The Seven Year Speech: Tips for Writing Dialogue in Fiction

I have a love-hate relationship with writing dialogue. Some days I skip over it and other days it's all I want to write. I've been looking for some tips on writing and improving my dialogue and this is what I've gathered so far. Hope some of you find it helpful and please, share any tips you may have too!

Read it!

Always read your writing aloud – you want to make sure that it sounds realistic. Would you actually say something like this in real life? Try to make dialogue sound as natural as possible. Watch out for clichés and oddly archaic sounding conversation bits. Delete unnecessary dialogue, superfluous or filler words, phrases, descriptions, repetitive information that a character may say to clarify a scene or setting (The action in your story should be sufficient to fulfill the imagination of your readers so that they can visualize the scene at hand.) On a similar note, when in doubt, use a VERB. “Verbs are our friends.” Ask yourself: Do my characters sound natural or forced? Are they coherent or all over the place?

Read More!

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, reading can be a great research tool. Look carefully at the dialogue used in other works of fiction and how it effectively fits into a scene, character description, relationship, etc. Ask yourself: Why was it used where it was placed in the story? What was effective about it? What was not effective about it? Could you have written it any differently?

 

Vary word choice.

You don’t want your dialogue to read like this: He said. She Said. She was going to say. He’d said out loud by accident. If he hadn’t said that, he would have said this. Use profanity and slang as little as possible – also be wary of stereotyping. Ask yourself: Is my dialogue active or passive? What makes this word choice better than another? Can I replace any of my dialogue with description? Or a more concrete statement/question/exclamation, etc.?

Congruency

You also want to be cognizant of the relationship between what your character is saying, their personality and the situation. Would your character truly say something like she just did? Or would it be better fit for another character to make such an exclamation? Ask yourself: Does my dialogue have fluency? Is it varied in its rhythm in accord with the story’s tone and setting?

Punctuation

Be wary of punctuation! Don’t go comma crazy. You almost never need exclamation points – the dialogue should infer the expression on its own (and if it doesn’t, think about revising.) Delete any (and ALL) unnecessary dialogue tags. Also, beware of excessive dialogue modifiers (many times you can just put dialogue in quotes with no “she said, he cried, she exclaimed, he pondered,” etc. etc. Ask yourself: Am I punctuating my dialogue correctly? Or am I confusing my reader with commas, apostrophes and tag lines all over the page?

Naming

Do you ever notice that you almost NEVER say another person’s name back to them in casual speech? Try not to have characters use another character’s name in speech to establish identity. If this is necessary in your dialogue, remember, it is most often typical of characters, such as car salesmen. When editing (see below) ask yourself: Are your characters are so individualized by their speech that you don’t even need to use things like “Joanne said.”?

Edit, edit, edit!

I have read over and over (and over) again that the delete key on your computer’s keyboard is your friend. Simplify, combine, make more concrete and clean up your dialogue. You will likely be surprised to find that you can say the same thing in half the amount of words you originally wrote. Ask yourself: What is the purpose for the dialogue here? Does it advance my story? Reveal something new about a character? Does it provide other important information? (Hint: Here are four reasons for dialogue: To convey exposition - to tell us, through the conversations of the characters, what we need to know to make sense of the story; to convey character - to show us what kinds of people we're dealing with; to convey a sense of place and time - to evoke the speech patterns, vocabulary and rhythms of specific kinds of people; and finally, to develop conflict: to show how some people use language to dominate others, or fail to do so.)

I found a web site that has some great (and fun) exercises that are applicable to the art of writing dialogue for fiction. My personal favorites are #1, 2, 4 and 10. If you happen to try any of these, feel free to post the exercise in my comments section. I’d love to see how your interpretation of the dialogue practice turns out!

Please see below for details of refer to their site:

http://www.poewar.com/12-exercises-for-improving-dialogue/

1 Write down the things you say over the course of the day. Examine your own speech patterns. You don’t have to get every word, but you may find that you say less than you think and that your statements are surprisingly short. You might also find that you rarely speak in complete sentences.



2 Find a crowded place such as a restaurant, a bar, or a shopping mall and write down snippets of the conversations you hear. Avoid trying to record whole conversations, just follow along for a brief exchange and then listen for your next target. If you are worried about looking suspicious, you might want to purchase a Palm Pilot, Handspring Visor or other hand-held PDA device. These handy spy tools make it look like you are conducting business or playing with your favorite electronic toy rather than eavesdropping.



3 Test responses to the same question. Think of a question that will require at least a little thought, and ask it of several different people. Compare their responses. Remember that you are focused on their words. Write them down as soon as you can.



4 Record several different TV shows. Some choices include: sitcom, news, drama, talk show, infomercial, sporting event, etc.). Write down a transcript using just the dialog and people’s names. If you don’t know the names, just use a description such as announcer or redheaded woman. You can also transcribe two shows of the same genre, using one show you like and one you dislike. Compare dialog between the fiction and non-fiction programming you recorded. Look for such things as greetings, descriptions of physical actions, complete sentences, slang, verbal ticks (Such as like, you know, uhhhh, well, etc.). Compare how these dialog crutches change according to the show format and quality.



5 Rewrite one or more of the shows in exercise 4 as prose, trying to recreate the show as accurately as possible. Note how easy or difficult it is to work in the entire dialog from the show. Does it seem to flow naturally and read well or does it get in your way. Rewrite again eliminating any dialog you feel is unnecessary. Try not to change any dialog though until your final draft. Work with what you have. Remember that you don’t necessarily have to rewrite the whole show. Do enough to be sure you have the feeling for it.



6 Rewrite one of the transcripts from exercise 4 using as much of the dialog as possible, but changing the scene in as many ways as possible. Change the setting, change the people’s intent, and change the tone. See how easy or difficult it is to give the same words a different intent. Again, do enough to be sure you have the feeling for it.



7 Write the dialog for a scene without using any modifiers. Just write down a conversation as it goes along naturally. After you have completed the dialog, add narrative description, but not dialog tags such as said, shouted or ordered. Instead, try to work the dialog into the action as a logical progression of the statements. Finally, add any dialog tags that are absolutely necessary, and keep them simple such as said, told, or asked. Again, only put them in if you can find not other options. Compare this to the previous dialog you have written and see what you like or dislike about the changes.



8 Write a scene in which one person tells another person a story. Make sure that you write it as a dialog and not just a first person narrative, but clearly have one person telling the story and the other person listening and asking questions or making comments. The purpose of this scene will be both to have the story stand alone as a subject, and to have the characters’ reactions to the story be the focal point of the scene.


9 Write a scene in which one person is listening to two other people have an argument or discussion. For example, a child listening to her parents argue about money. Have the third character narrate the argument and explain what is going on, but have the other two provide the entire dialog. It is not necessary to have the narrator understand the argument completely. Miscommunication is a major aspect of dialog.



10 Write a conversation between two liars. Give everything they say a double or triple meaning. Never state or indicate through outside description that these two people are lying. Let the reader figure it out strictly from the dialog. Try not to be obvious, such as having one person accuse the other of lying. That is too easy.



11 Write a conversation in which no character speaks more than three words per line of dialog. Again, avoid crutches such as explaining everything they say through narration. Use your narration to enhance the scene, not explain the dialog.



12 Write a narrative or scripted scene in which several characters are taking an active role in the conversation. This can be a difficult aspect of dialog to master, because with each additional character, the reader or audience must be able to keep track of the motivations and interests of the individuals involved. This can be especially difficult in prose, where the time between one character speaking and the next can be interrupted by action or description. See how many characters your can sustain within the scene and still have it make sense and be engaging.



I will be looking more closely at the dialogue written in the books I am currently reading and I plan to provide a follow-up post to this one on dialogue soon thereafter. If you have any suggestions for books that you’ve noticed to be extremely well-versed in the art of writing dialogue, please let me know here (either with, title and/or author, or even better yet, with an example of some of the dialogue written).






As always, thanks for reading and Happy Writing!