Imagine you are reading a novel and you come across a scene where two characters are talking.
- What do you expect from their dialogue?
- Do you want it to be engaging, realistic, and revealing?
- Or do you want it to be dull, unnatural, and boring?
Dialogue is one of the most important elements of a novel. It can make or break your story. But writing dialogue is not as easy as it seems.
You need to master some skills and techniques to make your dialogue sound natural, realistic, and consistent with your characters’ voices.
In this post, I will share with you some tips on how to write dialogue in a novel.
1. Listen To How People Talk In Real Life.
One of the best ways to learn how to write dialogue is to observe and listen to how people talk in different situations and contexts. Pay attention to their word choices, sentence structures, expressions, pauses, interruptions, and tone of voice.
Notice how they convey their thoughts, feelings, and intentions through dialogue. You can also read transcripts of interviews, podcasts, or speeches to get a sense of how people communicate verbally.
2. Avoid Info-Dumping And Exposition.
Another common mistake that novice writers make is using dialogue to dump information or explain things that the reader already knows or can infer from the context. This can make your dialogue sound unnatural, boring, and unrealistic.
Instead of telling everything through dialogue, show it through actions, descriptions, or subtext. For example, instead of having your characters say “I’m angry with you because you lied to me”, you can show their anger through their facial expressions, body language, or actions.
3. Use Dialogue Tags And Beats Sparingly And Effectively.
Dialogue tags are words that indicate who is speaking and how they are speaking, such as “he said” or “she whispered”.
Dialogue beats are actions or descriptions that accompany the dialogue, such as “he shrugged” or “she smiled”.
Both dialogue tags and beats can help you add variety, clarity, and emotion to your dialogue. However, you should use them sparingly and effectively. Don’t overuse them or use them unnecessarily.
For example, don’t use a dialogue tag after every line of dialogue if it’s clear who is speaking.
Also, remember not to use a dialogue beat after every line of dialogue if it doesn’t add anything to the scene or the character.
4. Vary Your Dialogue Structure And Length.
Another way to make your dialogue more interesting and realistic is to vary your dialogue structure and length.
Don’t write all your dialogue in the same way or with the same length. Mix up your dialogue with questions, exclamations, interruptions, incomplete sentences, long speeches, short responses, etc. This will create a more dynamic and natural flow of conversation and reflect the different moods and personalities of your characters.
5. Give Each Character A Distinct Voice.
One of the most challenging aspects of writing dialogue is giving each character a distinct voice that matches their personality, background, age, gender, education, culture, etc.
Make sure that each character sounds different from each other and from yourself as the author. To do this, you need to know your characters well and understand their goals, motivations, conflicts, quirks, etc. Also, consider their word choices, sentence structures, vocabulary, slang, accent, dialect, etc.
6. Read Your Dialogue Out Loud Or Have Someone Else Read It For You.
Finally, one of the best ways to check if your dialogue sounds natural and realistic is to read it out loud or have someone else read it for you. This will help you catch any awkward phrasing, grammatical errors, punctuation mistakes, or inconsistencies in your dialogue.
Using this technique, You will hear if your dialogue sounds like something that your characters would actually say and if it conveys the tone and emotion that you want.
Conclusion
Dialogue is one of the most important elements of a novel. It can reveal the characters’ personalities, emotions, motivations, and relationships.
It can also advance the plot, create tension, and add humor. But writing dialogue is not as easy as it seems.
You need to make sure that your dialogue sounds natural, realistic, and consistent with your characters’ voices. In this blog post, I talked about some tips on how to write dialogue in a novel.
