Readers love dialogue. They might skip the beautiful description that you spent hours crafting but they’ll read every word of dialogue. If we write dialogue which is authentic for our characters and drives the plot then we’ll have our readers turning the pages to find out what happens next.
I teach creative writing at the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of York and these are the key things I teach my students about dialogue.
1. Listening
Writing dialogue starts with listening to the way people talk. As a writer you have licence to eavesdrop on conversations on buses or trains or in cafes in the name of research. However, if you’d rather not or that’s not easy for you then BBC Radio 4’s The Listening Project is a great resource. The Listening Project records conversations between people who are friends or relations as they talk about a subject which they’ve never discussed before. As well as listening to the way people interact in a conversation, it’s a useful exercise to pick up on what’s not being said in the conversation (which we’ll come to later in subtext).
2. Dialogue isn’t conversation
Dialogue in fiction isn’t like real-life conversation. Dialogue has to have a purpose whether that’s to drive the story forward or divulge information about a character. Whereas conversation is an exchange of ideas, dialogue is an exchange of ideas directed at solving a problem or confronting a conflict.
As readers, we accept that characters are having conversations which don’t have a purpose off the page. They’re talking about the weather or football or what they watched on TV when we’re not with them. However, when we’re reading about them their dialogue should have a goal to keep the story moving forward and maintain the pace of the story.
3. Conflict
Dramatic dialogue needs conflict. The characters need to have different goals. There’s a quote from Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and director of The Avengers) which I find really helpful on this.
“Everybody in your scene, including the thug flanking the bad guy, has a reason. They have their own voice, their own identity, their own history. If anyone speaks in such a way that they’re just setting up the next person’s lines, then you don’t get dialogue: you get soundbites…”
When you’re writing a scene, it’s a good idea to work out what each character knows before this scene, what they want from this interaction and what they don’t want to reveal. This can be done by writing a list of verbs of the character’s emotional state.
4. Avoid ‘on the nose dialogue’
Where a character speaks exactly what they’re thinking, you get ‘on the nose’ dialogue. It’s best to avoid this as it’s unrealistic and gets boring for the reader really quickly. A reader will be more invested in your story if they have to do some of the work of untangling what the characters are really thinking.
5. Subtext
Subtext is the character’s intention or emotional state that is not expressed directly. It can come through in what the character doesn’t say, their actions, their speech inflection, how they dress or an object that’s important to them. Actions can be a useful way of signally that the emotion is different to the words (for example, shopping bags being slammed down as the character says ‘I’m fine’).
If you’re struggling to put the subtext into dialogue it can be useful to write the scene from more than one viewpoint. When you’ve been in the head of all of the characters in the scene, you’ll have a clearer idea of what they’re saying or not saying.
6. To tag or not to tag
Speech tags should be approached with caution. ‘He/she said’ and ‘he/she asked’ become largely invisible to the reader. I generally advise to steer clear of adverbial tags (e.g. he said coldly or she said mischievously) and said bookisms (e.g. exclaimed, pondered, bawled, hollered, suggested) as these are definitely not invisible to the reader. Ideally, you want the dialogue to do the talking not the speech tag. If your dialogue is really working and has the elements we’ve looked at then the reader will know that the character is ‘exclaiming’ or ‘suggesting’ without it needing to be pointed out to them.
I hope these tips will have you crafting sizzling dialogue which brings your characters to life. I love writing dialogue. I think that transmits through the page so if you’re having fun that’ll come through and your readers will enjoy it too.
This article was originally published in Romance Matters, the magazine of the Romantic Novelist’s Association.
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