Dialogue is a tricky thing and requires careful consideration. Going into a scene without a plan may spell doom. Bad dialogue is easy to catch and will sink a story for any reader. Dialogue is one of the most powerful tools for characterization, and demands our full attention. It makes the reader relate to characters on a personal level and brings characters to life in a way that description can’t. If your dialogue is bad, your characters will be unrelatable and boring, and bad characters will kill a story.

There is no one way to write dialogue. The things we suggest are just that – suggestions. Great dialogue requires a keen ear and attention to detail. We can’t teach that in a single blog post, but these concepts will give you a strong place to start.

Purpose

All stories have some kind of purpose that they move toward. The subsections of stories also have their own purposes – Act I of a story has its own separate purpose from Act II. The same goes for scenes. Scenes in a story need a purpose, and it needs to serve the overarching story. Find it and make sure your dialogue advances the plot. Strings of dialogue without a purpose are generally boring and should be cut.

Scenes can have a variety of different purposes, and most tend to involve conflict– the characters in a scene have opposing goals. If two characters talked about how much they agreed with each other then the scene would have no purpose. Arguments will help you flesh out your characters and write exciting scenes. Start with a strong purpose.

Momentum

Once you have purpose for a scene, consider the speed and intensity of how it will play out. Much like how full stories have rising actions and climaxes, so should your scenes. Consider how the emotions change as we move through scenes. That will affect how the characters speak to one another.

For example, if characters are going to get into a fight, start their dialogue calm then devolve into madness as the scene continues. Then you can have the characters resolve the conflict of the scene bringing it back to calm- full circle. With that said, remember that the fight needs to have a purpose that serves the main story.

When writing dialogue, think about the intensity of the scene. If it’s a high energy situation, the characters will probably speak in shorter sentences, influenced by the heat of the moment, but as things relax, characters will speak in longer sentences.

Let’s make it sound right.

Now let’s discuss how people talk. You want your characters to sound like real people, but you don’t want them to actually talk like real people. In real life, most people stutter on occasion or get distracted in the middle of sentences. It happens to all us, but not to all characters.

If a character stutters in a story, they should either be scared or have a condition. If a character gets distracted by something asinine mid-sentence, then they better be easily distracted. This can be a powerful tool for characterization, but if those things don’t serve the purpose of the scene, we don’t need them. Cutting down needless fluff will keep scenes focused.

However, this door swings both ways. Characters shouldn’t sound like robots. Make sure your syntax matches the rhythm of regular speech. Vary sentence length and structure. A lot of short, simple sentences can feel awkward. For example:

“I like pizza. I had it yesterday. I also went to the mall.”

Compared to:

“I had pizza yesterday, and after that I went to the mall.”

One easy way to capture this effect is reading your dialogue out loud. Listen to the rhythm of your sentences. Do they sound natural or forced? You will have to trust your ears (and the ears of those who give you feedback). If you think it sounds off, other people will too. Try out different words and play with the syntax until it sounds right.

Theme

Most stories have some kind of theme, but dialogue is not a place to explicitly state it. Having a character state the theme is lazy. It is easy to have a character say “all you need is love,” but it’s not rewarding. Themes are for the audience to discover. Let’s make our stories rewarding and not have characters needlessly spew the theme. That’s what subtext is for.

For example, in Rogue One, the characters consistently blabber on about “hope” and how important it is. We get it. The movie is about finding hope in trying times. We should be able to get that from watching the movie without being told every 15 minutes. The use of “hope” in this movie is particularly horrid because it is a reference to A New Hope. This is a complete break of the 4th wall. Everytime someone said “hope” in that movie, it pulled me right out of the experience. Dialogue shouldn’t break the reader’s suspension of disbelief.

Subtext

In real life, people rarely say exactly how they feel. Instead, they beat around the bush and hide their true intentions – and so should your characters. If a character always says, “I’m mad because…” then you have probably failed (if they are telling the truth).

Emotions should be conveyed through words and actions. If a character storms through the door and says “That Harry Potter is a sonofabitch!” then it is pretty clear that they are angry – there’s no need to tell the audience that through description.

If characters aren’t explicitly stating their desires in a scene, you’ll need another way to convey them to the audience. You can hint at it through the things they say, their body language, and their actions. This use of subtext creates tension, particularly when a character’s words conflict with their actions and body language.

Voice

Characters are people, and people all speak differently. Your characters should have distinct voices that are true to their backgrounds. Where are they from? How smart are they? How do they feel right now? These all play into a character’s voice. Clearly differentiated voices will bring your characters to life. If your characters all speak the same, the dialogue will be boring and lifeless.

Voice can also be a powerful tool for characterization. There are things that writers can show rather than tell through dialogue. Don’t tell readers that a character is a blubbering idiot, let them see him blubber. Don’t tell them Donny is a smartass, show them how he mouths off to his teacher.

Never tell something that can be shown through dialogue. Trust your reader to come to their own conclusions.

Listen

The things your characters say should be realistic. You don’t want your audience thinking, “who would say that in that situation?” This usually occurs when a character says something that needs to be said for the plot but no other reason. When a character responds to another, put yourself in that character’s shoes and figure out their honest response- not the response that’s convenient for you.

This will help keep your dialogue consistent. If you have a character fleshed out in your head, then as you listen to them, they will speak in a consistent voice. They should also have consistent goals that influence what they say. Inconsistent characters are confusing and take the reader out of the story.

Break it up.

Avoid long strings of a single person talking. Break it up. People don’t just sit and speak without doing anything else. People move and look around as they talk. Break up long bouts of dialogue with narration. Here’s an example:

Jonny sat down on the couch a seat away from Michelle. He looked around the room and lit a cigarette as he spoke, never quite meeting Michelle’s eyes.

“I ain’t about to go sit through no damn funeral. My pop never gave me anything an he won’t get nothin from me. My poor ol ma is gonna have to sit through that service like she gives two shits, but I’ll tell you this, she don’t.”

Compared to:

Jonny sat down on the couch a seat away from Michelle.

“I ain’t about to go sit through no damn funeral,” said Jonny. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a long, furious drag. “My pa never gave me anything an he won’t get nothin from me.” Jonny’s eyes lowered to the floor.

“My poor ol ma is gonna have to sit through that service like she gives two shits, but I’ll tell you this,” Jonny paused. He took a drag and leaned back in his seat, eyes locked on the floor. He whispered, “She don’t.”

I’m not saying this is the best dialogue in the world, but it at least has a couple of things going for it. You can picture the scene in real time.

Jonny reacts to the things he’s saying. His language and furious cigarette smoking make it clear that he’s angry. Then we follow his body language as his mood shifts. Perhaps he’s sad for his poor mother or secretly misses his father. We don’t know, but we can reveal that as the scene continues.

Attribution

When do you plant that all-important “He said”? The answer is: only when you need it. If you put “said Jonny” after every couple of lines, it would become tedious. It is generally easy to follow who is speaking, especially with only two people. Little hints can also help clarify who’s speaking, but generally you don’t need to make it explicit. Let’s continue the scene from before.

“My poor ol ma is gonna have to sit through that service like she gives two shits, but I’ll tell you this,” Jonny paused. He took a drag and leaned back in his seat, eyes locked on the floor. He whispered, “She don’t.”

Michelle waited a moment. She looked at Jonny. He didn’t look back.

“I’m sure your mother is happy to go.”

Johnny takes another drag. “Says you.”

“She loved him at some point. She’ll want to pay her respects.”

Jonny thrusted his cigarette into the ashtray, stood and looked Michelle in the eyes. “There ain’t no respect to be had for a scoundrel like my pa.” He turned and slunk into the kitchen.

Michelle sighed and rested her head on the back of the couch, closing her eyes.

Again, I’m not winning any prizes with this, but at least it’s clean. We don’t need a bunch of “he said” or “she said” to understand who is talking. Context clues are enough.

You should also be wary when using attribution other than “said.” Using a lot of ~fancy~ attribution like snarled, barked, cried, etc. usually comes across as weak writing and is tiring for a reader. The action in the scene should be enough to understand how someone is speaking.

Something else you’ll notice above is that I include the character’s action and their lines in the same paragraph. This implies that person is speaking without having to use attribution.

Also, always use a new paragraph when someone new is speaking. This may seem obvious to some, but I have read pieces where there are multiple people speaking in a single paragraph, which is quite confusing. Starting a new line when there’s a new speaker will keep things clear.

Like I said before, these are suggestions and not hard rules. Writing is an art, after all. Perhaps this is the best piece of advice: pay attention to the dialogue that you read. Ask yourself what the author is doing. See how they use attribution. See how the energy flows in their scenes. This may give you a good place to start.

These concepts should help you craft engaging and natural dialogue that will keep your story moving.

Weekly TL;DR: Dialogue requires careful consideration into the purpose and momentum of a scene as well as the backgrounds and characterization of those speaking.

If you have any questions or comments, join the discussion on our Discord! Next week we’ll be discussing the dialogue in Netflix’s new series, The Witcher. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter below to stay in the loop on the blog and Campfire news.