How To Write Dialogue in a Story with These Tips
Learning how to write dialogue can be a tricky thing for many writers. Not only are there so many rules in regard to formatting and punctuation, but crafting natural, purposeful dialogue is tough to master. So, not only is dialogue hard to write, but it is also an essential part of a good story.
I think good dialogue in any story includes four parts: it’s natural, it’s meaningful, it adds personality, and it is interesting to read. When you incorporate these elements, you can be confident in writing dialogue.
Let’s look closer at these elements and better understand how to write dialogue in a story.
How To Write Dialogue
Make It Natural
When dialogue sounds fake or unnatural it can be difficult to read. People don’t speak as they write, so writing in a way that people naturally speak involves setting aside the normal rules of writing. For instance, in speech people mostly use contractions. When writing dialogue, don’t worry about incomplete sentences, using slang, or including words that are not “proper”.
Tip: To gauge how natural your dialogue sounds read it aloud. Do you trip up on certain words? Is the dialogue easy to read? Is this how people actually speak?
Good Dialogue is Meaningful
Even though dialogue is an important aspect of any story it should serve a purpose. Some beginner writers can fall into the trap of using dialogue as filler content. Or, they don’t think there’s enough dialogue so they add some irrelevant conversations.
Adding meaningless dialogue will slow your story down, bore readers, and take space away from more important information.
So, ask yourself: Does this dialogue serve a purpose?
Now, the purpose of the dialogue may be small and that purpose may not be obvious at first. The most obvious reason for dialogue is to move the plot along but that is not the only reason.
Dialogue can be used to show character personality. Much of a character’s personality can be expressed in the way they speak to other characters. Not only that but dialogue can also be used as a way to break apart intense action or conflict. When your plot gets heavy into conflict it can be good to use dialogue in between to “slow down” the action.
Show Personality
A big reason for dialogue is to express a character’s personality. How they speak, how much they speak, and what they speak about all show who your character is. Each character’s dialogue should be unique to them. Maybe you have a character who says “huh” at the end of a lot of sentences. Maybe there’s someone who says only a few words at a time. All of these little aspects of the dialogue can really make each character stand out. When you’re writing dialogue try asking yourself: Can I tell who is speaking without the dialogue tag?
Keep It Interesting
Boring dialogue is—well, boring. Having bland conversations full of small talk is unnecessary. Most people don’t want to read:
“Hello, how you doing?”
“I’m good, how are you?”
“Good. The weather’s been pretty nice lately.”
“Yeah. It has been.”
Not only does that add nothing to the story and serve no purpose, it’s also not fun to read. As long as the dialogue serves a purpose it will usually be interesting. If, as you’re editing your story, you find a section of dialogue dragging, see if you can shorten it or rework it.
Recap
Irrelevant and purposeless dialogue is boring to read and takes space away from more important information. To write good dialogue, be sure it is natural, it’s meaningful, it adds personality, and it is interesting to read.
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