Say What? Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is an essential tool of the novelist, but too many either don’t know how to write it or may not understand all that well written dialogue can do for their story. This is going to be a two-part blog post because there is just that much to say about the topic.

Dialogue is used by writers to:

1. advance the plot,

2. to develop character

Advancing the plot:

The most obvious use of dialogue in a novel is to advance the plot. People talk, things happen. Easy as that.

However, unless you’re writing a script for television or theatre, you need to have more than just dialogue. You need internal dialogue — what the point of view character is think. You need to have description (where are these people who are talking). And you need to have some action — it doesn’t need to be a lot of action, people don’t need to be throwing fists or running for their lives, they could merely be sitting around a dining table eating.

Another extremely important thing to think about here with any type of dialogue is that it’s got to sound natural. Read your dialogue out loud after you’re done writing the scene. Do the words trip off your tongue? Do they sound as if anyone might say them? Or do they sound stilted and awkward? Actually listening to the dialogue you write will help a great deal.

Mostly dialogue is learned by listening to others talk, but another good way to learn dialogue is by…