Let's Talk about Dialogue

Dialogue. One of the most important parts to any story. It’s how your readers get to know your characters, how your characters express themselves, and (let’s face it) it can be really hard to get right.

Image by Brooke Cagle. Unsplash

Why is Dialogue So Hard?

Writing good dialogue is hard for a few reasons. First, you have to create multiple, unique voices. All the characters can't sound the same. It’ll get boring and confusing for your readers, and would be completely unrealistic. Do teenagers and 80 year olds use the same terms with their friends? Do people from different parts of the country use the same phrases? These are all things to think about when you’re writing your character’s words: who are they? Where are they from? Who are they talking to? There’s also things to think about like word choice, speech pattern. Do you have a character who is soft-spoken versus a more forceful, aggressive speaker? One who is very formal all the time? You've got to know your characters before you'll know what they sound like.

What about accents and dialogue? The style has changed on writing this lately. Think about classic 19th and early 20th century books where you almost can’t understand what some characters are saying because of their dialect (Walter Scott, for example) Today, generally the first line a character has will use the dialect but it will disappear after that. Perhaps another character will think about the Scottish accent once and awhile to remind the reader it’s there, but usually it is no longer written all the time. That’s a call you can make as the writer, but you now have the option of giving your character a heavy accent and dialing it back for writing/reading purposes. I just finished On Loverose Lane the latest book by Samantha Young-set in Edinburgh. While most of her characters are from Edinburgh, a few are American or from different parts of Scotland and have different accents. It's a great book to look at if you want to see a modern example of handling strong accents (all her books are actually).

Dialogue Isn’t Real

In real life we use small talk. Filler about the weather, how crowded the restaurant is, how long it took to park. The traditional “How are you” back and forth when people meet up is a polite way to make people who aren’t good friends comfortable. But does that have to go in your book? No. All the little “ums” of real life may be realistic, but nobody wants to read them- unless there’s a point.

Let’s say your character is a detective trying to set a nervous witness at ease. Then they might do some small talk about the predicted snow storm and their corner deli running out of milk before they get home. They’ll let the witness’s body language tell them when it’s time to jump into the real reason they are actually meeting. You still won’t let the scene go for three pages before you get to the point, but a few lines of “real world” small talk can work here. Or your detective can put the witness at ease with a relatable story about their own family in a similar situation to show the witness they can be trusted- which also shows the reader something about the character.

Dialogue can also be fun, because it is so often what we wish we could say in conversations. Those snappy comebacks that take us days to think up? Our main characters get to have them right away- because we can think them up over days. Consider the kind of vibe you’re going for in your dialogue. Are there books or movies you can think of that are similar? Maybe watching them would inspire you. One of my all time favorite movies for great dialogue is The Lion in Winter with Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. Hepburn gets all the best lines and is the perfect example of what you wish you said at the time. I highly recommend it if you get the chance.

Move the Plot

Don’t have a conversation just to listen to people talk. Dialogue should always be doing one of two things (both at the same time is even better!): developing your character and moving your plot forward. If things aren’t moving forward, ask yourself why the scene is there. If you intend for the scene to highlight one thing, like the protective streak in your romantic lead, ask yourself if the conversation can do something else at the same time to move the plot along. Can the dialogue also reveal a hidden insecurity about the lead? The answer isn’t always going to be yes, but it’s worth asking the question.

What's Your Goal?

When your characters are talking, they have an agenda. A goal. As the author, you may have a different goal than your characters for the same scene. This can create a scene full of tension or awkward, possibly unintended (for your characters) humor. Think about the cafe scene in You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks' character has realized Meg Ryan's character is his secret pen pal. The only conversation Meg Ryan is having involves trying to stand up to Fox (Hanks' character) and get him to leave before her date gets there. Fox is having a surface conversation-annoying her by being himself. But there's another goal to his conversation as well. He's beginning to try and change how she sees him, so she's ready to connect her pen pal and her real life competitor by the end of the movie.

“As You Know”

This one is a big pet peeve of mine. If both characters in the conversation know something, why say it again? The only time two people should be going over something that already happened is when there was a clear misunderstanding between them, or a revelation that needs to happen. “You know you always thought I was boring, so after you left me at the altar I went and started bungee jumping and now I do it professionally.” That line starts with something they both know but veers off to a surprise at the end!

Writers often use conversations to fill the reader in on information so they don't have to write paragraph-long explanations that are literally just text. But if everyone in the conversation already knows what's happening, the reader is going to know the conversation is an "info-dump" to fill them in. And they won't appreciate it. Give your reader credit for being smart enough to know a scene is only there for them and find a way to make it work for your characters as well. Think about Jurassic Park. If all the geneticists are sitting in the lab explaining how they created a dinosaur, that's a big "as you know" scene- and won't work for the reader (or viewer). If the scientists are explaining it to an outsider who hasn't been in a science lab since high school, then it works.

Show, don’t Tell

Don’t forget body language! We communicate with more than our words, let your characters do that too. Tone, posture, gestures, how we walk, all of it conveys something- and not all of it says the same thing as our words. Don’t let your characters fall into the trap of being just “talking heads”- let them get out on whatever stage you’ve written for them and use their whole bodies in the conversation. Context is crucial. How the same person talks to their friend isn't going to be how they talk to their boss (unless that boss is also a friend) let alone their boss's boss. How do they talk to their siblings? The barista at their favorite coffee shop? The loud guy talking on the phone in front of them in line? Is the dialogue they internalize the same as what they say outloud? Is what they feel being shown? If not- is there ever a person or place they feel safe enough to be themselves? Or do they bottle everything up until they need to be wearing a big "Contents Under Pressure" sign? What happens when those contents explode?

Be Consistent

One of the most important things is: be consistent. If you have a character who is always informal, is there ever a time when they will be any other way? If they always walk around stiff and formal, don’t let them change things up without a good reason.

The best way to check yourself for continuity is to highlight all of your dialogue. Give each character a different color and mark up your manuscript. Read only one character aloud and see if you’ve kept their vibe the same-or if you had them change, did their arc change the way it needed to? Do the same for each character. You can also try the Read Aloud features to give yourself a different angle on the dialogue. Make notes when you notice something that needs changing and go from there.

Spend time where you can do a lot of people watching- and listening. What kind of inspirations for types of conversations for different characters do you get?

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