| rdfs:comment
| - Speech in fiction is fictional: too good to be true. People in fiction do not speak like we do. In Real Life, we encounter:
* Repetition.
* Stu-stut-stuttering, slllurrring, or mumbrbl.
* Infecting yourself, sorry, no, correcting yourself.
* Um, disfluencies, errr, placeholders while you think.
* Some sentence with in it bad grammar.
* Stupid people talking like they're god-damned angry, you stupid@#$%razzafrazza*mumblegrumble*...
* Going off on tangents which aren't relevant to the plot. Like platypi. Or falafels. (This is heard quite frequently in fiction thanks to Rule of Funny, but in Real Life it's unlikely that listeners would just let the tangents slide).
* Making private references or inside jokes that casual listeners would never understand. Isn't tha
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| abstract
| - Speech in fiction is fictional: too good to be true. People in fiction do not speak like we do. In Real Life, we encounter:
* Repetition.
* Stu-stut-stuttering, slllurrring, or mumbrbl.
* Infecting yourself, sorry, no, correcting yourself.
* Um, disfluencies, errr, placeholders while you think.
* Some sentence with in it bad grammar.
* Stupid people talking like they're god-damned angry, you stupid@#$%razzafrazza*mumblegrumble*...
* Going off on tangents which aren't relevant to the plot. Like platypi. Or falafels. (This is heard quite frequently in fiction thanks to Rule of Funny, but in Real Life it's unlikely that listeners would just let the tangents slide).
* Making private references or inside jokes that casual listeners would never understand. Isn't that right, Reginald?
* People halfway through a sentence getting interr-
* And, like, turning every third sentence into, like, a simile, while being all like incorrigible with their use of "like."
* Repetition.
* Verbal Tics, desu.
* Sneezing, coughing and *cough* *cough*, ahem, and so on.
* Just letting sentences kinda...
* Pauses or, y'know, interjections - right? - to make sure that the person understands. Get it?
* Saying the wrong word by accident, and hoping nobody else involved in the constipation will notice.
* Being unable to choose from between two words before the sentence comes out.
* Oh, and sentence fragments. Can't forget those.
* Mispronounicration and neologisms (to describe unwordiness).
* Foreigners that use patterns of speech of their native tongue simply because they didn't grew speaking English.
* Disjointed syntax and backpedaling. (For example, making a Long List of things, trailing off, starting to move on to the next topic, and then remembering one or two more things for the list and mentioning them, such as "We need eggs, milk, bread....basic, everyday things, you know....cold cuts, cheese, that kind of thing." No character in a movie or TV show ever talks like this.)
* Impossibly long sentences where the speaker drones on and on but never stops to begin a new sentence so they just keep tossing in conjunctions like "and," "but," and "so" and in that way turn what should be a paragraph into a single sentence and it's really annoying. (And, unlike in fiction, people who speak this way may also pause at regular intervals, drawing the never-ending sentence out even more.)
* Repetition. In fiction, characters inevitably come out with well-formed sentences. They may have a poetic flavor filled with Shakespeare-like similes and luminous golden metaphors that most people in real life aren't clever enough to come up with on the spot or even at all. They never stumble over their words or say the wrong thing except for deliberate comedic effect. Even "realistic" dialogue is relatively free of errors and padding. It is almost as it was written by a professional. It really was. This trope is an Acceptable Break From Reality; Real dialogue can be unreadable. Journalists know that an interview subject can be made to look stupid by simply repeating their speech, word-for-word. We enjoy the fruits of scriptwriting and acting more when they are free to be polished. Part of the reason is to make speech come across the way it is heard rather than the way it is; humans are well-adapted to interpret speech, and as a result what we experience is an interpretation of speech rather than a recording of it. Also falls under The Law of Conservation of Detail - because the time it takes for a character to correct themselves could be used for more dialogue. At times characters go beyond fiction-speak, and break out in a spontaneous eloquent monologue, at length, especially at moments of high emotion and plot importance, such as Holding the Floor. These monologues do happen in Real Life, but they are rare. (They were a lot more common before the twentieth century, when rhetoric was taught in all the schools and people would actually listen to and study speeches for entertainment.) Some literary work has an ambiance that is simply incompatible with natural speech; for example, Fairy Tales. Exceptions to this trope can come from works produced through improvisation, either live or as part of the writing process. On other occasions, stumbling or inarticulate speech will be used deliberately to suggest a character is dishonest or distracted. Aversions are often examples of Narrative Filigree. See Also: Buffy-Speak, Mamet Speak, Funetik Aksent. Examples of Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic include:
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