Writing Tips - Dialogue And Character Continuity

writing tips - dialogue and character continuity

this is something that's a bit more nuanced when writing characters, but it makes a huge difference. basically, character continuity is keeping the character's actions, dialogue, and inner thoughts consistent with their profile.

'well, that's just writing a character, pygmi, what else would you do?'

well, sometimes it's not that easy.

Biggest point i'm gonna make (if you get nothing else from this, at least get this): keep your feelings out of it. your opinions as an author don't have anything to do with the story, because you aren't in the story.

When it's obvious that the author is inserting their feelings and perspective into the narrative, it gets really muddy. lemme show you an example.

for the sake of this post, this story is 'narrated'/told from the perspective of a six year old named Lacy.

"Lacy watched her father tinker with the car, wondering what he was doing. He'd taken a socket wrench to the engine and was removing all of the nuts and bolts, lining them up in his toolbox. She thought that was strange, because weren't the parts supposed to stay in the car?"

this is an inconsistent piece. it's 3rd person, but it is told from her perspective and using her thoughts.

Problem: A six year old (or at least none of the ones I've met) aren't familiar with the insides of a car. I don't think Lacy would be very good at describing in detail what her dad was doing, and definitely couldn't identify the tools he was using.

Yes, this paragraph is okay, but it creates a level of distance between the character (Lacy) and the story. We feel removed from her head because it doesn't feel like she's describing it.

Let's try this:

"Lacy watched her father tinker on the car, wondering what he was doing. He'd rustled around his toolbox before pulling out a long, metal stick with a loop. Whistling, he started pulling grimy silver trinkets out of the open car. They plinked gently on the cement floor. She thought it sounded like bells in the church."

Little kids don't have the vocabulary and sentence structure to describe things like the first paragraph (obviously, some are more advanced, but for explanation's sake). However, they are great at describing things with comparisons and colors/shapes/sizes. With Lacy, I picked a more general vocabulary that focused on what it looked like, not what it was.

I'm not here to tell you how to write small children, but you need to understand how to tailor the perspective to the character. A little kid won't be thinking with complete, highly educated theoretical thinking. An old wizard won't be cracking jokes like a teenager. To create juxtaposition, you could work with that, but it needs to make sense. If you just don't know what to do, that's different.

this also applies to interactions with other characters. You can have a hotshot girl with perfect body and sexy hair, but if it's told from her brother's perspective, he's not gonna describe her that way. That's not the nature of their relationship.

Understand the context and background from which the characters come from before using their narrative.

let me know if you want me to elaborate, but that's a summary

xox love you

i 👏love👏this👏so👏much!!!!!!!!! i screamed when i saw the notif thank u thank u thank uuuuuu

sweet nathan is the best nathan 😌

xoxoxox love u fen!!

Need You

Nathan Bateman x GN!Reader • Rating: PG •Masterlist• ao3• want to be tagged? | requestinfo• MK Bingo 2024 Masterlist• ko-fi •

Summary: Nathan wants to go to sleep.

A/N: Guess who's being all sappy againnnn.

Warnings: fluffy fluff fluff, self-indulgent as HECK, swearing, Nathan being a little shit, reader being a little shit too, over use of italics, typos, not beta read, railroad sentences, please let me know if I've missed a warning!

Word Count: 758

You hear Nathan before you see him, practically stomping down the corridor. Most of the time he was surprisingly light footed and took a perverse glee in sneaking up on you at any available opportunity. So that fact that he was being so obvious about where he was now was most certainly to send you a message. 

The message of: hurry the fuck up and come to bed. 

You couldn’t help the smile that pulled at your lips. 

As the office door opened you pretended to ignore it, not even looking up from your screen as you typed. 

Out of the corner of your vision, you could see Nathan’s outline in the doorway, his hands on his hips as he watched you, the air of unimpressed rolling off him in waves. 

You count the seconds in your head, one, two, three, four…

“What the fuck are you doing?” He grumbled, padding into the room and standing next to you. 

“Working.” 

“It’s late.”

You don’t look up from your screen. “So?” 

“So?” 

“So?”

He groans. “Fucking turn that off.” 

You school your face into a scowl, despite the fact you want to giggle, and glare at him. “I’m working, you’re always working weird hours.”

“You were working five minutes ago, you were looking at lego sets.” He crosses his arms.

“Monitoring my computer?” You smirk.

“Always.”

“It’s research.” You stress.

“No, it’s not.” 

You turn back to your computer screen, but don’t even bother to pretend to hit the keys. 

Nathan lets out a humph. 

“Why do you want me to stop looking at Lego sets?” You ask as innocently as you can, looking back up at him. 

Nathan swallows, still scowling. 

You smile, sickenly sweet as glee runs through your veins. Slowly, you move to go back to what you were doing, purposefully moving languidly to drag the seconds out.

He breaks sooner than you thought he would.

“Fine, I’ll buy you every fucking Lego set that has ever been made, hell, I’ll buy you three. One to build, one to keep and one to burn-”

“That’s a waste, Nathan.”

He ignores your interjection, but he rolls his eyes at you, “if you just turn off the computer.”

“Why?” You don’t look at him. 

He grumbles again.

“Why Nathan?” You ask in a sing-song voice. 

“Don’t make me say it.” He mutters.

“Sorry?” You cup your hand to your ear in an over the top fashion just to tease him, “I didn’t catch that?” 

He groans, flopping his hands to his sides, looking momentarily like a toddler about to throw themselves on the floor for not getting their own way. 

“I want to go to sleep.” He huffs out.

“Sorry?” You can’t help but push him.

“I want to go to sleep.” He repeats, louder and clearer, and definitely with more exasperation.

You look up at him, giving him your full and undivided attention. “So?” 

He glares at you, a storm brewing on his forehead. But instead of saying something rude or marching off, he takes a deep breath. “I would like to go to sleep with you in bed next to me,” he pauses for half a second, pushing the frown from his face before he adds, “please.”

Surprisingly the word isn’t said begrudgingly. 

He catches the small flicker of shock on your face and he kneels down next to you, battering his eyes dramatically and putting his hands on your knees. 

“Please come to bed with me?” He says in an awful baby voice. 

You burst out laughing. “Stop, don’t ever do that fucking voice again.”

“Why?” He blinks harder, continuing the voice and somehow making it worse. 

You playfully go to push his cheek softly away, but he catches your wrist in his hand lightening fast as he kisses your wrist. 

“Please?” He repeats, still babyfied. 

“Will you stop that voice if I say yes?” You giggle. 

And he nods looking up at you softly, still battering his eyes. 

You snort. “Alright. You’re so silly.”

“No?” He grins and kisses your palm.

“Yes. All you needed to do was admit you’d like me to come to bed with you.” 

“Hmm,” he snuffles closer on his knees, pushing your legs lightly apart. “Need me to tell you I need you, huh? You that pathetic?” He teases.

“Yes.” You say bluntly, smiling, knowing that’s not what he expects.

There’s a flicker of surprise for a second before a soft smile pulls at his lips. “I need you, baby,” he says silkily, knowing that’s not what you expect either.

Thank you for reading!

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ahahahahahahaaaaa awwww this is so perfect i love failure tea ☆☆☆☆☆

perfect nathan relationship 10/10

Rally beloved it is Mushi... calling you from baked beans land....

Any chance of romantic non smut with nathan ?

MUSHI!!!!! For you? Absolutely anything!

Contents: bad language, Nathan fluff, everyone is a bit sassy, slightly mushi-specific (~1.3k)

Nathan smells it before you even bring the mug into his main lab.

“Don’t you dare bring me Failure Tea,” he shouts through his doorway.

“Stop calling it that,” you say as you walk into the room, setting the huge, steaming cup on his desk. It’s bright yellow with a smiley face on it. “I brew it myself, with love.”

You kiss his cheek.

He looks at the mug like he wants to punch it in the face.

“It’s a mixture to clear your head, help you focus,” you say, rubbing his back.

“It’s the tea you bring me when I fail,” Nathan grumbles.

“When you need a little encouragement.”

“The last time you brought it to me was when I had to erase an entire two days of work because I-“ he stops himself from getting mad again. 

He picks up the mug and takes the very tiniest sip. It’s mostly herbal and he pretends he hates it.

He’s grumpy because you’d asked him to help you figure out the prices of things here vs. back where you'd grown up.

It started for fun, but you'd found this online list of things rich people wouldn’t know. Price of a car, how much a Happy Meal costs, that kind of thing.

Nathan was amused when you laughed at him thinking a cup of coffee cost a dollar.

He was a little put out when you’d laughed at him for thinking the average price of a hotel room per night was, "I don't fucking know... 3 grand?"

He stormed out of the room, pissed, when he’d gotten the price of an ice cream cone wrong.

He’d said fifty dollars.

Fair play, cost of living crisis and all. But you'd still laughed.

After carefully noting down his hilarious guesses, you’d brewed him the tea and brought it to him as a peace offering.

Nathan takes another sip and sets the mug aside without a word.

You nudge his shoulder with your nose to get him to focus back on you. He has on a workout tank and his skin is warm against yours.

“I’ve never seen you fail at something before, and it was actually very hot,” you say.

He tries to pull away but you wrap your arms around him so he can’t.

“You’re full of shit,” he says, trying to continue typing and working.

But you’re not deterred. He can’t fool you. He loves your attention and tea and gentle poking to get him to talk things through. 

“It wasn’t sweaty-workout hot, but it was hot in a different way.” You chase his face with your eyes, trying to get him to look at you again.

He looks amused. “You find failure hot? That explains the person you had a crush on before you came to live with me.”

“Oh ha fucking ha. From the guy who hadn’t spoken to an actual, real, live woman for years until I came along and took pity on your gorgeous ass.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, sugar lips.”

“Don’t call me that or I’ll color your white patch in with a purple marker while you’re sleeping and have all the robots call you Grimace.”

He scratches his chest. “Your brain is so weird.” He means it as a compliment. His brain's pretty weird too. “Fine, sweetheart. What did you mean, about finding my failure attractive?”

You tilt your head back and forth, unsure how much you want to say. “You’re just, not very normal.”

He looks annoyed by you stating the obvious.

“It was cute seeing you try really hard to figure out how much it costs to go to the cinema,” you say. “It was a stupid game, and I didn’t mean for it to make you feel bad.”

Nathan bristles a little at the suggestion that he has feelings at all, other than annoyance and irritation.

You rub the back of his neck. “You see me struggle all the time, but you never do. It’s like when I ask you to put the dishes in the dishwasher. I don’t say anything when you do it all wrong because I like to see it all wrong. It makes my ovaries perk up and take notice.”

“I don’t fucking understand you,” he says, almost to himself.

“Neither do I,” you smile happily.

“You know that’s all made up shit that’s programmed into you, right? Society programmed you to do all the house work, so your brain interprets me doing below the bare fucking minimum as attractive, because it might offset your unfair workload. Which, by the way, it doesn’t.”

You lay your hands on either side of his face, over his beard. “You are so much fun. Seriously, mansplain the gender gap to me some more.”

He pushes up his glasses. “Sure, but make me a sandwich first.”

“You make me a sandwich.” You lean forward and kiss him.

“How about neither of us does it? Let the robots do the cleaning and the cooking?”

He picks up the mug and takes a drink. He hands it to you so you can share it with him.

He licks his lips. “Except the tea. They can’t do that. Yours is better.”

“Does it taste like failure?” You tease him.

Nathan runs his hand down your arm. “Yeah, but maybe it’ll keep me humble.”

You snort laugh at that. He laughs too, giving up on his sour mood.

“How about this,” Nathan says, settling his arms around you. “You go sit on the deck and I’ll make lunch. I promise to fuck it up really, really badly. You won’t be able to stop yourself from falling in love with me.”

“Is that what you’re after?” You say playfully.

“Maybe it is. Maybe I love you already,” Nathan says too casually. “Look, all I’m saying is that I didn’t ask you to come live out here to do dishes or for your programming skills. I definitely didn’t fucking ask you to constantly knock me down a peg.”

“I’ll peg you if you ask nicely.”

Nathan pinches your butt and makes you laugh. “Shut it.”

“Oh, now you’re silencing women? Tsk tsk, Nathan,” you shake your head mockingly at him.

“How did this get turned around? You’re the one who made fun of me with that rich people game.” He rubs your sides with his hands, an unconscious gesture that's as comforting to him as it is to you.

You laugh. “And you were so bad at it that I’m nearly in love with you already.”

He straightens his glasses, looks over your face. “Nearly?”

You shrug, just to tease him.

“Making me work for it. Okay. I respect that.” He stands up. “Maybe I’ll make you a tea. You have all kinds of dried plants and shit in the kitchen. Can’t be that hard.”

You slap his arm. “I put a lot of thought into the plants I use. You need to appreciate nature more.”

Nathan rolls his eyes. “Don’t give me that holistic bullshit, honey, please.”

You clear your throat and point to the mug of tea that he’s picked back up.

“This? I don’t drink your Failure Tea because I think it actually helps. Or, I don’t think it doesn’t help. It doesn’t, not help.” His eyes narrow in frustration. “Is there a tea that makes you less of a smartass?”

“No, but hot chocolate would probably keep me busy for awhile.”

Nathan puts his arm around your waist as you walk out of his lab together. “I’ll make you a huge pot of hot chocolate for lunch. We'll sit outside together and drink it. I like to look at you out in the fresh air. The way your voice sounds with the river running behind it.”

You rest your head on his shoulder as you make your way to the kitchen. “You know I’d love you, even without the hot chocolate.”

“I know.” He kisses the top of your head, rubs your back with his hand. “I might not know what a liter of milk costs, but I'd do anything to make you happy."

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