Not Quite Conversational DialogueWhen two or more characters in your novel talk, it's dialogue. Yes, this should sound a lot like you talking to your friends but... ...without all the "umm", "well", "you know"... You know? When your characters speak, they need to sound a lot like real people. No walking encyclopedias, please (unless it's a comedic character and that's the funny part about him). And no illiterates, unless the character truly is. Dialogue needs to sound natural. But not too natural. How's that you ask? Listen to a conversation between two people. Any two people. Or your own with someone else. It sounds a lot like this, doesn't it? "Hi." "Hi." "How are you?" "Okay. How 'bout you?" "I'm fine." I'm bored, aren't you? You need to cut to the meat. Cut out the dregs. No one cares about the "hi, how are you" portion. They want the argument, the teasing, the sexual innuendo being flung. Let's try this again. See what you think now. "He plays better than I can, Damon. I can't teach him anything." "Well, I could use the extra time for his tutoring and we did know this might be the case." "That a student who's trained intermittently awhile back is better than a master? He has perfect pitch! And looked mystified when I said so." "He may not have known the term. But, aye, he has perfect pitch." "He didn't know how to adjust a music stand, dammit. Where in the world did he learn to play like that if he didn't know two such basic things about the music guild?" Now, wasn't that more fun? Even without tags and the bits of description normally thrown into such an exchange, we now have something more interesting to read. So, now you know how to write dialogue your readers want to read. Conversations with a purpose. Not just inane pleasantries. But, how do you know who's talking? There's more than one method. The first is to use tags. The second I'll discuss in a moment. Dialogue tags can be as simple as "she said", or "John said" and nothing more. If you have only two speakers and one is male, one female, then "he said" "she said" is sufficient. However, don't fall into a rut and tag every line. It'll seem unnatural, break up the flow and send your readers scrambling away for something better to do. "He plays better than I can, Damon. I can't teach him anything," she said. "Well, I could use the extra time for his tutoring and we did know this might be the case," he said. "That a student who's trained intermittently awhile back is better than a master? He has perfect pitch! And looked mystified when I said so," she said. "He may not have known the term. But, aye, he has perfect pitch," he said. "He didn't know how to adjust a music stand, dammit. Where in the world did he learn to play like that if he didn't know two such basic things about the music guild?" she said. Ooohh. Now it's like being jabbed in the ribs each time one fictional character stops talking. Poke, poke poke. That doesn't seem natural, either, does it? Neither will it if your characters continually "shriek", "cry", "mumble", "rant" or any other silly tag you can come up with. Keep it simple. Yes, your characters can show their emotions, and occasionally you can use a different tag because of that, but don't make it constant. No one wants to listen to such shenanigans. If you feel you need to tag your dialogue - and sometimes you will need some tags - use them only when you have to. In the above example, you could leave the first "she said", but we don't need "he said" on the next line, because she called him by name in her first sentence. We know it's him responding, because he's the only other one there. (Yeah, you might not know that from this tiny sample, but in the novel it's from, it's obvious.) You can really delete the rest of the tags in this conversation because it's only two people, and the paragraph changes when each person changes. But what if it's a long conversation, or more than two people talking? Great question! When you're writing dialogue, don't let every character sound the same! In my example, Damon says "aye", not yes. In every novel he's in, that's one of his peculiarities of language that sets him apart from other speakers. I have another character who turns phrases around oddly because he's always translating from his native tongue. It's easy to tell when he's talking, too. You can write dialogue completely free of tags - if you use other cues to tell us who's speaking. Let's look at my sample one more time, with the character's movements and such put back in place. Please note, we're working from only one character's point of view, so any "thoughts" are from that perspective. Be sure you do the same when you write scenes, or you'll confuse (and lose!) your readers. "He plays better than I can, Damon. I can't teach him anything." She looked angry, Damon thought. Or... jealous. "Well, I could use the extra time for his tutoring and we did know this might be the case." "That a student who's trained intermittently awhile back is better than a master?" Ah. What's really bothering her. "He has perfect pitch!" Isana pinched the arm of her chair in her right fist. "And looked mystified when I said so." "He may not have known the term. But, aye, he has perfect pitch." "He didn't know how to adjust a music stand, dammit. Where in the world did he learn to play like that if he didn't know two such basic things about the music guild?" Not a tag to be seen, and we can still tell who's speaking when. The judicial use of a character's actions, thoughts and reactions will go a long way to making your dialogue sing, not stutter. And give your cast characterization while you're at it! So, don't be a slave to tags. Don't let your characters ramble. Make them get to the point and stay on it. If you can write fictional conversations like that, your readers will love reading them. And you'll love the checks rolling in when your fans all buy your next finely crafted novel! For more on creating characters, see these pages: If you'd like more novel writing tips, sign up for my free newsletter, A Novel Approach. Once or twice a month, I'll e-mail examples of "before and after" scene writing, character creation and other novel writing techniques. Return to Characters page from Dialogue page. Return to How To Write A Novel Homepage from Dialogue page.
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