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Presenter: Welcome to Ask the Author, the podcast where kids get to ask published authors how they create their stories.

Presenter: Today we’re talking to Sophy Henn all about dialogue and how she makes her characters sound unique.

Sophy: Hello, my name’s Sophy Henn and I write stories for children and today I’m going to be talking to you about dialogue, focusing on some of my books called Bad Nana. The Bad Nana series are all told from the point of view of a seven-and-a-half-to-three-quarter-year-old called Jeanie. Jeanie likes to tell lots of stories about what her bad Nana gets up to.

Presenter: This book is all about a very unusual grandma.

Presenter Bad Nana is funny, mischievous and definitely does not always follow the rules. The story is told by her granddaughter, Jeanie, who ends up going on lots of naughty and embarrassing adventures with her.

Presenter: The story is packed with funny conversations between Jeannie and her Nana. So, it’s a brilliant book to explore how dialogue makes characters feel real and brings the story to life.

Presenter: Let’s hear Sophy read the start of the first Bad Nana story.

Sophy: “Hello, my name is Jeannie and I am seven and three quarters. I like badges, biscuits and cats that play pianos. But not always in that order. I have three Grandmas. One is called Shirley and she’s gone to Devon. We haven’t seen her in ages. One is called Granny Rose and she is very nearly completely peach coloured. My other grandma is called Bad Nana. Well, that’s not her actual, actual name. I can’t even remember what that is as we only ever call her Bad Nana and she doesn’t even mind. In fact, I think she quite likes it…”

Presenter: We’ve got questions for Sophy about how she writes the dialogue or what her characters say. So let’s Ask the Author.

Presenter: How do you know which characters should say different things?

Sophy: All the Bad Nana stories are told from the point of view of Bad Nana’s granddaughter Jeanie. So the whole story is kind of written in dialogue - Jeanie’s dialogue. So I had to think about how a seven and three-quarter year old would describe certain situations, what they would find funny in those situations? What they’d find worrying about them? And the use of language came very much from remembering the conversations my daughter had at that age in the back of the car when I drove her and her friends from school to play dates, or gymnastics, or whatever and they’d be chatting away in the back and that’s pretty much where the voice and the dialogue of Jeanie came from.

Presenter: If the character was dressed differently would it depend on what they say? Does the clothes of the character give off a mood, which is how they speak?

Sophy: That’s such a good question. Because I illustrate my stories as well, I can decide what my characters are wearing. And I do think that the way they dress affects how they speak and possibly how they see the world as well. So for example, if they’re wearing a lovely big rainbow jumper, they might be feeling optimistic and happy. And so the dialogue might reflect that. But if they’re wearing a long, dark raincoat with a hood that flops down in front of their face. Maybe they’re feeling in a bad mood because it’s raining, or maybe they’re feeling a little bit shy. So that could affect how that character speaks as well. So yes, I think the clothes do affect the way a character talks.

Presenter: When you write a book, do you expect the reader to know what kind of tone the character’s voice would be? Or do you just have them imagine what they want to sound like?

Sophy: When I’m writing each different character and their dialogue, I have a voice in my head for that character. So I know the tone and how they’re talking and the sort of words they use. And hopefully, because I draw the pictures as well, that combined with the pictures will give the reader a bit of a clue as to what I’m hearing, how I’m hearing that character talk. But that’s the joy of reading, isn’t it? Is that we all read it slightly differently. And I love it when people come up and talk to me about my characters and maybe tell me something I hadn’t even thought about or maybe a different way they talk that hadn’t even occurred to me. And it’s great. That’s fun.

Presenter: How do you make the dialogue sound real?

Sophy: Hopefully I make it sound real. I think a lot of my characters are based loosely, let’s say, on people I know. So, I often think about how that person would say something. Sometimes writing is a bit like acting and you have to get into that character in order to think about how they would talk and how they would use words and what would make them shout and what would make them be very quiet. It’s a bit like acting. You take things from real life, you take things that you might have read in a book, you take things that you’ve imagined and you build that character and then you sort of try and be that character while you’re writing the words for them.

Presenter: Do characters always say exactly what they’re thinking?

Sophy: Ooh, well, do you always say exactly what you’re thinking? I know I don’t. No, they don’t. And sometimes you can hint about that. Sometimes my illustrations are telling one story and my words are telling another. So that can hint at the fact that the character might not be saying what they’re thinking. Sometimes I use little actions like in the Pizazz books. Pizazz eye-rolls a lot. I think we all do sometimes, don’t we? She eye-rolls a lot. And so at the end of a sentence, I might just write ‘eye-roll’ in asterisks so we know that she’s saying something, but she’s not necessarily feeling it. So actions can help imply that your character’s not really saying what they’re thinking.

Presenter: Thanks so much, Sophy. We just have one final question for you.

Presenter: Do you have a top tip for us about how we can write dialogue for characters in our stories?

Sophy: My writing tip for creating interesting dialogue is to just earwig all over the place, so listen in to other people’s conversations, only if it’s safe to do so obviously. But listen to how other people talk and listen to the way they use words and maybe they use different words to you, like Bad Nana uses phrases such as ‘cock-a-hoop’ things that you or I might not say, so that’s my top tip - is listen to how other people talk and let that help you create your dialogue.

Presenter: Today, we learned about how an author writes dialogue for their characters.

Presenter: And how characters’ voices can bring them to life.

Presenter: I’m going to read my dialogue out loud when I write it.

Presenter: There’s lots more Ask the Author episodes waiting for you on the BBC Bitesize website. Just head to Bitesize Primary English to find them. Thanks for listening!