The ability to communicate is something most of us take for granted until something interferes. A bad connection. A language barrier. A brain tumor. The photo accompanying this post is a picture of the latter, my father trying to have a conversation with me as a malignant tumor spread in the language center of his brain.
Before gliosarcoma stole his ability to form complete sentences, my father was one of the best conversationalists I knew. And if I were to render his dialogue accurately, you would get to know the kind of person he was rather quickly. Because little shows a person’s character as effectively as the things the say, the things they don’t say, and how they say or don’t say them.
Good dialogue in life makes life good. Good dialogue in fiction makes fiction good (or at least better). It can mean the difference between scenes that flow and scenes that falter. It can mean the difference between exposition that seems forced and exposition that you didn’t even realize you were getting. It is a significant part of what makes a character seem like themselves and not like another character. It is so easy to get wrong—and so easy to fix.
It may seem a little odd to even have to discuss strategies for writing better dialogue. I mean, most of us talk to other people on a fairly regular basis, and I’m sure you all eavesdrop on strangers as much as I do. So it seems like we should all be able to translate our actual experience with talking to other human beings to the written page. But it’s not as simple as all that.
CHALLENGE #1:
We say a lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be said.
Let’s talk about small talk. I hate small talk. I would rather have a long stretch of uncomfortable silence in a conversation than engage in small talk.
Small talk conveys nothing beyond the fact that two or more people don’t have much on their minds, or that they don’t trust the other person with their real thoughts on real things.
Now, there may be an occasion or two to use small talk in your fiction to show a character’s social discomfort, but most of the time I see small talk showing up in writers’ manuscripts it’s because “that’s how people talk” and they don’t want to jump directly into the real subject of the dialogue because they think it’s more authentic to show how the whole conversation would go.
The problem is, that’s super boring for your reader. Just as small talk is a waste of time in real life, it is a waste of ink in your novel. It’s dead weight. Why? Because dialogue has a purpose. It’s there to convey information or give insight into a character or move the plot forward or something. It’s not just there because people talk. People sleep too, and I don’t think I’ve read too many books where I am forced to watch a character sleep for hours and nothing is actually happening.
Dialogue has a purpose. It’s not just there because people talk.
So while you may be tempted to include all the niceties and clichés we all use on a regular basis, and while you may even put them all down on paper when you’re drafting, these are the types of things to edit out of your work when you are revising it.
Just as you might remove all the unnecessary stage direction in a descriptive passage—“She took four steps across the room, placed her hand on the doorknob, and, with a flick of her wrist, released the latch and opened the door,” is probably better rendered as “She crossed the room and opened the door,” or even “She opened the door,” or “She left.”—you can remove most of the “How have you been?” “Great, how about you?” “Fine, thanks.” “It’s hot today, isn’t it?” “Yes, it sure is. I can’t seem to do a thing with my hair,” and replace it with: “You look like a hot mess.”
You never want to waste the reader’s time and brain space with stuff that doesn’t matter. The tacit agreement every writer has with every reader is that what’s on the page matters and needs to be remembered because it contributes to the meaning. So don’t make the reader wade through a bunch of stuff that doesn’t actually contribute to the meaning of the story. Get to the point, and then get to the next one.
This doesn’t mean the conversations in your book will all be short and clipped. It means they will be full of meaning instead of full of filler. You can write an entire novel that is one long conversation and it can be captivating. But that takes work. It’s not just basically transcribing how a real conversation would go in real life. You have to edit that conversation to make it work in fiction. (To see how to write a dialogue-heavy book that stays on point, try the novels of Elmore Leonard.)
Bottom line: avoid small talk in writing and in life.
CHALLENGE #2:
There’s a lot we don’t say at all.
I’m not talking about nonverbals here. We’ll get to those a little later. What I’m talking about are the things we think and choose not to say for various reasons.
Think of a conversation you had with someone where one or both of you bit your tongues—out of politeness, a sense of decorum, because you had a secret, or because for some personal, selfish, or cruel reason you wanted to withhold information the other person could have used. Think of all the words you have swallowed in your life. Think of them all sitting there in your gut, like rubbery wads of chewing gum you should have spit out.
Sure, we all have times when we’ve said something we regret. But I bet most of us have a lot more unspoken words floating around out there. Some of the greatest tension in scenes can come from what the characters aren’t saying to each other. Think about veiled threats, half truths, unspoken rules, family secrets, unpopular and therefore unvoiced opinions.
Be careful of making all of your characters too honest and too forthright. If they are, you’ll constantly be resolving the tension that you should be letting build up. People deflect when they don’t want to answer something or they don’t want you to know their real thoughts. Let your characters deflect as well.
In my third novel, All That We Carried, there are two estranged sisters with very different worldviews who are constantly picking each other apart, challenging each other’s opinions about spiritual matters and what happens after we die and things like that. But it’s a novel. It’s not book about apologetics, it’s not a diatribe, it’s not a debate. Their arguments are never truly resolved. And they’re not even there to be resolved. The point in the story isn’t the answers but the argument and what the argument reveals about each sister to the reader and reveals to each sister about herself. So in that book there are a lot of things that don’t get said. And there are a lot of things that finally get said.
One caution: you have to moderate your use of deflection and things unspoken. Otherwise, at some point your reader will notice that you’re relying on too many misunderstandings to move your plot forward, which is manipulative and unrealistic and just bad writing.
CHALLENGE #3:
In normal speech, we don’t have to let anyone know who’s talking at any given moment.
Because of course we can see or hear the person talking. But on the page, we need some attribution. He said, she said. But how much? How often? When should you use a character name and when should you use a personal pronoun? Are you only allowed to use “said” or “asked” as some writers have claimed?
I’m not going to give you any hard and fast rules about this. It’s a matter of taste and style and confidence in both yourself as a writer and in your reader. You will probably have a lot more attribution in your first draft than you do in your final draft. It’s something that is easy to remove later when you discover you don’t need all of it.
In general, I would say if you can drop an attribution without confusing your reader, you should (especially if you are trying to cut down on word count). If you’ve given your characters distinct enough voices of their own (more on that later), you really need far fewer dialogue tags than you might think.
If you can drop an attribution without confusing your reader, you should.
But remember that dialogue moves a reader through the page quickly. It speeds the pace. If you feel yourself getting through a dialogue-heavy scene too quickly, attribution can help slow it down and show readers what cadence you have in mind. It gives them somewhere to pause and take a breath and helps your scene mimic the timing of a real conversation.
On the other hand, if you are trying to depict a quick or frantic conversation, like in a thriller where the characters are being chased, let’s say, you want to keep the pace clipped and quick and not even necessarily always grammatically correct.
Bottom line, the pacing should match the tone and the action. Add or subtract tags to help get the balance you desire.
CHALLENGE #4:
The time it takes to read the dialogue on the page should be similar to the time it would take to speak the dialogue on a stage or screen.
Please, please, please don’t break up dialogue with long paragraphs of internal musings or long descriptions of the surroundings or long flashbacks. Because however long it takes the reader to read those interruptions, that’s how long no one has been talking in this conversation. You have to keep those quick so that the reader doesn’t forget the last thing that was said and have to flip back a page to find it.
This is one of the most common issues I see in the manuscripts I’m editing from inexperienced writers. They use conversations as places to dump backstory (which more often than not turns out to be completely unnecessary information) and spin out internal monologues.
This is especially problematic in scenes that are supposed to be high action. People don’t have the time or the correct mental state to muse when they are in high-stress situations, like escaping from something or chasing something.
But even in a conversation over wine while watching a sunset, you need to keep such interruptions short because they always take the reader out of the now of the story.
A great way to see if your internal monologue or backstory injections in a conversation are going on too long is to think of these characters in the movie version of your book. If your character is asked a question in the middle of a conversation and that question prompts a memory about childhood, which they then spin out in their head, imagine the other actor on screen waiting expectantly for an answer as your character stares off into space, stuck in their own thoughts, for the amount of time it takes to read the words on the page. Meanwhile the other person in the conversation (and the audience/reader) is waiting, waiting, waiting unnaturally long for the next line of dialogue. Now imagine the entire movie was like that.
No thank you. To best approximate the cadence of a real conversation, keep those narrative interruptions infrequent, short—I’d recommend just a sentence or two—and meaningful.
CHALLENGE #5:
We are never just talking, are we?
Let’s talk about nonverbals. That whole thing about only 7% of communication being the words we say and 93% of it being our tone and our nonverbals comes from two flawed studies and it is continuously taken out of context. And this is according to the man who did the actual studies back in the 1960s. So forget that noise. Exact percentages don’t matter and probably could not be accurately estimated and certainly wouldn’t apply to every situation.
Suffice to say, nonverbals are an important part of communicating. Some people are better picking up on them than others. People with particular personality profiles are more in tune with nonverbals. People on the spectrum might miss some cues others would see. Some people imagine nonverbals are telling them one thing (perhaps, “This guy thinks I’m ugly”) when those thoughts are actually being projected onto the person talking (as in, she’s actually the one who thinks she’s ugly).
The nonverbals are there. Use them. Act out the scene you are writing. How would you say that? What look is on your face? Why? Does the other person notice? Why or why not? What are you doing with your hands? Is your knee bouncing? Is there sweat on your upper lip? Is that a come-hither glance? Or has she had too much to drink? Is that smile because he thinks I’m witty? Or is he smirking at what I said because he thinks I’m kind of an idiot?
You don’t need nonverbals for every line of dialogue. (Please, please don’t do that.) But you probably need some. There are no emojis here.
You don’t need nonverbals for every line of dialogue.
Here is a perfect example of why we need nonverbals. A while back, I posted a picture on Facebook of my little chihuahua mix standing between my legs. Someone commented: “Nice feet.” That’s it. Hmmm… Not sure just what to do with that.
If it were a woman, I would assume that she liked my pedicure. It was not a woman. If it were a guy I used to go to high school with, I would assume it was a cheeky little flirtation all in good fun. Not the case. This was someone I used to work with. Not closely, but we were part of the same company. He’s probably in his seventies. Retired. But I don’t know him well.
Maybe the guy has a thing for feet. Maybe it was kind of an inappropriate thing to say to someone who could be your daughter. Or maybe he likes the color yellow (I have a bright yellow pedicure in the picture).
I don’t know because I wasn’t face to face when it was said. I don’t know how it was said. I don’t know if there were suggestively raised eyebrows or if he elbowed his buddy when he said it. I don’t know if there was a grimace on his face and he thinks feet are disgusting, and particularly mine! A nonverbal would have helped me interpret this cryptic comment. Or, in this case, an emoji. There is a big difference between these statements:
Nice feet. 🥰
Nice feet. 😈
Nice feet. 🙄
Nice feet. 🤮
Nonverbals are an essential part of communication, so don’t forget them in your dialogue. Don’t overdo them, but don’t forget them.
CHALLENGE #6:
How do readers know how something was said?
Besides nonverbals, we have a lot of ways to show how something was said in human speech. They can be a little trickier to convey in writing. These are tone of voice, volume, and the placement of emphasis in a sentence—all things we do without thinking when we talk and we interpret as we listen. So how do you approximate that on the page?
Not with exclamation points. Not with italics. Not with tons of adverbs. These are tempting when you want to make sure the reader is hearing it the way you’re hearing it. But they are easy to overuse, they can show a lack of confidence in your own writing ability and a lack of trust in your reader to get it right. And really, in most cases, it doesn’t matter if your reader hears it exactly as you do. Just as no one is actually seeing the character exactly as you do, no one is hearing them exactly as you do. And that’s okay.
In most cases, it doesn’t matter if your reader hears it exactly as you do.
Think of the journey a line of dialogue makes from a screenplay to the actual screen. There’s almost never anything in the screenplay that indicates to the actor how something should be said. And it is even considered bad form and rather insulting to an actor for a director to give them a line read, where they say the line how they think the actor should say it. They have to trust the actor to know the context of the dialogue and, more importantly, to know their character well enough to interpret the line and deliver it in an effective way.
Your reader is the actor. When you give them the job of interpreting what you wrote, you invite them to take part in the creative act. They’re part of the story. They’re acting it out in their minds. Sometimes they might unconsciously mimic what the character is doing or make the face they feel the character is making.
When you write dialogue from within a character—not as a way to tell the reader what’s going on (more on that later)—and trust that your reader is paying attention and is getting to know that character intimately, you don’t have to worry about showing them exactly what word was emphasized by using italics or that something was said at high volume by using exclamation points or telling us the line was said derisively, sarcastically, excitedly, or magnanimously. The reader does that work for themselves. You set the stage, you write the play, and your reader acts it out.
You set the stage, you write the play, and your reader acts it out.
The reader’s participation in creating the character or bringing the tableau to life is half the fun of reading. You want to give them enough to go on and then trust them to fill in the gaps.
CHALLENGE #7:
When dialogue doesn’t ring true…
Okay, this is our catch-all issue and we’re going to break it down into some of the most common mistakes that result in dialogue that doesn’t ring true—failing to develop distinct and authentic voices, sloppy exposition, characters telling each other what they already know, and the like.
Characters telling each other what they already know
You see this in books, TV shows, and movies ALL THE TIME. It’s lazy writing. It’s the writer needing to make sure the reader knows something and so it becomes part of dialogue, but the problem in this case is that there is no earthly reason for Character A to tell Character B this particular thing because Character B already knows it. In real life, people don’t typically tell each other things they already know.
A common example: “Remember our first date?” And then the character goes on in dialogue to describe the first date to the only other person who was an eye witness. No one does that. Because no one needs to.
But what if the reader needs that information? you say. Easy: just put it into the narration. What would a couple actually say when talking about their first date? They’d say things that, to an outsider, wouldn’t make sense because all they need is the shorthand they’ve developed over the years of their relationship. So the conversation might be nothing more than:
“Remember our first date?”
“That waiter.”
“So annoying.”
“But if it weren’t for him…”
“Yeah.”
There’s no real information there. If your reader really truly needs to know exactly what the waiter did, throw a line or two in that explains it. But it is far more likely that the particulars don’t matter. What matters is showing that these two people have a history and it’s just theirs. It purposefully keeps other characters and the reader on the outside of this bond for the moment. And that’s okay.
Another tip: Beware of starting any sentence with, “As you know.” It means you are about to cheat. Or even if you don’t start with “as you know” but you have Character B respond to Character A with “Yeah, I know.” Find another way to get that information across.
Sloppy exposition
Characters telling each other what they already know is often what we mean when we say sloppy exposition, but that can also happen when you have Character A telling Character B something he didn’t know. The key question to ask yourself is, would anyone actually say this this way in a conversation?
Would anyone actually say this this way in a conversation?
You’ll see this sometimes in stage plays because all the audience has is what is going on right now on stage. So sometimes some background information will be thrown into dialogue because there’s nowhere else to put it. But in a novel, you can find other ways to do exposition.
In a lot of manuscripts—like, a frightening amount—the writer glosses over action that they could have put on the page, and instead they write a scene where two characters are sitting at a table with coffee or tea and one of them recounts what just happened to them. Why? Because to the writer it seemed easier than actually writing out the scene where the action happened (more on that in a minute).
But it’s far more engaging for the reader to see the thing happen, to be there in the midst of it. If later your characters are having coffee, don’t have them rehash the whole thing. You can simply write a line of dialogue introducing the event—“You’ll never believe what happened to me on the way here”—and then something like, “She told him the whole story—dead pigeon and all.” Because the reader just read the scene with the dead pigeon. In the coffee shop, we can move on to the next subject, moving things forward. (Or maybe that coffee shop scene can be cut out entirely, eh?)
If your manuscript is one long string of conversations about something that just happened, but we never actually get to experience any of it happening firsthand, start your revision by actually writing out the action scenes where something is actually happening. You’ll instantly breathe life into your story.
As I said, one of the reason writers tend to skip writing the active scene and fall back on someone describing it to someone else is because they’re avoiding a scene that will be challenging in some way. A scene that is hard to write. A scene they have not fully imagined, but they know what they want their character to get out of it. And when you do that, you keep the reader at arm’s length because they didn’t go through the scene with the protagonist. They’re the secondary character just hearing the story, and that has very little impact on the reader. It doesn’t allow them to experience the emotions that the protagonist supposedly did.
There are some scenes that are hard to write, especially if they require you as a writer to go deep into something you’d rather ignore or forget. Something that happened to you. Or a belief you’re afraid to examine. Or something you’re afraid your mom will read. But those are the most important scenes. Don’t shortchange them and then just have characters talk about them. Let the reader in.
Developing distinct and authentic voices for your characters
I’m talking about this last, but really, if you do this well, it can take care of a lot of the problems we’ve already covered.
When we know someone well, it’s usually because we’ve talked to them a lot. We know what they’re about. We know when they’re serious and when they’re joking. We know if they tend to exaggerate. We know if they’re sarcastic or sincere, tentative or confident, if they’re tuned in to what other people are thinking or feeling or if they are self-absorbed and clueless. How does she speak to her kids and how is that different from how she speaks to her boss or her mother or her friends? How is her voice different from his voice or my voice or someone else’s voice.
In order to give your characters distinct and authentic voices, you need to get to know them. You need to know how they grew up, what they found challenging, what they rebelled against, what they wish they were better at. What happened to him that he’s so closed off to friendship? What did she do that she so ashamed of? Why does he have a problem with authority? Why doesn’t she ever say what she’s thinking? What made her so cynical? Why won’t he accept a compliment? Or an apology?
Your characters need to exist apart from the timeframe covered in your novel. Because what has happened to us before today has made us into the person we are today. And the person we are today shows up in our speech. So if you want characters that crawl off the page and into the psyche of your reader, characters who feel and talk like real people, they first need to be real to you.
Your characters need to exist apart from the timeframe covered in your novel.
Now, they may not be fully formed when you’re working your way through your first draft. You may not really get to know a character for several drafts. That’s why revision is vital to the writing process.
In fact, you’re not going to get any of this perfect on the first pass. Or the tenth pass. But with every revision, you can refine and fine-tune every aspect of the dialogue in your novel until your characters feel like real people and the fictional story you are telling feels more like something remembered and relayed than something made up. That’s the kind of novel that transports a reader into that separate headspace we’re all chasing, that feeling of being part of a story. Like a runner’s high but for people who like to curl up on a couch with a good book. A reader’s high, if you will.
Let’s recap (because we all like lists)
Skip the small talk
Hold back and deflect—remember all the things we don’t say
Use simple attribution, only when needed
Use nonverbals (but let’s not turn it into a game of charades)
Easy on italics, exclamation points, and adverbs
Trust your reader and include them in the creative process by allowing them to interpret rather than telling them how to read everything
Characters should never tell other characters what they already know
Show the action in active, on-screen scenes, don’t just have character recount what happened in a passive scene
Know your characters inside and out and distinct, authentic voices will follow
I hope you have found something useful to your writing process. Now go forth and write better dialogue!