Dialogue Deep Dive

When I submitted my first story to a publisher, I received the feedback that there was way too much dialogue. It felt more like a film script, in which almost all information must be conveyed by saying it out loud.

I was surprised. I did the only sensible thing: run my own analysis. I learned that the average amount of dialogue seemed to be ~30% of the novel. But there were many outliers. I did an analysis on the first book of Game of Thrones, and it was ~75% dialogue! Agatha Christie’s books started at 50% dialogue and went up to 80% as she wrote more.

The amount of dialogue differs quite a bit between authors. Some use a lot of it, such as George R.R. Martin (writer of Game of Thrones). Dialogue is often their greatest strength. Others barely use it and are more known for great description or plotting.

My novel only had 30% dialogue. Yes, I can be dialogue-heavy, but it clearly wasn’t such a big issues as the publisher claimed.

My dialogue was also simply bad. Everyone talked in the same way. Everyone was constantly interrupted to make similar kinds of jokes or remarks.

This chapter aims to bring these two facts to your attention.

• If you rely too much on dialogue, you should be writing film scripts. For a novel, you spend a bit more time inside a character’s head, describing, or simply immersing the reader through a unique writing style. (Although it’s certainly a trend for authors to be more “cinematic” and write novels that seem destined to be film scripts.)
• Writing good dialogue is certainly a skill, and it starts with making sure all characters talk in a believable, characteristic way.

The short rules

For all the details about dialogue, read my actual Dialogue course. You can read parts of it while applying this challenge.

The details

The summary, however, is that good dialogue is “heightened dialogue”. (Just like a story is “heightened reality”, just a little more interesting, exciting and magical than actual reality.)

• Simply use “said” as the dialogue tag most of the time. (“Watch out for the monsters!” Timmy said.)
• People don’t constantly misspeak or take ages to think of a response. (Also, be careful with writing accents or broken speech. It quickly gets annoying or impossible to decipher.)
• Do away with the pleasantries around a conversation. (“Hey” “Hello” “How are you?” “Good. You?”)
• People do not say information they (or their conversational partner) already know. Don’t use dialogue to feed information to the reader in an unnatural way. (“As you know, Bob, you are an accountant, are you not?” “I sure am, Sally, and you are still a farmer, right?”)
• People do talk a lot in clipped sentences. Dialogue is very fast and efficient. (When someone asks “how are you?”, we say “fine, you?”. Not “I am doing fine, and how are you?”)

For many, dialogue reads more easily than larger blocks of (descriptive) text. When in doubt, try to write the scene as dialogue instead of narrative.

Many things, however, just sound unnatural or would not be spoken about in reality. Those must be portrayed through description. Additionally, if you only use dialogue, you get the “talking heads” problem. The reader cannot imagine a scene and nothing else is happening, just spoken words for pages and pages, which also isn’t great.

Two standout principles

Here are the two most important principles, to me.

• Different people talk in different ways. Apply this at every level: different words, different sentences, and different responses altogether. (A talkative person obviously responds to everything with long paragraphs, while a shy person gives rare and terse responses. A smart person chooses more complicated vocabulary, a dumb character sticks to basic words and ideas.)
• Structure dialogue like a mini-story. The people in the conversation have a goal, a point they try to reach. The dialogue gets more and more heated, as more is revealed or rebuffed, until it finally resolves. (Either the hero gets what they want, or they don’t.)

It’s a common beginner’s mistake to write dialogue as in real life. To add many scenes to your novel in which friends are just cracking jokes, talking about their day, starting every conversation with small talk.

Instead, only add dialogue with a purpose. That purpose can be “to reveal a new personality trait” or to “show these two are friends”. More often than not, the purpose should be more directly related to the story.

Also, when I say dialogue should “get heated”, don’t just make every scene an argument or a fight. That’s another common mistake, of which I am certainly guilty. (My first book was basically “look how many disagreements I can write between these two people”.) People can disagree without yelling. Your hero may try to be more subtle and get something by being kind and talking around it.

Just like a story can have many different kinds of conflict and resolution, so can a dialogue.

Now write

Here are your two challenges.

Write a story in which it is obvious who is speaking, at all times, from the words alone.

After attributing dialogue once (so the reader knows to whom it belongs), leave out the dialogue tags entirely. Differentiate the characters through word choice and response styles alone.

To get inspiration, simply … go and listen to others talk. They probably have many odd habits and word choices that you’ve grown accustomed to. Once you listen carefully, you realize the patterns and can use that for a unique voice.

Include as much dialogue as you can, and make each dialogue scene a mini-story.

One person has a goal. The other person is the obstacle. They take turns attacking (like asking a question or trying to strike a deal) and defending (giving counter-arguments or talking around the topic).

Bonus points if you manage to make the climax of the story, or some of its biggest moments, happen through dialogue only. No action, no event, just very strong dialogue that achieves something important.

Your final story will probably have too much dialogue. But the purpose of this exercise is to practice it, and to see for yourself what amount of dialogue you feel is “just right”.