Thanks are due to '3113', who, despite a heavy workload, offered thoughtful, intelligent advice and comments. Bless you, thirteen, whoever you really are.
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Literotica specializes in erotic stories. OK, we all know that. So obviously, sexual union and communication is high on the theme list, and one of the things people often do when they communicate sexually is communicate verbally as well. But a whole lot of the dialogue on Literotica pages is profoundly unreal, whether the characters are merely talking, exchanging plot information, preparing for sex or love, in the throes of lust or passion, or chilling out afterwards. Why should this be? (Yeah, I know, there are plenty of honorable exceptions, but that's not the point here... yet).
Well, some of it's down to style and subject matter. Slut wives, talking vegetables, zombies, basic stroke stories, the purer adventures in fantasyland, don't demand realistic protagonists and don't usually need to develop characters into credible human beings. These stories aren't aiming for realism. But to take a theme like 'romance', or 'incest', or 'mature', or 'group sex', and to create believable people with motives and needs and reactions that will persuade the reader to suspend belief and think of them as real, if only for a moment : that takes a little more work.
When you've got the time, try this little experiment. Rig up a recorder with a decent mike, invite a couple of friends over, and start talking. As the awareness of being recorded fades you'll begin to talk more naturally. (Better still, don't tell them). Record enough to get a whole chunk of how you and your friends sound when you're talking casually. Doesn't matter what it's about: baseball, cooking, work... (If you're really brave, tape your lover and yourself when you're preparing for / doing / relaxing after sex/love). When you play that sucker back, listen carefully. Let me make a few predictions about what you'll notice.
• People don't talk in sentences.
• People contract words, often whole phrases.
• Words get mangled and slide together
• People do not use each other's names very much.
• People don't all speak the same way.
Let's expand these findings, and see what we can do with them:
• People don't talk in sentences. They think they do, but no fucking way. Grammar-free clauses, hesitations, corrections, repetition, meaningless interjections, sudden changes of subject... everything but clear, concise, grammatically correct pronouncements. Bummer. One of the things we could do here is just transcribe what people say. But unless you're a genius, transcription isn't the answer. You're writing a story, and your readers are going to need some help. Not too much though, or the dialogue will sound like a shopping list. Try this: transcribe part of what you've recorded and see the patterns, the rhythms, where the stress falls. Now write down what the person actually meant. There's a middle road here, and if you can identify it, so that the marks on the page echo the words in your head, you're on the way. In the following short example, stressed words are indicated in CAPITALIZED ITALICS.
Real person as recorded:
"So, um, I went to her HOUSE...ah...the NEW one...um, it's got this YARD? Have you SEEN it? Well it's kinda...REMEMBER her OLD place? Well...it's like... I mean, the OLD place had all these...um, BUSHES AN' SHIT... an' THIS one..."
(No-one's going to want to read more than ten lines of this, and who can blame them? But, you've done two things. You've found the information words that are stressed in natural conversation, and therefore you've got the rhythm that this speaker uses. Now you can tidy it up without losing either).
Character's statement as written dialogue:
"So, I went to her HOUSE, the NEW one, and before, in her OLD place she had a YARD that was just FULL OF BUSHES and stuff, and THIS one...."
(Of course, you're not going to put the capitals in, but the speech has the same rhythm and patterns as the spoken transcript, and it reads more naturally than):
"I went to her new house and unlike her old one, which had a yard that was full of shrubs, the new property..."
• People contract words, often whole phrases, a usage which is called, technically, 'ellipsis'. There isn't a single native English speaker in the world who says 'I will', or 'He is', or 'They are not'. It's 'I'll', 'He's', 'They aren't', unless they are emphasizing or contradicting a point, or the phrase is inverted as a question, or it comes at the end of a sentence ('I'm cold, are you?' ... 'Yes, I am.'). How much ellipsis you use depends on your style, the story, the characters and the context, but it happens everywhere. Try spending a half hour not using these common contractions. First, you'll find it almost impossible, and second, your friends will wonder what the hell's wrong with you. If your characters' dialogue doesn't reflect this then you're kidding yourself and shortchanging your readers.
• Words get mangled and slide together. Writing this is harder. I use, e.g., 'wanna' and 'gonna', etc., when I'm writing about American characters, but I try to take care not to overdo it, or it looks like a bad attempt at dialect. Once again: style, story, characters, and context.
• People do not use each other's names very much when talking to each other, unless the conversation is very heavy or formal. We use eye contact to tell someone we're addressing them. In large groups, names are used to attract someone's attention, but not nearly as much as you might think. On the other hand it's a useful tool for the author if the speaker might otherwise be difficult to identify and you don't want to use 'he said / she said' the whole time. Local call.
• People don't all speak the same way. If you've got two characters conversing, and one is an old guy, grumpy, no college, been a mechanic all his life, and the other is a highly educated investment banker who's got an appointment at three and wants her car fixed now, they aren't going to sound the same. Different rhythms, different pitch, different vocabulary. Take your own voice away. Write the scene in a grossly exaggerated way, then pare it down until the essence of the characters is there in the way they speak. It's always harder to cut stuff out than to add it, but it's always the better way to attack the problem, and it nearly always leaves you with something cleaner and stronger than the unfocused page you started with. Do this right, and the characters will resonate in your readers' heads for a while.
People talking to each other in real life get round the grammar problem by punctuating their speech with pauses and tone changes. These are hell to transcribe. (Try to forget those little green lines that your spellchecker keeps inserting. It's designed for text, not speech, and it's dumber than my dick anyway). Written punctuation marks, used carefully, can go a long way towards telling your readers what the character's tone of voice, pitch, etc. is up to. When you're offering someone a drink in an intimate or casual situation, you probably say 'Coffee?', or 'You wanna coffee?', and not 'Would you like some coffee?'. It's not grammatically correct, but it's how people speak. On the other hand, if it's Great Aunt Eliza who's gasping for a drink, you're probably a lot more formal, especially if she's rich.
Now then, as we said, this is Literotica, and our characters spend a fair amount of time bopping each other's socks off, and rarely in total silence. What you and your lover say in bed is usually private, often silly, and sometimes weird. But here are some things I really don't say: maybe I've lived an unadventurous life...
"You are so hot", "That is so nasty", "Beg for it you fucking slut", "I'm gonna fuck your tight pussy."
And here are some of the things that have never been said to me:
"I love the taste of your cum", "Make me your slut", "Fuck my dirty shit-hole".
I guess I've just never met the right people. But if I find stuff like that masquerading as dialogue in a sex scene I sigh and look for something else.
Like I said earlier, if you're writing a simple stroke story, or an out-and-out (in-and-out!) fantasy, you can have your characters say what you like. But if you want them to have that third dimension, think carefully. Talking dirty does happen, and very nice too, but a little goes a hell of a long way. 'I am going to cum in your hot slut mouth you cocksucking wet cunt bitch.' isn't dialogue. It's one-handed keystroking.
