Dialogue
This chapter on dialogue will be very brief. Why? Because I wrote a separate course on Dialogue. Click the link to visit it.
If you write screenplays, dialogue is the most important skill of all. Because it’s based on how humans talk and interact, dialogue quickly feels “unnatural” and “wrong”. For the same reason, though, dialogue is very diverse: everybody speaks in a different way.
This made dialogue worthy of its own separate course. It’s just not a skill you can teach in one small chapter. As such, I recommend reading that course when you’re done with this one!
I’ll just give you a few useful pointers you can apply right now.
Efficient
Dialogue can be “incorrect”.
People talk very efficiently. They use clipped sentences, they don’t say more than absolutely necessary, and they might not even respond to another at all.
“How was the party?” she asked.
“Fine,” he replied.
“Any dancing?”
“Not from me. Ben and Carla did though.”
Similarly, dialogue in prose should be efficient. If you need long sentences or paragraphs, don’t make it dialogue. (It should probably be description or introspection.)
Unique & Personal
Dialogue is information through a human lens. If a line of dialogue could’ve been said by anyone, don’t write it. The words are only spoken (this way) because they are unique to the one speaking them. If a bland robot could give the same line of information, then it shouldn’t be dialogue.
Say you want to give the reader information about a bank heist the characters are planning. This can only be done through dialogue, if one character knows those plans and the others don’t.
Say you want to communicate to the reader how bad the tyrannical government of your fantasy world is. If you decide to do it through dialogue, have characters say things that match their opinion about this government. Don’t make them say variations on the same thing, like “Oh I hate them and I want them to die”. No, people only speak if they have something unique and personal to say. That’s when you use dialogue.
Dialogue is spoken action
This is the reason why dialogue is even more active than actual action. It is spoken action, delivered through very efficient sentences. It is action that multitasks: besides giving information it also reveals character.
Don’t use dialogue if you’re just going to give loads of information. Don’t use dialogue just to avoid introspection and have characters say their thoughts out loud.
Dialogue should be a battle with words.
Characters attack and defend. Character A accuses somebody of stealing, character B defends themselves. Or A tries to persuade B, searching for something that triggers them. Or maybe A needs to extract a secret from B, which B obviously tries to hide and not accidentally give away.
Meaningless banter between characters can be fun and endear readers to them. But keep it to a minimum and reserve most dialogue for characters who need to achieve a goal by going through the other character.
Dialogue is a tool for characters to achieve goals. (And the way they speak should always communicate their goals, flaws, likeability, proactivity, competence, …)
Conclusion
Yes, short chapter, go read the course on Dialogue.
Dialogue is a great tool for multitasking: giving information while showing character.
It is fast, it is natural, it is usually more fun and easier to read.
But don’t use it all the time. Use it when it makes sense for a character to give this information. Use it to wage a war between characters using words. Use specific dialogue only when it reveals more about the characters of your story.
As usual, though, you can be more lenient in your first draft. Sharpening dialogue is something usually left for the later drafts of a story. In the first one, dialogue can be less efficient, less personal, and less natural.
In my first draft, many characters usually speak the same “basic” way. After writing the story, I know who my characters are, and I know what verbal ticks or favorite words they’ll have. In the second draft, I rewrite most dialogue to match the speaking patterns of characters.
Similarly, in my first draft, most dialogue tags are simply “said” or “asked”. This is absolutely fine. Using different ones, like “whispered”, just distracts and becomes a crutch for bad dialogue. In my second draft, I might only change a handful of dialogue tags to something more specific.
All that matters is getting the general decision right: when to use dialogue to get the ideas in your head onto the page.
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