Your best friend. Your worst enemy. However you see dialogue, every writer must concede to its importance.
As a reader, nothing turns me off more than shoddy, unrealistic, poorly-written dialogue. On the flip side, nothing pulls me in more than snappy, intriguing, conflict-ridden dialogue.
Love it or hate, let’s admit we all need to learn how to write it.
In A Novel Idea, a book for writers, James Scott Bell has a few things to say in the area of dialogue that I found helpful.
Agendas:
Before writing dialogue, know your characters’ agendas and put them in conflict. No matter if its a comedic scene or a tragic scene. Find a way to put conflicting agendas in the hearts of the conversing characters and watch your dialogue explode off the page. It can be something as simple as Character A wants to unload about her day but Character B is late for work. Voila. Agendas in conflict.
Personal Equilibrium
Every character, most especially the protagonist, needs to be in a state of disequilibrium. The characters are striving for peace, and dialogue can be the means to which they reach for it. Bell suggests that before writing the dialogue in a scene, we should ask ourselves: Why are the characters in a state of discomfort? What is really going on beneath the surface? Once we figure out those answers, we write from that deep place and watch our dialogue fill with depth and hidden currents (every heard of subtexting? If not, you can read about it here.)
Dialogue as Weapon
Think of dialogue as a battle, and the characters’ words as bullets, a weapon the characters fire at one another in an attempt to win the figurative (or literal) war. This is most applicable during those intense scenes.
So there you have it. Three ways to liven up the dialogue in your writing.
Questions to Ponder: Do you have any dialogue pet peeves? Or perhaps some dialogue quick tips to share?
I hate it when authors use dialogue to 'tell' the reader something they obviously can't figure out how to 'show'.
Those tips are GREAT!
Well dialogue is done well, it's so very good. When it's not, it's so painful it makes me cringe. Dialogue literally makes or breaks a book for me.
Hey, thanks for visiting and commenting on my blog post with the interview of Rachel Held Evans earlier this week. Appreciated you stopping by!
I love dialogue. It's my favorite to write. Which is why I've turned to script writing.
Dialogue is one of my favorite parts of writing. I love, love, love it. Except when I'm in a my-writing-sucks-and-so-does-this-book mood.
My pet peeve in dialogue is when the writing is too formal. As in, no sentence fragments, contractions, or slang. Drives me crazy.
Just as Jill has mentioned, in a recent critique of my wip my attention was drawn to the fact that in some places I gave my MC phrases that are mine, not his! Oops! Getting into the head of my characters isn't usually a problem for me, but this one has been a challenge. I have to have my story collage near by for reference. In fact, my critter suggested a picture of the character taped right to the monitor, and that really helps.
Pet peeve? When a character uses a phrase that seems completely wrong. You can tell someone from another generation wrote the book. Keep it real, you know!
I love really witty conflict. It just pulls me in and tells me so much about the characters and their conflict. It can be a funny witty, or a snarky witty. I love it all.
Hi Katie –
I detest dialogue tags when I'm reading. They pull me out of the story. Also redundancies make my eyes roll to the back of my head: "How are you?" she asked. Grr.
Blessings,
Susan 🙂
Great points to think about. Especially about putting agendas in conflict. That's so important but I had to learn the hard way about that!
I am bookmarking this post, Katie! Thanks for the great info. 🙂
Great info!
Thank you.
Lisa, that's funny, and sooo true!
I've learned to listen to dialogue in order to make dialogue work.
When people raise eyebrows at what someone says, I know that could conjure several emotions, just not the good ones, lol.
How do you do it, Katie?
I have that book and love it. Can't wait to take JSB's early bird class at ACFW.
Since I live in a testosterone-charged house, my dialogue pet peeve is male dialogue that sounds like it's written by a woman. Men think, speak, and act differently than women. We need to make sure that comes through in their speech patterns, as well. Two years ago at ACFW, Rachel Hauck did a terrific workshop called You Write Like a Girl and it was about how to write male POV. I learned so much.
To write like a guy, listen to the way your husband, sons, brothers, fathers, cousins, neighbors talk. Guys don't express themselves like women. Most guys aren't as chatty as women. They can sum up what they're feeling in a couple of words whereas women need a couple of lattes. 🙂
Great topic, Katie. 🙂
I love dialog, not to sound snotty, but I could write a whole book with dialog. I tend to get carried away and have to do a lot of cutting.
Thanks for sharing the thoughts.
I love reading dialogue but definitely only if it's realistic. I enjoy writing it, too, but I have really forced myself lately to realize that every word needs to count. Dialogue for the sake of filling in a scene won't work–it needs to serve a purpose.
I agree with what you said, for what I like and dislike about it.
It's one of my favorite things about writing! So much can be felt through dialogue.
Long-winded, "unnatural" dialogue.
My brother, a writer and commander of an F-15 guard unit, says try to say your piece in FIVE words or less and let tags and actions give the details.
"Let's go to the ice cream parlor now," she yelled.
"Come on." She wiped her forehead, willing the mango sherbet to do its magic against the heat of their earlier row.
It gets to be a game, weeding out extra words…
Just thank Colonel Roy V. Qualls, veteran of The Gulf War, three hurricanes, and now the oil spill.
I've really had to work hard at making my dialogue better over the past few years. I think I'm gaining but doing as you said–making each word count and having a conflict behind each word.