Dialogue Writing in Fiction-5 Key Steps to Sparkling Dialogue
Dialogue is often the make or break of a good story. Sometimes, even a plot can be thin or weak, but if the characters sound realistic through convincing dialogue the reader may keep on with the book because they can empathize with the people in that little fictional world who talk in a way that engages or perhaps mirrors them.
Here are a few tips to writing interesting, attention grabbing dialogue:
Learn all you need to know about creating compelling dialogue. Available @ Amazon.com
1) Read your dialogue out-loud. It may feel a little strange at first, but reading dialogue out-loud will quickly point out to you what works and what doesn’t. Contrary to popular belief, dialogue in a book should not be real speech, but it should mimic it. The important thing to remember is to find a natural rhythm as you would when talking, and occasionally interrupt that rhythm with pauses and voiced interruptions like ‘erm’ to add a touch of authenticity.
2) Give each character an idiom. Create for each character some discernible phrases, whether they hint of a regional dialect or a generational saying, for instance calling someone ‘dude’ or saying ‘I dunno’ or ‘whatever’. Even your older characters can benefit from this. For instance, you may choose to begin quite a few bits of dialogue with ‘I remember when…’ for an elderly character, which reinforces the nature of the character and gives them a discernible voice.
3) At the same time, avoid using too much slang. The problem with colloquialisms in good fictional dialogue is that very few are long lasting. They are often very much of the ‘now’, and when the ‘now’ becomes yesterday, the dialogue full of slang suddenly becomes very dated. Having said that, a few choice words can add a feel for the period you are evoking in a work of fiction, so don’t neglect them all together, but use them from the standpoint of less is more.
4) How you follow up your dialogue is important. ‘He said’ is fine, but vary it using adjectives such as ‘moaned’, ‘whined’, ‘coughed’ or ‘whispered’ to name but a few in order to add texture to the fictional voice your are creating. This will keep the reader interested more than standard phrases that do not offer a hint of how a character is feeling or how they are emoting.
5) If at all possible, keep dialogue brief. Pages of dialogue are like a disembodied spirit, insubstantial and hard to understand without the proper grounding of a body of narrative text. Interrupt your characters often to explain what they are doing while they are saying something, and also, interrupt them with other character’s speech, interjecting to quibble over a point or to explain it further. This creates a rhythm that the reader will latch to and find interesting. Without it, the fictional dialogue will become one long monotone and will quickly loose the readers’ attention.
Using any and all of the five steps outlined above will hopefully allow you to develop dialogue that is engaging and fun, whilst at the same time sparing and yet substantial. A final point that might serve you in writing better dialogue: The true purpose of dialogue is often misdirection or revelation.
Related posts:
Announcements
Must Have Books
  |   |