The Dos and Don’ts of Dialogue

Learning dialogue is an art all its own, and it’s one that you must master (or at least achieve competence in) if you want to be an effective writer. Let this list be your guide to achieving dialogue that brings life to your story rather than leaving it bloated and ready to crawl off and die. Yes, the quality of your dialogue can make or break your story.

The principal use of dialogue is to bring conflict to a scene and to show character. Please keep this in mind while you are crafting your dialogue (or rewriting it).

First, what you shouldn’t be doing.

Do Not Have Speeches in Dialogue

I see this a little too often. One character is saying something long and windy, a lot of it is not pertinent to what is at hand, some of it is already known by the character they are speaking to, and all of it is usually pretty awful. 

Never have one character say something to another that the second character should already know.

Do not use speeches to convey information to the reader. Show that information if possible, or bring conflict into the speech and break it into smaller chunks. More on that below.

Dialogue interchanges should be short and punchy.

Avoid Overuse of Idioms and Accents in Your Dialogue

Yes, you may want to bring your particular culture to life, but take care in how you use idioms and accents. Idioms from West Virginia may not be understood by your New York reader. Accents on the page can be difficult to read.

Bad:

   “Haay,” I said. “Whut’s yer story? You ain’t never towld may.”

   “Eet’s a haarrd thang ta tale.”

   “Try. Plase. Ya know I’m leeving sown aynd I jest got ta know.” 

Better:

 “Hey,” I said. “What’s your story? You ain’t ever told me.”

   “It’s a hard thing to tell.”

   “Try. Please. You know I’m leaving soon and I just got to know.”

You can impart the flavor of cultural language differences with word choices and diction rather than making your reader choke down a whole plate of misspelled words.

Do. Not. Use. Small Talk. in Dialogue.

Just don’t. It’s awful. It’s boring. Your readers will put down your story, go to make some coffee so they can stay awake, and then likely just not come back.

Bad:

“Hi Nancy, how are you?”

“I’m good. And you?”

“I’m fine. How are the boys?”

Better:

There is no ‘better’. Just skip it.

Avoid Cliché in Dialogue

Yes, I know that I use a lot of cliché in this blog. Ok, a lot. That is because I am using this as a platform to talk directly to you. I am educating, not entertaining. I never use cliché in dialogue or in fiction writing in general. 

It’s a lazy way of writing, it’s boring for the reader, and you are shortchanging yourself as a writer if you let yourself do it. Plus, you are unlikely to be traditionally published if that is your goal.

Now, on to the dos.

Do Have Opposing Agendas for Each Character in the Scene

The opposing agendas should come out in dialogue. Each line should be promoting the speaker’s desire or opposing the wants of another. This is a great way to bring conflict in. 

If one of your characters does not have an agenda in a scene, they should not be in that scene. Kill your darlings, Darling.

Do Give Each Character Distinct Speech Patterns

Your main character might stutter, and his girlfriend might say ‘like’ a lot, and his mom might cuss a blue streak. Maybe Grandma is a church lady and blesses everything in sight and wouldn’t say ‘ass’ if her life depended on it. You get the point.

Dialogue eccentricities should work alongside characterization. Princesses shouldn’t say ‘dammit’ in the norm. CEOs shouldn’t usually talk like street thugs. Those are common sense, but stretch beyond that and think about how each character thinks, what their background is, and what kind of person they are.

Your CEO might talk like a street thug if he used to be one. Maybe he grew up in foster homes in an inner city and got a scholarship to an Ivy League school thanks to an inspiring teacher. There is no ‘never’, but if your character’s dialogue defies expectations, there should be a valid ‘why’.

 Do Keep Dialogue Brief

It’s great if your character is an English professor and likes nothing better than to talk, but for the sake of your reader, shut her up now and then. 

Remember, keep your interchanges short and punchy.

Readers like it.

Editors like it.

I like it.

Do Utilize Interruptions in Dialogue

“But what if that English professor won’t shut up and…”

“You can interrupt her.”

“I don’t understand. How does…”

“Interruptions within dialogue can increase tension and conflict.

“You’re being very rude. All I want to do is tell a story and…”

“Interruptions can also impart information in a more interesting way.”

“Ok, already.”

Emotional Demonstration

You can break up longer dialogue bits by showing your character’s emotions.

“You see, the reason we’re promoting this merger,” Dennis paused and surveyed the board members. Sweat broke out on his forehead. “Is because it can help rectify our third quarter losses and help us become profitable.”

That’s not the greatest thing in literature, and I still don’t know anything about mergers. It’s just an example. Breaking up what might otherwise be a speech can help to keep tension. Always be building tension.

Do Avoid ‘On the Nose’ Responses

Yes, I know. This one seems like a don’t. But it’s really more about crafting good responses than avoiding common pitfalls. So it’s really a do.

The term ‘on the nose’ was born in the film industry and refers to dialogue that is too expected, and therefore to boring.

“Are you ready to go yet?”

“I’ll be ready to go in five minutes.”

Boring. How can we spice this up a bit? Give an unexpected response.

“Are you ready to go yet?”

“I can’t find my lipstick!”

Better. It’s not going to win a Pulitzer, but it injects a tiny bit of tension and makes the exchange a smidge more interesting.

Or…

“Are you ready to go yet?”

“I’ll bet you’re so anxious to see her. Aren’t you?”

Even silence can work and raise tension. 

“Are you ready to go yet?”

Eliza said nothing. She leaned toward the mirror to apply her lipstick.

Whatever you do, avoid echoing the question back in the answer. See how in the first exchange, ‘ready to go’ is repeated? Don’t do that.

Do Use Subtext in Dialogue

This is likely the trickiest trick to use. It requires plumbing the depths of what is going on in the scene under the surface. In Conflict and Suspense, James Scott Bell refers to subtext as something that is “underneath the surface, other story deposits are bubbling up toward the top”.

You might have two characters who lost a child a few years ago, who never speak of it directly, but never stop communicating about the child indirectly. Maybe a silence falls whenever someone mentions the local softball team. Meanwhile, a picture of their child in a softball uniform sits on the mantle. 

Subtext involves talking around things instead of about them. We’ll dive deeper into subtext in a future article. 

Use these tips as a guide for writing or editing your dialogue. Try not to fret about it too much as you write your rough draft. You want to keep in flow. You can save your fretting for the editing process. Remember, stop editing as you write.

As always, happy writing!

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