Dialogue, and those who love it.

[Time For Future Girl!]

In my opinion, one of the most difficult tasks of the writers is to separate the character's words from the narrative. While an accent can be a tool, what about those characters who speak without accent? Is your grammar style different? Do you find that a writing style without much finesse can sometimes bring down your dialogue scores?

And for the mods, what do you look for in great dialogue? Would someone who wrote in first person (therefore effectively making everything a form of dialogue when you get right down to it) be penalized for using poor grammar, if that was the way their character was prone to speaking/thinking? Would you even recognize it being part of the character's mode, or just think the person couldn't write a proper sentence?

[Sorahn]

Believable dialogue is one thing I have a lot of problems with, as I tend to view it more as a necessary evil than as a valuable tool, and as a result my dialogue is very simplistic.

But as far as differentiation, I typically try to make Sorahn speak with an older English, where my writing is more modern. Not like "thee" and "thy" or anything like that, but more saying "have not" instead of "haven't". It's a very subtle variation and most of the time I forget about it. Like I said, I have problems with dialogue.

[Chiroptera]

I love dialogue. It's much harder to do when RPing since snappy comebacks are basically lost in the maze of narration that envelops them, but it's great stuff. I was big into thinking in italics when I first started out (I believe Witchblade was the one who kindly told me how obnoxious it was), but now I just weave it into the narration and try to keep dialogue only to what a) reveals something about your character or b) reveals necessary information for the other people you're RPing with.

[Tainted Bushido]

I get lost in Dialogue, really. Check a lot of my work. I'll have people go back and forth with Dialogue for awhile, but usually with a point. In the end it either comes out two ways;

1) Corney as all hell.
2) Natural and enhances the effect I'm going for.

In the end, I say there's two ways to go about Dialogue, either end a post with a bit and let the next person do their comeback, if you're looking for a retort. OR, work with the person and bunny Dialogue. It turns what becomes an awkward five posts into two posts, while making the shift of viewpoint refreshing, as suddenly they're getting the other half of whats going on.