File this one under utter randomness.
Because most of my day at the dayjob is spent in silence the occasional words overheard tend to jump out at me. For the heck of it last week I started writing them down as I heard them. These covered several days and a wide variety of people.
***
She’s living in a tree now. (Afterwards I realized that the person had said “She’s living with me now.” but I’m leaving it as is.)
I told her to call me if she needed any help.
It’s not that complicated really.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No way.
You just don’t understand.
Yes I do. I just don’t want to pay for it.
In the for what it’s worth department,
It would be better if he was here.
I know what you expect, but, shall we say, I just don’t care.
How are you going to do that? I mean, really, is it even possible?
I just went in and they gave it to me.
Did you have to sign for it?
No, they just gave it to me. It was like they were waiting for me to take it away.
It’s been 37 forever.
Then how come somethings burning?
***
At first I thought I was just being silly doing this but now, as I look at the list, I realize there could be a writing exercise around this. You could take one snippet of dialog and give it to a character and see what happens.
Happy Monday. I hope yours is a creative one.
GREAT randoms!
I LOVE stuff out of context!
Re: GREAT randoms!
Me too! I’m going to just keep this list going. Engineers say the darndest things.
Great post!
This is a perfect example of how to write realistic dialogue without having to use trendy slang. The way people say things can be more meaningful than the actual words.
Hmmm…and I wonder why someone is in a tree. Sounds like a good start for a book.
LJS
Thanks, Linda Sue. I think he really said “she’s living with me” but when I first picked up on, I heard tree.
Very good post! I might try that with my patients tonight. 😉
THAT would be funny. Or scary. Or both.
The Object of Destiny…..
“I just went in and they gave it to me.”
“Did you have to sign for it?”
“No, they just gave it to me. It was like they were waiting for me to take it away.”
Hmmm — that’s a fine opening for a very cool and strange little tale. What could the fateful object be?…….
I may just have gotten sidetracked from my day of grunt work!
All the best,
Jon Bard
Managing Editor
Children’s Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children’s Writers – http://write4kids.com
The Children’s Writing Web Journal – http://write4kids.com/blog
Re: The Object of Destiny…..
Thanks for stopping by, Jon. Hope you didn’t get too distracted from your grunt work. 🙂
A line I overheard recently:
Someone said to a young man: “I like your hair that long. So tell me, where is Scooby nowadays?”
LOL. That’s great.
Side note – I’m packing up books to mail out today so you should have yours soon.
Susan- I used to do this ALL THE TIME when I was a regular on the Amtrak NY-to-Springfield, MA train ride. ALL THE TIME. I started writing a movie script a lonnng time ago based on the conversation I totally stole from the passengers behind me. Something about a sister owing her brother a favor and how the two behind me were going to hit her up for a loan– just AFTER the funeral they were heading up to Massachusetts to attend. Oy vey. “A loan’s a loan.” That’s just what he said and it has stuck with me all these years later…
I still have their dialogue, written with a leaky old pen, on smelly, crumpled Amtrak napkins. (Am I dating myself? No laptops then. Not even an available notebook.) ;>
-Pamela
I bet you heard some great conversations on the train! It’s so good to see you out and about the blog world again. You’ve been missed.