[TopAce]

Suppose you have a mission which reveals something important about the campaign's plotline. You know what the critical message will be about, but you don't have any full sentences yet. You plan to put it into the initial phase of the mission before hostiles jump in. You initially plan a two-minute-long dialog between Command, the pilots, and possibly the convoy ships you're protecting. You want to create an effective build-up phase before the message you want to convey is uttered explicitly.

What steps would your writing process entail? Will you take some paper and pen with you the next time you invite your friends over for a coffee and note down some witty remarks, expressions that sounds good, etc? Or do you just write something preliminary in Notepad and revise it a couple of times until you are satisfied with it? How do you decide whether what you wrote is okay or should be completely rewritten? Do you simply refuse to look at it for a couple of days, just to make sure you can view it with a fresh head the next time around?

What's your preference?

[Scotty]

I have the general gist of the messages in my head when I start.  I then write the first line in a way befitting the circumstances of the moment.  I try to look at it like I was receiving the message.  How would I react to this?  How would I say something back?  The hard part about that is trying to get the conversation to go a certain way while keeping it seeming that both parties didn't know what was going to happen already.

[Colonol Dekker]

Bullet points are key. Draft stuff. . Then build upon it. Like mission design itself, good dialogue is half planned design and half inspiration / light bulb moment.

[Rodo]

I always add the dialogue while making the mission itself, sitting and thinking the dialogue before doing the mission does not fit my style. Might be because I just hate to adapt the dialogue to the mission's rithm, I mean.. you can't set a hole bunch of dialogue lines and then try to "fit" them within the mission, it just doesn't work like that for me.

Dialogue and mission events must be interacting all the time to give a certain amount of credibility to the mission.

After the mission is mostly done I start making the beta testing, this time I take special care at the script and change timings, words, even hole lines if necesary.

Well that's the way I've been working so far.

[General Battuta]

Keep it simple and succinct. Always underplay.

[ReeNoiP]

I have the general gist of the messages in my head when I start.  I then write the first line in a way befitting the circumstances of the moment.  I try to look at it like I was receiving the message.  How would I react to this?  How would I say something back?  The hard part about that is trying to get the conversation to go a certain way while keeping it seeming that both parties didn't know what was going to happen already.

Pretty much this. Most of my characters have been loosely based on real people so I try to imagine how those people would have reacted.

After this I pay attention to the dialogue when testing. What seems nice in notepad isn't necessarily good when you have the backgrounds and music in game.

[NGTM-1R]

I try not to relate to real people or myself since they're not usually comparable. (Try other fictional characters instead, if you really need the help.) Then again, I find it relatively easy to crawl into other people's heads.

Sadly, most of the advice other people are offering I'd have to contradict. I don't draft or outline usually. I just shake it out of my arm. That...doesn't work for most people.

However: Always try saying it out loud. I can't stress that enough. Some things will sound good in your head or "on paper", but said out loud sound ugly and forced. Real speech is not the same thing as complete sentences and proper grammar.

[Scotty]

To reinforce:  ALWAYS say the lines out loud.  Not only does it help check fluency and ease of use, it also gives you a pretty good estimation of just how long the line is going to take to say.  Shortening or lengthening the appearance of messages just feels really off-key and not well edited.

[General Battuta]

Darius had a great rule of thumb for how long to make a message duration, based on how many lines it used up in the box. Worked beautifully.

[Colonol Dekker]

I go by that "display time" should much audio duration rule above all else.  I'm suprised more VA requests don't specify preferred duration to be honest.

[The E]

I think that's more because it's easier to tweak the message duration in FRED once you have the voice acting than to meticulously plan it out beforehand.

[TopAce]

Okay, thanks for all the replies, guys. One more question: How often do you completely rewrite certain dialogs? Do you sometimes find that the entire conversation is sort of redundant/stupid, or are those only a few lines that you typically rewrite?

[Dilmah G]

If I have the time, I'll do that. This is where writing a script beforehand is a lot more helpful, because you can spot these things before you FRED them. Sometimes if it's just an offending line of dialogue, it's easier just replacing that line.

Darius had a great rule of thumb for how long to make a message duration, based on how many lines it used up in the box. Worked beautifully.

Do share, Battuta.

[Spoon]

I usually end up spending hours typing something, retyping it again. Getting distracted by something else then reading back what I typed and try to rephrase it again... In the end it results in having done just a single command briefing. (Big time sink )
I'm hopeless when it comes to writting. I never really have in my head what I want to write down and end up trying to make up dialouge on the spot.

[Ransom]

Habitually. Dialogue is rarely right the first time. Each line must contribute something meaningful or it's wasting the player's time. I let initial scripts stew for around a month before I come back to refine and compress them. The break gives perspective.

[General Battuta]

Aye. The compressing is the important part.

[NGTM-1R]

Darius had a great rule of thumb for how long to make a message duration, based on how many lines it used up in the box. Worked beautifully.

IIRC Blaise actually posted his somewhere, I used it for Cleaning Crew.

Okay, thanks for all the replies, guys. One more question: How often do you completely rewrite certain dialogs? Do you sometimes find that the entire conversation is sort of redundant/stupid, or are those only a few lines that you typically rewrite?

Completely rewrite...pretty much never. Again, this has to do with my style; I simply "shake it out of my arm". Editing goes hand-in-hand with the actual writing. If I get to the point I'm completely rewriting it's a sign the work is doomed and I'm not going to finish it.

In general, however, if I dub an element superflous, I don't bother rewriting. I just delete it. Comms discipline; talk less so more people can use the circuit.