A guide for the Fallout fandom on how to keep your fanfics lore-friendly and consistent with the games. Also includes general writing advice specifically targeted at this fandom.
Basically how to make your fanfiction even better - and more realistic...
This subject was suggested by AhNoOkay, who asked for dialogue tips.
Okay, this is something I could talk and talk and talk about without rest. Like 60% of my stories is dialogue (whereas the other like 30 is internal monologue so kinda like talking too?) and I usually have trouble with keeping it at the minimum. And yet, somehow, that minimum is still a lot.
So here's the thing: dialogue can be either casual or informative. The first kind is used for setting the relation between characters, the second one is used to move the plot forwards. Of course, a dialogue can be both of these at the same time, but let's not focus on that for now.
The first kind is the one that is more fun to write, because you can mess with the characters, their personalities, the relationships... Basically, this is everything that they talk about and isn't directly connected to the plot of the story. This can be just casual chit-chat, commenting on something that's happened, telling a joke, friendly banter or even complaining about the weather! The stage, so to say, is yours. This is the simplest, because there's no one to tell you what to do.
It is also the hardest, because this one has to be natural. And in order to do that, you have know how your character naturally acts and how people naturally act.
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Simple enough, right? Well, kind of.
First one, how your character naturally acts. If it's an OC, well done, you can improvise! If it's a canon character, you probably already know how they act. If not, just go back to the source - play the game/watch the show/read the book (I'm putting this chapter into all my guidebooks, so just pick whichever applies) and you're pretty much set.
Second one, how people naturally act. This is a golden bit of advice that no one is going to give you because it sounds wrong, alright, but stay with me. I'm about to tell you one of our (writers) professional secrets that we wouldn't want other people to know about. Many writers do this, so it's just completely normal. At some point, it even becomes a habit.
Okay, here it is: you have to learn to eavesdrop.
You have to learn to eavesdrop professionally, habitually, unconsciously, like it's one of the most obvious things to do. You have to learn to eavesdrop on complete strangers.
This sounds... wrong. But it isn't, actually. First of all, you're doing this for, let's call it, scientific purposes. Second of all, you don't wanna learn people's secrets or anything - you just wanna know how they talk. I would still advise you against listening to your friends, because that kind of feels like a violation of their privacy, but if you're on the bus or the subway/underground and there's a couple of teenagers talking nearby, that's probably your best target. (I swear this isn't "The Sociopath's Guide To Writing"!) It sounds stupid, but the truth is, the more dialogue you listen to, the more dialogue you'll be able to create based on your experience.
And that dialogue can't be script-written from a TV show or movie, because it will always lack that naturality, no matter how good it sounds. Real people stutter, real people take time to think of a response, real people make grammar mistakes... There'a a whole other world of dialogue here in the real world.
And you just have to learn it by ear.
Now, moving on to informative dialogue. This one is - should be - the dominant one in your story (but let's admit, that's never gonna happen). It should be natural too, but the main job this has to do is, as the name suggests, passing information. Between the characters and from a character to the reader. (And don't bother about the names, because I made them up myself.) But it can't sound as though your character is Mr. Wikipedia, because that's just weird. You have to find a perfect balance between information and the way of delivering it. I'd love to give you some specified advice on this, but to be honest, this is something every writer has to figure it out on their own.
Summing up... The real trick is to write dialogue that's not only informative, but also casual.
If you really can't figure out what to dialogue about, just think about what your character is passionate about. Maybe it's power armor mods, maybe it's learning foreign languages or temporal physics? Maybe they'd want to talk about it for hours until their very bored and exasperated friends have to make them shut up? How do they make them shut up? Or maybe the other way around, they're fascinated by the subject? Maybe they wanna know more. They ask questions. And once you've got questions and answers, my friends... You have just created dialogue.
