OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Dialogue has been my own writing nemesis and I continue to find it a challenge, although each day of writing seems to improve it slightly!
Today, author and blogger Ali Luke helps us with some basic dialogue mistakes and how to fix them.
Whether you love writing dialogue or dread it, you’ll probably agree it’s an essential part of fiction. Unless you’re writing an experimental short story, you’re going to need to include some dialogue – and it needs to be done just as well as the rest of your writing.
Dialogue has many roles in your story. It can:
- Reveal character
- Advance the plot
- Make characters seem real
- Give a sense of action unfolding
Dialogue is also easy and fast to read.
It breaks up the page, adding white space and making your story look more attractive. (If you’ve ever seen someone flicking through a novel in a bookstore, there’s a good chance they were looking to see how much narrative vs dialogue that novel contained.)
Unfortunately, dialogue is also easy to get wrong. Whether you’re a new writer or an established one, you’ll want to watch out for these mistakes.
(You can also look out for them in published books, too — plenty of pros still aren’t getting these right. If you come across a great what-not-to-do example, share it with us in the comments.)
Mistake #1: Being Too Formal
Even if you’re a stickler for the finer points of grammar in your prose, real people don’t talk like textbooks. They say things like:
- Me and him went to the shops.
- I dunno.
- If I was you…
Yes, we know that those should technically be:
- He and I went to the shops.
- I don’t know.
- If I were you…
…but most of your characters won’t always talk “correctly.”
There might well be circumstances where you want a character to speak in a precise, correct way – but that gives the reader some very clear signals about this character (perhaps they’re posh, trying very hard to get things right, or a little uptight).
On a similar point, characters shouldn’t speak in long, complicated sentences – or give long speeches. If you’re struggling to “hear” real dialogue as you write, try recording a conversation and listening to how people really talk.
However…
Mistake #2: Being Too Realistic
Some authors, shying away from formality, go too far into making their dialogue real. They pepper every character’s sentences with “ums” and “ers” and hesitations. They have so many interruptions that it’s hard to figure out what’s going on.
This might be a perfect transcript of how real people talk all the time – but it will make your character sound incredibly indecisive and uncertain to your readers:
“Um, I don’t really know if – actually, yes – er, let’s go to the, the park.”
There will be occasions where you want a character to hesitate or fumble their words – but again, keep in mind the signals that this sends the reader. Is your character very nervous, or perhaps lying?
#3: Using Obtrusive Dialogue Tags
A dialogue tag is the little phrase that tells the reader who’s speaking, like this:
He said
She asked
I answered
Some writers worry that using “he said” and “she said” all the time will get boring, so they start varying their dialogue tags:
He opined
She screamed
I exclaimed
In general, the simple tags are best – readers barely notice them, except to register who’s speaking. Stick with said, asked, answered and perhaps an occasional whispered, muttered or shouted.
If you do feel you’re overusing dialogue tags, an easy trick is to add a line of action to your dialogue, like this:
Sarah came running down the stairs. “I can’t find it anywhere!”
#4: Using Phonetic Spellings
If you have a character with a strong accent, you might be tempted to indicate this in every line of dialogue they speak.
Tread very lightly here. If you’re peppering your character’s speech with apostrophes and creative spellings, it’s going to make the reader’s life hard. It can also give the inadvertent and unfortunate impression that you’re looking down on or even mocking that character’s region, class background, or race.
Instead of writing words out phonetically, try using occasional dialect words, or unusual word order, to indicate a character’s speech patterns.
#5: Using Character's Names Too Often
In real life, we don’t tend to use other people’s names all that much when we’re talking to them – even if there are three or four people involved in the same conversation. We might say “Hi, Sue” when they arrive, or “It was great to meet you, John” when they leave – but we don’t use their name every time we address a remark or question towards them.
In fiction, though, you’ll sometimes find characters talking like this:
Hi, Amy. Is there much happening today?
Not much, John. Did you get those figures I needed?
Sorry, Amy, I forgot.
The conversation starts to sound odd and artificial – or even slightly patronizing towards one or both characters.
This problem sometimes arises when authors are trying to avoid using too many dialogue tags. In general, it’s much less intrusive to add in an extra dialogue tag than to constantly have characters addressing one another by name.
#6: Not Including Any Narrative
In #3, I mentioned that one way to avoid overdoing dialogue tags is to include action. You can also do this with a character’s thoughts, like this:
Julie couldn’t stand Mark, but she managed to fake a smile. “Hi. It’s lovely to see you again.”
Or with description, like this:
The pub was dimly lit, but now they were sitting down, Lucy could see the stains on the walls, and the deep scratches in the furniture. She cast around for something to say. “Do you come here often?”
Some writers, though, seem to get into “dialogue” mode and have line after line of dialogue, with no more support than a few dialogue tags. By blending in action and the viewpoint character’s thoughts – not necessarily every line, but at least occasionally – you can enhance the dialogue by adding new levels of meaning.
#7: Having Every Character Sound the Same
We all have different ways of speaking … but sometimes in fiction, authors make all their characters sound exactly alike. This might work if the story is set in a homogenous group – but it sounds silly if some of the characters are teens and others are grandparents.
For each character, you could think about:
- Any habitual phrases they use. You won’t want to overdo these, but they can be a useful way to cue the reader in that a particular character is speaking.
- What words they don’t use. Perhaps they never swear, preferring “Oh sugar!” or “Fiddlesticks!” Maybe they tend to avoid long or complicated words.
- How eloquent they are – or how taciturn they are. Some characters have a way with words; others don’t say much, or say it awkwardly when they do.
- How polite they are – or not! Do they make requests pleasantly, or do they order other characters around?
#8: Using Indirect Speech Poorly
Not all conversations in your story need to be spelled out in full. Sometimes, you’ll want to give the reader a quick summary – and you can do that with indirect speech. It looks like this:
Tom and Jonathan chatted for a while about the football game they’d seen last night. Beth, bored, went to get another drink.
This is a great way to let the reader know that a conversation is happening, without having to go into any detail.
One mistake here, of course, is to never use indirect dialogue at all, giving a blow-by-blow account of the football game that leaves the reader as bored as Beth. Some writers worry that “show, don’t tell” means they should avoid indirect dialogue – but that’s not the case.
Another problem, though, is when important conversations get summarized in this way:
George had a massive row with his mum, about that letter she’d had from school, and she told him that he was banned from using the X-Box until he’d got his homework done. He told her he hated her, and stormed off upstairs.
In this case, the words exchanged matter – the reader will want to judge whether George is being a horrible child or whether his mother has overreacted, for instance. It’s also a lot more dramatic to hear the words spoken, rather than just read a summary.
#9: Spelling Everything Out in the Narrative
Some writers worry that the reader won’t quite “get” the dialogue, and decide to spell things out, like this:
“I hate you!” George slammed the door and ran upstairs. He was furious with his mum – he felt that she was being unfair.
We don’t need the last sentence here: it’s obvious from what George says (“I hate you!”) and what he does (“George slammed the door and ran upstairs”) than he’s furious, and we can make a fair guess that he thinks his mum is being unfair.
When you spell out what’s happening like this, it’s irritating to the reader: they’re perfectly capable of understanding subtext, and picking up on small cues, to figure out the thoughts and emotions behind what a character says.
Of course, there will be some occasions where you do need to explain what a character is thinking – but this should be the exception, rather than the rule.
Are any of these nine mistakes ones that you know you’re probably making in your own writing?
(I suspect I’ve managed all nine at some point!) Do you have a tenth mistake to suggest? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Bio: Ali Luke is the author of Lycopolis, a novel, and Publishing E-Books For Dummies. As well as blogging about writing all around the web, she runs Writers’ Huddle, a community / teaching site for writers. The Huddle is packed with useful resources (with new ones added each month) and is suitable for complete beginners as well as advanced writers. The doors are only open for new members until 12th October, so if you’d like to take your writing to the next level, alongside other like-minded writers, check out the full details today.
Top image: people talking from BigStock
0111 says
Hi, i have a question. I gave my narrative writing to my teacher. When i wrote i dialogue, i didnt started with a new paragraph. Do you think its ok?
John says
You should always start a new line if someone new is speaking, however not if it is the same person.
BillytheCrayon says
Thanks John. I have a follow up question. So if two or three characters are having a conversation, each time someone different speaks, it should be on a new paragraph? So during longer conversations it should be a bunch of small, one or two line paragraphs?
neulinu says
yes, you will enter into a new paragraph each time a different character says a line of dialogue. any actions made by the character speaking can be a part of the same paragraph, but as soon as another character opens his/her mouth, it’s a new paragraph.
a lot of talking by a lot of characters can really chop up a page and make the paragraphs look all small, but it’s the proper format. I’d try to avoid very lengthy multiple-character conversations because they can be confusing to the reader if they last too long… imo
Tiaana says
I know this is super late, but is it okay to state the action of character A following character B’s line of dialogue, then have character A’s dialogue in the next paragraph? For example:
[“I can’t believe you just did that!” Sarah gasped. “Are you stupid?” John’s mouth dropped open at the woman’s words.
“I can’t believe it either.” He added.]
Does that look good to you?
j. says
My problem is going too on the nose. Now my antoganist imop is lots more interesting. My main pov is hard sometimes she doesn’t want to talk. XD This happens when she scared or angry. One chapter can take days if this happens. Arrg. I wish there was a way to stop this.
Lulwa says
I write more dialog than description any suggestions??
Lavender says
I have this problem too, I often have to force myself to write description, and not sure what to do about it. :// …..But, I think maybe it’s okay as long as the dialog is as engaging as the description would be, and moves the story along? If it’s a lot of boring conversation about what kind of dogs they prefer (though that’s okay SOMETIMES), that’s never really interesting and can really hinder your story just from a reader’s perspective. If the dialog is engaging, though, and gives you information that continues to make the reader want to read on, I think, more power to you. That’s the great thing about writing, it doesn’t really have to have a guideline…so if you like the way your story is being told I really don’t think there’s much of a limit. I one time literally read a book that was entirely just dialog, and though that was it’s specific ploy, I still thought it was really interesting. So, really, I think it’s okay as long as YOU can be happy and proud of what you produce. Don’t know if I helped at all, but best of luck!
Wayne B. says
@Lavender
I loved reading what you wrote. It gives me hope for my dialog.
There is more story line than Dialog, but it does have quite a bit of it as well.
I am trying to make sure that it is engaging. Though while writing at time, I tend to overlook what is or is not engaging. Until I read over it, and stat doing my edits.
So, hopefully it will come out the way I see it in my minds eye.
Wayne
ash says
Lead your characters to talk about you setting or where your at into part of the conversation.
Heather says
I feel sometimes there is a whole added layer of learning about writing that is never taught. By anyone.
I sometimes senses different ‘genres’ of writing (including what I sorta see literary fiction as being a genre too) have a specific narrative vs dialogue proportion. What’s your view on that, Ali?
I wish I could find information sources on the book publishing industry that answer these kinds of questions. I feel there’s a mind field of information that teachers of writing never discuss.
Publishing is not all about periods.
Thank you.
Billy Omeonga says
Your article just popped up on my Pinterest screen., although I see it’s been out for some time. I enjoyed it very much; it was well-organized and thorough. Thanks!
Wayne B. says
Thank you for writing this article.
My question is this.
When you have 2 or more people having a conversation. When is there too much dialogue?
For example.
In the book that I am writing. Uncle, Aunt, and Niece are talking about a man that the Niece met at a market. They go back and forth with questions as she gives answers.
Altogether, about 20 new lines of speech.
On another example.
Uncle, Aunt, and Fellow (Man, the Niece met at the market) are talking, and their conversation is about his trip to their town. Where he is explaining a tragic moment that happened on his way.
The dialog is about 30 new lines.
Last example.
The Fellow character, at one moment in the story, he visits the grave site of his late wife. He sits down beside the grave and talks to her. The dialog is several sentences together, within a single set of Dialog tags.
And since there is no one to answer back, he continues to talk.
Altogether, there are about 5 sentences, Somewhere around 60-80 words. (Do not have that page on this computer, to give an exact count.) But it is just him, speaking to his late wife.
In the examples above, is it too much, or does this help to make the characters real?
I am not much of a book reader, however. I have always enjoyed writing since I was in school. Top of my class when it came to turning in my work. If the teacher asked for one page, I usually turned in 3 or 4 pages.
But I have never written anything like this before, where I have a conversation between my characters.
Thank for any and all advice.
Wayne
CMac says
Be aware Wayne that quantity and quality are not the synonymous. A key piece of writing advice that virtually all award-winning authors give is to read lots of quality fiction in your genre to learn from it both subconsciously and overtly. (If it’s the actual act of reading that trips you up, consider listening to e-books or using a local library electronic service like Overdrive.) But back to writing dialogue between multiple characters – you would find most of the answers to your questions above during a simple library research trip where you thumb through a bunch of novels to compare.
CMac says
Ugh. When will I learn to re-read my posts for errors before hitting ‘post’? How embarassing. 😉
Julie says
Those sound like such interesting scenes, Wayne. I struggle with the same issue of writing what feels like too much dialog. I feel like a long as you find your dialog interesting, your readers will too.
Also, does anyone have any advice on how to write in accents? Some of my characters are supposed to be Irish… When I add apostrophes everywhere like “‘ere” instead of “here” I’m afraid it might be hard to understand.
Julie
Tiffany Smith says
I once wrote a scene from a prisoner’s perspective. They’d been captured by bandits, and the bandits were planning another raid. The conversation was full of the apostrophes – for example:
[“Ted got a good diea for once!” one of the other bandits said, feigning surprise. “Willya lookit that?”
“Ted’s ideas ‘r always good, Hank ya idiot,” says his friend, cuffing him over the head.
“So, why’r ya here, Thorn?” Goff asks.
…
“Darn sure,” Goff growls. “Ted’s called us all up to Divinity’s Reach to help out with somethin’, yer team’ll be watching the prisoners.”
…
“I toldja, Rand, no need to anounce yerself like that! What’f someone’d taken over?”
“Sorry sir – uh, Goff.”
“Yeah, stop callin’ me sir.”]
The conversation goes on a lot longer. You can tell they’re uneducated bandits, but it’s not an overwhelming, confusing amount.
Ari says
I always loved writing n school too and had the same problem when teachers made us condense our creative writing to a crtain number of pages. I wish they encouraged creative writing in Elementary through high school. It bugs me when teachers claim argument essays matter more than novels!
Jess says
I agree wholeheartedly! All we do in English now is write essays, which while I understand are important for jobs and whatnot, creative writing is equally important in my eyes! Not until high school (at least in my district) can we opt to have a creative writing class. What about the people who want to write novels or teach creative writing? They won’t have any training!
Annie says
It’s too much when it’s not significant to anything going on in your story, and it’s not compelling enough to serve as anything else (like a comedy or romance moment).
Being concise is an art and a good writer can say a lot with few words (think of a haiku – very few words evoking specific imagery and emotion).
Once in a while a character might have to make a speech. The thoughts at the grave might be fine if you managed to make his words and feelings poignant and plot relevant. If you’re just trying to show how tragic this guy is it might come off as contrived (dead wife is used a lot in fiction) and people won’t want to sympathize with him.
Other things in your instance I think matter more, such as do we care about this man at the point in the story? Do we care about his grief? If we can connect with him, his words may be heartfelt and we’ll want to read a longer account of his feelings.
Tom says
There is a burning question I have not yet found an answer to.
When I write dialog, often a speaker will pause and consider someone else’s statement, or consider how to reply, just before replying. That seems natural, but how do I indicate this?
If I just string new lines of dialog between carriage returns (with punctuation, of course) the timing seems rushed, because unless you are Aaron Sorkin or one of the Gilmore Girls, people often hesitate before saying something.
My way of dealing is to add leading ellipses ( “…I don’t really know, Parker.”) to indicate the pause before replying to a question, for instance.
But is seems unique to my style, and maybe not correct. Possibly there is a better way to do this.
I also try to use dialog tags or small action elements to get this sort of timing to feel right (Parker pursed her lips. “I have an idea.”).
But you can’t do that a lot, so I end up with too many leading ellipses, and honestly, I have never seen a leading ellipsis before in other writing, so I worry that I am breaking a cardinal rule, or that Hemingway might be spinning in his grave.
Suggestions, please?
Annie says
I hope you’ve found an answer since March, but in case you haven’t I’ll make an attempt.
It’s better to show the hesitations somehow. Ellipses are a sort of cop-out and their overuse looks way worse than extra action elements. If my character’s body language is significant then I always describe it.
First think: Why are they having this conversation? What’s going on inside their heads and what are they feeling? What are their nervous tics and tells?
If some character is hesitating all the way down the page and you risk being repetitive, you could start by describing their nervous demeanor. It sets the tone in the mind and then their hesitations doesn’t have to be described every line.
* She was pausing before speaking as if forced to choose her words cautiously.
* He spoke slowly, always keeping one eye on me as he edged around the room.
* As he spoke he paced, pausing at each turn to consider his next line.
* Still hysterical, she took deep, calming breaths before each sentence.
If I’m writing a piece from a specific character’s perspective I might include their thoughts if significant (though in comedy pieces or with sarcastic characters you can use insignificant thoughts to make a point).
* While he stared daggers at me, I thought about what had landed me in this situation to begin with. It was all my fault.
* I followed along in the document as he read his own copy aloud, and thought, “Damn this guy overuses his ellipses.”
* I rubbed at my aching temples as she awaited a response. She just wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Leveling my eyes at her I said, “Get out.”
* She finally stopped shouting and stared at me, waiting, but I was still thinking about that pizza I had for dinner.
If the hesitating character is not the perspective you’re writing from, then use those action elements. Their brow furrows and they look away. They lick their lips and shift their weight. They stutter and their eyelashes flutter. They tell an obvious lie or deflect the conversation with chit-chat. They stare off into the distance and flex their jaw. There’s a lot of way to show hesitation and internal thinking you might not have access too.
If “nothing” is happening in that dot-dot-dot time it’s also perfectly fine to mention silences or significant pauses in the conversation. (tumbleweeds!)
* There was a pregnant pause.
* There was a brief lull in the conversation where no one dared looked at one another.
* Silence enveloped them as she refused to speak another word.
* His mouth opened as if to speak, but the words caught in his throat.
Basically replace excessive ellipses with what is happening or subtly reveal what they might be thinking in that dot-dot-dot time.
That’s all I got.
Kathy says
I am writing my first novel! How can I take out some of my was and were? How do you take out names, and she, he, her and him if your talking about the characters?
Sarah elizabeth says
I’m having a similar problem. I’m racking my brain trying to figure out. I’ve tried looking at it from another characters point of view, such as giving nicknames so you don’t have to keep using his or her name. Such as a wife or friend calling Dan instead of Daniel, or mr / miss surname) or the mother or teacher or someone higher authority using full names.
Taking out him she her they, I try to put words such as ‘the team’ instead of they, and she, maybe using her job title such as ‘the psychic closed his eyes…’ Instead of he closed his eyes.
But I get sick of writing ‘the’ . I guess it’s about choices and experimenting with sentences and which you think sounds better.
Annie says
If you have too much was. I think you might either be writing about the past too much or are literally telling people how someone feels or how something is.
Stupid random example:
“It was a bad haircut and he was angry at her. He screamed, and she was scared he might get physical .”
Stilted and doesn’t really stir up the imagination. Compare it with…
The client turned towards the mirror. Eyes widening, his hands gripped at what remained of his hair.
“What kind of sick joke is this?!” he demand, “Are you even a professional? I ‘oughta do the same to you!”
The hairdresser took a step away, a hand going to her open mouth.
—
He and she should only be used when it’s obvious who he or she is referring to. If there’s any doubt, remove ambiguity by using their name, nickname (when appropriate), title, or role. Alternate those when appropriate.
If the character or characters are one shots, like a couple of strangers stopped in the street, you could say…
the tall one
the youngest boy
the bespectacled lady
…instead of referring to he and she all the time. You get a feeling for what they look like and who is talking at the same time.
WriterD says
Regarding #4, this is so true. I once stopped reading an author altogether because, in trying to portray the dialect of an African-American character in the south, the author spelled the word “liquor”, IN DIALOGUE, as “likker,” in an effort to demonstrate a more simple-minded way of saying the word. Problem is, if you say both of those out loud, they sound the EXACT SAME. It seemed to me the author wanted to embed in the character’s pronunciation of “liquor” a possibly lower level of education. Like, “When this character says, ‘liquor’, she’s saying, ‘likker.'” It was lame. Combined with other things in the book that were similar, I saw a vein I didn’t like and dropped that author. It wasn’t about hypersensitivity. It was that other thing in publishing: Making sure the reader knows they’re in good hands. After Likker-Gate and other things, I didn’t feel l was.
Billy Dean says
Some authors tend to use dialog that sounds less like a real conversation between real people and more like the author’s attempt to “tell” readers about something the author thinks the readers should know.
Dialog encourages what I call presence because it happens in the here and now. Using it instead of narrative tends to lessen presence, making readers feel like they’re standing outside the story instead of participating in it–vicariously of course. I think we should try very hard to not get in the way of a reader’s willingness and ability to suspend disbelief. Not to do anything that makes a reader suddenly realize s/he is reading words, not experiencing conversations, action and description.
Batmansbestfriend says
Dialogue tags: I hate “he/she said.” I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it so much that I wish I could time travel back to the delivery room where the first person to ever use it was born and…well, stop them from coming out of the whomb.
I go to painstaking lengths to not use them in my writing. And before you jump all over me, “he exclaimned,” “she chirped,” “they yelled,” and so on are just as bad. We know the line was spoken…what else do the quotes mean? Seriously. That’s why when I finished the first draft of an approximately 700 page book a few months back (that I’m now proof reading) I sat back and was proud of my self that not once did I use the word “said” after any line of dialogue.
What I do instead is set the line up so either a dialogue tag is not necessary at all, or you get the jist of the scene enough from the one or two I do use to know how the other dialogudeis supposed to be read…and if that changes, I relent to a tag in order to signify the change.
Example:
“Oh my God, what happened?” eyes wide, noticing tears upon Martha’s face.
“I finally told him I was leaving and-”
“…and what?” slowly standing.
“…and he said ‘yeah so’,” finishing with her best immitation of the man she had “just left” with what little energy she had at her disposal.
“Bastard,” with no intention of not being overheard.
See how much better that is instead of a bunch of “she said” crap? After that I can resort to not using the tags and you’re left knowing that there’s two people and logically each person is speaking every other line (or indent, or set of quotation marks, or whatever). …and from what you’ve read, you know how the scene is going. You know one character left a significant other (ended a relationship of some sort) and is hurt only because the guy didn’t care one way or the other. She’s hurt, you know because she’s crying, and it’s suggested she might have exerted so much energy that she’s now worn out. You know the other character is sympathetic and also might dislike the guy the first character left. The other lines of dialogue whould be written realistically enough that they read how they would be spoken within a scene set up as this one is. If something changes in a way that isn’t obvious to the reader, then I signify it…otherwise not.
Sometimes I have a scene with multiple characters (say 5), where no amount of setting up will make it obvious whose speaking (unless only one person is or three are watching a conversation by two). In this case I will set up with dialogue tags as necessary and then simplify it as follows:
Martha: “So why didn’t you tell me you never liked him?”
Linda: “I thought by the way I spoke to him when we hung out it was obvious.”
Martha: “Yeah, but you don’t like anyone.”
Linda: “Touché, but still,” as she took martha’s hand.
Stephen: “…and besides, you like me and you’ve talked to me that way more than once,” with no intent to offend.
Linda: “Yeah, but what woman hasn’t?” smiling, coyly if anything, over shoulder, while returning her attention to Martha.
…and so on and so forth. With the first set of tags you also get some action that could as easily be told in separate narration, but as it is done there it feels more seamles. Would you, as the reader, rather have a lot of different paragraphs explaining the action between dialogue or action seamlessly worked in to keep the flow steady and well paced? …and the conversation feeling uninterrupted?
Kylie says
Sorry but to me your examples sound wrong. Your first example feels like fragmented sentences to me and the second way – with the name and colon before the speech looks like a play.
I would suggest:
“Oh my God, what happened?” Fred’s eyes widened, noticing tears upon Martha’s face.
“I finally told him I was leaving and-”
“…and what?” He slowly stood.
“…and he said ‘yeah so’,” She finished with her best imitation of the man she had “just left” with what little energy she had at her disposal.
“Bastard.” He had no intention of not being overheard.
Similar to what you did (action tags) but less fragmented and more correct (as far as everything I’ve ever read or been told). Still no “said” in sight, but use of names occasionally makes things clearer for the reader.
I hope that helps.
Annie says
I bookmarked this three times as I was reading it. I really wanted to make sure it’s there in my bookmarks because this is such good advice for me.
PS:
I remember more than fifteen years ago back in school, I used the first technique on this list to better portray a character. The teacher reprimanded me pretty harshly for not using correct grammar and I was furious.
Megan says
I have an important question…someone please HELP!
How do you write dialogue when the person was speaking in the beginning, but now they are telling the story (the whole story) of the rest of it. Like you captured them in a moment of dialogue in the beginning and you panned into the movie of their life that they’re recalling as the actual story content?
For example, I’m writing a children’s picture book manuscript. The grandpa is asked in the beginning by the grandkids to tell them the story again. So he begins telling the story, but his story becomes the entire rest of the story of the book until the end when he will talk to the kids again. Do I write it all as quotation dialogue and keeping the perspective third person (like it was with Grandpa’s dialogue with the kids)? Or do I turn the quotation dialogue into just the story and only add in the quotations when people are talking in his story? Would I change it to just his POV (so first person)? Please help! This would be the entire rest of the story.
Thanks!
Olivia says
I’m trying to write an online novel. One of my characters is trying to explain something to another, but I don’t want all the dialogue to be concealed into one paragraph because it makes it hard to read. Do I continue onto another paragraph with quotations as if a new character is talking and perhaps confuse the readers, would I leave out the quotations and just continue on as if I’m explaining something through the eyes of a character or a setting, or do I do something completely different?
Joanna Penn says
If one character is talking to another, then you need to make it dialogue and format as such. If you feel like you have too many chunks of explanation – which is ‘telling’ as opposed to ‘showing,’ then the best thing to do is figure out how to rewrite it to include more action on the part of the characters. Look at other books you like and see how they handle it.
Kay Stone says
Thank you for your article, Joanna. Its funny, I have had editors say I write too much dialogue, and others say I don’t write enough. Beta readers think its just fine, so in the end, I guess I’m writing to please the industry. And whereas I’d love to be the rebel, aren’t we all just trying to sell a novel?
Belle says
I tend to write mostly dialogue, but I’m working on the description. My main problem is that I don’t want to bore readers with too much description. For example, in a high-speed scene where my MC is in a taxi and trying to get away from this guy who’s following him, should I bother to describe the inside of the taxi or what he’s seeing out the window? Would that build intensity or be irritating to readers?
Barry O'Connell says
I really appreciate this article. I write to kill the pain of life. I am now on book seven in a series that will likely never be published. My work was awful but every book is better. Now i have to cut back on dialogue. I spent 20 years writing nonfiction and sold it now I’m probably going to end up spending 20 years writing fiction if I live that long. Thanks for your help.