Readers will allow some writers (like Toni Morrison in “A Mercy”) to get away with page after page of narrative and no word from a character. However, most writers are not that fortunate. Readers need dialogue to:

  • Move action forward;
  • Show conflict;
  • Build tension;
  • Convey information;
  • Develop the characters; and
  • Provide a break from the author’s voice in the narrative.

To write living dialogue, we need to:

  1. Listen and observe. Sometimes we are not paying attention, just waiting for our turn to speak. So next time, let’s listen for what is said and what is unsaid; let’s note the words, pauses, gestures,  silences, interruptions, subject changes, awkward moments, and  language quirks.
  2. Omit most of what we hear. Fillers make up a lot of regular conversation, and perhaps half of what we say is meant to pass time while we wait for the juicy bits to evolve. All the readers want is the essence.
  3. Keep the language consistent with the character.  Dialogue can tell readers the age, education, occupation, and geographical location of the character.  You can also give a character a distinctive way of speaking, with favorite phrases or slang terms that reveal the character’s background.
  4. Move the story along. Sometimes real-life conversation is boring, or it tells us information we already have or could work out for ourselves. Dialogue allows the story unfold with one thought/idea at a time coming from one character to another .Readers will be on to our game if we use dialogue to preach or just to pass on information, and they skip pages to get to the “real” story.
  5. Avoid confusing the reader. Be sure to let readers know who is speaking, as you don’t want them to slow down by re-reading the dialogue to figure out who is saying what and to whom. You can simplify the dialogue by staying with dialog tags like “he said” and “she said”.
  6. Limit phonic dialogue. Unless you are like Zora Neale Hurston (in Their Eyes Were Watching God), you will want to limit the phonic spelling of dialect words. A few words are great for flavor, but a lot will distract readers. You can often use speech rhythm (with conventional spelling) to convey dialect.
  7. Read the dialogue out loud. You can tell if the dialogue sounds natural or stilted when you read it aloud. You may also consider taping the dialogue to see if your dialogue, even if grammatically correct, sounds natural.
  8. Break up dialogue. Long stretches of dialogue can bore readers. You can add action, emotion, or description to show the how, why, when, and where of the dialogue.

All of these tips are negotiable, so please share with us the ideas that work or don’t work for you. What ultimately counts is writing a story that readers do not want to put down.

Copyright 2010 EyeEdit. All rights reserved.

Unlike
  • Share/Bookmark