Dialoque for demographic

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Dialoque for demographic

    I'm doing a romance-drama with my two leads in their early twenties. The story is paranormal in nature. I am writing the dialogue in a more adult manner, as I feel this lends more credence to the story, but I'm concerned about speech style. It's not a rom-com so I'm not loading it up with the current hip slang but at the same time I feel I should balance it with some. Problem is I'm 52, not 22.

    My question is: How do you approach using modern slang when you don't use it yourself?
    We gain our innocence by taking yours.

  • #2
    Re: Dialoque for demographic

    Write what you know.

    If you don't know it, find out about it until you do.
    On Twitter @DeadManSkipping

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Dialoque for demographic

      I wouldn't worry about it, Better to write dialogue you prefer at a good quality than attempting something foreign to you.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Dialoque for demographic

        Slang goes in and out of style too often to put much effort into keeping up to date with it, IMO. Find some 20ish people to eavesdrop on, figure out which pop culture references they'd use, and then just make it sound natural.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Dialoque for demographic

          Originally posted by AE35-Unit View Post
          My question is: How do you approach using modern slang when you don't use it yourself?
          Brah, it's a whole new language, you need a dictionary and a thesaurus

          http://www.englishbaby.com/lessons/3...lang_word_list

          And then there's the code

          http://www.datingfun.com/guides/slang-translator.php (that can't have changed, right?)

          peace out
          Story Structure 1
          Story Structure 2
          Story Structure 3

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Dialoque for demographic

            Thanks. Kinda what I thought.

            "We need to talk", meant the same in the 70's. I heard it once.
            We gain our innocence by taking yours.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Dialoque for demographic

              Tutor some kids. You'll learn real quick, and you'll get to do something awesome for the community as a bonus.
              Chicks Who Script podcast

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Dialoque for demographic

                Definitely try to make it sound like the right age-- as a reader, I really relate to a script that has the right voice for the right characters. If the voice is off, the script doesn't feel genuine. It's not that people discriminate against old people, but if you can't write like your characters or in the way your target audience speaks, the script might get overlooked.

                But I also agree with the person about slang going in and out of style. I'm not a very slangy person myself and when I use it it's NEVER whatever regular people are saying-- even when I was a teenager. Someone here accused me of being born in 1940 because I said "duffus." I also enjoy saying "nimrod." I'm not a real "asshat" kind of person...

                Tutoring's an interesting idea (I teach) but you could also just hang out at a place where teenagers go, like the mall. You could be the old guy sitting on the bench and you wouldn't look like a creeper (as those whippersnappers like to say...). Just be sure the bench is by Hot Topic or Hollister or whatever.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Dialoque for demographic

                  Originally posted by cvolante View Post
                  Definitely try to make it sound like the right age-- as a reader, I really relate to a script that has the right voice for the right characters. If the voice is off, the script doesn't feel genuine.
                  Yes. That said, along the way I made a still-surprising discovery:

                  I thought of films that, to my mind, have dialogue with great pitch, i.e., the tone/slang/structure matches the characters as to place/age/background. Then I found the scripts and was surprised that the dialogue looked a lot more "normal" on the page than it seemed on the screen. It was still clever and all, but the slang and dialect stuff was relatively small. A pinch here, a dash there. The words on screen were the same as in the script, but the acting is what really provided the "pitch".

                  For me, it seems that the more important challenge, and the one that can be a bit more difficult to meet, is finding the right allusions. One character tries to explain his feeling of sadness. "It's like when [the name of some character in a movie that's known to everyone of that age] really wanted to [something] but like [slang for failed]."

                  Back to the slang question: Some department at UCLA sells a slang reference book that they update every 5 years or so. You might google it. As I recall, it's not very expensive. Otherwise, there are a number of good suggestions others have made above. Oh, and here's a source that, if nothing else, can be funny: http://textsfromlastnight.com/

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Dialoque for demographic

                    My 24 year old son corrected me on "I promise we will hook up."

                    'Hook up' means you want to get together and 'bone'. If you just want to be friends you say "hang out".

                    Jesus, I've been saying 'hook-up' to my customers for years.
                    We gain our innocence by taking yours.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Dialoque for demographic

                      Originally posted by AE35-Unit View Post
                      My 24 year old son corrected me on "I promise we will hook up."

                      'Hook up' means you want to get together and 'bone'. If you just want to be friends you say "hang out".

                      Jesus, I've been saying 'hook-up' to my customers for years.
                      Don't worry, "hook up" can also mean French kissing or other things that are lower than sex on the totem pole.

                      So your customers might just think you want to touch them in special places.

                      And I agree with those who said slang that is current today will make a movie seem that much more outdated down the line- when I first watched The Breakfast Club, I thought it was a parody of the eighties.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Dialoque for demographic

                        Don't force dialogue you don't feel naturally. If you don't feel it, you don't feel it. It's not going to be good.

                        If you want it to be natural, then watch as many movies as you can that are current and feature characters of the age you're watching. Get a sense for how they're doing it.

                        You'll need much, much less than you think. Time-specific slang is far less informative than good writing, i.e. interesting characters behaving in interesting ways involving interesting dramatic conflicts will be interesting (no surprise there).

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Dialoque for demographic

                          Originally posted by AE35-Unit View Post
                          I'm doing a romance-drama with my two leads in their early twenties. The story is paranormal in nature. I am writing the dialogue in a more adult manner, as I feel this lends more credence to the story, but I'm concerned about speech style. It's not a rom-com so I'm not loading it up with the current hip slang but at the same time I feel I should balance it with some. Problem is I'm 52, not 22.

                          My question is: How do you approach using modern slang when you don't use it yourself?
                          From my perspective, it's a much bigger problem using expressions that are out of date rather than struggling to use the "right" expressions. And that probably goes as much for the way things are done as for how things are said. For instance no one says phone me -- it's always now "text me." Nobody writes down a number any more. They always just put it into their phones -- or just somehow or other shoot it from one phone to another.

                          So on that level, if you use the wrong expressions -- terms from when you were a kid all those long, dreary endless years ago -- it will sound dated.

                          But you know what else will sound even more dated?

                          That's using slang from five years ago. Or sometimes even three years ago.

                          Trying to be really timely in contemporary slang means that you will date faster than yesterday's fish.

                          If you doubt this, try watching movies from pretty much any decade aimed at the "youth audience" that attempted to exactly that -- that is, to write to whatever way the makers of those movies thought kids were talking.

                          And who knows? Maybe they were, for a small part of an afternoon in 1967, or 1974, or 1985.

                          But listen to it today and it's ludicrous.

                          I'm not suggesting a "generic" way of speaking, but I think that it makes much more sense to look to the particular character for that person's voice rather than "how are those young'ns talking these days."

                          NMS

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Dialoque for demographic

                            This thread reminds me of JUNO.

                            Could I write a pregnant teen?

                            I'd have to find one and shadow her. Lift the dialogue. Better still, make her write the character.
                            Story Structure 1
                            Story Structure 2
                            Story Structure 3

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Dialoque for demographic

                              I was 22 once.

                              I know 22 year olds.

                              Slang can be distinctive to your characters - not what every 22 year old says, but what *your* 22 year olds say.

                              - Bill
                              Free Script Tips:
                              http://www.scriptsecrets.net

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X