10 Tips for writing great dialogue

First person dialogue is tricky. Descriptive narrative may be easy to write but good interactive dialogue adds tension and pace, drawing the reader right into the conflict.

Here is the boring way to do it:

John Davenport was a doctor fleeing from a terrible past. He had been drummed out of the profession for bungling an operation while he was drunk.

Compare this to:

“I know who you are,” Charles said.
“You know nothing,” John said.
“You’re that doctor.”
“If you don’t mind I—”
“From Hopkins. You killed a woman because you were soused. I saw the whole thing on TV.”

LIke so many other forms of advanced writing, you will not get first-person dialogue right on the first attempt. The answer is to accept this, get the basic content down quickly and then tinker until it sounds exactly the way you want!

#1 Get the content right

When you write the first draft of a scene, let the dialogue flow. This will allow you to come up with lines you never would have thought of if you tried to get it right the first time. In fact, you can often come up with a dynamic scene by writing the dialogue first.

Record what your characters are arguing about, stewing over or revealing. Write fast, paying no attention to who says what, their actions or how they speak. You might find it easier to set out your dialogue as a play or movie script.

Once you get the right words down, go back and add normal speaker attributions and tags.

#2 Act it out

Start an argument with yourself. Go back and forth, changing your actual physical location. Allow a slight pause as you switch, giving yourself time to come up with a response in each character’s voice. Imagine you are a well-known actor who suits the role – Julia Roberts or Charlize Theron, or Brad Pitt. Play all the parts. Let yourself go.

In real life, listen with concentration to the length of sentences, how people respond and what they say. In movies, the best screenwriters are past masters at good dialogue.

#3 Avoid the obvious

If you want to bore your reader then keep to a simple back-and-forth exchange, and echo your characters responses:

“Hello, Elize.”
“Hi, Anne.”
“My, that’s a wonderful outfit you’re wearing.”
“Outfit? You mean this old thing?”
“Old thing! It looks practically new.”
“It’s not new, but thank you for saying so.”

There are no surprises, and the reader drifts along with little interest. Your dialogue will be stronger if you sidestep the obvious:

“Hello, Mary.”
“Sylvia. I didn’t see you.”
“My, that’s a wonderful outfit you’re wearing.”
“Where is he, Sylvia?”

This dialogue isn’t exactly JK Rowling, but I think you’ll agree this exchange is immediately more interesting and suggestive of currents beneath the surface.

Look at a section of your dialogue and change some direct responses into off-the-wall retorts.

#4 Cultivate silence

A powerful variation on the sidestep is silence. Hemingway was a master at this. Consider this excerpt from one of his short stories” A man and a woman are having a drink at a train station in Spain.

“Should we have another drink?”
The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
“The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.
The girl looked down into her drink, watching the ice melt away.
“It’s really an awfully simple operation, dearling,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”
The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
“It’s something that must be done. You understand don't you?”
The girl did not say anything.

The man is trying to convince the girl to have an abortion (a word that does not appear anywhere in the text). Her silence is reaction enough in this brief, compelling exchange.

#5 Use facial expressions

When a character raises an eyebrow or furrows his brow, this action, or beat, interrupts the dialogue and telegraphs a change in the character's emotional state. As an exchange progresses and the emotional intensity rises—as the character's dissatisfaction grows into anger, for instance—a character might set his jaw, bite his lip or narrow his gaze. His eyes may darken, his face may redden, his nostrils may flare and so on. These are all conventional and commonly understood signs of anger.

You can read a dozen Psychology textbooks on facial expression and emotion, or you can watch a few good dramatic films or TV shows with the sound off. It won't take you long to see how the actors use facial expressions to signal emotion.

#6 Talk with their hands

Characters can point, steeple their fingers, clench their hands into fists, pound tables, hold their hands up to surrender, cross their arms in front of their chests, throw up their hands in resignation or despair (though this gesture is much overused) or twiddle their thumbs (seriously, does anyone actually do that?).

"It's a fake," said James, holding out his hand to me, palm upward. Upon it lay a tiny silver pistol, a "ladies' model" with a pearl handle, no bigger than a deck of cards.

His fingers closed around the little gun and he slipped it back into the pocket of his overcoat.

"I found it in a drawer at home and I just started carrying it around. For good luck, I guess."

#7 Add movement

Your characters can cross the room or push back from a desk or table to get physical and emotional distance from a heated conversation, an intimate moment or even another character. They can move in closer to become more threatening or more intimate, or to drive a point home.

If a character puts a piece of furniture or some other object between himself and someone else, that's a clear signal that he's blocking the other character—emotionally, physically or intellectually, depending upon the nature of your scene. Use movement to support and enhance your dialogue, and your readers will pick up on all this and more.

Alexi stooped and picked up a rock. "Last chance…"
"It’s your call." Jack unbuttoned his winter coat, took it off, folded it carefully and deliberately placed it over the chair.

#8 Oblique resonses

Humans are rarely directly responsive to one another, especially when conversing. More often, responses will be oblique or partial:

"Would you tell me your name, please?"
"Why you asking?"

We don’t listen carefully, we pick up the tone and perhaps the gist, but we want to get our own words in. Instead of a direct response, try an indirect response, or even an non-response.

"These boards are loose, watch where you’re walking."
"God, these cobwebs are gross."

There are several ways to handle partial or oblique resonses:

• Answer a question with a question.
• Let two or three dialogue passages go by before answering an earlier question.
• Interrupt the speaker.
• Don’t answer what happened, but explain why it happened.

#9 Build personality

If it's within your character's personality, don't be afraid to have him take big actions—throw a fit, throw a plate or throw a punch. If your character has a hair-trigger temper, bypass any eyebrow raising and go straight to breaking the furniture.

Make sure the actions you choose are consistent with your character's traits. Every action should be a reflection of the character's objectives and emotions, and of the scene. If your character seldom shows emotion, focus on small details that show his true feelings leaking out: a tightening around his eyes, a deliberate forcefulness in each step as he walks across the room, a tense grip on a pen.

Beats like these make it easier for your reader to see and feel the emotion in your dialogue. Render your characters' words with care—and then do everything you can to make them shine.

#10 Polishing a gem takes time

We’ve all had those moments when we wake up and have the perfect response for a conversation that took place the night before. Part of the fun of being a fiction writer is that your characters can always have the perfect comeback.

And how do you do that? Like a diamond cutter, you take what is rough and tap at it until it is perfect. One hour for just 10 words – it’s worth it.

Punctuation in dialogue

Mark pointed at the sky. "It's going to rain."

Here there are two separate actions, treated as two separate sentences. So you punctuate them as such, the only difference being that Mark's speech is indicated by being enclosed in quotation marks.

If you're adding a straightforward tag like "he said," that's part of the sentence, so you include it in the sentence with a comma. A comma separates dialogue from its dialogue tag. Periods, question marks, exclamation marks and commas ALWAYS go inside the quotation marks.

"It's going to rain," shouted Mark.

Mark pointed at the sky and whispered, "Oh no, it's going to rain."

He grabbed his books and dashed for shelter.

Every new speaker should be quoted as a separate paragraph. Actions following speech should also be described in a separate paragraph.Keep sentences short - as they are in real conversation.

To show emotion, include exclamation and question marks within the quotation marks, not at the end of the sentence. Please note that adverbs should be used sparingly - to say "Mark exclaimed excitedly" is clumsy and adds nothing new.

"It's going to rain!" Mark exclaimed.
"Do you think it’s going to rain?" asked Mark.

You can avoid the whole issue of comma vs. exclamation mark by inverting the sentence and letting the exclamation mark fill its end-punctuation role.

Mark pointed at the sky and shouted, "It's going to rain!"
Mark wondered if it was going to rain.

If you're writing a sentence in which your character quotes someone else, the character dialog has double quotation marks while the quoted remark has single quotation marks.

"Alice is so annoying," Mark complained. "I told her it was about to rain and we should pack up, but then she asked Jack, 'What do we do now?' – so why didn’t she listen to me?"

Perhaps Mark complains for several paragraphs. Start with opening quotation marks, but do not close them at the end of the paragraph.

At the beginning of the next paragraph, use opening quotation marks to assure the reader that yes, Mark's still speaking. At the end of the multi-paragraph tirade, you tell the reader he is done by inserting those long-awaited closing quotation marks:

"I don't like Alice," Mark said. "I told her it was about to rain, but she asked Jack what we should do instead of me.

"Now, if you ask me, Alice is a bit full of herself. She thinks she's too good for me. That I don’t know what’s what!

"After all, if we had been caught in the rain, my hair would have been ruined!"

"She's not snooty," Jack interrupted. "She asked me because you don’t care about anyone except yourself."

Poorly punctuated dialogue can lose your reader within minutes. At all times, the reader must be clear about who is speaking, and get a sense of the tone of the conversation.

Writers who fail to punctuate dialogue correctly confuse readers and draw attention to their inexperience. So basic is proper punctuation that an editor will not likely read past the first page if the dialogue is handled incorrectly.