5 Tips on Naturally Writing Effective Dialogue
I’ll be the first one to say that I don’t love writing dialogue.
The actual task of recording down their conversation is quite un-riveting for me personally.
That being said, analyzing dialogue and the actual process of creating it, thinking through it, and revealing character using dialogue is quite fun.
It shows your reader:
– What’s going on in characters heads
– What their normal life is like
– Into scenes that they might otherwise not be able to see
– The story
– What makes characters different
– What makes them similar
– It can persuade your reader to believe something about a character that may end up being a great twist later
– Suspense
– Drama
– Conflict
– It also makes pages easier to read through
Think about people talking normally.
When you’re out the next time to the movies or mall or restaurant, out to the groceries or whatever.
Be purposeful to hear the way people talk to you and others.
Even think about the way you speak to others and your mannerism.
You can log this information away as normal speech patterns.
The more people and cultures you interact with the more dialects and different speech patterns you find.
But a great way to figure out how to give your characters the right words and thoughts is to listen to people in your real life.
Talk your dialogue out loud.
Another great dialogue practice is to have your character’s conversations out loud with yourself and maybe your editor or friend. Whoever you have that’s willing.
When you hear it out loud it gives it an entirely new feel and it’ll be easier to tell if it sounds weird, odd, or abnormal.
Draft it out.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard when it finally comes to sitting down and typing it out on the keys is to write it out without making many punctuations at first.
Just let the words flow fast and naturally so that you can feel what it’s going to look like and sound like right away without stopping much to be distracted by punctuation
Don’t be overly concerned with he said, she said just yet except to just keep it organized.
This will really free you up to create the dialogue and have it come out right rather than being bogged down in the first draft by all the writing technical work.
5 Tips on Naturally Writing Effective Dialogue
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Add the punctuation after you feel the dialogue is right.
Take your time in the editing process of your dialogue to make sure it sounds natural and each character has their own voice just like a real human.
When their talking and interaction seems right for them add the punctuation.
This helps compartmentalize the creative process from the technical process.
Common dialogue pitfalls to watch out for.
– Don’t overuse names.
Overusing someone’s name in real life is weird and it’s weird in writing too. Unless your character is a creepy salesperson.
– Try not to create a repetitive chain of information.
If you need two characters to talk about information that you already introduced once just make it that the second character found out from another source.
“Did you hear about so and so?”
“Yeah I did. Jackie just told me. Crazy right?”
– People in real life day umm a lot and make filler noise. Characters do not mostly.
Take this thought liberally as every once in a while it helps make a certain character to give them a weird noise that they make while they are thinking, but for the most part, cut it out.
– Get on get out.
Make each line have a purpose.
Most characters shouldn’t talk too much. And other characters shouldn’t talk too little but our dialogue needs to have a point and move the characters forward in the plot.
If they decide to head for Starbucks to gab about ‘whatever’ in reality one of the characters is about to bump into someone important.
Otherwise they need to be meeting up at Starbucks to discuss things that are important to the plot and revelation of character.
– Help the reader see who’s talking without being annoyingly redundant.
He said.
She said.
He asked.
She said.
We don’t have to add ‘they said’ at the end or beginning of every quotation.
The goal is to just make sure that we are clearly letting the reader know who is talking and then write the dialogue in such a way that they can skim through and it’s very clear who is saying what even if we stop writing he said/she said/ she asked, etc.
Make your main goal to just tell the story and make it simple. Don’t be tempted to over display what they are feeling with adverbs while they speak.
Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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