I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned when it comes to writing exciting and engaging dialogue. In some of my first novels, my dialogue was compared to a microwave burrito (not my best review, but one of my favorites). After receiving that rebuke, I started studying dialogue and how to do it effectively, as well as attending some fantastic workshops and conference. Now, I’d say my dialogue is no longer a microwave burrito, but more like a deep dish pizza . . . yum.

Below are the rules I’ve learned and I follow when it comes to writing good dialogue. I’ll continue the numbering from the first post on the Writing Tips from Mark. I hope this is helpful.

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Rule #5: Make dialogue sound real:

You want your dialogue to sound natural. I never let a character say, “I am going to the store.” That doesn’t sound real to me. Instead, I’d have them say,  “I’m going to the story,” because that’s how I’d say it. I use contractions in dialogue frequently. Some writers say that’s a terrible thing to do, but I write like I speak, and I use contractions when I talk with others. Now that I’ve said this rule, let me tell you how I break it.

Sometimes, I want a character to have a distinctive way in which they talk, for example, in my Minecraft novels, Zombies never use pronouns. A zombie would never say, “I like ice cream.” They would instead, say, “This zombie likes ice cream,” or maybe they’d use their name, “Er-Lan likes ice cream.” Creating this rule of speech for zombies makes them stand out a little from the other monsters.

For spiders, I have them repeat their s’s. For example, a spider in one of my novels would never say, “I must go to the store soon.” I wanted the spiders to sound creepy in the heads of my readers, and I thought having them sound a little snake-like might be cool. They would say, “I musssst go to the sssstore ssssoon.” This seemed like a good idea, but their dialogue is really hard to type, but I’m still glad I did it.

Try to make your dialogue sound like you and your friends. Readers can spot fake dialogue easily!

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Rule #6: Cut out the boring stuff!:

In a story, you wouldn’t want to have some characters talking about what they want for dinner, hot dogs or hamburgers, unless it’s critical to the story. This kind of dialogue, although it happens in real life, is boring, and you don’t want it in your story. Alfred Hitchcock said, “What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.” This is true about dialogue; it’s what you’d see in daily life, with the boring parts all deleted. Keep your dialogue interesting, and interject conflict as frequently as possible. Here’s an example:

“Mary, what are we having for dinner?” Walter sat at the table and pulled out his phone to check email.

“I thought we’d have steak. You know how much you like steak.”

Walter sighed. “I guess.”

That was some boooooooring dialogue. It lacked any tension or conflict. Sometimes this is necessary in a story, but it can put your readers to sleep and cause them to disengage from your story, and you never want that to happen; them might put your book down.

Here’s another way to do the same dialogue:

“Mary, what’s for dinner?” Walter sat at the table and pulled out his phone, becoming completely immersed in his email. Mary said something, but he didn’t hear. “What did you say?”

“I said, are you on your phone already? Why can’t we just sit and talk for once.”

“Does this need to be a big deal every night. We’ve had this argument before.”

“I know.” Mary came into the dining room, her feet stomping the hardwood floors. She put a plate in front of him; a burned steak sat in the middle, a small pile of corn covering a charred end. “We have this argument every night, and you promise tomorrow will be different . . . and here we are again!”

 

You see, I still showed what they were having for dinner, steak, which was completely unimportant to this scene, but added the conflict and tension into the dialogue; that’s what the scene is really about. Dinner doesn’t matter here.

Add conflict into your dialogue whenever it’s appropriate, but if you have conflict in every scene, it will get old and your reader will tune it out.

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Rule #7: No info dumps in dialogue.

I like to use dialogue to give information and background about my characters, letting the reader know some of their backstory, but this must be done with care. You can’t let your character recite their history. Their backstory must be in the form of a conversation, and like in rule #6, there needs to be something interesting in the discussion so the reader will stay interested. If the reader thinks this is an info dump, they’ll skip that part of your story, and then they might not understand the next part, which means your book might be heading to the basement. Keep it interesting, keep the info short and spread it out across multiple conversations, so you can slowly reveal that character to your reader.

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Rule #8: No BOGSAT – Put action into your dialogue

I learned about BOGSAT from the great author, Steven James. You never want your dialogue to be with a Bunch of Guys Sitting At a Table. You want your characters doing something, that keeps the dialogue more interesting, and it seems more realistic to your reader. Rarely do you just stand or sit and talk, without doing anything. Your fiddling with your phone, playing with a pencil, pacing back and forth, cooking dinner . . . Unless we are on trial and we’re sitting in the witness chair, we move when we speak. You must do that with your characters as well.

Here’s an example:

“Gameknight, what happened to your armor?” Digger asked.

“Well, I was attacked by some zombies,” Gameknight replied. “They really want me to stay with them, so I had to politely refuse.”

“Did you refuse with your sword?” Digger asked.

“Yep.”

That’s a very static discussion, with no emotion in it at all. Here’s how I’d do it with action and motion added to it. I’ll discuss the dialogue tags and what’s wrong with them in rule #9:

“Gameknight, what happened to armor?” Digger asked as he rushed to his friend’s side and put a muscular arm around him, helping his friend to stand.

“Well . . .” Gameknight said, then coughed. He pulled out a flask of water and drank. “I was attacked by some zombies, and . . .” He reached to his chest plate and ran his fingers over the deep grooves carved into his armor. “They really wanted me to stay with them, but I had to politely refuse,” Gameknight added.

Digger offered Gameknight a piece of cooked chicken. The User-that-is-not-a-user ate it quickly, eliminating his hunger and allowing his health to rejuvenate.

Gameknight999 glanced at Digger, then drew his diamond sword. There were a handful of new nicks and scratches in it. “Yep,” Gameknight said with a smile.

 

Do you see how adding the action to the dialogue makes it much more interesting, and makes it seem more realistic, as if Gameknight had just come from a battle. Having action and motion in your dialogue is super important!

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Rule #9: Minimize the number of dialogue tags:

Dialogue tags are the, he said, she said, Gameknight asked, Hunter replied, Crafter asserted.

First of all, said is a word that is nearly invisible to readers. You shouldn’t try to come up with ways of replacing it with other words. You have read or watched by lesson on echoing. Said is immune from echoing, you don’t need to try and replace it with something else.

That being the case, use said as infrequently as possible. You can use the action in the scene to identify who is talking. For example, it the paragraphs above, we didn’t need the said when Gameknight coughed; saying he coughed was a sufficient identifier. Also, if there are only two people in the scene, you can go back and forth a few times before you need to add another dialogue identifier of some kind. Here’s how I would rewrite the scene in rule 8, without dialogue tags:

“Gameknight, what happened to armor?” Digger rushed to his friend’s side and put a muscular arm around him, helping his friend to stand.

“Well . . .” Gameknight coughed, then pulled out a flask of water and drank. “I was attacked by some zombies, and . . .” He reached to his chest plate and ran his fingers over the deep grooves carved into his armor. “They really wanted me to stay with them, but I had to politely refuse.”

Digger offered Gameknight a piece of cooked chicken. The User-that-is-not-a-user ate it quickly, eliminating his hunger and allowing his health to rejuvenate.

Gameknight999 glanced at Digger and smiled, then drew his diamond sword. There were a handful of new nicks and scratches in it. “Yep.”

I was able to remove every dialogue tag, but you still knew who was speaking, and you could also imagine the movement and action in the scene. That keeps the reader engaged in your story, which keeps them turning to the next page.

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Remember Rule #1, it’s #1 for a reason, because it’s super important:

Dialogue and Action drives the story, and dialogue is 50% of that rule. Your dialogue must be interesting, it must increase the tension and add conflict and keep the reader engaged. Dialogue is super important. Good dialogue will make your story sparkle, and bad dialogue will make your story smell like a microwave burrito; trust me, I know what that smells like, and you don’t want that for your story.

Keep working on your dialogue. Keep reading and look at other author’s dialogue, that’s a great way to learn. Keep writing, and watch out for creepers.

 

Mark (Monkeypants_271)