Dialogue is an essential part of fiction, and whether you love writing dialogue or dread it, you’ll probably agree how important it is to any story – but it needs to be done well to move the story along and stay interesting for your reader.
Dialogue has many roles. It can:
- Reveal character
- Advance the plot
- Make characters seem real
- Give a sense of action unfolding
Dialogue is also easy and fast to read.
It breaks up the page, adding white space and making your story look more attractive. (If you’ve ever seen someone flicking through a novel in a bookstore, there’s a good chance they were looking to see how much narrative vs dialogue that novel contained.)
Unfortunately, is also easy to get wrong and make dialogue mistakes. Whether you’re a new writer or an established one, you’ll want to watch out for these seven mistakes.
Dialogue Mistake 1: Dialogue is Too Formal
Even if you’re a stickler for the finer points of grammar in your prose, real people don’t talk like textbooks. They say things like:
- Me and him went to the shops.
- I dunno.
- If I was you…
Yes, we know that those should technically be:
- He and I went to the shops.
- I don’t know.
- If I were you…
…but most of your characters won’t always talk “correctly.”
There might well be circumstances where you want a character to speak in a precise, correct way – but that gives the reader some very clear signals about this character (perhaps they’re posh, trying very hard to get things right, or a little uptight).
On a similar point, characters shouldn’t speak in long, complicated sentences – or give long speeches. If you’re struggling to “hear” real dialogue as you write, try recording a conversation and listening to how people really talk.
However…
2: The dialogue is Too Realistic
Some authors, shying away from formality, go too far into making their dialogue real. They pepper every character’s sentences with “ums” and “ers” and hesitations. They have so many interruptions that it’s hard to figure out what’s going on.
This might be a perfect transcript of how real people talk all the time – but it will make your character sound incredibly indecisive and uncertain to your readers:
“Um, I don’t really know if – actually, yes – er, let’s go to the, the park.”
There will be occasions where you want a character to hesitate or fumble their words – but again, keep in mind the signals that this sends the reader. Is your character very nervous, or perhaps lying?
3: Using Obtrusive Dialogue Tags
A dialogue tag is the little phrase that tells the reader who’s speaking, like this:
He said
She asked
I answered
Some writers worry that using “he said” and “she said” all the time will get boring, so they start varying their dialogue tags:
He blurted
She screamed
I exclaimed
In general, the simple tags are best – readers barely notice them, except to register who’s speaking. Stick with said, asked, answered and perhaps an occasional whispered, muttered or shouted.
If you do feel you’re overusing dialogue tags, an easy trick is to add a line of action to your dialogue, like this:
Sarah came running down the stairs. “I can’t find it anywhere!”
4: Not Including Any Narrative
In #3, I mentioned that one way to avoid overdoing dialogue tags is to include action. You can also do this with a character’s thoughts, like this:
Julie couldn’t stand Mark, but she managed to fake a smile. “Hi. It’s lovely to see you again.”
Or with description, like this:
The pub was dimly lit, but now they were sitting down, Lucy could see the stains on the walls, and the deep scratches in the furniture. She cast around for something to say. “Do you come here often?”
5: Making Every Character Sound the Same
We all have different ways of speaking … but sometimes in fiction, authors make all their characters sound exactly alike. This might work if the story is set in a homogenous group – but it sounds silly if some of the characters are teens and others are grandparents.
For each character, you could think about:
- Any habitual phrases they use.You won’t want to overdo these, but they can be a useful way to cue the reader in that a particular character is speaking.
- What words they don’t use. Perhaps they never swear, preferring “Oh sugar!” or “Fiddlesticks!” Maybe they tend to avoid long or complicated words.
- How eloquent they are – or how taciturn they are.Some characters have a way with words; others don’t say much or say it awkwardly when they do.
- How polite they are – or not! Do they make requests pleasantly, or do they order other characters around?
6: Using Indirect Speech Poorly
Not all conversations in your story need to be spelled out in full. Sometimes, you’ll want to give the reader a quick summary – and you can do that with indirect speech. It looks like this:
Tom and Jonathan chatted for a while about the football game they’d seen last night. Beth, bored, went to get another drink.
This is a great way to let the reader know that a conversation is happening, without having to go into any detail.
One dialogue mistake here, of course, is to never use indirect dialogue at all, giving a blow-by-blow account of the football game that leaves the reader as bored as Beth. Some writers worry that “show, don’t tell” means they should avoid indirect dialogue – but that’s not the case.
Another problem, though, is when important conversations get summarised in this way:
George had a massive row with his mum, about that letter she’d had from school, and she told him that he was banned from using the X-Box until he’d got his homework done. He told her he hated her, and stormed off upstairs.
In this case, the words exchanged matter – the reader will want to judge whether George is being a horrible child or whether his mother has overreacted, for instance. It’s also a lot more dramatic to hear the words spoken, rather than just read a summary.
7: Explaining Everything in the Narrative
Some writers worry that the reader won’t quite “get” the dialogue, and decide to spell things out, like this:
“I hate you!” George slammed the door and ran upstairs. He was furious with his mum – he felt that she was being unfair.
We don’t need the last sentence here: it’s obvious from what George says (“I hate you!”) and what he does (“George slammed the door and ran upstairs”) than he’s furious, and we can make a fair guess that he thinks his mum is being unfair.
When you spell out what’s happening like this, it’s irritating to the reader: they’re perfectly capable of understanding subtext, and picking up on small cues, to figure out the thoughts and emotions behind what a character says.
Of course, there will be some occasions where you do need to explain what a character is thinking – but this should be the exception, rather than the rule.
Do you make any of these Mistakes in your own writing?
Want to know the most important thing about writing dialogue in fiction? If it sounds like a conversation you’d hear in the real world, you’ve not it quite right.
Seriously. The next time you’re on a crowded bus or sitting by yourself in a bustling restaurant, just listen to the two people closest to you talking. You’ll hear them…
- speak over each other
- say “um” and “er” a lot
- jump from one topic to another with no warning.
All of which is fine in the real world, but hopeless for novel writing.
Writing dialogue isn’t about replicating a real-life conversation. It’s about giving an impression of it. And, yes, improving on it.
If fiction is like real life with the dull bits taken out, exactly the same thing applies to fictional conversations. The role of the writer is to select what is important and then distil it down to its very essence.
The rules below will help you to write realistic dialogue that keeps your readers gripped – and definitely no dull bits!
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Dialogue Must Be in Conflict
It’s obvious, really. Just as a description of two young lovers spending a perfect day out at the zoo doesn’t constitute a plot (not unless something awful happen!) so, two people chatting about nothing much at all (and not disagreeing with each other, either) doesn’t constitute dialogue.
Pleasant conversations are great in real life. Even if nothing especially interesting gets said, who doesn’t like gossiping with a neighbour over the fence or a friend over coffee?
Listening in on those conversations, as a third party, would be about as exciting as watching laundry dry. So make sure you don’t subject your readers to tedious, yawn-inducing dialogue in your novel.
How do you ramp up the excitement? Easy…
Give the two characters conflicting goals – one of them wants one thing, the other something else. Even if it doesn’t end in a shouting match here and now, the underlying tension will be all you need to keep the readers turning those pages.
To illustrate that dialogue mistake, take a look at this example…
“What are we having for dinner?” asked Jane.
Bill opened the fridge, shifted the milk to see to the back. “How does steak sound?”
“Sounds great.”
“There’s chicken if you prefer,” he said.
“No, steak is fine. With mashed potatoes.”
A perfectly nice conversation, the kind we all have every day – but hopeless for the purposes of novel writing. Add some conflict into the mix, though, and it might look something like this…
“What are we having for dinner?” asked Jane.
Bill opened the fridge, shifted the milk to see to the back. “How does steak sound?”
“What, again?”
“We haven’t had steak since last Saturday,” he said.
“I know. And the Saturday before that and the one before that! Don’t you ever fancy something different, Bill?”
Much more interesting. Why? Because the dialogue is in conflict. Jane wants one thing and Bill wants something else…
- Bill wants to stick to the same old routine.
- Jane wants some adventure in their relationship.
And when characters have conflicting goals, consequences are sure to follow later in the novel.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with having some everyday conversation in a novel. The rules of dialogue, along with every other kind of novel writing rule, are there to be broken.
Sometimes a simple exchange of information between characters will be exactly what is required.
But for the most part, go for tension and disagreement and conflict between the characters. Besides, writing dialogue is much more fun if you do that.
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Dialogue Must Have a Purpose
To avoid sialogue mistakes, and even if a passage of dialogue in your story is full of juicy conflict, you’ll still need to delete it if it’s not serving a storytelling function. If the speeches in the novel don’t meet at least one of the following criteria, they should be cut.
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i) The Dialogue Should Drive the Story Forward
Conversations in the real world often have little or no point to them, with the circumstances of the people involved remaining unchanged at the end.
Your dialogue, therefore, should advance the plot in some way.
How will you know if it does? Ask yourself these questions…
- Will the story still make sense if the dialogue is removed? If it can be removed without leaving a missing link in the character’s journey towards his or her goal, scrap it.
- Does the dialogue increase the suspense for what is to come? If a character says something which causes the reader to worry about the nature or the outcome of an upcoming event, it should stay.
- Does it change the character’s situation, for better or worse? Do they receive some good or bad news which leaves them closer to their goal or further away from it? If so, it is moving the plot forward.
- Does the dialogue shed some light on what the character wants? Anything which makes a character’s goal clearer is good and should remain – as should anything which makes their motives (or whythey want to achieve their goal) clearer.
- Does it serve to strengthen the character’s resolve, or perhaps weaken it? Are they told something which makes them wish they hadn’t bothered to set out on this quest in the first place – or make them glad that they did? Either one is good.
I’m sure there are plenty of other criteria to use, but they give you the idea. If a conversation is in some way related to a character’s goals and conflicts, it’s moving the plot forward.
If the characters are talking about nothing important, the dialogue is filler and should probably be removed.
Note, though, that some “pointless conversation” in a novel is good. After all, you’ve got keep the dialogue authentic – and we all talk about the weather or what we want for dinner.
Keep the chit-chat to a minimum, though. And always ensure that, if a passage of dialogue starts out being about nothing of any importance, it quickly gets to the point.
The Dialogue Should Characterise
Just as advancing the plot is one way of giving dialogue a purpose, so too is adding to the readers’ understanding of a character’s personality.
So maybe the speaking character tells whoever is listening about a formative event from their childhood, or about their love for their family pet, or about their dreams for the future.
These revelations might not affect the plot, might not be important for the telling of the story at all. But they help to explain the character’s motivation for wanting whatever it is they want. And doing that not only helps us to get to know them better (which is never a bad thing), it also gives us a greater insight into why, precisely, they are chasing their goal.
One other thing worth mentioning…
Dialogue is one of the most important tools there is in demonstrating the relationships between different characters.
The way two people speak to each other tells you virtually everything there is to know about how they get along. And demonstrating this to the readers, particularly the relationships between the major players in the novel, certainly gives dialogue a purpose.
iii) The Dialogue Should Provide Information
What kind of information? Anything that is crucial to the understanding of the story. Let me explain that…
Every novel has plenty of “dry facts” that the reader needs to learn…
- an important moment from the character’s childhood
- a brief history of the town in which the novel is set
- and so on.
Details that are not a part of the story but are nevertheless important for understanding it are known as exposition.
The key to exposition, which always runs the risk of boring the readers (and make them skip ahead), is to present it to them in bite-sized pieces. This makes the potentially dry facts more palatable and doesn’t significantly disrupt the forward momentum of the novel.
And guess what? Dialogue is one of the best methods there is for getting information across in small chunks. If you do it skilfully enough, the readers won’t even know what’s happening!
Just beware of characters telling each other things that they already know. A husband, for example, would never say this to his wife…
“Mary, my sister, had to take Florence, their miniature poodle, to the vet again.”
The wife will already know that her husband’s sister is called Mary, and that Mary owns a poodle called Florence. Information like that is there solely for the benefit of the readers, and it makes the dialogue sound horribly stilted. So don’t do it!
And that’s it: three ways to make sure that every line of dialogue you write has a purpose.
Once you’re satisfied that you are advancing the plot, characterising or providing information, you can stop worrying about if it “belongs” and concentrate on all the other rules for writing good dialogue…
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Dialogue Should Flow
Actually, all writing in a novel should flow effortlessly. With dialogue, though, it is doubly important. The conversations need to read effortlessly and look good on the page. There are three ways to achieve this…
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i) Watch How You Use Dialogue Tags
You know what dialogue tags are – he said, she said and the like.
They’re useful little things. But beware of overusing them. Conversations in a novel will sound like games of ping-pong if you have a tag after every single line…
“Hello,” said Jim. “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” said Sally. “I hear you’re getting married.”
“That’s right,” said Jim.
“When’s the big day?” asked Sally.
“Next week,” said Jim.
On the other hand, beware of using too few tags as well. Because, as a reader there’s nothing more annoying than having to count back lines to work out who is speaking.
Another trick is to stick to the simple tags – like said and asked. Using tags like exclaimed or interjected or screeched makes the dialogue sound amateurish.
Adverbs make it sound amateurish, too (as in, “Sally said excitedly“). If you want to demonstrate Sally’s excitement, describe her fidgeting in her chair or bouncing on the balls of her feet while she speaks.
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ii) Vary the Length of the Lines
One important rule of novel writing is to keep the readers reading. Duh! Boring them is likely to have the opposite effect, which is why it’s so important to make your passages of dialogue flow beautifully.
Here is why varying the length of the lines matters…
- if Character A says something using half a dozen words
- then Character B replies using a sentence of the same length
- then Character A says something back using another short sentence
…it can all sound a bit the same and dull. A better conversation would look like this…
- Character A says something.
- Character B replies using a longer sentence. Maybe two or three. or even three.
- Character A just shrugs here.
- So Character B says something else, something long again that goes on and on and on…
- Until Character A cuts them short with a quick one-liner of their own.
That’s not a dialogue blueprint, but just an example of how to shake up your dialogue.
iii) Don’t Have Characters Talk in a Vacuum
It’s rare for people to talk without doing anything at the same time. They’ll often have conversations while cooking the dinner or trying to fix something.
Even when they’re “just talking,” they’re usually doing something – drinking coffee, watching the world go by.
To help your dialogue flow (and keep it authentic), all you need to do is mention every day insignificant actions…
- Chopping the vegetables.
- Drinking a coffee.
- Noticing a neighbour passing by.
Even if two fictional characters are having a conversation while sitting still in a featureless room without windows, they’ll still cough or scratch or pick threads off their clothes.
Why is it important to break up the dialogue with little snippets of prose?
Because writing one line of speech, followed by another, then another, which again sounds a lot like a game of ping pong – even if you vary the length of each line.
To overcome this problem, simply freeze a conversation for a few sentences while you…
- Describe the sound of the rain hitting the window or a dog barking in the distance.
- Show what one of the characters is thinking (internal dialogue) Write anything,except another line of dialogue.
This before/after example demonstrates all of the key points to remember when writing dialogue that flows…
Before…
“What do you fancy for dinner, Sarah?”
“What have you got?” she enquired.
“Not much,” Frank admitted. “I think I could stretch to pasta, though. And there’s cheesecake for dessert.”
“Cheesecake’s my favourite,” Sarah replied.
“Then later I thought we could catch a movie,” Frank said cautiously.
“We could,” Sarah said. “But I’ve got a better idea.”
After…
“What do you fancy for dinner, Sarah?”
“What have you got?”
Frank opens the fridge door and stands on his tiptoes to search the top shelf. “I could stretch to pasta,” he said. “And there’s cheesecake for dessert.”
“Cheesecake’s my favourite.”
“Then later I thought we could catch a movie.”
“We could,” Sarah said as she pours the wine into two large glasses. “But I’ve got a better idea.”
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Dialogue Should Be Concise
To write good dialogue, cut it to the bone – and then a little more. Never use ten words when five words will do. And if you can get the job done in three words – or even with a simple gesture like a shrug – that’ll be even better.
Concise dialogue isn’t realistic. In the real world, very few people have the ability to say what they mean without throwing a lot of empty words into the mix. The paradox, though, is that it will seem realistic. And it will certainly be a lot more gripping for the reader.
Here is an example of what I mean…
Before…
“Hi, John. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks, Mary. And yourself?”
“Oh, I can’t complain,” she said. “Actually, I’m glad I bumped into you. Are you coming to the party tonight?”
“I hope to, Mary. It really depends if I can get off work early.”
“Have you asked your boss?”
“Not yet,” John admitted. “McNulty’s having a bad day, to tell you the truth. His ex-wife called. She wants money again. I’m waiting to pick the right moment.”
“Is there ever a good moment with that man?”
“Sure,” John said. “Catching him somewhere between his third and fourth scotch usually works.”
After…
“Hi, John. Coming to the party tonight?”
“If I can get off work.”
“Have you asked?”
“The boss is having a bad day,” he said. “Ex-wife troubles. I’ll pick my moment.”
“Is there ever a good moment with McNulty?”
“Sure. Somewhere between his third and fourth scotch.”
Much better, right? But how do you achieve that? Here are a couple of specific things you can do…
- Get rid of most of the chit-chat and social niceties.Don’t strip these things out completely, because you still want conversations to sound natural. But fictional conversations, if they aren’t to bore the reader, need to cut to the chase a lot quicker than real-life conversations.
- Don’t write in complete, grammatical sentences.Because very few people do, at least in informal conversations. “Do you want to go to the park?” sounds stiff. “Want to go to the park?” sounds more natural.
Revise your passages of dialogue again and again during the editing phase of your novel to improve them each time until they’re perfect. Then when you don’t think you can edit them anymore, go through them one last time and cut out something else! But not at the detriment of the story.
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Make Sure the Characters don’t all Sound the Same
Every character in a novel is unique. They look different, think and act in their individual ways. And it’s no different with the way they speak.
Having all the characters sound the same is the hallmark of an amateur. So you need to work hard at giving each and every character a unique speaking voice.
How? It’s actually very simple. Make sure that the words a character says are a natural extension of their personality. And achieve that by stepping into their shoes, so to speak, before you try to put words in their mouth.
Here are four questions to ask yourself when trying to find a distinctive voice for each of the people in your novel…
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i) Who Are They?
You’ll have already developed the characters before starting to write your novel. You’ll know who they are and what makes them tick.
And so, when putting words into the characters’ mouths, you must simply make those words fit their personalities.
- The kindly old lady won’t say anything too mean. (Well not always!)
- The mean old man won’t be terribly kind when he opens his mouth.
- The big-head will brag.
- The joker will have everyone laughing.
- The optimist… well, you get the idea.
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ii) What Is Their Personal Vocabulary?
This means making a character’s voice fit their background and occupation…
- An educated character will have more words (and fancier words) at his or her disposal than a not-so-educated one.
- A dockworker will probably swear more than a school teacher – and won’t care as much (or know as much) about grammar.
- A physics professor will likely throw the odd scientific term into his or her speech.
- An artist will have plenty of words to describe colours.
Note that it’s perfectly acceptable to use bad grammar and poor word choice in dialogue. It won’t reflect badly on you as a writer, because it is understood that it’s the character speaking.
Just don’t go over the top.
If a character’s natural way of speaking is to use a curse word in every sentence, for example, you don’t need to include every single one. The odd expletive here and there will give the reader the idea!
iii) Who Are They Talking To?
In real life, we all speak differently to different people, and it should be no different with a character in a novel. A tough city cop, for example, will have…
- One way of talking to his colleagues.
- Another way of talking to his superiors.
- And when he’s visiting his grandmother, he’d better watch his mouth!
Of course, all rules are there to be broken, and having a character talk in precisely the same way to everyone, no matter what the circumstances demand, could be the key defining trait of a character with poor social skills.
But this is the exception that proves the rule.
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Give Characters an Agenda
We all enter into conversations knowing what we want to get out of them. And the way we often achieve this is by broaching a subject obliquely.
If we want to borrow money, say, we won’t say it straight out. We’ll start by asking the listener how business is or something.
Nevertheless, our agenda will be there. And we’ll eventually steer the conversation to the heart of the matter (or else steer it away from the heart of the matter if our aim is to conceal information).
And it is exactly the same for writing dialogue for fictional characters. Two characters having a conversation in a novel will both want something, often opposing things…
- A wife will want to quiz her husband about the affair she suspects he is having, though she won’t come out and say it because she isn’t certain yet. Instead, she’ll ask him if he plans to be home late tonight.
- The husband, desperate to move this conversation onto safer ground, will start talking about his latest business deal instead.
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Avoid Obvious Dialogue
Imagine a middle-aged woman sitting at the breakfast table. Her hungover husband walks in, looking like hell. We’ll call them Sarah and David.
Here is how their conversation might go…
“Morning,” said Sarah. “How are you feeling?”
“Absolutely awful.”
“Could you manage some toast?”
“I don’t think I could stomach it,” said David.
Sarah poured him some coffee instead, with no milk, and asked him how last night had been.”
“Good,” said David. “The part of it I can remember.”
Not exactly the stuff page-turners are made from. The dialogue fails to ring true because it’s dull and obvious. The characters in this novel say precisely what we would expect two people in this situation to say.
In the Real world
But here’s the thing: folks don’t usually talk that way in the real world – and in a novel they never do. Instead, they…
- Rephrase lines to make them fresh and interesting, perhaps even funny.
- Say the exact opposite to what they really think.
- Try to avoid having the conversation altogether by changing the subject.
- Come out with an outright lie.
Writing dialogue that has the ring of truth to it is all about reflecting this reality.
So, when Sarah asks her husband how he is feeling, he won’t say “absolutely awful” – instead, he’ll say he “feels great” or “fantastic, thanks!” or he might even ignore her altogether. (Authentic dialogue is often just as much about what characters don’t say as what they do.)
Instead of asking David if he could manage some toast (boring!) Sarah could say, “I take it you won’t be having extra syrup on your pancakes.” And when she goes on to quiz him about his night out, David (not wanting to discuss it) could pretend he hasn’t heard.
Here, then, is an improved version of the breakfast table scene…
“Morning,” said Sarah. “You look good.”
“Not half as good as I feel,” said David.
“I take it you won’t be having extra syrup on your pancakes.”
No answer, not even a glance.
“Coffee it is, then,” she said and poured him a large one. Black. As she watched her husband sip it and wince, she asked if his watch had packed up again.”
Still nothing.
“Only I could have sworn you promised to be home before midnight,” said Sarah.
David sipped some more coffee, pulled a face. “Is this stuff fresh?”
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Use Subtext In Your Dialogue
Learn to listen when you’re talking to people. Listen to how people say one thing and mean another. We’ve all done it at sometime in our life’s.
I suppose this is partly related to the previous point. But it’s worth mentioning separately.
One way of adding authenticity to a passage of dialogue is to have characters talk about one thing… when they are actually talking about something else entirely.
A couple in a failing relationship, for example, might argue about what movie to watch tonight, and not what is really on their minds…
- What they reallybelieve is that they are two different people and it is time to head their separate ways.
- What they actuallyfight about is watching the horror movie vs. watching the romantic comedy.
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Get the Punctuation Right
Last but not least, a look at the nuts and bolts of how to punctuate dialogue properly. Not a very sexy topic – but an important one to get right nonetheless!
The odds are that you’re a keen reader (most novelists are). So you really don’t need me to tell you the mechanics of how to set out dialogue on the page.
But if you’re unsure of the answers to questions like these…
- Should you use single or double quotation marks?
- What do you do if a speech runs to more than one paragraph?
- What is the difference between ending a line of dialogue with a dash versus an ellipsis (…)?
Don’t Be Afraid to Break the Rules
Those, then, are the “rules.” But remember, rules are meant to be broken occasionally.
If you stuck to every piece of advice all of the time, you’d end up with dialogue that is almost too good. In other words, there’s a danger of going overboard…
- Yes, you want the dialogue to sound original and witty and clever, but not for every single sentencethat a character speaks. Do that and they’ll simply sound annoying.
- Yes, you want your characters to avoid awkward subjects (or, when they can’t do that, to lie), but not all of the time.
- Yes, you want the dialogue to be there for a reason. But occasionally, just occasionally, it’s okay to talk about the weather.
How do you know if you have gone too far? The same way that you assess all of your writing: put the scene aside for a day or two and come back to it with fresh eyes.
If you like what you read and it feels both sharp and natural, it’s fine. If it strikes you as being a little too clever, it’s crossed the line to being too good to be true.
There are several important things to remember when writing conversations like the examples above, which are called direct dialogue:
- Do not use dialogue simply to convey information. Dialogue should set the scene, advance action, give insight into characterisation, remind the reader, and foreshadow. Dialogue should always be doing many things at once.
- Keep the character’s voice in mind but keep it readable. Dialogue doesn’t have to be grammatically correct; it should read like actual speech. However, there must be a balance between realistic speech and readability.
- Don’t use too much slang or misspelling in order to create a character’s voice. Also remember to use speech as a characterization tool. Word choice tells a reader a lot about a person: appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, background, and morality.
- Tension! Sometimes saying nothing, or the opposite of what we know a character feels, is the best way to create tension. If a character wants to say ‘I love you!” but their actions or words say ‘I don’t care,’ the reader cringes at the missed opportunity.
Using Thoughts in Dialogue
Using thoughts or memories of occurrences and conversations can also show important details of a story without unnecessary character interaction. This indirect dialogue is another way of creating the feel of exchange without quotations. This often takes place internally in one of the characters.
“Hi Tony.”
Tony looked down at his shoe, dug in his toe, and pushed around a pile of dust. “Hey,” he replied.
Katy braced herself. Something was wrong.
It is important to keep in mind when writing thoughts not to use quotations. If you must write a direct thought, always italicize what is being “said” within the character’s mind.
Formatting Short Story Dialogue
Format and style are key to successful dialogue. Correct tags, punctuation, and paragraphs can be almost as important as the actual quotations themselves.
The first thing to remember is that punctuation goes inside quotations.
- “I can’t believe you just did that!”
Dialogue tags are the he said/she said of quotations. Very often they are mistakenly used as forms of description. For example:
- “But I don’t want to go to sleep yet,” he whined.
Use Sparingly
While these types of tags are acceptable and even necessary at times, they should only be used sparingly. The dialogue and narration should be used to show the emotion or action stated in the tag. One of the most important rules of writing fiction is: show, don’t tell.
Instead of telling the reader that the boy whined in the example above, a good writer will describe the scene in a way that conjures the image of a whining little boy:
- He stood in the doorway with his hands balled into little fists at his sides. His red, tear-rimmed eyes glared up at his mother. “But I don’t wantto go to sleep yet.”
Paragraphs are important to the flow and comprehension of the dialogue. Remember to start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes within the dialogue. This helps the reader know when someone new is speaking (and who it is).
If there is action involved with a speaking character, keep the description of the action within the same paragraph as the dialogue of the character engaged in it.
Creative writing is one of the few activities where hearing voices is not only a good thing, it is a necessity. If you find yourself having difficulty coming up with new voices for your characters, there are a few things you can do to help develop the voices in your head.
- Start a dialogue diary. Practice speech patterns and vocabulary that may be foreign to your normal habits. This will give you the opportunity to really get to know your characters.
- (Something I love doing!) You should always carry a small notebook with you and write down phrases, words, or whole conversations verbatim to help develop your inner ear.
- Read! Reading will hone your creative abilities. It will help familiarise you with the form and flow of narration and dialogue until it becomes more natural in your writing.
As with anything, practice makes perfect. Not all best-seller authors get it right.
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