Writing How to Make Conversation Between 3+ People Less Repetitive?

Fighterman481

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So, I keep running into an issue where I'm writing a conversation, and I want to make it clear who is saying what, but I also want to keep the instances of "x said" down because it feels repetitive. I'm not particularly enthused about trying to constantly use other, similar things like "x exclaimed" because I feel like that gets distracting and takes away from the conversation as a whole.

So, what does everyone else do to get around this issue? Is it even an issue? What do you all think?
Thanks in adv
 

D.Dimitrov

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Umu, you can go with body language, like, let's see...

"Good morning guys." Fred waved at his two friends.

"Oh, good morning! It's nice to see you so early up and running!" Joseph smiled, returning the wave.

"Morning" Rey nodded, murmuring under his breath.

Edit: It's clear from the example that you can just add some guestures for the characters and still be clear who talks and when. What's more, sometimes you don't need to add anything if your character's speech is inuque on its own and it can be recognized. Though, personally,I preffer to add such guestures.

Hope I was of help.
 

BenJepheneT

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as far as my mediocre writing skills go, I try to keep conversations limited to ONLY 3 guys. If more, I'd send the others to be BG charas (Tom ducked away to sharpen his machete) or just straight up NOT include them in the convo, and only mention them once or twice ("Ain't he a faggot," Sam said as he nudged a finger towards Tom).

But if you're insisting on keeping more than 3 charas in a single convo, the best thing to do is to determine who has the most say in the subject and who else can chime in an opinion or two.

So here's a quick example: the scene is in a rundown shack in a zombie apocalypse, Tom knows all about zombies, Sam doesn't know tad shit about zombies, Alex seen some zombie movies and Jesus is a gun nut. They're stuck in the shed and Sam doesn't wanna stay there.

"So what, we're just gonna sit out here until the sun comes up," Sam rattled, "might as well hang an all-you-can-eat buffet sign over the damn door!"

"Sam's right," Alex said, "we can't just sit out here and wait."

Tom drew his wrinkled face towards the motley group, his signature disdainful expression hung over his cheeks like a paint to a wall. "No," he said before going back to sharpening his machete.

"No worries, though," Jesus chimed in from behind, polishing his Beretta for the twentieth time today, "if they want a buffet they can have these condiments." He drew up a fistful of gleaming 9mms before going back down.

"Yeah, they'll definitely enjoy human meat with a dash of Italian metal, Bible man," Sam snorted, "I've seen those fuckers out there. I've seen what they've done. They can fucking smell us from miles away. Yeah sure, we have walls, but for how much longer."

"Surely you have some ways to get us out of here, right?" Alex pleaded with her oh-so-supportive customer support voice. Seems like it still had some use, even when the world's gone to shit.

"In, and that's final." Tom didn't even look back as he said his words.

"At least we can board the windows so that they won't see us-"

"Board what?! So we can slowly pry it back out when they crash in the walls?!" Sam stood up, his hair on his edge.

He couldn't take it. Five hours into the apocalypse and all God did was give him a girl in a blouse, a guy who can't gun for shit and a cooky old man who claimed he time traveled from the Third World War to stop said apocalypse, which judging by the now, had failed as spectacularly as anybody would've ever imagined.

Alex grabbed him by his torn jeans, "Pipe down, you're gonna attract atten-"

"Like the fucking lamp didn't?!" Sam shot a finger to the oil lamp sitting beside Tom.

"Shut up! You're ruining my concentration! I can't get the spring lock in," Bible Man spat out from behind.

That was it, Sam thought. That was so it. Twenty-two years he'd live and ten out of those twenty-two he'd dedicated his life to the church and the God's book and this is the way He thanks him - by sending him to hell in a handbasket.

"Fuck, fuck, FUCK," Sam spat out in a fit of rage. Alex wouldn't dare to shout him down, fear that the already booming voice would call out the undead. Jesus was rubbing the hell out of his magazines in grunts. Tom stayed as if nothing's happening behind.

Sam lunged his legs out of Alex's grasp and stormed towards the wooden door. He slammed his hand on the doorknob and swung a finger towards the three. "At least if I fucking die, it's not with the three fucking stooges-"

THUNK

- was the sound that shut everything up, as if it was a mute button to the whole world.

A machete, wobbling from its plastic handle was lodged right between Sam's head and hand with perilous inches in between.

Alex only watched in silence as the machete did the last of its dance. Even Jesus slammed the brakes on his firearm maintenance, watching Sam stand rooted to his blood-stained Nike kickers, not daring to see the gleaming, rusted metal beside his head.

Tom's arm was outstretched, bulging and shaking. The old man shot up from his seat and strolled across the room, pulling his machete out from the door. Nobody dared to move a single muscle.

For the entire time, Tom's face stayed the same; a frown over a controlled breathing, as if he hadn't attempted first-degree murder with a flying machete mere moments ago.

"Open the door, and you open the doorway to Lucifer. I was sent back to retrieve you - all three of you, so that when I go back, the streets won't smell like Hannibal's asshole. I don't care whether you like it or not, you stay right here in this very room. Dim light deters the dead, and they're all deaf. Shout all you like and they'll still strut along. What they can do, is smell. More you move, more you sweat. You already smell like a gas chamber, so this light is the only thing keeping you alive."

Tom strut back to the oil lamp and, like nothing happened, went back to sharpening his blade.

"I pulled you out of that trailer to keep you alive. I'm not risking your idiot anger management ass back out there so you stay put here, or you're gonna wish it was the zombies and not me."

He turned back for the last time, staring at the shellshocked, panting Sam.

"I won't miss the second time. Sit down."

Alex gathered every last courageous breathe she had. "Tom got us out of there and lost the zombies. Himself. Listen to him. Maybe what he's saying is true. We're still alive, right?"

Jesus agreed, "Old man pulled us out of trouble in a five minutes when it took us five hours. If it's his bullshit that saved us, I'm sticking to that shit."

Sam darted his eyes across the chick and the gun nut. He took a glance to Tom, his broad, wounded back still bent, sharpening the blade that mowed down the horde they've so desperately tried to outrun and failed before he came in.

"Fuck."


Tom is the pivotal guy, while Sam is the convo carrier. Alex acts as a support while Jesus just does his own background work. Give them their own roles so it wouldn't be confusing. Name drop the characters as much as their dialogues so that the readers can have a good sense of who's having a bigger role in the convo.

Take my word with the smallest grain of salt you can find. I don't have any credibility or example to back my words other than what's up there. You're welcome, if it'd helped you any.
 

FriendlyDragon

Your friendly local dragon~
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Writing dialogue can be complicated but is actually manageable if you realize that readers are actively thinking when they read. There’s no need to put he said she said continuously every line. You might think you need to as it’s a conversation between more than two people, but if you really think about it, even large conversations involving multiple people can function as many different one on one conversations. A character might talk to one character for a few lines and then the third comes in with something. During the conversation when it was mainly the two characters, you don’t need to repeatedly specify who is talking once you’ve established the flow. Then when the third person comes in, you state who is speaking and who replied to it. Like other comments said, you can add small descriptions as well to your dialogue tags or use different types of dialogue tags. Here's a quick example.

"Whew, we're back," John said, tossing his jacket onto the couch. "We went out for longer than I thought we would. It's almost midnight."

"That's because you wouldn't leave that shooting booth," Sarah laughed. She held the door open for Brandon as he walked in. "And you still didn't win!"

"Hey, I was close wasn't I?" John pouted.

"Yeah, yeah. Sure."

"Hmm? What's this about winning?" Brandon asked as he not so subtly shook the massive stuffed bear in his arms.

"Oh shut up. You were lucky, alright?" John growled.

"At least I didn't spend almost all of my savings for the festival on one booth," Brandon grinned.

"I did not spend half."

"Sure buddy. And I didn't win a giant stuffed bear."

"It's getting kinda late guys," Sarah interjected. "We should go sleep or something."

"You're right," John sighed. "The festival's still going on tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "Why?"

"Wanna go back tomorrow?"

"Ha! You're still trying to win that game?" Brandon laughed. "Bro, just give up already and buy something like a corn dog or whatever."

"I'm going to beat that stupid game. I swear it's rigged."

"If you wanted this bear that badly then I can just give it to you man."

"Hell no. I don't need any pity. I'm going to beat that thing and then shove my bear into your face."


So yeah. That's one way to write three way dialogue. Who is saying what is fairly obvious even for the ones without dialogue tags. That's because the topic being spoken off and the context leads the reader to assume (correctly) who is saying what and when. When someone says that they can give you the bear that they have, it's obvious going to be the person that was described as having that bear that said that sentence. The lines where someone is complaining about how they lost a game is obviously going to be the person that was already stated to have lost a game. So as you can see, you don't need a dialogue tag for every sentence or piece of dialogue even for conversations with more than two people. Your readers can easily assume who is saying what if you do it correctly. In case of any ambiguity though, you should state who is saying what. But even those you can spice up with different tags other than "said" or "asked". In my example, I used laughed, sighed, pouted, etc. I also had some descriptions going on so you have a dynamic conversation rather than a static one where people seem to not be moving. By adding different dimensions to your conversations like including actions and showing feelings, you can create easy to read, good flowing conversations. Hoped this helped a bit.
 

Fushigi

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My top advice would be, keep the dialog realistic. Followed by the prior advice to keep plenty of 'business' (in the acting sense. gestures, movements, other non-verbal activity) and setting detail in the narrative to break the dialog up.
What do I mean by keep it realistic? Real conversations rarely ping-pong constantly between three or more people. They usually consist of a series of exchanges between two people, with the pairings switching around, of one or two people dominating and the rest only chiming in at intervals, with less talkative types only occasionally speaking, etc. You rarely get three or more equally talkative people on their own.
 

CupcakeNinja

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So, I keep running into an issue where I'm writing a conversation, and I want to make it clear who is saying what, but I also want to keep the instances of "x said" down because it feels repetitive. I'm not particularly enthused about trying to constantly use other, similar things like "x exclaimed" because I feel like that gets distracting and takes away from the conversation as a whole.

So, what does everyone else do to get around this issue? Is it even an issue? What do you all think?
Thanks in adv
You could also call them by titles, or body features.

"Xxx" the green-haired boy explained.

In dialogue you can also do this:

Muriel and Evie exclaimed, anguished as Mary burned the pictures to the ground. Meanwhile, Charlotte just shook her head.

"My masterworks!" Mama Claybrook fell to her knees in pain. "Mary, this betrayal...why?!"

The loli Saintess clutched her heart, moaning, "Master's divine image...lost..." She glared through hot tears. "Sacrilege!"

"You drew pictures of him naked, what did you expect?" A careless shrug.

See? List the names in order. Then write the dialogue. People will match the dialogue with the order of names you wrote down. Muriel spoke first, Evie second and Charlotte last.

Even of they didn't understand through that way, i used words like "Mama Claybrook" and "loli Saintess" to identify who was talking.

Edit: this is totally NOT a excerpt from a possible future chapter of mine, okay?
 

S-Scherr

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I'm with Trolling Trolls on this one. Dialogue tags can easily be replaced by 'action tags' to show who is speaking. I would just suggest not overdoing it with the action or else you run the risk of slowing down the pace of the conversation. For example:

"I don't understand why Sheila has an issue with me." Diane shook her head in disbelief, then sat down on the couch to peruse a magazine she had no interest in.

"It's true." Wanda sat down on the couch and picked up the piece of coffee cake. She wrinkled her nose at it, then took a bite to not offend her already distressed friend. "She told me all about it last week."

I'm overexaggerating the action to make a point. The actions tags work great as long as they don't interfere with the flow of the conversation. Also, there are many instances where you don't need a tag at all, even with three or more people talking. If it's already been established once that Diane is already speaking with Wanda, then nothing further is needed until a third person interjects. Example:

"I don't understand why Sheila has an issue with me." Diane sat down on the couch and sighed.

"It's true." Wanda said.

"But... I never did anything to her!"

"That's not what she says."

"Sheila says a lot of crazy things," Ryan added. "Just the other day..."

In a lot of instances, tags work great (whether dialogue or action tags) for natural pauses in conversations, and with the right amount of words to fill each pause. And if a conversation gets tense in a hurry between two established speakers, no tags at all work the best until that third party gets involved.

Hope that all makes sense ;)
 

Khiricastares

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Well, even with multiple people there is rarely an even distribution of dialogue between all three that goes in an A - B - C pattern. Back and forth and two people talking is still a thing and there will always be those who carry the conversation and people who are just adding in things and those dynamics can change during the conversation too.
As well as adding actions and other things to make the he said/she said less monotonous, you can also have the characters refer to each other through dialogue so that you don't need to denote who is speaking, or who is going to reply, because the last line was directed at a certain character etc.

"Who is it?" Mary yawns, stretching and seeing Petra in the room.

"I found you a pet. She's here to keep you company and stab the bad people," I explain.

"Why can't I stab the bad people?" Mary asks.

"Because your hands will get dirty sweetie."

"So it's OK for my hands to get dirty?" Petra asks.

"What are you talking about? You use a spear, they won't get dirty."

"Then why can't I use a spear?" Mary whines.

"Spears are dangerous Mary."

"You never let me do anything fun..."

"But I just bought you a cat! Petra, can you meow for me?"

"Fuck off."

"Thank you Petra," I say, before lowering my voice a little and pretending to whisper to Mary. "She's a little special."
 

Silver_Sky

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Good morning guys." Fred waved at his two friends.

"Oh, good morning! It's nice to see you so early up and running!" Joseph smiled, returning the wave.

"Morning" Rey nodded, murmuring under his breath.
"Good morning guys" (Fred)
"Good morning its nice to see you up and running" (Joseph)
"Morning" (Rey)
Also usable if things don't pan out as well as you hope ...well obviously not as bare bones as what I did but similar or maybe you could transition into a 1st person POV

"Guys did you hear"
Looking over I gaze suspiciously at the new arrival.
"John we don't even know what your going on about"
I glance at Ronald seeing him agree,
"How could we know John?"
"How do you not know a convention is being held here? Steve, Ron your not joking with me are you?"

Like that add more details to show they are going to school or standing around at work
 

GDLiZy

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Treat it like a mini-chapter. By detailing your end-goal, you can start by leading the topic of conversation from the lighthearted topic and connected it to the serious topic by similarity or through linking various things together. As long as you have a clear goal in mind, you'll know when to end the conversation and how to steer the conversation to your desired point.

If the dialogue served no propose ( Direct or indirect ), then it's probably a filler and you should not be making it.
 

BenJepheneT

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If the dialogue served no propose ( Direct or indirect ), then it's probably a filler and you should not be making it.

just remember the thumb rules set by none other than Neil Gaiman himself:

1. Progresses story
2. Reveals character
3. harharfunny/ohmanthatissmartineverwould'vethoughtofthatgoddamn

If your dialogue hits 2 out of 3 of these qualities, you're good to go.

wait, what's the point of this thread again?
 

LWFlouisa

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So, I keep running into an issue where I'm writing a conversation, and I want to make it clear who is saying what, but I also want to keep the instances of "x said" down because it feels repetitive. I'm not particularly enthused about trying to constantly use other, similar things like "x exclaimed" because I feel like that gets distracting and takes away from the conversation as a whole.

So, what does everyone else do to get around this issue? Is it even an issue? What do you all think?
Thanks in adv

Simple, I don't have three people talking at once. I can't even mentally keep up with that, I have trouble just talking to one other person. I feel like my mind is often splitting in two when I try.

Usually I don't even bother with dialogue, unless I absolutely half to.
 
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