How to Write Proper Dialogue Between Characters
How to Write Proper Dialogue Between Characters
When writing the dialogue between characters, you are giving the audience and readers a story; however, it shouldn’t sound like plain speech.
Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, having dialogue brings life to stories and helps break up the long pages of description and action.
Getting the dialogue right is an art, however, some tips and rules can help you.
Writing dialogue isn’t just about replicating a conversation, it’s giving an impression of a real-life conversation in a fun way by improving it.
Dialogue needs to be fun to write, but the rules for writing dialogue shouldn’t kill the fun but enhance it.
So what are the best practices for writing dialogue?
Keep it Tight
Written conversation is difficult to read if it contains unnecessary words. In other words, there are no spare parts; there is no excess in dialogue. When it comes to writing dialogue, doing away with unnecessary words has acuteness in itself. If you have a passage of description with a redundant sentence, it will register temporary slowing. However, because this is just a passage, most readers may not notice it or even care about it.
Now, take a block of dialogue and you make the same mistake of having unnecessary sentences in the piece. It will seem like the characters are speechifying instead of speaking. The right way to do away with unnecessary words is to have gaps in communication. The readers will fill in those blanks as they read the dialogue. Don’t give the reader 100 percent of the details they want to read or hear, give them like 80 percent and let them figure out what the rest is.
Let’s elaborate this using an example from the A Question of Blood, the 14th Rebus crime novel by Ian Rankin. In one dialogue, detective John Rebus receives a phone from his colleague at night.
Rebus’ Colleague: …“Your friend, the one you were visiting that night you bumped into me …” She was on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors.
Rebus: “Andy?” he said. ‘Andy Callis?” …“Can you describe him?” … “What’s happened?”
The dialogue is edgy, vivid, immediate, and communicative. But you can see the gaps in the communication. First, you see that in the conversation, Rebus’ colleague doesn’t even give the name of the person she is speaking about. She further says that the person she is phoning about was on her mobile and she sounded as though she was outdoors.
The tone of this sentence indicates that something bad had happened to the one person in question.
However, in the dialogue, Rebus’ colleague doesn’t say it straight to detective Rebus. She leaves the gap, so you see now Rebus asks freezing, “What’s happened?”
Even earlier in the dialogue, you see how Rebus’ colleague introduces the person she is talking about with detective Rebus. By not mentioning the name of the person, she leaves detective Rebus to guess. And you can see him asking whether it’s Andy?
When you have such kind of gaps in the dialogue, it creates immediate suspense in a sentence, that the other character has to discover what it is. This keeps the conversation interesting.
Use Conflict
A gripping dialogue is usually one that contains some level of disagreement. It’s not like the kind of conversation you would find in a scene involving young lovers having a picnic or some time out in the park or zoo unless something unusual occurs like the girl tripping and falling or she has a bee sting. That’s when probably you would have dialogue in their story. The other part of their story would be speeches and narrations.
You can create conflict in dialogue by having conflicting goals of the two characters. Say, for example, one person wants to remain an alcoholic but the other wants them to attend alcohol rehab. It doesn’t have to be a shouting match, but it brings some tension that keeps the readers wanting to know what transpires next. You will have the reader turn those pages because they are glued on the subject.
Let’s use an example where Oskar and Josephina argue about what to take for dinner.
Oskar: “What’s the choice for dinner?”
Josephina: “I think steak is a perfect choice, or what do you prefer?”
Oskar: “Alright, let’s go with steak, it’s fine though I would prefer chicken breasts.”
Looking at the above conversation, it is typical to see how the two characters respond to each other. However, dialogues aren’t meant to be hopeless, lifeless, or plain. They need to be exciting and should bring out real-life conversations in a pleasant, fun way.
Throwing some conflict into the characters brings life to the dialogue. You may instead have something like this:
Oskar: “What’s there for dinner today?”
Josephina: “Steak… something tasty, but there are chicken breasts…”
Oskar: “Oh no! … just had that the other day!”
Oskar: “Don’t you like changing tastes, Josephina?”
Josephina: “Does steak taste better than chicken breasts? Well, maybe, but I don’t agree with you.”
You see, when there is an element of conflict, it keeps the conversation going and going, and you could have consequences later on in the novel. When you have two characters having different goals and want to achieve them, there will be conflict.
If both characters are unyielding and the stakes are high, then you have a great drama piece. Conflicts in dialogue bring some tension to the scene.
Reveal Character Emotion and Dynamics
The emotions of characters can be pictured in the dialogue to keep the reader aligned with the scene. The reader can understand the feelings of the characters as they read the dialogue piece.
Let’s use an example from the book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.
Charlie, a freshman in high school discovers that a long-time foe, Sam, his former girlfriend would want him back, and the dialogue goes like this:
Sam “Okay, Charlie … I’ll make this easy. When that whole thing with Craig was over, what did you think?”
Charlie: …“Well, I thought a lot of things. But mostly, I thought your being sad was much more important to me than Craig not being your boyfriend anymore. And if it meant that I would never get to think of you that way, as long as you were happy, it was okay. That’s when I realized that I loved you.” …
Sam: “I can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there, put everybody’s lives ahead of yours, and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things.”
Charlie: …“Like what?” …
Sam:…“I don’t know. Like, take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want. Like on the dance floor, did you want to kiss me?”
When you look at Charlie and Sam, they are exploratory and tentative. The words they say turn the scene by receiving new information while also driving action on it. So there is dynamic of the characters coming out, and readers can connect to them.
In the dialogue, Charlie seems reactive and wants to find out what Sam may be wanting him to do.
At that point, Sam gives some ideas about what Charlie should be doing, suggesting that she needs much more actions to show love.
Bringing it Together
Concisely, you don’t have to be the master for writing dialogue; however, the way you bring out the conversation says much about how you will keep the readers wanting to open the next page.
An exchange should be short, about three or so sentences. If it’s longer than that, it may dilute the purpose of having the dialogue in a book or novel piece. Make sure that you have the characters speaking in their voice.
Adding slang and banter and lacing character chats with things like foreshadowing makes it an intriguing piece. Of course, you don’t have to be writing a thriller to have these elements.
Remember that in dialogue, interruption is pleasant and you have to learn to get in late but get out early in the conversation. You should decide the point where the characters interact and avoid small talk.