How To Write Strong Dialogue: 5 Steps For Great Conversations
One of the most important elements of a good book is dialogue. Of course, there are books that don’t have any dialogue in them, but if you pick up a random novel in your local bookstore, more likely than not you will find dialogue on one of the first pages.
But while dialogue plays such an important role, not every writer fully understands how to write good dialogue. Here’s everything about how to write strong dialogue and the five steps you should follow to create great conversations between your characters.
Find Your Dialogue’s Purpose
First and foremost, you must realize that dialogue always has some kind of purpose. You can’t just insert conversations wherever you feel like inserting them. Doing so might interrupt important scenes or action moments and could even bore readers and prompt them to skip to another paragraph or page.
This is exactly why you should always know why you are writing a particular conversation. More often than not, dialogue serves one or several of these five purposes:
It Reveals Character: The conversations your characters have reveal their needs, desires, interests, motives, and so on. This is why writing dialogue is so important for character development. Moreover, if you do mention any character thoughts, then dialogue is the only way for you to voice what the characters are feeling, thinking about, and so on.
It Moves the Story Forward: Likewise, dialogue is essential for moving your story forward. Perhaps your characters need to exchange an important piece of information or you need to show a character changing their views – both of these can be revealed through dialogue. However, some books don’t focus much on action and instead prefer to be character studies which is when the first purpose will be more common.
It Adds Conflict and Tension: Conflict and tension are crucial for making your story more exciting. When your characters disagree about something or have conflicting goals, it helps you create more action. Obviously, a lot of these things can be revealed through dialogue, even if you are mostly doing so through subtext rather than stating things out loud.
It Gives Information: As mentioned earlier, your characters might need to have an information exchange which is when dialogue will be needed. But at the same time, it’s also a way for you to give information to your readers. Your characters can refer to certain events that give the situation more context, they can share new information, and so on.
It Creates White Space: On the more visual side, dialogue is a great way for you to create white space. Readers can get tired from reading block of text after block of text, especially if your paragraphs are on the lengthier side. This is why adding dialogue here and there can be a way to visually make your text more appealing and pleasant to read.
Remember Character Backgrounds
As explained above, dialogue is often used to reveal character as well as add conflict and tension. This means that when you are writing your dialogue, you must always remember the background information for each character involved. This can be difficult to manage, especially if you are a beginner and you have a conversation between multiple characters.
One way to keep everything in mind is by having character profiles where you can note down all of the information related to each character. This information should include anything from their appearance to their motives and interests. While writing your dialogue, you can refer to character profiles to make sure that your character is acting appropriately and isn’t contradicting themselves.
For example, if your character is known for being shy, it would be likely that they stay silent during most of the conversation while two other characters talk. Likewise, if one character starts talking about a subject the other character isn’t familiar with, that character will need to respond correctly (e.g. ask about the topic, pretend that they understand what the other person is talking about, and so on).
Add Underlying Subtext
Some say that subtext is always necessary no matter what you are writing while others believe that subtext will appear on its own once you start writing good dialogue. No matter which opinion you believe in more, it goes without saying that adding underlying subtext does help your dialogue.
Zoe Barrymore, an expert from the custom writing reviews site Best Writers Online, says, “You don’t need to add subtext in every single conversation but adding it in some places intentionally can help you add layers to your dialogue. Don’t feel forced to add subtext though if you are not sure how to do it. If you perfect your dialogue writing, subtext will likely appear in some form on its own.”
Make It Short and Simple
Characters in classic plays often break out into long speeches, but that doesn’t mean that characters in your book need to talk so much. In fact, it’s likely better to make your dialogue short and simple rather than long and complicated. And that goes both for the different lines your characters say and the overall length of each conversation.
To clean up your dialogue and keep it shorter, it’s a good idea to get rid of all the unnecessary elements in it. For example, don’t use any “uh” or “yeah” or “um” – people use these in real life, but your characters should only utter these words sparingly. When starting a conversation, skip the greetings and small talk, and when ending one, omit the goodbyes.
Proofread and Edit Thoroughly
Last but not least, don’t forget to edit your work once you have finished writing. You will either want to proofread and edit your dialogue once it’s written or already once you are proofreading and editing your entire book. In both cases, keep some things in mind:
Check for any grammar, spelling, punctuation, or wording mistakes
Stick to simple speech tags (e.g. “said”, “replied”) and avoid using adverbs
Add action to your dialogue to make things more dynamic (e.g. “I know,” she laughed and fell onto the bed.”)
At the end of the day, it’s important to always practice as much as you can. Only by honing your skills can you truly become better at writing – and that includes practicing writing dialogue. Use the tips in this article to help you develop your own dialogue writing technique and start creating better conversations in your books.