10 tips for writing better dialogue

People get less articulate, not more, when theyre emotionally moved. Want to write an emotional moment? Increase your quotient of stumbles and restarts. Jane Espenson Writing good dialogue takes practice and patience. Here are ten tips for you to improve how you write your dialogue so your conversations crackle on the page. 1- Read dialogue aloud. Its meant to be heard, after all. This will help you to listen to the voices of your characters, noticing the flow and movement of their words. 2- Dont use dialogue to convey large chunks of information (exposition). People dont sound like this: Since we arrived here at four, to watch for Martin Goodfellow, the murderer, Ive felt hunrgy. Its okay if readers dont know exactly whats happening at all times trust them to understand the story because they are intrigued by the voices of your characters. 3- Dialogue should sound real, but that doesnt mean dialogue on the page is exactly like snippets of dialogue you overhear. You dont need all the Hellos, Goodbyesand boring small talk of daily life. Cut it out. 4- Good dialogue should move the story forward, convey character and feel full of life. The best place to see great dialogue is by attending (or reading) plays, watching movies or even just switching on the TV. 5- If you want your character to say, I need you, think about the words they would actually use. Perhaps theyd say, I cant- Do you have to catch the early bus? Jane Espenson writes, Want to write an emotional moment? Increase your quotient of stumbles and restarts. She writes scripts for TV (shows like Buffy and The Gilmore Girls) and her insight into writing dialogue is helpful to think about here. 6- Learn how to write the correct punctuation for speech. Itll be a useful tool for you as a writer, making it easier for you to write the dialogue you want, and itll help your work look professional when publishers read it. 7- Another technical dialogue tip: he said and she said read just fine. Dont worry about repetition, most readers glide over he said/she said as if those words were punctuation. Too many of these: exclaimed, gasped, screeched, postulated, reasoned, argued, pondered, mouthed, etc and your dialogue will be overwhelmed by the words around it. 8- Have people argue with people, or have people saying surprising, contrary things. If everyone is agreeing with each other, your story will feel flat. 9- Think about how each of your characters sounds. Make each voice distinct this can be subtle or dramatic. Perhaps one character likes to use a certain word or short phrase, so make sure the other characters dont use that same word or phrase. Its a small distinction, but useful. More dramatic distinctions are up to you!

10- People dont have to answer each other directly. Sometimes whats not said has huge meaning.
Some writers love dialogue. They find that they have a natural ear for how different characters speak, and that the dialogue races along, carrying the story with it. Others struggle over every word of a dialogueheavy scene, feeling that the characters sound stiff and unlifelike. Fortunately, theres a huge amount of great advice on writing dialogue; Im going to be quoting from three authors and books:

Nigel Watts Teach Yourself Writing a Novel (and Getting Published) Elizabeth George Write Away: One Novelists Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life Robert Graham How to Write Fiction (and Think About It)

The function of dialogue

Im sure you know what dialogue is spoken words between two or more characters. What I want to look at here is what purpose the dialogue serves within a story. Watts writes that all dialogue should accomplish at least one of the following three things:

Moving the story forwards Giving information Contributing to characterisation George agrees that in the most basic kinds of writing, dialogue serves the interests of moving the story forwards. She believes, too, that better writing involves dialogue that contributes to characterisation, where what [a character] says and how he says it tell us as much about who he is as do his actions. For George, however, really good dialogue goes far beyond this. She suggests that it can:

Foreshadow events which are to come Make these events more vivid when they do arrive Give characters, and the relationships between them, life Both Watts and George agree that dialogue shouldnt only exist to give the reader information. This sort of speech invariably sounds clunky and unnatural, as characters often end up telling one another things that the reader knows theyd already be aware of. (Your wife, who you married ten years ago)

Making dialogue sound natural?

One of the major struggles which many writers have is writing natural sounding dialogue. Characters often end up sounding stilted, wooden and unreal. George suggest that a good author gives [dialogue] the look and sound of natural speech even while he knows he cannot make it a reproduction of natural speech. Here, George is saying that dialogue should have a certain verisimilitude it should seem real to the reader, but it shouldnt have all the umms, errs and false starts of real speech. Try taping two or more people talking, or reading a verbatim transcript of a live show. Youll find that the result is almost unintelligible. You dont want your dialogue to be this true to life, though; unless, as George writes, your character has a speech impediment, low-wattage brain power, synapses misfiring, or psychological problems, and the dialogue is being used to define his natural limitations. To make dialogue seem natural without boring the reader to tears or making them think that all the characters are blathering idiots try some of these tips:

Use contractions (dont, shouldnt, cant) unless a character is very stuffy or speaking in a very formal context. Let characters break off sentences, or speak in phrases rather than sentences. (You might think of these as verbless sentences theyre great for dialogue.) Have characters interrupt one another. Use the occasional um or er, if a character is being particularly hesitant.

Giving characters distinct speech patterns

When writing dialogue, its important not only to make the words sound natural but to distinguish (and characterise) your characters by the way in which they speak. Graham writes that dialogue is characteristic of the person speaking it, and emphasises that the words a character says must seem in-character for the reader to accept them as real. Watts emphasises that as your characters have different physical and emotional characteristics, so too should they speak differently. Some factors to consider when finding each characters voice, as well as their personality, are:

What sort of educational background does the character have? Where are they from (geographically)? How old are they? What do they do for a living? All of these will affect whether your character is terse or long-winded, whether they use technical terms or laymans ones. Theyll also determine the sort of slang that your characters use (none at all? Out-of-date slang? Offensive slang?) One area to be cautious about something which Graham, Watts and George all mention is the use of dialect. If your character has a very strong regional accent, the reader will quickly get tired (or confused) if you attempt to spell everything out phonetically. As Graham says, You dont want your story to grind to a halt while readers work out syllable by syllable just exactly what has been said. Try using a couple of regional words to give the dialogue the right flavour: a Scottish character, for instance, would use words like wee (meaning small) and bonnie. Do you find dialogue easy to write, or is it one of your weak areas? Do you have any tips on writing realistic speech that reveals character, moves the story along and makes characters come to life?