What makes good dialogue?
1. Dialogue has to be tight
Dialogue that is filler and goes nowhere makes for a story that is filler and goes nowhere. Remember what I said about editing a scene? If your dialogue serves no purpose to the plot or the characters (and ideally both) then it has no place in your story. Dispense with small talk for the sake of small talk. Your story doesn't have room for it. Remember: not everything which is said has to be read.For example, instead of writing out:
"Hello, old friend. I trust you had a pleasant trip."
"Quite fine, my friend. The weather has been wonderful."
"Yes, lovely. But I think it might rain soon."
Just write:
They exchanged pleasantries.
Now you can get to what the conversation is really about, and there's still time to indicate these two character's personalities and relationship in the conversation to follow.
2. Remember that book speak is different than life speak
If you (discreetly) listen to people's conversations you will find they are full of filler. We have incomplete thoughts, we repeat ourselves, we lose track of where we were going, we interrupt each other, and we're very informal. It's kind of a nightmare. Even if this kind of speech is true to life, it doesn't look right in a book. Even a character who uses slang and speaks very casually is still going to use more formal language than they would in real life. People just don't have the patience to wait for a character to remember how to get to their point. Leave out the majority of the 'ums' and 'wells,' and tighten it up.3. Make it sound natural
I view writing dialogue as a game volleyball, a series of actions-reactions. One thought should lead to the other. What one character says should naturally elicit the other's response. If you fear your dialogue is becoming stilted and too formal, it can help to read it out loud.Also, characters should talk in a way which is consistent to them. This can be trickier if you don't know your characters well, but each major character should have a unique style of speaking. Also, realize they're going to speak differently around different people and in different situations. Practice, edit, and when in doubt, read out loud.
And lastly, don't overthink it. If it sounds good, it's probably fine.
4. Use the right tags
Dialogue tags are the things outside of the quotation marks often used to let the reader know who says what and how they said it. Most often, this consists of simply writing 'they said,' which is perfectly fine."Do you really mean it? I mean, truly?" River said.
Most people don't even pause when they see the word 'said.' Our brains are so used to seeing it, we skip over the tag. You can use other descriptors (exclaimed, remarked, retorted) but these are best used sparingly and where their impact is the greatest. Too much, and it becomes distracting.
"Do you really mean it?" River asked sleepily. "I mean, truly?"
Some dialogue tags are action tags, which work kind of like stage directions. They let you know who said what and how, without telling you directly. Instead, they show you what the speaker was doing. I'm guilty of using these a lot, 'cause I like them, but like using something other than 'said' it can be easily overdone.
"Do you really mean it?" River rubbed her eyes, fighting sleep. "I mean truly?"
And of course, sometimes tags aren't necessary for every line, such as when only two people are talking. Your best bet is to use a variety of tags, and try to keep a good balance for the whole conversation.
"Do you really mean it?" River rubbed her eyes, yawning. "I mean truly?"
"Why would I lie?" Javin said.
"I don't know. You might just want me to stop talking and go to sleep."
He laughed. "That'll be the day."
5. Get the formatting right
A major inconvenience when writing dialogue is getting the formatting right, but it's important to do. This isn't a complete list of rules, but many of the ones I've come across. Just remember: English is a collection of exceptions. When in doubt, fact check.Use a comma at the end of your quote if it has a tag. This acts as a single sentence, so don't capitalize the first word in the tag.
"This is insane," a boy sitting in the library said.
You can also use something other than a comma with a tag as long as it's not a period. Weirdly, this still acts as a single sentence, so don't capitalize the tag.
"What's so insane?" a girl sitting at the same table asked, absentmindedly flipping through her book.
But if there is no tag you can end the quote with something other than a comma (a period is okay here).
"You know what I'm talking about!"
One exception to the 'no period unless it's the complete sentence' rule is if you use an action tag. Since the sentence ended in the quotation, the next sentence is capitalized.
"No, not if you don't tell me." She slammed her book closed. "What's bothering you?"
Punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks, even if it looks weird. If you are quoting something in your quote, use single quotation marks and make sure to always close them.
"Listen to this: 'Past participles are used for all perfect tense forms of a verb.'"
Keep in mind that a new paragraph indicates a new speaker. If you only have two people talking you can flip back and forth without needing to add a tag. So long as it doesn't go on for too long, people should be able to keep track of who's speaking. But if you add a third person, you're going to need to start differentiating who's who.
"It's English homework," she said.
"It's insane. Who keeps track of this stuff?"
"Well, for the moment, we do. Just memorize it for the test. It'll be over before you know it."
"Hey guys," another student walked up. "What are you talking about?"
"English grammar," the girl explained.
"Ah," he said. "I'll leave you to it, then."
The exception to the 'new paragraph equals new speaker' rule is when a speaker has a long chunk of dialogue that requires a paragraph break, such as when the subject changes. In this case you would start a new paragraph with a quotation mark but leave the end quote off of the previous paragraph. Keep doing this until the speaker is finished.
"It's nuts," the boy said. "They want us to actually learn things but who's brain works this way? I can't keep track of nouns and adverbs, let alone past participles and clauses.
"If you ask me, they'd be better off having us read more and learn about things that actually matter."
The following aren't formatting rules per se, but formatting your dialogue this way can have some interesting affects. And of course, you still have to format them right.
Using a dash to end the quote indicates the speech was cut off.
"Okay, but--" the girl started.
"Don't even start," he growled.
Using a dash to begin a quote indicates something which was cut off is now being finished.
"--you're not looking at it quite right."
"This is just filler work, and I dare you to figure out how this is useful."
An ellipsis indicates a pause, or speech which has trailed off.
"Oh, how to explain this..."
.
Interrupting a line can place a pause in your speech. If the first chunk of interrupted dialogue is not a complete thought then you can place a comma at the end of the tag. If you do that, don't capitalize the next word in your next chunk of dialogue. However, it is perfectly acceptable in cases to end the tag with a period, even if the dialogue is not a complete thought. If you do this, capitalize the next word. Both are acceptable, but the second places a longer pause and thus more emphasis on the next thing said.
"I know," he said, "education is important. But why this?"
"Look," she started. "It's important to learn because it's the way language is constructed. You might be able to learn grammatical rules intuitively by exposure, but if you know how to analyze language categorically then you can learn other languages more easily. The basics of language remain the same across all of them, it's just the order which words appear in and the rules that govern them which change. And besides, it'll make you a more well rounded person."
There are other dialogue tricks that don't have specific rules. For example, in my book I use brackets to indicate when a different language is being spoken and italics when animals are talking (don't ask). There are no specific rules for something like that, so just make sure you keep the formatting consistent and explain what it indicates at the outset.
"[What are they babbling about?]" one of the exchange students whispered to another at the back of the library. Technically, it's considered rude to talk about people in a language they don't understand, but he wasn't terribly concerned about that.
"[I have no idea. Something about English and grammar,]" his friend whispered back.
"[Well, we all have our hobbies, I guess.]"
6. Avoid other pitfalls and distractions
I mentioned this a little bit when I talked about dialogue tags and formatting, but there are many ways to ruin dialogue. Even if you use perfect tags, have nuanced, meaningful, and natural dialogue which is formatted correctly, the content itself can become distracting. If your dialogue uses cliche or stereotyped speech patterns, or you write with too heavy of a dialect (think of the mole characters in the Redwall series) you'll lose people. It'll sound forced and unnatural. This isn't to say you won't have a character with a heavy accent, nervous speech pattern, or word whiskers. It means that for a book, those aspects have to be toned down so you get the impression of them rather than having them spelled out verbatim. If your reader has to reread something to work out what the character said, then your dialogue's not good.So to reiterate, to write good dialogue:
- Make it tight and meaningful
- Make it natural feeling (even if it's slightly more formal than spoken speech)
- Use a good balance of tags
- Get the formatting correct
- Avoid common pitfalls such as bad formatting, distracting tags, overused dialect, inconsistency, and filler
