By Andrea Lewis //
Steve Martin, actor and writer, confesses in his Masterclass that for the longest time, he found it difficult to write dialogue. However, after much practice, he discovered the truth behind what sounds almost like a cliché: “when a character speaks, it starts writing the dialogue.”
This article does not cover all aspects of dialogue writing. It only offers an analysis of what writers see as good dialogue and lists a few writing techniques that may help.
Like many aspects of the writing craft, writing dialogue implies extensive observation of people around us, inside and outside of our homes and in places where dialogue happens, along with the reactions, gestures, feelings, and much context.
What Is/Makes Good Dialogue?
Author of The Joy luck Club, Amy Tan states in her Masterclass that “dialogue should work in multiple ways. […] Look at it in terms of what advances the story or tells about the character. If it is not doing that, consider cutting it.”
In Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott describes good dialogue as “a complete change of pace from description and exposition and all that writing.”
Jeff Gerke, author of “The First 50 Pages”, cautions writers from a book proposal point of view: Sometimes, editors “will skip everything else in a proposal, go straight to the first section of dialogue they can find, and begin reading.” Therefore, dialogue has to be “realistic, layered, and right for the characters and the moment,” as quoted by Scott Francis at Writer’s Digest.
Realistic—Gerke defines it as opposed to unrealistic: “characters politely take turns and answer exactly what each other says.” In real life, we respond to nuances, tones, and what we think the other person said.
Layered—adds to realistic: “in good dialogue, dialogue with subtext, the characters aren’t responding to what the other person says, but to what they think the other person means.” The term subtext is borrowed from theater and used in screenwriting as well. In her Masterclass, Shonda Rhimes, executive producer of Grey’s Anatomy, makes the distinction between text, “what we say,” and subtext, “what we really mean.” “People’s subtext should not be written as dialogue.” Writers should find other ways to convey the subtext without putting it into text.
Right for characters and the moment—since dialogue is the most important way to “nail the character, […] you have to work at getting the voice right,” writes Lamott in Bird by Bird. Not only should characters sound differently from each other, they should not sound like the writer, either, advises Lamott. This will make them unique, identifiable. They should also speak in the moment, in accordance with the scene at any given time. Gerke exemplifies this with “two characters swimming out at sea to rescue someone, will speak fast, in short statements, not elaborate sentences.”
The connection between dialogue – character – plot is obvious by now, drawing in on the importance for dialogue to reflect the character’s emotions and advance the plot.
Then…
How Does One Write Good Dialogue?
A. Before Writing Dialogue
In his book Writing Dialogue, Tom Chiarella, the Hampton and Esther Boswell Distinguished University Professor of Creative Writing at DePauw University, urges writers to employ listening, jotting, and crowding in their journey of writing good, realistic dialogue.
Listening—writers should intently be listening to conversations around them, as opposed to tuning out their surroundings.
Crowding—which he defines as “conscious listening,” or “stealing the words from the air around you,” goes hand in hand with listening. Chiarella recommends that writers should go to places “where you can’t avoid overhearing conversations” like airports, booths at diners, movie theaters, baseball games, hotel lobbies” and “take one step closer.” Dovetailing this idea, David Baldacci draws another benefit from going into “the world”: writers can study people in such places. This will help them understand their characters, which, ultimately, means writing authentic dialogue.
Jotting—carrying a notebook and writing down overheard discussions. Baldacci urges writers to write down, edit, and revise, then read aloud, thus joining Chiarella in explaining the process of “capturing a phrase or words and a circumstance.” The reason: “Good fiction can be created from things overheard,” says Chiarella.
Both Chiarella and Baldacci produced their advice to writers long before Covid times. Taking a “step closer” may no longer be advisable, rather develop a better sense of hearing.
Know the emotional context—Baldacci stresses the importance of knowing both the character’s current emotional situation (is the character upset, happy, sad, etc.), and the specific plot goals. These two aspects will help writers keep that focus in the scene they are about to write.
It takes practice, argues Chiarella, who proposes a series of exercises to help develop listening skills:
- “Spend a day recording everything you say,” as exactly and orderly as possible.
- “Go to a public place where you can crowd, move from spot to spot, jot down everything you hear. When finished, look over what you have. Perhaps you see stories galore. Choose one and run with it.”
- Remove punctuation and capitalizations from what you jotted down, then ask friends or family to read your notes, while you observe their rhythm.
- “Script your day. Before you go to bed, write in order everything you are going to say the next day. The next day, stay with the script.” “How far did you get before someone said something you didn’t expect?” The point of the exercise: to make a script that must fight predictability.
- “Guerilla dialogue at home:” Ask your family members a surprising question, then note everything they say, including their reactions.
B. While Writing Dialogue – Techniques to Help Improve Your Dialogue
Keep dialogue tags simple: “said,” “asked,” “replied” are preferred. Avoid anything that may disconnect the reader’s attention from what is being said. Instead, use “stage directions,” advises Baldacci in an example: “‘No,’ she said, clenching her hands into fists.” This conveys anger without the character saying it. The technique will also be helpful while you work on compressing your dialogue.
Use silence as well as words. “Sometimes, what’s not said is more powerful than what is said,” writes Ali Luke, author of “Time to Write” in 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Dialogue. Chiarella emphasizes the strength of silence as response with an example from Chekhov’s “The Lady With The Pet Dog,” where silence is the trigger for Gurov’s actions.
Furthermore, silence is not “a vacuum,” writes Chiarella, because “things happen during silence.”
Gestures—“[W]hen words stop, the physical world steps in” and gestures become “as significant as words within dialogue,” according to Chiarella.
Place—The setting is an integral part of the scene and influences communication between characters. Use it to enhance the scene and the dramatic effect of silence. Chiarella exemplifies the importance of setting/place with Albert Camus’ “The Stranger.” Luke adheres to this recommendation and invites writers to think of the surroundings of the scene and create the sense that “characters are physically located in a particular setting.” Make location part of the dialogue by involving senses (sounds, images, smell, etc.) and by considering any passersby (nosy onlookers, noisy children, boss, etc.)
Caution with dialects and accents. Not only can they make the text too hard to read, they can be “unintentionally comic, or even offensive,” cautions Luke.
Solutions:
Chiarella advises writers to “limit dialect to word choice and syntax, rather than spelling and misspelling” to add local flavor to a piece.
Amy Tan speaks about “inner vs. outer dialogue.” She places teenagers and foreign characters in the same category, since both seem to have an “inner dialogue” in first person. Foreign characters speak their own language perfectly, but when they speak to others in English for instance, writers can make it imperfect, because that is how others will perceive it.
Give your characters distinct speech patterns. Characters differ by age, gender, social background, education level, geographical area, particular catch phrases (any common phrases), verbosity, and the list may go on. “You should be able to identify each character by what he or she says. Each one must sound differently than others. And they should not all sound like you,” writes Lamott. Echoing her, Luke proposes an exercise to verify the uniqueness of each character’s speech pattern: “take just the lines of dialogue, cut out the action and dialogue tags, see if you can work out who said what.”
Punctuate your dialogue correctly. Crucial in any circumstance, it becomes more important the moment you “submit your work to publishers or enter competitions. It is vital if you are self-publishing because you want your work to be as professional as possible,” advises Luke. Here are a few reminders on how to punctuate dialogue, adapted from Luke’s article:
- Begin on a new line for each new speaker.
- Have double or single quotation marks around the words and be consistent with which you choose: the US standard is double, the UK is single.
- Have punctuation inside the quotation marks.
- End dialogue line with a comma if you are adding a dialogue tag, but with a full stop if you are adding an action.
Inject dialogue with suspense and tension. Author of “Conflict, Action and Suspense,” William Noble recommends the “well/maybe” approach to create tension and suspense through dialogue. In his article on Writers’ Digest’s website, Noble argues that since “humans are rarely direct to each other, […] more often, responses will be oblique or partial” in a conversation. This can help create dramatic effects, and here are ways that Noble suggests for handling it:
- Answer a question with a question.
- Let two or three dialogue passages go by before answering an earlier question.
- Mimic the speaker’s line.
- Interrupt the speaker.
- Don’t answer what happened but say why it happened.
Compress your dialogue to reflect character and plot development with the following techniques:
- Realistic does not mean real. Luke advises writers to eliminate fillers like “uhms” or hesitations and repetitions, because “dialogue is supposed to give an impression of real speech, it is not supposed to be a transcript of how we really talk.”
- Avoid exposition in dialogue. Characters should not tell each other things that they already know. The same advice comes from Chiarella in the context of dialogue compression: “Characters already have/know their backgrounds; you do not need to remind it in every discussion.”
- Get in late, leave early. Luke recommends cutting out the type of niceties we regularly use in phone conversations, such as “Bye,” “See you soon!” Rather, “end a scene on a line of dialogue” to give it power. The suggestion is in line with Baldacci’s advice on economy of words: “you should keep dialogue economical in the same way you do with your prose. Unless your character is naturally verbose, tighten up his or her language, conveying only the information that will deepen the character or move the story forward.”
- Don’t let one person speak for too long. Long speeches don’t normally happen in real life. Lectures or sermons are limited to special occasions. Luke proposes breaking up longer blocks of speech “with interruptions from other characters, or non-verbal responses from the listeners (nodding, sighing, frowning, etc.).”
Lastly, before writing “reams of dialogue,” consider three sets of questions that are recommended by the “Writing Effective Dialogue” course offered by WritersOnlineWorkshops at Writers’ Digest:
CHARACTER:
- Who is saying this?
- What does the character look like?
- What is his/her occupation?
- Why would he/she say such a thing?
- What is the dominant emotion?
PLOT:
- What happened to cause the character to say such a line?
- Who did he/she say it to?
- Does this other character oppose the first character for some reason?
- What is the reason?
- What are the objectives of the characters in the scene?
SETTING:
- Where is the dialogue taking place?
- What are the smells?
- What are the sounds?
- What does the character see around him/her?
- Why is he/she in this place at this time?
- What does the setting tell us about the background of the character?
Questions are a good tool for writers to keep track of what their dialogue needs to accomplish. The answers will provide rich material to develop good dialogue scenes and complex stories.
What are your practices in writing your dialogue?
ANDREA LEWIS lives and writes in Huntington Beach. She was born in Romania and moved to the United States at the age of 34, after meeting and marrying her husband. She writes memoir and personal essays, with a recent attempt at freeform poetry. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times.