~ Dialogue Secrets ~
Building characters can be a real pain in the ass.
I prefer to cheat.

Essentials to Building Characters
The last thing you want is a Superman with no Kryptonite.
If the good-guy wins everything all the time, where's the fun in that?
You need SUFFERING!
Also known as Dramatic Tension.

The Keys to Dramatic Tension
These are the characters' Achilles Heels, the essential ingredients to making it really hard for your character to defeat the bad-guy and survive the climax.

A physical need or dependence:
This can be a person, a place or a thing.
In Romances, one character needs the love of another. A vampire needs blood. A cyborg needs maintenance. Dorothy needs to go home. Jason needs the Golden Fleece. Neo needs to know what the Matrix is. In Erotica - the need to get laid.

An emotional need:
An abstract idea.
The need to belong, to be rich, to be famous, to be understood, to control others, to be safe, to be free, to achieve revenge, to achieve greatness, to know something...

A physical hang-up:
The one physical thing that either limits the character's powers, or shames them.
In Romances liking sex is the heroine's big hang-up. A vampire is limited by daylight and his need for regular blood. Superman is limited by Kryptonite. Dorothy is limited by being a human child. Jason is part god but limited by his mortal body. Neo is limited by his disbelief. Selene is limited by her racial prejudices. (She is a vampire but the man she loves is a werewolf.)

An emotional hang-up:
What the character fears most.
In Romances, it's usually fear of commitment. A vampire is afraid of discovery and/or loss of what little humanity he has left. Dorothy is afraid she will never see her family again. Jason is afraid of failure. Neo is afraid that he won't be able to live up to everyone else's expectations. Selene is afraid that she will lose her hard-won place in the vampire hierarchy.

Once you have all four ingredients that make your character squirm, then its time to go out and Find your character.
Wait a minute... Find?
Yes, and from a movie.
You use a movie character rather than a book character because you want to PICTURE your character as they move through your stories and record those details. In a movie, you can SEE body language and expressions. Too many books leave these visual character traits out.

Out of all the movies you have seen, what fictional character is most like yours? Once you know that, dialogue is easy.

Dialogue - for Cheaters
Imagine your favorite movie character or actor. Think about what they would do or say in your plot situations. Picture that character as you write and the dialogue should come pretty easily.

Cheat tip: To refresh yourself on how people actually talk, spend some time eavesdropping in the food court of your local mall.

Examples of Common Characters:
Logan who is Wolverine from the X-Men is a typical alpha male, and an easy character to write. He's short-tempered and sarcastic so you know that what ever he's going to say will be snide and aggressive. However, he's a pudding when it comes to his emotions, because he's repressed them so tightly. His emotional dialogue only comes out under stress, and then he is understanding and self-effacing if gruff. In addition, he immediately covers all his emotional outbursts with a thick coating of more sarcasm.
(Anita Blake in Laurell K Hamilton's vampire executioner books is this type of character but female.)

Bruce Willis typically plays an action hero. He is an easy write because his says very little. In 90% of his movies he uses his facial expressions to say what's going on in his head. All you need for this kind of character is plenty of description and the occasional zinging one-liner when dealing with antagonists.
(Trinity from the Matrix and Selene from Underworld are also this type of character.)

Sandra Bullock plays the spunky heroine. She's witty and sarcastic but means well and is easily surprised. She is also more than willing to fight for what she wants. Think about some of the TV & movie heroines you've seen that are popular with the under 35 audience - they are all this type of heroine: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Phoebe on Charmed, the girl in Dawson's Creek, Hermione in the Harry Potter books & films. I used Ms. Bullock as an example rather than one of the other actresses because her body language is very visible and easy to put into words.
(Johnny Depp often plays a male version of this kind of character.)

In conclusion...
No one needs to know whom you modeled your characters from; if you have enough differences in description and background they never will. They haven't guessed any of my characters yet and I have a stock set! Most characters change as you write them anyway, becoming their own entity. The trick is to go with the flow and let your characters progress as they like, becoming their own individual selves.

Morgan Hawke