How to Write Dialogue for Novels
There are some authors who have what is called an "ear" for dialogue who can whip this style of prose off far more easily than the descriptive passages. Others are much more comfortable with description because they fear they can't make the dialogue sound natural. Here are some tips to make you write good dialogue.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
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Listen to people speak. When you listen to real people speaking in real conversations, you pick up on things that dialogue in movies and TV miss: overlapping, stumbling over words and being able to pick up on what another is saying without it being spelled out. The writer's life is typically rather solitary; it pays tremendous dividends to just occasionally put the computer behind you and sit for an hour in a restaurant or go shopping in the mall with no intention of buying anything--just observe and listen to people.
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Understand that the purpose of dialogue is to get information across without using description narrative. When someone says something in a novel, there should always be a reason: to move the plot along, to convey character and/or to amplify the themes of the novel.
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Resist the use of dialect. While this kind of dialogue has been used to tremendous effect by many great authors, the sad truth is that it has been used far more often to annoying effect by less talented writers. Rather than trying to get across a certain accent or a lack of intellectual capacity by writing dialogue in a manner that is guaranteed to alienate the typical reader, write the dialogue with a structure that reveals the cultural background. This can mean writing in shorter sentences and using certain words that may be stereotypical but, if used moderately, can convey the meaning you are shooting for.
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Use shortcuts that convey the natural and informal rhythm of discourse. Among the effects that can be used are sentence fragments, since most conversation contains surprisingly few full sentences. While listening to real people speak, try to get a sense of how people punctuate their words with pauses and mumbles like "er" and "um." Learn to use shorthand among your characters that know each other; notice how people who are familiar with each other have holes in the conversation that remain a mystery to outsiders, but draw reactions from the people "in the know."
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Avoid using the word "said" too often after a line of dialogue, but also be wary of the temptation to use more descriptive epithets like "shouted," "muttered" or "whispered." It is better to use words that convey that the line of dialogue was intended to be shouted or whispered. In addition, resist the temptation to use language that describes how dialogue has been spoken. Instead of writing that someone cried out loudly, write so that is is clear from the context that the character cried out loudly.
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Tips & Warnings
Practice reading the dialogue out loud to see if it sounds stilted or natural.
Avoiding having characters address others by name, as this only occurs in the movies, but at the same time make sure that the reader can logically follow who is speaking. Nothing is more irritating than losing sight of which character is speaking in a long section of dialogue.
