necessary. A sentence--They agreed to meet at 7:30 for dinner--would have covered but even that would have added nothing to the story.

Writing convincing dialogue is difficult.

Beginning writers sometimes try to sneak information into dialogue that becomes unrealistic.

   Hello Brother John.
   Hello.
   Mother says to be home early from your job at the FastCash supermarket, which you don't like,    
   because Uncle Bob, who lives next door, is coming to dinner even though Mother thinks he is a  
   pain in the ass and wishes he would move away.

What's wrong with it? All the underlined words Brother John would know and he would think the speaker is an idiot.

Okay, maybe I exaggerated a bit but overkill can prove a point. 

Maybe it would be okay to call Brother John that if that's how they usually addressed each other through out. Instead to establish the relationship, the information could be handled better written this way:

   John could hardly wait until his shift at FastCash supermarket ended. Seeing his brother didn't  
   help and learning from him that Uncle Bob would be at dinner tonight didn't help either. He 
   wished his uncle would move from next door and he knew his mother felt the same way although  
   she'd never call Bob, a pain in the ass to his face--just behind his back.

If we were to record speech and put what we record into a story it wouldn't work. People don't speak like they speak in books.

Styling the speech to match the personality, age, education and emotional feeling to the speaker is important.

An 80-year old American woman with a Ph.D. from Harvard probably wouldn't say. "Like get me, you know, my cane, like it's behind the you know the couch." A much younger person could but the extra likes and you knows can be as annoying to read as they are to hear.

Vocabulary choices also can tell a lot about character. If a prim and proper woman suddenly starts using f--k, it could tell a lot about what is going on. A pompous character can use multi-syllable words. Grammatical mistakes work if not overdone.

How to handle foreign languages?

If your characters are French everyone will assume they are speaking French. However, if a writer wants to sprinkle the work with foreign words it is safe to assume not all readers will understand. Translations in parenthesis are awkward, which is what my best-selling author did.

I prefer a sneaky approach. Make the meaning clear with the next sentence.

   "Je te vois plus tard," he said.
   I glanced at my watch. Would I be free later to see him?

Even if I wanted to edit the writing and found the repetitions tiresome, I will read the book to the end. It is a great story under all the verbiage and I hope she enjoys every cent she's earned.