By Ryan Cipriani.
Let’s talk.
About dialogue.
Brace yourself because the puns only get worse from here.
Dialogue is one of the most dynamic aspects of any piece of writing or storyscape. The words spoken by characters are not just a critical element to works of fiction, like novels and short stories, but also in screenwriting and scripts. After all, movies and television shows are pitched almost entirely on the premise of dialogue advancing a story if you think about it.
It is also arguably one of the most difficult elements of writing to master.
We all can recognize weak or even—cringe!—bad dialogue. And you probably know a dozen synonyms to refer to it. Stilted. Wooden. Flat. And the tried and true classic: boring.
But why is this? What separates truly compelling dialogue between characters and just a bunch of words predicated on ‘he said’ or ‘she said’?
More often than not, it comes down to something that is difficult to pin down: subtlety. Nuance. The ability to capture a human tone while still advancing storylines and character development. This is not easy. It is not easy because how human beings speak and interact is diametrically different from what most writers or students of language consider the ‘proper’ way to put words together.
But human beings are not proper. They are wildly unpredictable, vibrant, creative, colorful, kaleidoscopic creatures. Capturing that complicated beauty in a way that is accessible and yet still purposeful is the real essence of writing great dialogue.
So let’s take a look at these things. What I want to do with you is lay out a few exercises you can do to help improve your dialogue. But beyond just telling you ‘what’ to do, I want to explain why you should incorporate these practices. After all, if you do not understand why you are doing something, all you will do is create another habit loop that churns out the same passable but underwhelming dialogue.
Quick disclaimer before we jump into the meat and potatoes of this article. (Or veggies and legumes if you are vegetarian).
It is my absolute and sincerely held belief that all art is subjective. One person’s interpretation of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ dialogue is going to be very different from another’s. Nothing contained in this article should be interpreted as the right or wrong way to approach writing dialogue. There is no right or wrong way to do art. However, if you find that your dialogue is missing a spark you want to be there, or are looking for ways to shake up how you write character interaction, then consider this as a high-level primer for improving your dialogue. Because your dialogue is not bad—it’s just different. And maybe it is missing something.
That out of the way, let’s talk about bad dialogue!
What Makes Dialogue Less Than Stellar
All jokes aside, the first thing we want to recognize are the elements of dialogue that make it feel weak or flat. There are a couple of things to watch out for, and being able to recognize weak dialogue is the first step to diagnosing and strengthening it. So let’s start there and take a look at some of the most common dialogue mistakes.
The first and often most obvious is dialogue that is used primarily or exclusively as an exposition dump. One of the more elusive elements of writing effectively, in general, is the idea of ‘showing’ an audience rather than ‘telling.’ Immersive storytelling tends to lead the reader to understand its world through context clues and inferences rather than signposts. Sometimes writers try to get around crafting more subtle storytelling by using dialogue to deliver huge amounts of information in ways that sound clunky or unnatural.
Here’s an example. I was watching a movie recently about a small-time chef in New York who is in danger of losing the restaurant that was left to her by her deceased mother. I know all of these things because in the opening minutes of the film, I got an exposition dump in the form of dialogue. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like this.
“Oh [character], I know you’ve been sad ever since you found out you might lose the restaurant that your mother left you when she passed. It’s a shame business hasn’t been better, but that mall across the street is stealing all of your customers.”
These two lines of dialogue deliver a ton of information… but is that really how people talk to each other? Not really. What’s clear is that the screenwriter wanted to get a ton of setup out of the way as quickly as possible. They went the route of ‘telling’ it in an exchange, rather than ‘showing’ through a series of scenes what the struggles of the main character are. So you end up with this line of dialogue that gives the audience a lot of information, but it just… gives it to them.
There is no development, no world-building, no discovery. Signpost, not adventure.
Similarly, a more subtle trait of poor dialogue is unnatural-sounding exchanges.
A great quote with regards to strong dialogue goes something along the lines of “if it sounds like dialogue, it probably should not sound that way.” Human speech is chaotic, informal, vibrant, and breaks about every rule we hold dear when writing prose. Dialogue and prose should not necessarily be interchangeable. Prose should more likely adhere to grammatical rules, whereas dialogue may not.
We know as writers that every sentence should contain a verb, a noun, a predicate, etc etc ad nauseum. All the wonderful little esoteric rules of writing. When people talk, they obey none of these rules. They drop words, leave thoughts incomplete, slur letters together and vary their cadence.
Let’s do an example of two people talking about a party, and we’re going to do it as intentionally boring and unnatural as possible to really kill the mood of what should be a pretty exciting event.
“Hello, James. How was the party last night?”
“It was excellent, Lillian. Thank you for asking.”
“Can you tell me about the party? What did you do?”
“I can tell you about it, yes. First, we jumped motorcycles across the creek out behind Tracy’s house.”
“Oh my gosh, you jumped motorcycles over the creek?”
“Yes, we did. Then, a heavy metal band’s tour bus broke down outside, and we had to drive them to their show.”
“No kidding. How did that turn out?”
“We all got backstage passes and I woke up this morning with a tattoo of a camel on my shoulder.”
How did you feel reading that? A series of objectively exciting events reduced to a pretty boring discussion. It does not feel like a natural exchange. There is no weight to it, no excitement. The sentences are all technically correct in their construction, but it sounds like dialogue, it doesn’t sound like a conversation.
And let me ask you this: could you tell me which character is talking if I had not identified them in their exchange at the beginning? Probably not.
This is the last element of weak dialogue I want to touch on: dialogue that is indistinguishable from one character to the next. We don’t really need to invent another example, the one above serves just fine to illustrate this point.
Every human being has their own lexicon. They have their own way of putting sentences together, and they have words and phrases they are more likely to lean on than others. The way a person speaks is hyper individual, and it is informed by their education, life experiences, personality and demeanor. While some phrases are commonly used by lots of people, what sets individuals apart are the little quirks and twists on speaking unique to them.
If you were to take all the identifiers out of your writing, would you be able to tell who is speaking just based on what the reader already knows about the characters? If not, this is probably a sign that your characters are either underdeveloped or that your dialogue could use some strengthening.
Fortunately, those two improvements can actually go hand in hand!
Okay, so we’ve identified three aspects of weak dialogue.
- Exposition Dumps: Lots of telling, not enough showing
- Unnatural Sounding Exchanges: People talking like we write, not like we talk
- Indistinguishable Characters: Everyone talks the same and we cannot tell who is who
So what do we do about this? How do we strengthen our dialogue so it comes across more punchy and alive?
Let’s talk about some exercises you can do to help improve your dialogue and, in the process, create more dynamic characters.
Exercise #1: Observation
Here’s what I want you to do. If you are able, go to a coffee shop, order your favorite drink, and sit down with headphones on—but don’t put on any music or podcasts. What I want you to listen to is the conversation going on around you. Bring a notebook, and start taking notes on how people talk to each other.
Now, the point is not to listen to the content of people’s conversations. This isn’t an eavesdropping lesson. Try to separate what people are saying from how they are saying it. Take notes on the little nuances you notice. Picture word bubbles above their heads, like in a comic book. Visualize the words they are saying, but further, visualize how they are structuring their speech.
Notice things like natural punctuation. Where do they pause for emphasis? Are these natural commas or dashes or—gasp—semicolons? Listen for excitement! Can you hear where a natural exclamation mark might be occurring?
Zero in on speech mechanics that make them individuals. How is one person’s accent coming through? Do they drop letters? Do they rearrange sentence structure? What slang is being used?
Slang is something many writers forget to incorporate in their dialogue because it is not considered “proper.” We’ll touch on this again a little later, but I want you to remember: people don’t talk proper. Slang is human. It’s cultural. When you are trying to create dialogue that really captures humanity, bringing in aspects of an individual’s culture can help with this. And slang is a dead giveaway of culture.
After you have finished your drink, grab your notes and head home. Plunk yourself down in front of your keyboard: you have writing to do.
Side note: if you are unable to go to a coffee shop or public space for this exercise, don’t stress. Just pay close attention to a conversation you have with one of your friends or family members, or if you have a family function where you can listen to everyone for a bit, take your notes there. All you really need to do for this exercise is collect some conversational data.
I just personally have a severe coffee addiction and encourage everyone to support their local businesses.
Once you have your conversational data and are in front of your keyboard or have a pen and paper, I want you to write a dialogue between two of the people you observed. Work in their nuances. Don’t continue the conversation they were having, but instead, write them into an entirely different setting.
Again, the point here is not necessarily the content of the dialogue but being able to effectively recreate the voicing of the individuals you observed.
Exaggerate it. Go too big. Overuse their slang, over-punctuate to create their particular pattern of speech, overly muddle their accent or speaking idiosyncrasies. This should come out as a caricature of their speech rather than a perfect recreation.
Why?
It’s always easier to pull back and edit speech down than it is to inject more liveliness into it. And it is a good bet that if your dialogue is already feeling a bit flat, you probably still won’t go too big with it.
Compare what you come up with to a recently written conversation. Notice any differences?
Exercise #2: The Dinner Party
Okay, we’ve taken a moment out to observe how people talk and taken some notes on this. We’ve expanded our vocabulary a little and started considering additional ways to put sentences and phrases together to create more human dialogue. And we’ve written a sample conversation between two complete strangers that we know nothing more about than how they talk.
Not bad, so far!
The next thing we want to battle is exposition dumps. And we are going to do that by practicing storytelling through dialogue the way it might happen in real life: around a dinner table.
Only this time you won’t be using a stranger’s conversational models. You’re going to use your characters.
Let me set the table.
I told you the puns wouldn’t get better.
Your characters are sitting around a large dinner being served family-style. ALL of your characters. Not just the heroes, but the antagonists and even a few side characters as well, if you can manage! Picture where each dish is. Now give each character a goal, with one of them being the delivery of a critical story element.
For example, maybe one character is determined to get the last slice of cake on a dessert platter. Another could be getting a little drunk on the table wine and keeps derailing the conversation because they really want to tell everyone about an interesting bug they found. Get wacky. Have fun. But at least one of these characters must be delivering a story element: either advancing the plot in some way or adding additional backstory that had otherwise been missing.
Let’s do one together. We’ll have two hero characters, one villain and one side character. Hero #1 will be trying to advance the story, and is characterized as being logical and proper. Hero #2 is casual and unconcerned. The side character is chaotic and energized. And the villain is short and gruff. How might that look?
“The matter is beyond debate, my friend. There is only one course of action now. We must advance our timetables—opportunity is running short.”
“I think you’re making too much of it; we’re fine, we have time still.”
“I wish I shared your confidence—”
“GUYS! Have you tried the mashed potatoes! They have GARLIC in them!”
“James, relax. The emperor isn’t going to risk the treaty just because we lost the emerald. Especially if we find it, first.”
“I need butter.”
“No, seriously, these mashed potatoes are the best thing I have EVER HAD!”
“Archie, would you lay off the mash potatoes?”
“Remy, I do not believe you fully grasp just how dire the loss of the marital jewel is. This is linked to a tradition that goes back hundreds of thousands of years.”
“I. Need. Butter.”
“Right, so a few more days can’t possibly hurt.”
“It certainly can hurt if it means war.”
“You know what these potatoes would go best with? Like, a really, REALLY great steak!”
(Pounds table) “BUTTER. NOW!”
What can we take away from this little dialogue? Maybe that the main characters are dealing with a problem of considerable stakes, and even though they both recognize there is trouble brewing, only one of them seems particularly moved to act. Maybe we can take away that the villain has no manners at all: never asks for butter with a ‘please,’ just immediately begins demanding. But this also reveals the villain is a creature of direction: they know what they are after and will accept nothing less. We know the side character probably means well, but is a distraction to larger matters. We also can deduce that the main characters, for whatever reason, do not feel particularly threatened or concerned with the villain—they never even bother to respond to the ask for butter. What deeper dynamic could this speak to?
And notice how all of this is accomplished without ever identifying individual characters: merely by playing with the way they deliver dialogue.
Speaking of…
Writing Challenge: Write Dialogue Without Any Character Tags
Okay. We’ve done some observation of human interaction and taken notes on what makes speech unique among other people. We’ve written a conversation between two strangers using those lessons. And we’ve written a fictional dinner conversation using our own characters.
Final exercise. The ‘let’s put it all together’ exercise.
You are warmed up already for writing your own characters, so we’re going to continue here. But instead of writing something out of context as practice, we’re going to transition to writing something specifically for your in-progress manuscript.
Cue up the next scene in your story, script, or novel that has dialogue in it. Take a brief inventory of the characters involved and think about what makes them unique. Consider what the scene needs to accomplish, and have a ‘dialogue goal’: a way to move the story forward without just dumping exposition. Now start writing the exchange.
But here’s the challenge. Leave off all the character tags.
At no point during this conversation write a “so-and-so said,” or “he exclaimed,” or “she asked.” Leave the character tags blank, and just write the words flowing between the characters themselves.
This exercise is best if you have a Beta Reader who can read the scene after you’ve written it and let you know if they think it is confusing or dynamic. But even you will be able to tell the difference if you have deployed your new tools well. Can you tell who is speaking without the tags being there? Or do all the words just run together?
If you can tell the characters apart based just on the way they speak the words they are saying you’ve nailed it. You have injected a human element into their dialogue and are on the path to writing stronger conversations. If it is still unclear, go back and see where you can convey more personality in the characters’ interaction. Figure out if there is a way to sell who is talking without directly identifying them.
Now here’s the thing. You probably won’t leave this conversation like this for the final draft. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having conversational tags, and even the best-written dialogue requires it sometimes to help the reader keep the characters straight (especially in a busy conversation with multiple participants). The purpose of this exercise is not to write something usable for your manuscript, but to practice the art of adding a human element to how your characters speak.
If you take nothing else away from this article, this should be the takeaway: Human speech is imperfect. It is the imperfections that make it sound interesting and unique. Weave more imperfection into your dialogue.
Progress note. Take a moment and once again compare the conversation you’ve just written to earlier conversations in your manuscript. What do you notice has changed? Do you see improvement? Do the words feel more like a conversation between two vibrant, individual human beings?
If this is still a bit of a struggle, don’t worry—I have one more exercise for you.
Conclusion
That’s right! I’ve got a bonus exercise! This is just good practice to introduce into your writing in general, but it helps immensely with writing dialogue.
Write a character sketch for all of your major characters and the prominent secondary characters. These sketches should be as detailed as possible. Take a few days on this. Really put some time into it. Don’t just write down a description of them and their motivations in the story. Give them a little background. What kind of clothes do they wear, but more importantly why. Where do they come from originally, and how does that impact their mindset and the way they approach the world? What are their mannerisms, their idiosyncrasies, their gestures and ticks? Do they have an accent, and what tone of voice do they have? Do they have a catchphrase? What are their interests, personality, hobbies, job, finances, living situation, religion, spiritual beliefs and background?
Answer these questions in depth, and see what else you can come up with! Why?
Start thinking very intentionally about the dialogue coming out of these characters’ mouths. Are the words they are saying and the way they are forming sentences aligned with everything you know to be true about them?
For example, maybe you have a character that grew up a street-tough who eventually became educated and successful in a corporate world. Maybe that character speaks eloquently now, but occasionally drops an old slang word or catchphrase from their rougher days that identifies their background to the people around them who only grew up wealthy.
This is the kind of thing that makes for interesting dialogue. Interesting dialogue comes from interesting characters. Be interested in your characters.
Dialogue is not a science. It is very much an art. It is an art of observation and synthesis of human behavior. The more you understand people, and the deeper you understand your characters, the more compelling and believable your dialogue will be.
Last piece of advice. Start small. Work on conversations between two characters before really complicating things and introducing more and more. Don’t rush out of the gates to write a dialogue between all twenty primary characters in your epic fantasy. Start with a fireside chat.
You’ve got this.
Good talk.
Ryan Cipriani is the independent author behind the fantasy humor saga “The Mythical, Mystical, Magnificent Adventures of Krög: the Battle Prince.” Inspired by classic literature, schlocky pop-culture and retro video games, Ryan blends tongue-in-cheek jokes and satire into his storytelling, at once paying homage to his influences as much as he (politely) makes fun of them. His hallmarks are snarky, fast-moving dialogue, imaginative world-building, and sweeping, cinematic descriptions. Apart from Krög’s saga, Ryan has written a number of horror and sci-fi stories, and was a lead writer on the ill-fated online pulp fiction magazine ’The Lemonade Stand Massacre.’ He volunteers for ‘EveryLibrary’ to protect libraries and books from bans in the U.S and is an ardent supporter of libraries as a community space where all are welcome.
