Shut up and Listen.

Conversely, listen or shut up. Seriously, stop talking. Stop saying what you think you've got to say and realize there's more important shit being said all around you.

Listen. Hear that?

That's dialogue.

The kids talking in half-rap, half-banter on the Queens bound E. The patter of housewives gabbing over grapefruit in the Pick N' Save. The philosophical musing at the pub 4:25 on Monday when only the lonely and unemployed are there, no where else to go and no one but the bartender to discuss the facts of life with.

Sit. Shut the fuck up. And listen.

Books and textbooks can present the rules and regulations of writing. You can fill your head with Field, Vogler, McKee and Eisner and study screenplays, formats and books by everyone from Hemingway to the guys that write Archie Comics. Thousands of tips and hints and tidbits to help make you the best gosh darn writer you can be.

But who can teach you to write solid, believable dialogue?

If I'm getting worked up and red in the virtual face about this subject, there's good reason for it. By admission, I'm not the strongest plotter in the world. My stories and structures sometimes need a push in one general direction or another.

But dialogue? My dialogue can beat your daddy's dialogue with one noun tied behind its back.

Before email death bombs start filling up my poor beset electronic mail account, let's establish that the above "you" refers to the layman. The soul-searching writer who has spent hours upon godless hour selling his soul to Satan in exchange for one perfectly turned phrase Stan Lee would give his left testicelsior for. The writer seeking a voice, who has yet to grasp that the voice he should be seeking is actually someone else's.

Stories live and die by dialogue. It's a gift that can't be taught, a knack that's tough to master and an ear that even Van Gogh would have trouble cutting off. And he was an artist. Great dialogue can make a passable plotter seem genius and bad dialogue dash the most intricate high concept among the rocks of internet message boards the world over. I feel s strongly about the subject of dialogue that this column will be the first of three addressing the subject, offering opinions on how the soul-searching writer might go about finding that specific voice he or she might be seeking.

The Art of Dialogue can't be taught in six easy steps by mail order. Well then, young layman, how will you craft a tale about syphilitic cows fighting the Fourth World War and make it sound real, genuine, pure and true?

Short answer? Walk among the cows, young man.

Writer friends the world over will laugh when I say this, but I make no apologies: I am a Brian Michael Bendis fan. I absorb his work and I let his dialogue wash over me as I stand naked beneath it, looking up for inspiration. I've read his graphic novels -- from Fire to Torso -- and I am a devotee of both Powers and Ultimate SpiderMan. Why Bendis? Other than the fact that he's a fellow bald Jew writer from Middle America, what makes me praise his stories in a column that for the most part, finds fault in everything?

Here's why: Brian Bendis knows how people talk.

I read an interview Bendis did when Ultimate SpiderMan debuted in which he discussed a mall scene he was plotting. To put himself in the minds of his characters and in order to capture the rhythm of the dialogue, Bendis went to the mall. He sat there, observing teenagers in their natural habitat, and listened. He made notes. He listened some more.

There's an extensive Bendis interview by Michael Dean in a recent issue of The Comics Journal (#266, Feb/Mar) in which points about Bendis' dialogue style are brought up:

"BENDIS: There is one book I did that is a recorded conversation that was 'True Crime Confession,' it was part of Total Sell Out. There's like, people telling me stories, little monologues. Those were recorded conversations that I actually transcribed. Everything else is ear-to-hand. I mean it came with --again this might be Mamet's teachings -- training yourself to listen. You end up hearing more how people are talking rather than what they are saying."

One moment of the interview I enjoyed was:

"DEAN: One of the things that strikes me, especially in your dialogue is the kind of spontaneity where the characters actually seem to be listening to each other, and they'll even pause in mid-speech -- you'll actually feel the characters groping for the right words sometimes."

"BENDIS: Thanks. It's all I think about. My whole day is filled with this."

"DEAN: It's remarkable in comics; you see it rarely, in film, in theater..."

"BENDIS: Well, I think that Howard Chaykin did it before me. I think he was the one in comics that made me really think about, why don't more people do this?"

My opinion? Because people don't listen to the world around them. No, bullshit -- that's only half way right. The reason is twofold:

1) People don't listen to the world around them.

2) New writers learn how to write by reading comic books.

Swear to G-d, if I see the words "What The--?" in a comic book again I'm going to scream. And while we're at it, why must every comic book begin with an internal monologue... and why do some begin with out loud monologues? When was the last time you clenched your fist after someone pissed you off and growled, "Oh yes, lazy bank tellers... you will rue the day you crossed me"? People don't speak like that. At least not people I know. Maybe you live in Monologue City and if so, how do you get shit done?

Shut up. Listen. Why does Bendis' dialogue work? Because it's how people talk. Clipped sentences, back-and-forth banter and believable slang. Do the due diligence. Immerse your self. Research isn't all facts, figures and photo reference, you know. How do people talk, how do people sound, how do words like "menace" and "gunfight" and "cocksucker" roll off their tongues?

Which brings us to Deadwood.

For those who don't know, David Milch's Deadwood is my favorite television show. An HBO Original Series, Deadwood is about an outlaw camp near the Black Hills in the 1800s Gold Rush. The series teems with vibrant, varied and vicious characters, many with their own specific quirks and language. The show has been noted for it's rather, ah, excessive use of cursing and overall the dialogue flows from the actors' lips like liquid honey.

Recently at his hosted column, EXHAUSTED, at the Isotope Virtual Lounge, acclaimed writer Ed Brubaker had this to say on the subject of Deadwood's dialogue (and my apologies to Ed for swiping this for the column, but I thought it bore repeating):

"They're portraying a time when the old ways met the lawless frontier. And the language conveys that better than any set-piece ever could. Almost all the characters have this mannered way about them, tipping their hats for the ladies, opening doors, not getting directly to a point for fear of offending. And at the same time, they toss in a 'cocksucker' or slit somebodies throat at the same time. It's about the clash, the language is. No one ever says anything directly in Deadwood. They beat around the bush with so eloquence, though, that it doesn't matter. It demands more from the viewer."

What I got from Ed's column was this: language and dialogue helps tell you more about the time, place and character than they do themselves.

Let's say you're writing a book about skate punks. Let's now say that you decide "well, I've seen Gleaming the Cube or Lords of Dogtown" or whatever skate punk movie you caught on Sunday between the Lions game and the Simpsons and you figure you've got a handle on the way them skate punks ought to sound. Or you're itching to unfold a piece about unwed prostitute mothers living in Harlem and you've been with a call girl once or twice so you figure you've got the jibber jabber down.

And of course, you don't.

Remember Vibe? Vibe was a member of DC Comics' Justice League of America during the short lived "Detroit years" at the end of the first series right before everyone got assfucked by DC Comics, continuitywhiners, the Crisis and John Byrne. Vibe was of Latin descent -- an opportunity for an American minority to have representation, a voice in a flagship title. And what do they do? They fuck it up, of course. The writer decides that since Vibe is Latino, he of course wears big-ass shades and peppers his dialogue with what's essentially miles and miles of embarrassing racial slurs. Now, there I was, a young impressionable DC Comics Jew reader from Detroit who had never so much as met anyone of Latin or Hispanic-American origin and when I finally did, I thought he was going to talk exactly like Vibe.

Imagine my surprise.

Two years ago I wrote a spec script set in Manhattan, focusing on superhero street punks and gangs in Washington Square Park. Some of the major characters were African-American, so I figured I'd listen to the high school kids that rode the E train to Queens with me as I headed to work. I shut up. I listened. But even then I was nervous that I wasn't getting the right syntax down, the right rhythm of the street, and was terrified that, should the project get picked up, I was going to embarrass myself or worse, be labeled a racist. I mean, I'm a hefty, balding Jew from Michigan. Who was I to write this book? So I approached a few African-American writer pals who I felt would understand where I was coming from and asked them to once-over the script. They pointed out slang issues and dialogue errors and helped me make it sound real. True.

Do the legwork. Sit on trains. Go to malls. Shut up and listen or you'll end up like poor, doomed, racist Vibe - giving your readers the wrong impression about your time, place and character via your stilted and terrible dialogue. One of my pet peeves when it comes to reading Jewish fiction is the casual insertion of "oy" or "vey or "oy vey" or "gai kaken ofan yam." Look -- I'm Jewish and until one sentence ago, I've never said "gai kaken ofan yam" literally meaning "go shit in the ocean" which is what I'll tell you to do with your dialogue if it contains any Jew cliches.

Listen to how people talk. Carry a recorder around and tape your friends, their friends and even their friends. Study slang and observe communication. Don't assume that every Jew talks like an accountant from the Upper West Side. Not everyone from Britain talks like John Constantine. Sometimes, women curse.

Dialogue is quicksilver, changing every day. New words, different slang, better words to say and four new ways to say them.

And, hey - don't assume because I like Bendis' dialogue that I'm going to write my dialogue like him. Personally, I think Bendis' dialogue is right for the characters Bendis is writing. Doesn't mean that my syphilitic cows should talk in stilted patter with teenage slang peppered throughout.

Because that's not how syphilitic cows sound, I'll tell you.

I know.

I went out there, shut up and listened.

And I took notes.

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BIG POND is a collective column that begins with ideas and continues with opinions. Each column focuses in on my musings about writing for the comic book, film and television industry and then gives way to opinions on the week's topic by a diverse group of writers.

This week, we're joined in the pond by B. Clay Moore and Antony Johnston, two writers who have been tearing down the comics world this year with new, innovative methods of storytelling and both of whom are, like me, in love with the sound of their own dialogue - and both have good reason to be. Here are their thoughts on this week's topic:

Clay:"Let me start by saying that I think dialogue is my strong suit. I'm a better dialogue writer than plotter. And sometimes I count on dialogue to carry a scene when the story won't.

"I think having an ear for dialogue means having an understanding of how to adapt "real" conversation to the comic page effectively. Generally, that means using shorthand and shortcuts that make up for the wasted words that make up most of "real world" conversation.

"Some writers fall in love with their dialogue, and we end up with scenes that just run on endlessly, with characters meandering through a scene restating the same thing for the amusement of a writer that thinks he has a great ear for dialogue. That's all well and good, but comic books can sound real without sounding just like real life. Most people talk too much. There's no reason your characters should, and there's no good reason to transcribe the dull throb of daily conversation to the page verbatim.

"I firmly believe that less is more. My conversations tend to read more like snippets of conversations, and I strive to communicate meaning using inference rather than blow-by-blow description.

"First and foremost, good dialogue stems from your understanding of the characters you're writing. If you truly have a grasp on the personality of your character, and you have any kind of an ear for dialogue, the dialogue should flow freely. Personally, I'll often trim lines of dialogue, but rarely spend any time stressing over a rewrite. It's the easiest and more entertaining part of writing for me.

"The two things that need to be communicated in dialogue: The dialogue needs to push a story forward, and it needs to lend insight into the character speaking. In other words, if you've got three characters with three distinct personalities, then the same line of dialogue should come out three different ways, depending on which character is speaking.

"I think the best writer of dialogue in comics, for what it's worth, is Warren Ellis. Ellis' work on The Authority changed the way I thought about comics. His uncanny grasp of characterization meant that he could drop a character into the middle of a story, and without covering any of the character's back story, could give you a crystal clear understanding of the character's personality and motivations primarily through the use of dialogue. I mean...that's how we judge people in the real world. When we meet someone for the first time, we don't have access to their life history. Instead, we listen to what they have to say, and make our determinations about their personalities that way.

"Oh, yeah...and stay away from hip slang. It sounds dated the minute the book drops."

Antony:"I find nothing to disagree with in the above rant, including the quotations from both Bendis and Brubaker. If you want to write good dialogue, you have to leave the iPod at home and listen to how real people speak whenever you leave the house. Not how people speak in fiction - even really good fiction - but real people, in real life.

"Why not fiction? Well, that brings me to something Neil hasn't mentioned:

"Fictive dialogue isn't real speech. Not even Bendis'.

"Don't believe me? Carry a portable recorder/dictaphone around and tape the conversations you have or overhear in a single day. That night, play them back. You could even type them out, if you like, just to make this crystal clear. Pay special attention to the following:

"- 'Like', 'Y'know', 'I mean'.

- 'Um', 'Er', 'Ah'.

- How many times someone says the same thing twice, often cutting themselves off halfway through the first attempt.

- How many times someone suddenly forgets what they were saying.

- How many times someone suddenly remembers what they were saying.

- ...And many more tics and quirks besides.

"The point is: real speech is real dull. Doubly so for print. If you try to write genuine, real conversations into your comic, you'll make Chris Claremont look like a minimalist mute. And your artist will hate you.

"Sure, you want your dialogue to be naturalistic, and sound genuine. Of course you want to sprinkle real epithets and tics around your dialogue, to immerse the reader in your world. But at the same time... You need to make it coherent, legible, comprehensible.

"We process dialogue differently according to how we receive it. When we hear dialogue - as in film, television, radio and theatre - we can process it very quickly. Writers can put a lot more speech into a short space of time and your attention, such as all the back-and-forth of your average Mamet script.

"But when we read dialogue - and let's not forget that in comics we also have to "read" the images at the same time - we add an extra layer onto the process of comprehension, and slow it all down. Too much back-and-forth, overly stilted sentences, or too much 'Um' and 'Er' just grinds everything to a halt, and makes your dialogue feel dragged out.

"Bendis knows this. Any good writer knows this. When you read what feels like a totally naturalistic conversation in comics, believe me, you're not. But the writer has disguised the dialogue's fictive nature with the precise use of some genuine dialogue tropes and tics.

"It's knowing how and when to use those tics - knowing how much is just enough, not too much and not too little - that makes great, natural-sounding dialogue. And that's something you can only learn by listening, and practising.

"I mean, like, y'know?"

My thanks to Clay and Antony for taking the time to weigh in. Go and pay tribute at the feet of both their websites and pick up their collective bodies of work to see what I mean when I talk about good dialogue. When Clay and Antony speak - shut up and listen. You'll learn plenty. See you back here in two weeks for more dialogue.

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Neil Kleid won the Xeric grant for NINETY CANDLES, an experimental graphic novella, and his first graphic novel, BROWNSVILLE, (with artist Jake Allen) debuts from NBM Publishing in 2005. He is currently writing URSA MINORS!, a four issue comedy mini-series for Slave Labor Graphics. A graphic designer by day, Neil harbors notions of writing full time. Weep for him.

B. Clay Moore writes HAWAIIAN DICK, BATTLE HYMN and THE EXPATRIATE. He'll soon be writing more things. He just spent a year as Image's marketing coordinator, and now has a life again.

Antony Johnston is the award-winning author of eight graphic novels and numerous miniseries, including this week's new release F-STOP and the forthcoming QUEEN & COUNTRY: DECLASSIFIED. He's English, and talks all proper like.