Creating Believable Characters

My writing partner, Buck Stienke and I wrote over 25 screen and teleplays before we wrote our first novel, Black Eagle Force. We had just finished doing a screenplay adaptation of John Eastman's wonderful novel, Verdict! In Search of a Crime and we decided, "What the heck, let's write our own novel." Our experience in writing dialogue for screen/teleplays served us in good stead. As a professional actor/writer/director for over 38 years, I had a good grasp of what believable dialogue sounded like. Buck wrote much of the action scenes, especially the aerial combat sequences (Buck is a grad of the Air Force Academy, eight years as a fighter pilot and twenty-five years as a pilot for Delta) I focused on much of the dialogue, even though neither category was exclusive.
As acting coaches and screen writing coaches, we hammer home to our students the fact that people don't talk the way they write. They rarely use complete sentences, (that drives MW grammar check nuts), they interrupt each other and often don't finish what they are saying. If you don't write dialogue the way people (characters) talk, you commit the cardinal sin of  eliminating the "suspension of disbelief". In fiction, we know it isn't real, but the suspension of disbelief convinces us that it is, thereby pulling us into the story. You never tell the story to the reader, you bring the reader into the story. The reader will feel like they know the characters and therefore relate to them. Who is telling the story? The author(s)? No, the characters  are telling the story. - Ken Farmer co-author of Black Eagle Force. www.blackeagleforce.com
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Black Eagle Force - Eye of the Storm to be published by Tate Publishing later this summer.