Notes on writing dialogue

Dialogue can be one of the most challenging components of writing fiction. Often, the conversations come off feeling too forced or too clunky, lacking in natural rhythm.

However, improving one's dialogue-writing skills is well within anyone's reach, especially considering that there is an art form solely devoted to dialogue: plays/screenplays. We are going to look at how to take tips and pointers from these things, and apply them to our own writing.


Recognizing problems

He would never say that!

Have you ever watched a movie or seen a play and thought, “Geeze, no one would ever say something like that.” Or maybe, “Why would they word it like that?” You know what I mean; where the delivery of the line is directed more toward the audience rather than the other character in the scene.

Maybe it's just poor acting; more likely, it's that the writer was lazy and didn't care if the line was out of character, or the writer simply added too much information -- more information than the audience needs.

Example:
A woman steps inside a prison visitors' room and a guard directs her to a bench in front of a fortified window; on the other side of the glass, a young man in an orange jump suit sits down.
There are phone receivers on both sides of the window, and she picks hers up.
He picks his up, too. “Thanks for coming to visit me in prison, mother,” he says to the woman.

Ouch. A simple "Thanks for comin'. How's Dad?" would have sufficed; it contains all the information the audience needs to know, but in an indirect way. When dialogue is done poorly in any way, the result is the same: the fourth wall is broken and the believability of the piece is put at risk.

Writing a story is an all-inclusive process. Setting, plot, characterization, language all play off of each other and come together to make one solid piece. If one element is weak, it is going to drag the rest down with it. So when you're writing dialogue, keep in mind the context of the scene, the personality and background of the characters, and how this bit of conversation is going to fit into the plot. If your character is from a poor Chicago neighborhood and works at a corner store, they are not going to talk like a rich Harvard graduate who works as a tort lawyer in New York City. So make sure you're not using the same kind of vocabulary for both of them. If information is already provided to the reader, such as in our prison example above, there is no need to provide the same information in the dialogue. That gets tedious for the reader, who is sitting there going, "But I already know this!"


Not all conversations are created equal

Above, we talked about how context is one of those elements you really have to keep in mind when writing dialogue.

In the same way you have to keep your characterizations in mind, you have to keep in mind the situation in the scene. Friends discussing romantic pursuits over lunch is going to have an entirely different feel from two parents talking about how to cope after their only child is gunned down in overseas combat.

Emotions give life to the words that characters speak. Capturing them effectively involves paying close attention to choice of words, and balancing the language with action and description.

If you've ever read a modern play, you may have been surprised how quickly you got through it. That's because it's almost exclusively dialogue. Settings and action become the jobs of other people – set designers, stage directors, actors.

Think of what would happen if you applied this sort of approach to your stories. If you've done your job and created rich settings and characters, you generally don't need to add too much description in dialogue segments. Using description sparsely adds momentum and lets the conversation between the characters flow more naturally, because you're not necessarily stopping to consider all the facets of your emotions during a normal exchange. For example, when someone asks you how your day was, you usually have a pretty standard, instant response, right? On most days, you probably don't sit there with your lip wobbling and your eyes glistening and a stone in your throat, thinking about every person who has wronged you and how they made you feel.

This is not to say that kind of situation doesn't exist. Obviously if you are having two characters discuss something painful or maybe it's a tense scene between characters who are upset with each other, you can add more descriptions between what is said to sort of draw out the conversation. However, this MUST be very deliberate and used sparingly in order to preserve the effect that it creates. Try to find the kind of dialogue that is suitable for the scene/conversation. This is allowing form to echo content.

Also try to stick to one emotion per character per conversation; I'm guessing you don't go from being elated to being sorrowful to being full of hatred within the course of one conversation, right? If you are angry at the start of a conversation, most likely you will end the conversation still angry, even if it is with a slightly less amount of anger than at the beginning (if the person you are talking to wants to make you feel better, that is; if not, maybe you will be even more angry at the end of the conversation). It is more realistic this way and, trust me, solid believability is worth the sacrifice of some superfluous emotion.

On occasion, you might start a conversation full of joy only to have a metaphorical bomb dropped on you.

Example:
He came into the living room grinning. "I got a compliment from the boss today!"
She was sitting on the couch twisting the hem of her shirt. Her eyes were glistening and her face was white as paper.
His smile fell. "What is it?"
"There's been a shooting at the school..."
"My God." His heart dropped. He went to her and clutched her hand. "The kids. Are the kids OK?"

But once again, use these situations SPARINGLY or else the reader will start to get immune to their effect.


She said, he said

At LEAST 95% of the time, your method of delivery should be the word "said". You may use other words for more effect (blurted, spat, sneered, cackled, whispered, etc.) but SPARINGLY, for once again overuse will diminish the effect. Think of it this way: changing the delivery word emphasizes what the character is saying, and it is better to emphasize one or two important things rather than emphasize everything equally and risk tiring your reader. A tired reader is a lost reader.

By the same token, if it is obvious from the context who is saying what, you don't even need all those "she said, he said" tags.

Example:
Sarah rummaged through her purse. "I just can't find my keys. I swear they were here."
Jeff glanced into her purse and his mouth twisted when he saw her shove a pill bottle aside. “Did you have them when you got here?"
"Of course!"
"Maybe you put them in your pocket?"
"Ah." She ran to the coat rack.
He watched her go, then snatched up the pills and jammed them into his jacket. "Are they there?" he called.
"Yes, you were right."

By the same token, a period or comma will suffice to end a spoken statement at least 95% of the time. If you overuse your exclamation points, ellipses, and question marks, it makes for a poor experience for your reader.


For a summary of important points, as well as exercises that might help get you thinking more about dialogue (and some good literature, to boot), check out the artist's comments below.