How to Write Dialogue

Filling your book with well-written dialog can transport your readers to the time and place of your story. It can help you readers feel an emotional connection to your characters and is essential to creating a character driven piece. Dialog will bring drama and intense emotion to your book and, if done properly, could even be quoted by your readers.

Instructions

1. Familiarize yourself with the grammatical rules of dialog. Start a new paragraph each time a new person speaks. Use quotation marks and make sure punctuation is inside the quotation marks. Use commas to pace your reader.

2. Think about how to write accents and dialects. You can read works by other authors that contain characters with similar speech patterns to see how other authors have done it. An apostrophe can be used to show certain speech patterns.

3. Use slang. You don’t have to write everything in formal English. You can and should write how real people speak.

4. When writing dialog, consider the flow and rhythm of a real conversation. Try to reflect that give-and-take in your writing. Characters can have unfinished sentences, be interrupted, and can argue--just like real conversations.

5. Learn how to identify the speaker. Noting every piece of dialog with “said so-and-so” is repetitive and boring. Think of other ways to express that sentiment. Nuance can be used to identify the speaker, or you can specifically write that your character said, cried, muttered, etc.

6. Describe the voice your character is using and any inflection. The reader should not have to make an assumption as to how your character sounds.

7. Give each of your characters a voice. Just like each of us don’t talk exactly the same way as each other, your characters shouldn’t either. Your reader should be able to identify a speaker simply by certain words they use, or ways they pronounce things.

Tips & Warnings

• Read! Reading dialog rich works by other authors can help.