Talking of dialogue...

[John Dean]

As you may know, I work with a number of authors, some already published, some about to be published and some still seeking their big break, and one of the things to which I devote a lot of time is the need to get the dialogue right. That’s because just as good dialogue lifts a story, so bad dialogue can wreck it.

The big mistake to avoid is assuming that writing dialogue is about slavishly replicating a real-life conversation. It’s not like that. Rather, creating good dialogue is about giving an impression of conversation.

If fiction is like real life with the dull bits taken out, the same thing is true of fictional dialogue and the role of the writer is to select what’s important.

Here are some things to bear in mind in order to get dialogue right:

 

In real life, we repeat ourselves but not so in good fictional dialogue. Yes, it must sound like real people speaking but the difference between dialogue in life and dialogue in stories is that in stories, you need to cut day-to-day conversation that is extraneous or irrelevant. Use only lines that take the story on or show something about your characters and their circumstances.

 

We tend to talk in short, sharp snaps of dialogue so writers should aim to get rid of most of the chit-chat and social niceties.  Don’t strip these things out completely because you still want conversations to sound natural but remember that dialogue in fiction needs to cut to the chase a lot quicker than real-life.

 

We assume a lot. If we are talking about a relative, we tend not to say ‘How’s your sister, Barbara?’ We tend to say ‘How’s your sister?’ If there’s more than one sister we tend to say ‘How’s Barbara?’

 

Good writers do not cram detail into dialogue. We say ‘I’ll meet you by the bus stop’. Not ‘I’ll meet you by the bus stop on Ronson Road, the blue one, by the corner shop, opposite the park with the statue of the dog by the main entrance’.

Give characters something to do while they talk. Make them do things, make the tea, hang up the washing etc, anything to give the conversation context and inject energy.

 

Pleasant conversations are great in real life but not particularly exciting so make sure you don’t subject your readers to tedious dialogue. A good way to do this is to give the characters conflicting goals. One of them wants one thing from a conversation, the other something else. The underlying tension will keep the readers turning those pages.

 

Dialogue is an excellent way to add to a reader’s understanding of a character’s personality.

 

Dialogue can provide crucial information in a naturalistic way and drive the story on – eg ‘Looks like a storm is brewing,’ he said. ‘We’d better get home before we lose the light.’

 

Don’t have characters all sounding the same – give them distinct voices but, if you use dialect to achieve that, don’t go overboard, be restrained otherwise it distracts the reader.

 

Getting your manuscript ready for the next stage in its journey, be it submission to a publisher or agent or the self-publishing route? If so, I have teamed up with my daughter Laura, a skilled editor, to provide manuscript assessments and editing. Should you be interested, then feel free to drop me a line and we can discuss your needs. For further details on this and my online writing courses, you can contact [e-mail]

 

Picture by Ricardo Esquivel, used courtesy of www.pexels.com