5 Lessons I’ve learned about writing dialogue in fiction
One of my biggest weaknesses is writing dialogue. A lot of times, my characters ramble on about nothing and I end up cutting a lot of dialogue out while editing. So I decided to read up on how to write better dialogue so I can improve this very important element of fiction. Here’s a little of what I learned.
I decided to read the book Write Great Fiction – Dialogue
Here are 5 things you should consider the next time you sit down to write a scene with dialogue:
1. Dialogue needs to propel the story forward. If your characters are just standing around chatting, talking about the weather or their weekend plans, chances are the dialogue is not being effective and you need to cut the scene or rewrite it. Dialogue needs to move the plot forward and keep readers interested.
2. Dialogue is used for pacing in a story. Long and drawn out narratives in a story will slow the pace down. At the same time, dialogue generally speeds things up. Good fiction should be a balanced combination of the two. If your story has too much narrative you are likely to put your readers to sleep. On the other hand, if your story is all dialogue with little narrative, you will probably lose your readers and they’ll have a hard time following the story.
The bad news is that pacing isn’t something that can easily be taught. It’s more intuition than anything. The good new is that you can get better at it by reading a lot of varied genres and practice, practice, practice.
3. Dialogue should be unique to each character and reveal stuff about them. In real life, we all have different ways of speaking and use our own little ‘catch phrases’ and so forth. The characters in your fiction should also be differentiated by the way they speak. Just imagine if everyone in real life spoke the exact same way. Boring! Fiction should be no different.
Use dialogue to make each of your characters unique. But be careful: If you have a gun-toting, tattoo covered, motorcycle riding, crime loving character in your story, chances are he/she is not going to be talking about the pretty flowers on the side of the road. You get the idea.
4. Dialogue shows, narrative tells. You all have heard that old saying: “Show, don’t tell in fiction.” Well, dialogue is one way to show. Dialogue is a direct action performed by the character. It gives them life. Makes them human. For example, you can describe via narrative for pages and pages how a character feels after being dumped by her boyfriend. But you can also say the same thing, with greater effect, in a much shorter space through dialogue. The character herself gets to describe her feelings, in her own words.
5. Fiction needs dialogue. I’ve probably only read one novel that had more narrative than dialogue. The novel is Saturday
The main point I’ve taken from the Dialogue book so far is that dialogue is just one tool for writers to use in their fiction. Other elements like narrative, action and setting are all equally important. The trick is to weave them together in a way that is balanced and interesting. I wish there was some magic formula I could give you to make this ‘weaving’ easy. But there’s not. Writing good fiction just takes practice. And reading a lot of books in varied genres can’t hurt either.
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- Plot Vs. Character based fiction
- Literary vs. Genre Fiction
- Why writing fiction can be so complex
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