Five Tips for Writing Compelling Dialogue

Dialogue is more than what your characters say. Dialogue builds your characters and drives your plot forward.

It’s important to have good dialogue in your novels, but how do you make sure your dialogue is working for you?

Here are five tips for crafting compelling dialogue.

1. Cut the small talk.

Ever noticed how no one on TV ever answers the phone like a normal person? No one says “Hello?” That’s because there’s no time and it’s boring.

Depending on your scene, someone might need to say hi to indicate they’ve just joined a conversation, but generally there’s no need to have people say hello or talk about the weather.

2. Make sure there’s a point.

People in real life talk just to talk, but not in fiction. There has to be a point or your reader is going to get bored. Think about what’s happening in the scene. What are your characters trying to achieve? What do you want your reader to take away from the exchange?

3. Use subtext.

People hardly ever say what they mean. Or they say some of what they mean and the rest is implied through body language and other cues. And yes, I just told you to go against what people do in real life, but there’s a balance to be struck between making your characters feel like real people while driving the story forward.

When writing dialogue, think about what your characters are comfortable actually saying out loud. What would they hold back? What parts do they imply using body language?

4. Use action beats and dialogue tags.

The rhythm and flow of your dialogue is important, as is your reader’s ability to know who’s saying what.

Dialogue tags show who says what using verbs of utterance (he said, she yelled). Action beats are sentences that tell you what a character did. Both can be used to tell your reader who’s speaking and add information the reader might need to know.

5. Stay true to your characters.

We all have verbal tics. Our favourite phrases and pet words. My partner, for example, says “Come on!” all the time, and it’s adorable. Your characters should also have ways that they talk based on who they are as people.

However, not all of how someone sounds when they talk is a favourite phrase or word. (Imagine if that’s the only way you could communicate! You’d be like an NPC with five responses.)

Your character’s voice should be informed by their gender, socioeconomic class, age, hobbies, etc. (If you want some help with this background work, you can find my in-depth character booklets here or download a free version here.)

There are so many ways to craft great dialogue and many tips I didn’t get into here, but these are the top five tips I give to my clients on a daily basis.

If you want to learn more about crafting dialogue, I suggest rereading one of your favourite books and looking at how dialogue is used there.

Or if you want specific help with your dialogue, book a coaching call and we can dissect both your work and some classics.