Write Believable Dialogue

Certain aspects of writing come easier to some writers than others and while I don’t claim to be brilliant at any of them, I do count dialogue among my strengths. Good dialogue passes almost unnoticed because the story is too busy progressing to stop and point it out. Bad dialogue, however, can kill a story.

The most important thing to remember when writing dialogue is to KEEP IT REAL.
Here’s how to do it:

• Listen to the voices in your head – the ones belonging to your characters, that is. Take some time to figure out what they sound like and how they speak. You have to be able to hear them in order to . . .
• Individualise the speakers – If all your characters speak the same way – same phraseology, same accents, same tone – it gets confusing (not to mention boring!)
• Don’t put words in their mouths – let the conversation flow naturally. Sure, you might kick-start things with a bit of a prompt to begin with but if you get too involved in sculpting each and every reply, the dialogue comes out stilted and artificial. Now that you can hear them, let them talk.
• Do not use dialogue as an information dump – We all know the basis of good creative writing is to show, not tell. Making your characters ‘tell’ is still telling.

Of course, once the conversation is out there in black and white you should most certainly go back and clean it up. Interjections and short, sharp replies are great to break up long chunks of speech and create light and shade, but too much will result in disjointed dialogue that is hard for a reader to follow. Bin the uh‘s and um‘s that normally pepper our everyday speech unless absolutely necessary.

I have just one more thing to say and this is directed at the scriptwriters on some of my favourite TV shows:
When it comes to foreign characters, don’t be lazy. Having a mean-looking mobster with a fake Russian accent say, “Zis is like, so lame” . . . well, just don’t.

Like the title says: Write Believable Dialogue – please!