Writing dialogue well is an important skill for novel authors because it carries so much characterisation and drives much of the story. Stilted or unnatural-sounding dialogue is something readers will quickly pick up on, and they’ll also quickly put your book down.
Writing dialogue is more than writing down spoken English.
The important thing to understand about writing dialogue is that we don’t speak the same way we write. Written English and spoken English are different, and we have to write our dialogue as spoken English, in the way that people actually speak. But at the same time, we have to prune it back a bit, because no one wants to read lots of ‘well’s and ‘um’s. Or all the little things people say in introductions, like, ‘Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?’ In a novel, we want the dialogue to be on point, not to wander off into general chattiness.
So start by writing exactly what your characters might say, and then cut back anything that doesn’t move the story forward. I always read dialogue out loud, that way I know if it sounds natural or not.
The tips for writing dialogue below include parts of the book The Elements of Active Prose: Writing Tips to Make Your Prose Shine. That book covers the kinds of writing issues I see often in books presented to me for appraisal. It’s a short book, but each point is vital for writers to understand and apply. Many authors buy the paperback and have it beside them to refer to as they revise and self-edit their work. They use each point as a checklist for evaluating and improving their writing.
1. Ground Your Dialogue
Dialogue is referred to as ungrounded when it has nothing around it to set it in a scene or to indicate character reactions to the words the other person is saying. Readers can get lost in such dialogue. It’s all right in short segments, but long passages without grounding not only will lose the reader, but also are a missed opportunity for deepening the writing and drawing the reader more fully into the scene.
We ground dialogue through occasional inclusion of facial expressions, gestures, body movement – such as tapping a foot to show impatience – and setting interactions – such as picking a coffee cup up from a table.
Without these, characters become disembodied talking heads. Using them grounds your dialogue in the scene and helps character development. It also breaks large areas of one person speaking into more digestible chunks. You can also occasionally use body movement before someone talks to establish who is talking.
Example:
‘When are you going to see your father?’ Sally asked.
Could be:
Sally took a deep breath. ‘When are you going to see your father?’
An example in the following section shows why we need to ground dialogue.
2. Keep Dialogue Tags Simple
One mainstream publisher I did a workshop with said that when she received a manuscript, she opened it at random, and if she found that the author had a high number of dialogue tags or had used anything other than ‘said’ to tag the speaker in dialogue, she rejected the manuscript without reading further. Why? She said it indicated that the author didn’t know how to write.
The reason simple tags are better is that fancy tags are very obvious. ‘Said’ goes unnoticed. Replacement words, such as ‘remarked’, ‘commanded’, ‘agreed’, ‘argued’ and so on stick out—my pet hate is ‘opined’. Since it’s not a word in common use, it jumps right out at you. Fancy tags distract the reader from the reading experience. They remind the reader that they’re reading and thus take them out of the story. That’s the very opposite of what you want.
Example:
‘Get out of here now!’ he commanded.
‘Get out of here now!’ he said.
It’s obvious from the exclamation mark and the words themselves that the sentence is a command. The word ‘commanded’ is unnecessary and cumbersome. It’s overwriting, and a little insulting to the reader in that it assumes the reader hasn’t the imagination to realise that this is a command.
So stick to simple dialogue tags like ‘said’, ‘asked’ and ‘replied’ with the occasional ‘shouted’ and ‘yelled’. Forget what your primary school teacher may have told you about avoiding using ‘said’ too often by using alternative words. There are more skilful ways to avoid overusing ‘said’.
Whatever you’re trying to communicate with your fancy tag should be said in the dialogue itself or by the actions and facial expressions of the characters. The way to avoid using too many ‘saids’ is to avoid using tags altogether.
3. Cut Unnecessary Tags
Readers must know who is saying what. It’s very confusing if you get to the middle of a conversation and can’t remember which character is talking, and it’s particularly annoying if you have to go back to the last indication to find out. This can happen easily during conversations where one character speaks for a long time and where the character’s voices aren’t immediately different.
However, your desire to make sure that the reader knows who’s speaking shouldn’t always result in a dialogue tag.
Cut dialogue tags completely where it’s obvious who’s speaking or where you have action as well. The action is sufficient to tell the reader who’s speaking if you use the character’s name or pronoun.
Too many tags:
‘We’ve got to get away,’ John said.
‘How? We’re stuck here,” Mary replied.
‘I think I know a way,’ John said.
‘The only way out of this place is past those guards,’ Mary said.
‘Shut up and follow me,’ John said, setting off towards the shed.
‘You’d better be right!’ Mary retorted and stumbled after him.
Revised:
‘We’ve got to get away,’ John said.
‘How? We’re stuck here,” Mary replied.
‘I think I know a way.’
Mary shook her head. ‘The only way out of this place is past those guards.’
‘Shut up and follow me.’ John set off towards the shed.
Mary stumbled after him. ‘You’d better be right!’
Where you do need a tag in a line of dialogue, insert it as early as possible. This stops the reader having to read to the end of a long sentence to find out who’s talking.
Example:
‘Yes, I will eat the dog, but not until you whip the cream for dessert,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I will eat the dog, but not until you whip the cream for dessert.’
But do use tags when they’re necessary. Just because only two people are speaking doesn’t mean that the reader won’t forget which voice they’re ‘listening’ to after several exchanges without some indication of who is speaking. Underusing tags is as inadvisable as overusing them.
Take a look at this version of the above example:
‘We’ve got to get away.’
‘How? We’re stuck here.’
‘I think I know a way.’
‘The only way out of this place is past those guards.’
‘Shut up and follow me.’
‘You’d better be right!’
A great deal is missing from this dialogue now. It’s ungrounded, related to nothing in the environment, and though John says ‘follow me’, nothing indicates that he’s actually moved.
Try to vary the way in which you tell readers who’s speaking. Use tags, actions, gestures and facial expressions, but again, don’t overdo it. Where only two people are speaking, an attribution at the end of each character’s words is unnecessary and can simply slow the pace down and frustrate readers who just want you to get on with the story. It’s all a matter of balance.
4. Write How People Speak
People often talk in short sentences and phrases, rather than in long sentences with big words, so write your dialogue the way they speak. Modern people also use contractions often. They are much more likely to say ‘I’m’ than ‘I am’. Read your dialogue out loud to see if it sounds natural.
If you’re writing speculative fiction with different races, it’s a good idea to use different speech patterns for the different races. Races may use different words to refer to the same thing, or may have ‘sayings’ they use often. Perhaps one race tends to ramble on in long sentences and the other tends to speak in a way that is short and to the point. One race could be marked by the fact that they never use contractions.
These elements help to distinguish one character from another, and establish the characteristics of different cultures, thus deepening your world building. However you decide the characters of a particular race or species talk, stick to that in all your dialogue for that species.
If you’re writing historical fiction, be sure that your dialogue uses the speech patterns of your chosen era and that you don’t refer to things or concepts that have not appeared yet.
Buy The Elements of Active Prose: Writing Tips to Make Your Prose Shine
This is part of a series of blog posts on how to write a novel. It doesn’t just cover the technical details, but also the emotional journey we take and the personal challenges we meet on the road from potential author to author. Join the journey now, and don’t miss a post, sign up to my Novel Revision Checklist and I’ll send the articles to your inbox.
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