Last night I saw Revenge of the Sith for the first time. My daughter really wanted to see it, and I needed to preview it to determine if slowly burning alive and mass slaughter of jedilets is something I want my daughters to watch. Whenever I watch any Star Wars movie it gets me thinking about really bad dialogue.

There is a certain species of phrase that we constantly hear from action heroes and chisel-jawed adventures. These are phrases that we are all familiar with because we hear them all the time, and yet, we probably have never heard a real person say them. In fact, if we imagine ourselves in a similar situation, we realize that we can't even imagine ourselves saying them. This is because nobody talks that way.

I think the problem is that in real life, people do not dialogue. They talk. If I am having a conversation with you, I am not concerned about whether or not a bystander understands the back story or how the two of us are related. I'm not going to try to feign confusion in order to give myself a chance at further exposition. I'm not going to think out loud when I'm by myself.

Consider the following:

It's so crazy it just might work!

These two statements are rarely ever simultaneously true. Furthermore, nobody is going to trust their life to a plan that they consider to be crazy. Even a crazy person is not going to trust their life to a plan they think is crazy. They will simply consider fewer things to actually be crazy.

For Example:

The outlaws are trapped in a saloon while a lynch mob is waiting outside for them.

Outlaw 1: Let's just run out there, guns blazing, and take 'em.
Outlaw 2: It's so crazy it just might work!

In this case it's desperate but not in any way irrational. If you charge, you'll surprise them and cause confusion, and maybe one of you will escape.

Outlaw 1: Let's stuff tinker toys up our noses and pretend to be robot monkeys!
Outlaw 2: It's so crazy it just might work!

This really is crazy, but it won't work.

Basically, if you have to tell a reader that an idea is crazy, it's not crazy enough. If you have to tell them that others in the group feel that the idea is crazy, there are more elegant ways than having one of them point a finger like Donald Sutherland and shout "That's Crazy!"

What are you saying...

This phrase is usually used rhetorically, to show that what the speaker suggested sounds unbelievable, but really is true. It also allows for the speaker to continue on with his or her original thought and elaborate. It also sounds dumb.

Example:

Hero: The giant alien killer ants are trying to break through the door!
Heroine: What are you saying? We're about to be eaten?

Listen, kitten. If you are going to survive this, you need to develop at least a small amount of critical thinking. If we're confronted by a ravenous man-eater, I don't want you stopping to wonder whether you run toward or away from.

We've got to try!

The hero is desperate to save whoever it is he is saving. Things look bleak, everyone is telling the hero that it's never going to work and that they are all going to die. The hero gives them a steely eyed stare. Maybe he snatches his glasses off of his face Horatio Caine style. Maybe, if he's particularly feisty, he pounds his fist into his hand. He growls, "We've got to try!"

No, see, here's the thing. Nobody is impressed or inspired by this. It sounds like you're saying, "I agree. We've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of this, but lets have some action anyway. Besides, I'm bored."

A more likely response when stuck with a bunch of whiners who have no survival instinct: "Fine, you guys stay here while I escape. I'll probably send some sort of rescue... helicopter, or something. Say, while I'm running away, you don't suppose you could scream and jump up and down and, oh I don't know, look tasty? That'd be great."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

*snrk*
If you should ever find yourself experiencing unbearable grief, don't react in a way that makes those around you laugh. This is not the reaction of someone gripped by a powerful emotion. This is a 3 year-old who was told to go to bed. Actually it was exactly the sort of thing I would have expected from Pouty Vader, but it would have been better if he had thrown himself on the floor and done a full kicking and pounding his fists tantrum

There was this one time...

Some people have hundreds of great stories to tell, and others seem to live lives in which nothing happens. The story tellers, if given a chance to utter the words, "There was this one time," will talk your ear off until they are shushed. I have actually heard people of the other type claim that nothing interesting has ever happened to them.

I don't buy that.

I think the difference has to do with what you find interesting yourself. This morning my son took off his diaper, climbed into the dishwasher, and pooped in it. To another person this might simply be the kind of annoyance you put up with as a parent. To me, it's a funny and interesting story (and after all, cleanup was a breeze. I just threw some detergent in and started it up.) It might be a great start of a scene in a novel or a short story, or just something to make a scene more interesting. Take for instance, the story of Faust. The devil comes to see this guy to make an offer on his soul. Ok, a potentially interesting scene. What if, when the devil shows up, Faust was on his hands and knees trying to fish a turd out of the dishwasher? How might the conversation go? It seems like my more successful attempts at writing have made use of my own experiences. The only story I've been able to sell so far was almost entirely made up of my own memories. Nothing is ever as strange as real life.