Dialogue

Dialogue is hard. Making a conversation is hard enough in real life, let alone on paper. But with a few simple tips, you can write dialogue that is realistic and compelling. Let’s take a look.

1. The primary thing to take into account when writing dialogue is how realistic it sounds. Could you ever imagine someone saying what you just had your character say? For example, let’s take this dialogue: “I have just burned down the building and I do not care if anyone was injured by the fire.”

          Can you imagine anyone legitimately saying that in any kind of casual conversation? Can you think of a time or situation that would lead a character to make a statement like this? Always take into account how your character would sound when they say certain lines of dialogue. Look for a natural, logical rhythm to their speech.

2. Of course, the previous example sentence seems unnatural when you read it, right? This is an excellent time to take into account things like word choice and how they affect the impact and realism of dialogue.

Let’s take another look at that example sentence: “I have just burned down the building and I do not care if anyone was injured by the fire.” How does the deliberate lack of contractions make the dialogue seem much more formal and unnatural? It’s important to note that while not using contractions is usually required for more formal writing (essays, etc.), people use contractions often in everyday speech, and therefore if a character doesn’t use them in dialogue it makes their speech seem slightly odd.

Let’s say we rewrite this sentence: “I’ve just burned down the building and I don’t care if anyone was injured by the fire.” While this makes the dialogue seem more natural, the word choice still makes the speaker seem vaguely informal and distant. This could be because of the distant articles the speaker is using to define the terms of what they’ve just done (mainly the article ‘the’). If we change the first ‘the,’ when the speaker refers to the building, to ‘that,’ it makes the speech seem more personal and makes the speaker seem more involved in their own surroundings: “I’ve just burned down that building, and I don’t care if anyone was injured by the fire.”

It is also important to take note that most people don’t always use proper grammar when speaking, and English speakers often tend to eliminate words if said words appear/sound superfluous. If we use this as a basis for writing dialogue, then it’s likely that the word ‘just’ would most likely be forgotten by an English speaker. It is also likely that an English speaker would exchange “I’ve” for “I” and would switch “anyone” for the nicer sounding “anybody”, which effectively makes our dialogue: “I burned down that building, and I don’t care if anybody was injured by the fire.”

3. However, another thing to take into account when writing good dialogue is how a person’s background also affects their word choice. Would you find it more likely that a professor or a teenager would use slang in casual conversation? Would you expect a person from Britain to constantly use American idioms and phrases, or phrases of British origin? Another thing that can change a character’s speech is their personality. For example, is your character more likely to use words that he/she doesn’t actually know the definition of in an attempt to make themselves seem more intelligent? These are all things to consider when writing good dialogue.

So, let’s take another glance at our dialogue so far: “I burned down that building, and I don’t care if anybody was injured by the fire.” Do you think that an arsonist would be likely to use the word ‘injured’ in this sentence, or would ‘hurt’ make more sense? This, of course, all depends on the background of our arsonist, but let’s say for this example our arsonist is an impulsive college student who cares very little for reading. In that context, it seems to make sense that our arsonist would use a lower level word, so: “I burned down that building, and I don’t care if anybody was hurt by the fire.”

4. Of course, a character’s emotions also influence their dialogue. Does it make more sense that a startled person would talk in long, precise statements or short, wild sentences? If we look at our example dialogue and consider the emotions of the person speaking, we might notice a possible error in the speech: it is likely that our speaker (our impulsive arsonist) is very jumpy or excited as a result of the fire he’s just set, and this emotional mindset means that his statement is probably too long. It makes more sense that he would be speaking in short, harshly intonated bursts: “I burned down that building, and I don’t care if anybody got hurt!” Notice how the exclamation point changes the impact of his statement, as well as how the omission of “by the fire” makes his statement seem less deliberate.

So, in our look at dialogue we went from “I have just burned down the building and I do not care if anyone was injured by the fire.”  to “I burned down that building, and I don’t care if anybody got hurt!” See how much of a difference there is between these statements? Dialogue is a vital element to storytelling, and if it’s done improperly it can make an otherwise good story trite and painful to read. It is always important to try to keep dialogue as realistic and plausible as possible in order to keep a good story flowing smoothly.

Some Final Notes:

• The easiest way to learn how to write good dialogue is to eavesdrop on people’s conversation. This may seem creepy, but the best place to learn is straight from the source. The best dialogue writers are also often the best eavesdroppers.
• If you’re unsure of how good a line of dialogue is, read it out loud. Listening to speech is one of the simplest ways to tell if it sounds natural or not.
• No matter how excellent your dialogue is, don’t write pages of only dialogue. Too much talking can become very old very fast – break up dialogue with some action or prose now and then.
• Avoid using clichés in your dialogue – a good rule of thumb is if your dialogue adds nothing to the story, don’t include it.
• While dialogue can be useful for exposition in a story, avoid having characters constantly spell out what’s going on.
• Keep in mind that some stories use more dialogue than others! No piece of writing is superior to another based simply on its amount of dialogue. A large amount of dialogue is not an absolute requirement for a good story – so use it only when applicable!
• Don’t be afraid to use a large variety of punctuation! Exclamation points, question marks, ellipses, and even apostrophes can all be used to add intonation, inflection, and character to dialogue.
• While realistic dialogue is important, make it realistic up to a point. Try to avoid using speech patterns that are distracting to readers, especially when writing a character with an accent – if the majority of their words have letters or syllables omitted their dialogue can be extremely difficult to read. Also, while most people say “Errrrr…”, “Ummm…” and “Uhhhh…” a lot in common speech, using these too often can become annoying.