Writing realistic dialogue

The way you write your dialogue can make or break your story. After all your efforts in creating your characters with all their individual traits, personality, appearance, background and so on, it’s vital that the way they speak and the things they say, match their personality and mood.

While you want your dialogue to sound like real speech, it actually only gives the impression of real speech. When people are talking in real life, there are lots of y’knows, umms and ahhs, along with repetitions, interruptions and drifting off at a tangent. Real speech in a story would be tedious. The author has to give the impression of real speech with all the boring bits taken out, leaving just the words that are there for a reason.

A few lines of good dialogue can reveal more about character and plot than many pages of narrative. Plus, dialogue brings vitality to a story – it brings your story to life.

Reasons for dialogue

• To carry the story forward.
• To characterise the speaker and other characters.
• To show the emotional state of the speaker.
• To describe or set the scene or mood.
• To increase the tension and suspense.
• To provide the reader with necessary information.

Make every word of your dialogue count. It is not there to pad out your story. If something is mentioned in dialogue, then it is there for a reason. The reader may not know that reason at that moment, but later in the story it should become clear. If your dialogue is littered with irrelevant, unnecessary facts that come to nothing it can mislead the reader as well as slowing your story down and spoiling it. So, keep it alive and moving forward. Don’t allow your characters to get bogged down in a lot of unnecessary banter that does nothing to move the story forward.

Of course, making every word count also applies to your narrative – in fact when you’re polishing your story or novel, there should be no superfluous words or long-winded phrases. Every word really should count and be there for a reason.

One piece of advice I picked up years ago, but which has stuck with me, was: if you had to pay 10p for every word you write, you would be meticulous about unnecessary words slipping in.

Be careful not to duplicate.

If you’ve already mentioned something in the narrative, there’s no point in bringing it up again in conversation, and vice versa. And while dialogue is great for providing the readers with important information, be careful one character isn’t telling another character something they already know, just for the benefit of the reader. Bad example: “Hello, Sue, I bet you’re excited to be marrying Joe today at 3 o’clock at St Jude’s and your honeymoon in Paris, particular as you’ve only known him three weeks.”

Dialogue needs to sound natural with the characters all sounding different from one another.

 

 Show don’t tell through dialogue

Dialogue is the best way to reveal character, so be sure that in your story you do not simply state that your character is, for example, a man with a quick temper, or a real joker, without writing scenes to show these traits. Similarly, don’t just tell the readers about two people being in love, or hating one another. This must be shown through the scenes you write, and the way they speak and behave around one another.

Let dialogue work for you

Your characters’ dialogue doesn’t just carry the story forward, it shows the character’s mood, emotions and relationships with others. Let dialogue work in heightening the drama of a scene. If even a single word of dialogue isn’t there for good reason, then change it for a word or sentence that does add something to the story.

A line of dialogue is the perfect tool for starting off your story as it immediately draws the reader in. As someone is speaking, you’re immediately introducing a character. It can reveal personality and how they are feeling right at that moment. It can set the scene and even indicate the conflict and what is at stake. A few good lines of dialogue at the start of a story – or at the opening of any scene can take the place of paragraphs of narrative.

Dialogue is also a perfect choice for ending your story. After all, the reader has stuck with your characters throughout your story, so why not allow one of them to have the final word? I’ve found that a final line of dialogue can conclude the story perfectly.

                                                                                           

Today’s Exercise:

Find a professionally published extract of dialogue and copy it exactly. Take note of where the punctuation goes; take note of where capital letters are used and where they aren’t. Check your own work to see how it compares.

Tomorrow: More on dialogue including speech tags and punctuation around dialogue.