Effective Dialogue

Writing dialogue seems easy at first, that is until you read what you’ve written out loud and you hear how clunky and unnatural it sounds. Good dialogue can be difficult to write when you don’t know the tricks and best practices. In this talk, I take young writers through the pitfalls of bad dialogue, how to identify it, and how to fix it. I teach them how to use dialogue to reveal the something about their character as well as how to use dialogue to increase tension and make a story more exciting. They’ll learn how to make good verb choices in their dialogue and how to eliminate the “he said,” “she said,”s and replace them with action and sensory details. 

Dialogue is super important in a story, for it drives the story forward. Great dialogue can make a story sparkle, and once kids learn the strategies, their writing improves immensely. 

Below are some slides from the presentation.