Writing verbal conversations or dialogue is often one of the trickiest parts of creative writing. New writers often go into a story thinking it should be easy; after all, we all hold conversations several times a day!
What new story writers quickly realize is that crafting a relevant dialogue within the context of a story requires much more work than carrying out natural conversation.
Dialogue isn’t just about creating direct quotations from different characters.
Sometimes dialogue is best when it’s put into a summarized form, rather than the drawn-out form of an actual conversation.
If you think about it, our conversations are boring to read, for the most part. A normal exchange would go something like this:
“Hi Tony,” said Katy.
“Hey,” Tony answered.
“What’s wrong?” Katy asked.
“Nothing,” Tony said.
“Really? You don’t act like nothing’s wrong.”
Pretty tiresome dialogue, right? But by condensing a conversation within the narrative, the writer can convey relevant information that isn’t important enough to merit its own dialogue segment. You might think of dialogue as feelings that are verbalized in an abbreviated way.
Instead of writing a dialogue like the one above, a writer could condense the scene:
“Hi Tony.”
Tony looked down at his shoe, dug in his toe, and pushed around a pile of dust. “Hey,” he replied.
Katy could tell something was wrong.
There are several important things to remember when writing conversations like the examples above, which are called direct dialogue:
- Do not use dialogue simply to convey information. Dialogue should set the scene, advance action, give insight into characterization, remind the reader, and foreshadow. Dialogue should always be doing many things at once.
- Keep the character’s voice in mind but keep it readable. Dialogue doesn’t have to be grammatically correct; it should read like actual speech. However, there must be a balance between realistic speech and readability.
- Don’t use too much slang or misspelling in order to create a character’s voice. Also remember to use speech as a characterization tool. Word choice tells a reader a lot about a person: appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, background, and morality.
- Tension! Sometimes saying nothing, or the opposite of what we know a character feels, is the best way to create tension. If a character wants to say ‘I love you!” but their actions or words say ‘I don’t care,’ the reader cringes at the missed opportunity.
Formatting Short Story Dialogue
Format and style are key to successful dialogue. Correct tags, punctuation, and paragraphs can be almost as important as the actual quotations themselves.
The first thing to remember is that punctuation goes inside quotations.
- “I can’t believe you just did that!”
Dialogue tags are the he said/she said’s of quotations. Very often they are mistakenly used as forms of description. For example:
- “But I don’t want to go to sleep yet,” he whined.
While these types of tags are acceptable and even necessary at times, they should only be used sparingly. The dialogue and narration should be used to show the emotion or action stated in the tag. One of the most important rules of writing fiction is: show, don’t tell.
Instead of telling the reader that the boy whined in the example above, a good writer will describe the scene in a way that conjures the image of a whining little boy:
- He stood in the doorway with his hands balled into little fists at his sides. His red, tear-rimmed eyes glared up at his mother. “But I don’t want to go to sleep yet.”
Paragraphs are very important to the flow and comprehension of the dialogue. Remember to start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes within the dialogue. This helps the reader know when someone new is speaking (and who it is).
If there is action involved with a speaking character, keep the description of the action within the same paragraph as the dialogue of the character engaged in it.
BASIC RULES OF DIALOGUE
In fiction, successful dialogue serves one, and usually more of these purposes:
- Advances story.
- Develops character.
- Moves plot.
- Illuminates theme or meaning.
- Provides time transition, usually subtle.
- Changes direction of plot, usually through conflict.
- Creates voice and tone, either for story or character.
- Provides understanding of enlightenment for characters.
- Illuminates desire and motivation.
- Supports attribution with consistent syntax and ideation.
- Meets rhythmic necessity of human speech compatible with story dialogue.
- Adds drama (through conflict and resultant action).
- Provides movement for story ideas and plot.
In fiction, successful dialogue (almost) NEVER:
- Is used only to break up a narrative passage.
- Tells what was really said in an author’s experience.
- Provides exposition in any way that questions credibility.
- Is static prose.
- Provides prose context for author-clever simile (or metaphor).
- Slows down story-plot movement.
- Inappropriately provides setting that is better in narrative.
- Addresses author opinion.
- Mimics what a character might say in the real world.
- Is a conversation in quotes without story purpose.
In great fiction, dialogue is not intuitive, and it does not come naturally to writers. Most importantly, for effective dialogue in fiction, authors cannot simply describe a dialogue from real experience or from an imagined scene. Basically, dialogue is always created for the purpose of story development, therefore, it cannot function as a taped recording of reality; and it must be stripped of nuances that may not be true to the story or confuse the reader. In revision of dialogue, these questions are useful: Is dialogue logical? Does it fit character desire and motivation? Does it support theme and meaning? Does it move?