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8 Tips for Writing Dialogue for your Characters

Anybody Can Write a Novel

Chapter 5 “Choosing and Designing Characters” – Section 4 “Dialogue”

With Links to Supplementary Material

Dialogue is a tricky topic, and for two key reasons. The first is that creating realistic dialogue is a difficult skill to master—even in day-to-day life—without speech coming out plastic, pointless, or otherwise unconvincing. The second problem is that the proper dialogue for your story is deeply rooted within the other elements—the characters, the setting, the genre, etc... Because of this, writing dialogue that is custom fitted to your story, requires adjustment and cannot stand up to any “one size fits all” set of guidelines. Today, I'm going to try to give some new approaches as well as some time-tested tips for how create the best possible dialogue for your particular story.

Tip 1: Remember that all dialogue—every paragraph, sentence, and word—must serve a specific purpose in your story.

Whether you are advancing the plot through your characters' attempts at persuasion, manipulation, discovery, deceit, encouragement, questioning, or self-revelation, everything that is said in dialogue should serve a specific purpose. This is vital for dialogue, as they risk the pace, flow, and reader interest in the story more than any other plot element. Furthermore, attentive readers will remember the topics addressed in your dialogue more than they will any description or narration—meaning that they will be disappointed and discouraged if they perceive that their time and energy in being so attentive was for nothing.

Tip 2: Be conscientious when talking in your day-to-day life, as well as to how people respond.

How much of what you say in an average day has meaning, and how much is one-dimensional fluff meant to fill in the silence or perform some societal expectation? Begin to actually think about the words that you use, and the meaning that they hold. Consider what: “Hey, what's up,” really means, and whether is helps you accomplish any goal or attain any insight into a situation or person's life. Consider what you hope to accomplish—the ultimate purpose—of anything you say, and note the effect your words have on those around you—what others do, say, and how they otherwise react. Know that doing so will have a dual effect of making your daily conversations more effective but also force you to awkwardly struggle through re-learning how to communicate with meaning. This skill will then easily transfer to your writing.

Tip 3: Try some method acting—assume the role of each major character and talk like them for a week.

Once you have the hang of speaking with purpose, begin to analyze how specific characters with specific motives, specific backgrounds, and specific mannerisms would speak. Look at their background, their country of origin, their mastery over language, the refinement of their vocabulary, and the reason they would even want to talk. Obviously, when practicing this for villains and other characters that would harm or use others, you may just want to speak in a normal fashion and just rehearse in your brain how your character would have handled that situation differently. By being your characters and learning the subtleties of their dialogue and how they use language, you will become capable of transferring that depth and level of thought onto the page.

Tip 4: Use your many drafts to systematically refine a formula for speech patterns.

Your first draft should always use dialogue as a straightforward tool of going from point A to point B, as well as noting any thoughts you may have for later drafts. The reason for its spartan nature in the first draft, is that our first draft is only meant to create a complete block of stone from which we can chisel our art. In the second draft, further refine by creating full and grammatically correct sentences and more prolonged and extended thoughts. Then, in the remaining drafts, refine these sentences into exactly what is needed, as well as to reflect the characters from which the dialogue is coming from. By using drafts in this way, we learn structured improvement and refinement so that our attempts at bettering the dialogue is not blind and chaotic.

Tip 5: Always keep in mind the “Rule of Hitch” (aka the 90/10 rule).

In the 2005 movie, “Hitch” Will Smith's character quite accurately states: “Sixty percent of all human communication is nonverbal, body language; thirty percent is your tone. So that means that ninety percent of what you're saying ain't coming out of your mouth.” If you want your characters to communicate realistically, you must use nonverbal language. This is much more challenging in a written medium of communicating/storytelling, but you have at your disposal tools such as italics (for emphasis on words), shrugs, eye-rolls, quick breaths, big eyes, wrinkles, twitches, and dozens of other subtly, bodily actions, to create a communication that is far more three-dimensional than dialogue could ever be, alone.

Tip 6: Keep your dialogue tags simple and specific.

The two most common problems I see when editing stories are that the writer feels uncomfortable using “said” over and over; or that they use so many pronouns “he, she, it, they,” (or no tag at all) that it is impossible to tell who is communicating. It's alright! Every writer struggles with it, because it is awkward to repeat “Blake said” a dozen times in a chapter. But, rest assured that unlike with “exclaimed, shouted, declared, informed” and the rest of those other dialogue tags, readers will just look over “Blake said” because they are so used to reading it from professional authors, and will subconsciously absorb the identifying info that they need. Occasionally, it's alright to use tags such as “Blake whispered” if your character is hiding from a troll; just use them sparingly and only when the specification is necessary to the situation.

Tip 7: Begin a new paragraph every time the speaker changes.

Another common problem is that a character will say something short, such as “Alright,” and the beginning writer will not be confident in letting this one-word paragraph stand. Do it anyways. Changing paragraphs for each speaker makes it so that they reader can read with more fluidity and clarity, and so that they are not intimidated by constantly huge, blocky paragraphs.

Tip 8: Limit, as much as possible, the variation between talking and action sequences in each paragraph.

“It's important to limit how many times you change from dialogue to action in a paragraph,” Blake said, or rather typed onto the screen. “Because another way to break the flow of your storytelling is by constantly switching.” Blake thought he was quite clever in making his example reflect exactly what he was trying to illustrate NOT to do. “Try to limit each paragraph to three or fewer segments; two sections in quotations and one action/description sequence in between, or visa versa.” Blake sat back in his chair and stretched his back, with a cocky grin on his face, until he realized that it was now time for him to revise the second draft of his article. “Crap,” he said. “Here we go again.”

Feel free to comment with other suggested resources. Any questions about writing? Things you want me to discuss? Comment or send me a message and I will be glad to reply or feature my response in a later article. If you enjoy my reviews, please feel free to share my articles with friends, add it to your favorites, become a watcher on my page, or send send a llama my way!

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