In this article, I’m giving you my rules for great dialogue writing, one of the most important skills for any author to master.
In my genre of crime fiction, dialogue is essential for effective storytelling, so this is the topic that I have spent the most time studying. Readers compliment me on the dialogue in my novels. I work hard to make sure it’s always snappy, authentic, and entertaining.
Here are the rules of dialogue writing that I live by…
1. Dialogue must advance story, characterization, and dynamics.
Dialogue should move the plot forward. That is, the reader should be closer to the story’s conclusion at the end of an exchange between characters than they were at the beginning.
This ties into my earlier post about Story Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Great Scenes, when we talked about the need for scenes to turn. There must be some change over the course of the scene, or the section isn’t relevant enough to the story for the reader to care.
Dialogue is the same way. There must be some change over the course of the exchange.
Conversations between characters should also tell us about who they are. What a person says (and what they don’t say) can be a powerful indicator of their motivations and feelings. Dialogue can deliver important information about their backgrounds, their present perspectives, and what they hope the future will be.
Finally, you want your dialogue to reveal more about the dynamics between characters. Use what the characters say to each other (and, again, what they don’t say) to show how the various relationships in the story progress and evolve.
If a passage of dialogue does not accomplish ALL three of these objectives, it needs to be reworked so that it does. This is how great dialogue writers use their characters’ spoken words to tell a compelling story.
2. Dialogue should never be mundane.
Never include introductions in your dialogue.
“Hi, how are you?” “I’m good, thanks. You?” “Great.”
See how boring that is? When you write a passage of dialogue, jump right into the relevant situation at hand. Get to the part that advances the story, characterization, and dynamics without any of the fluff that people go through in real life.
Mundane verbiage, such as introductions (or worse, discussion of the weather), doesn’t make your dialogue sound more “real.” It just makes it a chore to read.
3. Give each character distinct rhythms of speech.
Nobody speaks exactly like anybody else. In fiction, it’s especially important to make your characters sound unique from one another.
To do otherwise is a classic mistake made by most beginning authors.
Pay attention to sentence structure, turns of phrase, and words that can be omitted to give each character a distinct voice.
Culture and regional background can be helpful here. I don’t enjoy reading dialogue that contains too much dialect, such as when the page is cluttered with apostrophes. That becomes annoying very quickly. However, changing the rhythms of speech based on dialect is a much less intrusive way of introducing a character’s background into their dialogue.
Every reader has a “mind’s ear” as well as a mind’s eye. It’s crucial that your characters each sound unique for the reader to connect with them as individuals.
4. Keep those rhythms of speech consistent.
Once you have your characters’ speech patterns figured out, keep them the same throughout the story. The sound of a person’s dialogue will be a major identifier and a source of connection for the reader. It’s important not to change that as you write each subsequent passage of dialogue.
5. Be a little over the top, but not too much.
The best dialogue writers (Elmore Leonard, George Higgins, George Pelecanos) all practice(d) this secret.
Authentic dialogue should feel slightly over the top as you write it. The character’s personality and speech patterns should, to you, come across as MORE than what you’d hear in real life.
The reason is that, while we strive for authenticity, fiction will never be real life. Dialogue must pop off the page for it to resonate the way spoken words do in our daily conversations.
This is another reason to keep your dialogue from being mundane—not only in subject matter, but also in tone and voice.
Push your characters’ rhythms of speech and sounds. If it feels slightly over the top to you, it will feel just right to the reader. Otherwise, you risk writing flat, boring dialogue that doesn’t ring true or deliver a special experience.
A word of caution, however. If you make it too over the top, you’re in danger of penning a caricature at best and something offensive at worst. Don’t stereotype your characters with this rule.
Find the sweet spot that will make your dialogue crackle.
6. Use “said” in your dialogue tags.
A dialogue tag is the “he said” or “she said” that accompanies a line spoken by a character.
This rule is a hotly debated topic in the writing world. Some authors prize variety in their dialogue tags, opting for phrasings like, “he chortled,” “he murmured,” “he shouted.”
Others are of the opinion that you should only use the verb “said.”
I take a stand on this issue and strongly side with the “said” camp. Here’s why.
Dialogue tags are there to give the reader a split second of clarity as to who is speaking. By only using “said,” you allow the reader to become accustomed to seeing it. Therefore, they’ll eventually just skip over the tags and continue with the characters’ conversation. The tag is there if they need clarity, but it is so nondescript that it never interrupts the exchange.
More “creative” tags, on the other hand, intrude on the conversation. The author’s voice interjects to tell you how a line is spoken.
Any good line of dialogue will contain enough context and will be written well enough to show you how a line is spoken. You don’t need the writer to spell it out for you.
So, don’t intrude on your characters’ conversations. Demonstrate your knowledge of various verbs in your prose, not in your tags.
7. Grammar is a suggestion.
The rules of grammar should be viewed as fluid when writing dialogue.
The reason?
People do not speak properly. See? I just ended a sentence with an adverb. And that’s nothing compared to what your characters could do with (or to) the English language.
Ask yourself, How would each individual in my book treat the rules of grammar?
This is one of the most potent techniques for affecting your characters’ rhythms of speech and adding authenticity to your dialogue. Again, factor in each character’s background.
In my own writing and in the research for each novel, I often find major differences between how various criminal subcultures and organizations treat grammar. The same also goes for the different levels and locales of law enforcement communities.
The caveat is this. You have to format dialogue properly, which includes an understanding of how quotation marks and punctuation work.
Dialogue is musical, so let’s compare it to musical notation. You can play around with rhythm, pitch, and tempo in music, but in order for the person reading the sheet to understand what to hear, you have to notate the page properly.
For writers, punctuation is our notation. It tells the reader how to hear our dialogue. For instance: commas introduce short pauses, periods introduce full stops. Em-dashes allow us to interject a related thought into a larger one. Double and single quotation marks orient us in a character’s speech.
To write rhythmically and musically, you must know how punctuating dialogue works.
8. Characters should never directly express their feelings.
“John, I’m sad.”
That is a terrible line of dialogue. Yes, your characters can express how they feel through what they say, but it should never be so on the nose and obvious.
Dialogue should indirectly show the reader how a character feels. Combine that with descriptive body language and well-written narration, instead of delivering emotions through declarative statements.
9. Don’t write long speeches.
It’s fine to include a longer passage of dialogue in certain contexts, such as when one character tells a story to another. But, in general, don’t give anybody a soliloquy. If you do have a legitimate reason for a character to engage in an extended dialogue, make sure you put space between that passage and the next.
Use lengthy dialogue in moderation or not at all.
People don’t like to listen for very long, and chances are, the character they’re speaking to will want to interrupt and say something.
There’s a trick in the craft of acting…an actor will start delivering a line just as a scene partner finishes their line. You jump on each other’s dialogue to keep the scene energized and moving forward. That’s often how we interact with each other in daily life too.
So, don’t let one character dominate a conversation for pages on end. Somebody will want to put in their two cents. Let them.
10. Read your dialogue aloud.
This is the most important rule of dialogue writing. I’d actually recommend reading your entire story out loud, both the dialogue and the narration. But it is especially important with dialogue.
Ask yourself, Does each character sound unique?
Does my dialogue sound like my voice? If so, change it. No character’s spoken words should sound like the written word.
Am I playing with sentence structure enough? Am I incorporating dialect and background in an effective way? Does any passage go on for too long?
Are my rhythm and musicality pleasing to the ear?
Does my dialogue crackle with enough exaggeration to feel authentic when I hear it aloud?
Only by hearing your dialogue will you be able to perfect it.
Summary.
To review, my ten rules for dialogue writing are:
- Dialogue must advance story, character, and dynamics.
- Dialogue should never be mundane.
- Each character should have distinct rhythms of speech.
- You must keep those rhythms of speech consistent.
- Dialogue should feel a little over the top to the writer, so it can feel authentic to the reader.
- “Said” is the best verb in dialogue tags.
- Defy the rules of grammar but get your punctuation right.
- Characters should never directly express their feelings.
- Long speeches should be used sparingly.
- Read your dialogue aloud.
For a masterclass in dialogue writing, check out George Higgins’s masterpiece, The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It gets my vote for the best crime novel ever written, and the book is approximately 80% dialogue. You’ll see a little bit of every technique in there.
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