how to write dialogue in a fiction

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Novel writing ,

Writing dialogue in fiction: 7 easy steps.

By Harry Bingham

Speech gives life to stories. It breaks up long pages of action and description, it gives us an insight into a character, and it moves the action along. But how do you write effective dialogue that will add depth to your story and not take the reader away from the action?

In this article I will be guiding you through seven simple steps for keeping your fictional chat fresh, relevant and tight. As well as discussing dialogue tags and showing you dialogue examples.

Time to talk…

7 Easy Steps For Compelling Dialogue

Getting speech right is an art but, fortunately, there are a few easy rules to follow. Those rules will make writing dialogue easy – turning it from something static, heavy and un-lifelike into something that shines off the page.

Better still, dialogue should be fun to write, so don’t worry if we talk about ‘rules’. We’re not here to kill the fun. We’re here to increase it. So let’s look at some of these rules along with dialogue examples.

“Ready?” she asked.

“You bet. Let’s dive right in.”

How To Write Dialogue In 7 Simple Steps:

• Keep it tight and avoid unnecessary words
• Hitting beats and driving momentum
• Keep it oblique, where characters never quite answer each other directly
• Reveal character dynamics and emotion
• Keep your dialogue tags simple
• Get the punctuation right
• Be careful with accents

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Dialogue Rule 1: Keep It Tight

One of the biggest rules when writing with dialogue is: no spare parts. No unnecessary words. Nothing to excess.

That’s true in all writing, of course, but it has a particular acuteness (I don’t know why) when it comes to dialogue.

Dialogue Helps The Character And The Reader

Everything your character says has to have a meaning. It should either help paint a more vivid picture of the person talking (or the one they are talking to or about), or inform the other character (or the reader) of something important, or it should move the plot forward.

If it does none of those things then cut it out! Here’s an example of excess chat:

“Good morning, Henry!”

“Good morning, Diana.”

“How are you?” she asked.

“I’m well. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” She looked up at the blue sky. “Lovely weather we’re having.”

Are you asleep yet? You should be. It’s boring, right?

Sometimes you don’t need two pages of dialogue. Sometimes a simple exchange can be part of the narrative. If you want your readers to know an interaction like this has taken place, then simply say – Henry passed Diana in the street and they exchanged pleasantries.

If you want the reader to know that Henry finds Diana insufferably then you can easily sum that up by writing – Henry passed Diana in the street and they exchanged pleasantries. As always she looked up at the sky before commenting on the weather, as if every day that week hadn’t been gloriously sunny. It took ten minutes to get away, by which time his cheeks were aching from all the forced smiling.

No Soliloquies Allowed (Unless You’re Shakespeare)

This rule also applies to big chunks of dialogue. Perhaps your character has a lot to say, but if you present it as one long speech it will feel to the modern reader like they’ve been transported back to Victorian England.

So don’t do it!

Keep it spare. Allow gaps in the communication (intersperse with action and leave plenty unsaid) and let the readers fill in the blanks. It’s like you’re not even giving the readers 100% of what they want. You’re giving them 80% and letting them figure out the rest.

Take this example of dialogue, for instance, from Ian Rankin’s fourteenth Rebus crime novel,  A Question of Blood . The detective, John Rebus, is phoned up at night by his colleague:

… “Your friend, the one you were visiting that night you bumped into me …” She was on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors.

“Andy?” he said. ‘Andy Callis?”

“Can you describe him?”

Rebus froze. “What’s happened?”

“Look, it might not be him …”

“Where are you?”

“Describe him for me … that way you’re not headed all the way out here for nothing.”

That’s great isn’t it? Immediate. Vivid. Edgy. Communicative.

But look at what isn’t said. Here’s the same passage again, but with my comments in square brackets alongside the text:

[Your friend: she doesn’t even give a name or give anything but the barest little hint of who she’s speaking about. And ‘on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors’. That’s two sentences rammed together with a comma. It’s so clipped you’ve even lost the period and the second ‘she’.]

[Notice that this is exactly the way we speak. He could just have said “Andy Callis”, but in fact we often take two bites at getting the full name, like this. That broken, repetitive quality mimics exactly the way we speak . . . or at least the way we think we speak!]

[Uh-oh. The way she jumps straight from getting the name to this request indicates that something bad has happened. A lesser writer would have this character say, ‘Look, something bad has happened and I’m worried. So can you describe him?’ This clipped, ultra-brief way of writing the dialogue achieves the same effect, but (a) shows the speaker’s urgency and anxiety – she’s just rushing straight to the thing on her mind, (b) uses the gap to indicate the same thing as would have been (less well) achieved by a wordier, more direct approach, and (c) by forcing the reader to fill in that gap, you’re actually making the reader engage with intensity. This is the reader as co-writer – and that means super-engaged.]

[Again: you can’t convey the same thing with fewer words. Again, the shimmering anxiety about what has still not been said has extra force precisely because of the clipped style.]

[A brilliantly oblique way of indicating, ‘But I’m frigging terrified that it is.’ Oblique is good. Clipped is good.]

[A  non-sequitur,  but totally consistent with the way people think and talk.]

[Just as he hasn’t responded to what she just said, now it’s her turn to ignore him. Again, it’s the absences that make this bit of dialogue live. Just imagine how flaccid this same bit would be if she had said, “Let’s not get into where I am right now. Look, it’s important that you describe him for me . . .”]

Gaps are good. They make the reader work, and a ton of emotion and inference swirls in the gaps.

Want to achieve the same effect?  Copy Rankin. Keep it tight. And read this .

Dialogue Rule 2: Watch Those Beats

More often than not, great story moments hinge on character exchanges with dialogue at their heart.  Even very short dialogue can help drive a plot, showing more about your characters and what’s happening than longer descriptions can.

(How come? It’s the thing we just talked about: how very spare dialogue makes the reader work hard to figure out what’s going on, and there’s an intensity of energy released as a result.)

But right now, I want to focus on the way dialogue needs to create its own emotional beats. So that the action of the scene and the dialogue being spoken becomes the one same thing.

Here’s how screenwriting guru Robert McKee puts it:

Dialogue is not [real-life] conversation. … Dialogue [in writing] … must have direction. Each exchange of dialogue  must turn the beats of the scene  … yet it must sound like talk.

This excerpt from Thomas Harris’  The Silence of the Lambs  is a beautiful example of exactly that. It’s  short as heck, but just see what happens.

As before, I’ll give you the dialogue itself, then the same thing again with my notes on it:

“The significance of the chrysalis is change. Worm into butterfly, or moth. Billy thinks he wants to change. … You’re very close, Clarice, to the way you’re going to catch him, do you realize that?”

“No, Dr Lecter.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind telling me what happened to you after your father’s death.”

Starling looked at the scarred top of the school desk.

“I don’t imagine the answer’s in your papers, Clarice.”

Here Hannibal holds power, despite being behind bars. He establishes control, and Clarice can’t push back, even as he pushes her. We see her hesitancy, Hannibal’s power. (And in such few words! Can you even imagine trying to do as much as this without the power of dialogue to aid you? I seriously doubt if you could.)

But again, here’s what’s happening in detail

[ Beat 1:  What a great line of dialogue! Invoking the chrysalis and moth here is magical language. it’s like Hannibal is the magician, the Prospero figure. Look too at the switch of tack in the middle of this snippet. First he’s talking about Billy wanting to change – then about Clarice’s ability to find him. Even that change of tack emphasises his power: he’s the one calling the shots here; she’s always running to keep up.]

[ Beat 2 : Clarice sounds controlled, formal. That’s not so interesting yet . . . but it helps define her starting point in this conversation, so we can see the gap between this and where she ends up.]

[ Beat 3 : Another whole jump in the dialogue. We weren’t expecting this, and we’re already feeling the electricity in the question. How will Clarice react? Will she stay formal and controlled?]

[ Beat 4 : Nope! She’s still controlled, just about, but we can see this question has daunted her. She can’t even answer it! Can’t even look at the person she’s talking to. Notice as well that we’re outside quotation marks here – she’s not talking, she’s just looking at something. Writing great dialogue is about those sections of silence too – the bits that happen beyond the quotation marks.]

[ Beat 5:  And Lecter immediately calls attention to her reaction, thereby emphasising that he’s observed her and knows what it means.]

Overall, you can see that not one single element of this dialogue leaves the emotional balance unaltered. Every line of dialogue alters the emotional landscape in some way. That’s why it feels so intense & engaging.

Want to achieve the same effect?  Just check your own dialogue, line by line. Do you feel that emotional movement there all the time? If not, just delete anything unnecessary until you  feel the intensity and emotional movement  increase.

Dialogue Rule 3: Keep It Oblique

One more point, which sits kind of parallel to the bits we’ve talked about already.

If you want to create some terrible dialogue, you’d probably come up with something like this (very similar to my previous bad dialogue example):

“Hey Judy.”

“Hey, Brett.”

“Yeah, not bad. What do you say? Maybe play some tennis later?”

“Tennis? I’m not sure about that. I think it’s going to rain.”

Tell me honestly: were you not just about ready to scream there? If that dialogue had continued like that for much longer, you probably would have done.

And the reason is simple. It was direct, not oblique.

So direct dialogue is where person X says something or asks a question, and person Y answers in the most logical, direct way.

We hate that! As readers, we hate it.

Oblique dialogue is where people never quite answer each other in a straight way. Where a question doesn’t get a straightforward response. Where random connections are made. Where we never quite know where things are going.

As readers, we love that. It’s dialogue to die for.

And if you want to see oblique dialogue in action, here’s a snippet from Aaron Sorkin’s  The Social Network . (Because dialogue in screenwriting should follow the same rules as a novel. Some may argue that it should be even more snipped!)

So here goes. This is the young Mark Zuckerberg talking with a lawyer:

Lawyer:  “Let me re-phrase this. You sent my clients sixteen emails. In the first fifteen, you didn’t raise any concerns.” MZ:  ‘Was that a question?’ L:  “In the sixteenth email you raised concerns about the site’s functionality. Were you leading them on for 6 weeks?” MZ:  ‘No.’ L:  “Then why didn’t you raise any of these concerns before?” MZ:  ‘It’s raining.’ L:  “I’m sorry?” MZ:  ‘It just started raining.’ L:  “Mr. Zuckerberg do I have your full attention?” MZ:  ‘No.’ L:  “Do you think I deserve it?” MZ:  ‘What?’ L:  “Do you think I deserve your full attention?”

I won’t discuss that in any detail, because the technique really leaps out at you. It’s particularly visible here, because the lawyer wants and expects to have a direct conversation. ( I ask a question about X, you give me a reply that deals with X. I ask a question about Y, and … ) Zuckerberg here is playing a totally different game, and it keeps throwing the lawyer off track – and entertaining the viewer/reader too.

Want to achieve the same effect?  Just keep your dialogue not quite joined up. People should drop in random things, go off at tangents, talk in non-sequiturs, respond to an emotional implication not the thing that’s directly on the page – or anything. Just keep it broken. Keep it exciting!

This not only moves the story forward but also says a lot about the character speaking.

Dialogue Rule 4: Reveal Character Dynamics And Emotion

Most writers use dialogue to impart information – it’s a great way of explaining things. But it’s also a perfect (and subtler) tool to describe a character, highlighting their mannerisms and personality. It can also help the reader connect with the character…or hate them.

Let’s take a look here at Stephen Chbosky’s  The Perks of Being a Wallflower  as another dialogue example.

Here we have two characters, when protagonist Charlie, a high school freshman, learns his long-time crush, Sam, may like him back, after all. Here’s how that dialogue goes:

“Okay, Charlie … I’ll make this easy. When that whole thing with Craig was over, what did you think?”

… “Well, I thought a lot of things. But mostly, I thought your being sad was much more important to me than Craig not being your boyfriend anymore. And if it meant that I would never get to think of you that way, as long as you were happy, it was okay.” …

… “I can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things.”

“Like what?” …

“I don’t know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date.”

The words sound human.

Sam and Charlie are tentative, exploratory – and whilst words do the job of ‘turning’ a scene, both receiving new information, driving action on – we also see their dynamic.

And so we connect to them.

We see Charlie’s reactive nature, checking with Sam what she wants him to do. Sam throws out ideas, but it’s clear she wants him to be doing this thinking, not her, subverting Charlie’s idea of passive selflessness as love.

The dialogue shows us the characters, as clearly as anything else in the whole book. Shows us their differences, their tentativeness, their longing.

Want to achieve the same effect?  Understand your characters as fully as you can. The more you can do this, the more naturally you’ll write dialogue that’s right  for them . You can get  tips on knowing your characters here .

Dialogue Rule 5: Keep Your Dialogue Tags Simple

A dialogue tag is the part that helps us know who is saying what – the he said/she said part of dialogue that helps the reader follow the conversation.

Keep it Simple

A lot of writers try to add colour to their writing by showering it with a lot of vigorous dialogue tags. Like this:

“Not so,” she spat.

“I say that it is,” he roared.

“I know a common blackbird when I see it,” she defended.

“Oh. You’re a professional ornithologist now?” he attacked, sarcastically.

That’s pretty feeble dialogue, no matter what. But the biggest part of the problem is simply that the dialogue tags ( spat, roared , and so on) are so highly coloured, they take away interest from the dialogue itself – and it’s the words spoken by the characters that ought to capture the reader’s interest.

Almost always, therefore, you should confine yourself to the blandest of words:

She answered

And so on. Truth is, in a two-handed dialogue where it’s obvious who’s speaking, you don’t even need the word  said .

Get Creative

As an alternative, you can have action and body language demonstrate who is saying what and their emotions behind it. The scene description can say just as much as the dialogue.

Here’s another example of the same exchange:

Joan clenched her jaw. “Not so!”

“I say that it is.”

His voice kept rising with every word he shouted, but Joan was not going to be deterred.

“I know a common blackbird when I see it.”

“Oh. You’re a professional ornithologist now?”

Not one dialogue tag nor adverb was used there, but we still know who said what and how it was delivered. And , if you’re really smart and develop how your characters speak (pacing, words, syntax and speech pattern), a reader can know who is talking simply by how they’re talking.

The simple rule: use dialogue tags as invisibly as you can. I’ve written about a million words of my Fiona Griffiths series, and I doubt if I’ve used words other than say / reply and other very simple tags more than a dozen or so times in the entire series.

Keep it simple!

Dialogue Rule 6: Get The Punctuation Right

Dialogue punctuation is so simple and important, and looks so bad if you get it wrong. Here are eight simple rules to know before your character starts to speak:

• Each new line of dialogue (i.e: each new speaker) needs a new paragraph – even if the dialogue is very short.
• Action sentences within dialogue get their own paragraphs too. The first paragraph of a chapter or section starts on the far left, and the next paragraph (whether it starts with dialogue or not) is indented.
• The only exception to this rule is if the sentence interrupts an otherwise continuous piece of dialogue. for example:  “Yes,” she said. She brushed away a fly that had landed on her cheek. “I do think hippos are the best animals.”
• When you are ending a line of dialogue with  he said / she said , the sentence beforehand ends with a comma not a full stop (or period), as in this for example:  “Yes,” she said.
• If the line of dialogue ends with a question mark or exclamation mark, you still don’t have a capital letter for  he said / she said .  For example:  “You like hippos?” he said .
• If the he said / she said lives in the middle of one continuous sentence of dialogue, you need to deploy those commas like a comma-deploying ninja. Like this for example:  “If you like hippos,” he said, “then you deserve to be sat on by one.”
• And use quotation marks, dummy. You know to do that, without me telling you, right? (Yes, yes, some serious writers of literary fiction have written entire novels without one speech mark – but they are the exception to the rule.)
• Use the exclamation point sparingly. Otherwise! Your! Book! Is! Going! To! Sound! Very! Hysterical!

Dialogue Rule 7: Accents And Verbal Mannerisms

Realistic dialogue is important, but writing dialogue is not the same as speaking. Remember that the reader’s experience has to be smooth and enjoyable, so even if your character has an accent, speech impediment, or talks excessively…writing it exactly as it’s spoken doesn’t always work.

If you want to show that your character is from a certain part of the UK, it often helps to add a smattering of colloquial words or

In The Last Thing To Burn by Will Dean, the antagonist, Len, has an accent (Yorkshire or Lancashire, it’s obvious but never stated). The protagonist is trapped inside this man’s home, she has no idea where she is, but by describing the endless fields and hearing his subtle accent the reader knows exactly where in the UK she’s trapped.

Len says things like:

‘Going to go feed pigs’ and ‘There’s a good lass.’

You can highlight location, a character’s age, and their social standing simply by giving a nod to their accent.

On the flip-side, if they have a foreign accent, it can sometimes be too jarring to write dialogue exactly as it sounds.

‘Amma gonna eata the pizza’ is an awful way to write an Italian accent – it’s verging on racist. Try to avoid that. Instead, simply mention they have an Italian accent and let the reader fill in the blanks.

Accents Written Well

But, of course, there’s always an exception!

Irvine Welsh writes English in his native Scottish dialect and it’s exemplary – but nothing something we would recommend for a novice writer.

Here’s an excerpt from Trainspotting:

Third time lucky.  It wis like Sick Boy telt us: you’ve got tae know what it’s like tae try tae come off it before ye can actually dae it.  You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.  He could be right.  Anywey, this time ah’ve prepared. 

Perhaps, if you have a Scottish character in your novel you may want them to speak in a strong accent. But getting it wrong can ruin an entire novel, so unless you are very skilled and very confident, stick to the odd colloquialism or word and leave it there.

Verbal Mannerisms

Whether you realise it or not, we all have speech patterns. Some of us speak slowly, others pause, people also trail off mid-sentence. Some people also use verbal mannerisms, such as adding a word to a sentence that is unnecessary but becomes a personal tic (such as ‘man’, ‘like’ or ‘innit’). Or repeat favourite words. These can be influenced by age, background, class, and the period in which the book is set.

Here’s an example of two people talking. I won’t mention their ages or backgrounds, but see if you can guess.

“Chill, Bro.”

“Chill? I’m far from chilled, you scoundrel. That’s my flower bed you’ve just dug up.”

“I found something, though. It was sticking out the ground.”

“Outrageous behaviour. So… You… One simply can’t go around digging up people’s gardens!”

“Yeah. And what?” They both stared down at the swollen white lumps pressing out of the soil like plump snowdrops.”What is it, though?”

Harold swallowed. “Fingers.”

A Few Last Dialogue Rules

If want some great examples of how to write in dialogue, read plays or screenplays for inspiration. Read Tennessee Williams or Henrik Ibsen. Anything by Elmore Leonard is great. Ditto Raymond Chandler or Donna Tartt.

Some last tips:

• Keep speeches short . If a speech runs for more than three sentences or so, it (usually) risks being too long. Break it up with some action or someone else talking.
• Ensure characters speak in their own voice . And make sure your characters don’t sound the same as each other. Remember mannerisms, speech patterns, and how age and background influences speech.
• Add intrigue . Add slang and banter. Lace character chats with foreshadowing. You needn’t be writing a thriller to do this.
• Get in late and out early.  Don’t bother with small talk. Decide the point of each interaction, begin with it as late as possible, ending as soon as your point is made.
• Interruption is good.  So are characters pursuing their own thought processes and not quite engaging with the other.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 5 typesetting rules of writing dialogue.

Part of the editing process is to ensure you format dialogue correctly. Formatting dialogue correctly means remembering 5 simple steps:

• Only spoken words go within quotation marks.
• Use a separate sentence for every new thing someone says or does.
• Punctuation marks stay inside quotation marks and don’t forget about closing quotation marks at the end of the sentence.
• You can use single quotation marks or double quotation marks – but you must be consistent!
• Beware of capital letters. Always at the start of a sentence and after the quotations mark.

How Can You Use Everyday Life To Perfect Your Dialogue?

Listening to people speak will really help you perfect good dialogue. Sit in a cafe and people watch. Watch their body language and how they express themselves. Their verbal mannerisms, tics, how they choose their words, the syntax, speech patterns and turns of phrase. Make notes (without being spotted) and look out for contrasting word choices and personas.

What Is A Bad Example Of Dialogue?

There are plenty to choose from above – but the worst things you can do include:

• Using too many words
• Writing an accent how it’s heard (unless you are Irvine Welsh, which most people are not)
• Writing dialogue that’s irrelevant or misleading
• Using too many dialogue tags (or none at all)
• Bad punctuation – remember dialogue formatting
• Avoid long speeches

How Do You Start Dialogue?

There are many ways to start dialogue. You can ease into it, by introducing the character to the scene. Or you can jump in median res, slap bang into the centre of the action. Much like life, sometimes we hear a person’s voice before we see them – they pop up out of nowhere – and sometimes we call them or walk into a room where they are, and we have rehearsed what we plan to say.

See what works best for your scene, your characters, and the genre you are writing in (dialogue in a crime thriller will sound very different to dialogue in a young adult novel, for instance).

That’s All I Have To Say About That

We really hope you have found this article interesting and that you have now found the confidence to tackle the dialogue in your novel.

What your characters say and how they say it can make the difference between a good book and one that everyone is talking about. So get eavesdropping, get practising, and read as many books and plays as you can to create better dialogue.

Practice makes perfect and don’t forget to enjoy yourself!

About the author

Harry has written a variety of books over the years, notching up multiple six-figure deals and relationships with each of the world’s three largest trade publishers. His work has been critically acclaimed across the globe, has been adapted for TV, and is currently the subject of a major new screen deal. He’s also written non-fiction, short stories, and has worked as ghost/editor on a number of exciting projects. Harry also self-publishes some of his work, and loves doing so. His Fiona Griffiths series in particular has done really well in the US, where it’s been self-published since 2015. View his website , his Amazon profile , his Twitter . He's been reviewed in Kirkus, the Boston Globe , USA Today , The Seattle Times , The Washington Post , Library Journal , Publishers Weekly , CulturMag (Germany), Frankfurter Allgemeine , The Daily Mail , The Sunday Times , The Daily Telegraph , The Guardian , and many other places besides. His work has appeared on TV, via Bonafide . And go take a look at what he thinks about Blick Rothenberg . You might also want to watch our " Blick Rothenberg - The Truth " video, if you want to know how badly an accountancy firm can behave.

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How to Write Dialogue: 7 Great Tips for Writers (With Examples)

Hannah Yang

Great dialogue serves multiple purposes. It moves your plot forward. It develops your characters and it makes the story more engaging.

It’s not easy to do all these things at once, but when you master the art of writing dialogue, readers won’t be able to put your book down.

In this article, we will teach you the rules for writing dialogue and share our top dialogue tips that will make your story sing.

Dialogue Rules

How to format dialogue, 7 tips for writing dialogue in a story or book, dialogue examples.

Before we look at tips for writing powerful dialogue , let’s start with an overview of basic dialogue rules.

• Start a new paragraph each time there’s a new speaker. Whenever a new character begins to speak, you should give them their own paragraph. This rule makes it easier for the reader to follow the conversation.
• Keep all speech between quotation marks . Everything that a character says should go between quotation marks, including the final punctuation marks. For example, periods and commas should always come before the final quotation mark, not after.
• Don’t use end quotations for paragraphs within long speeches. If a single character speaks for such a long time that you break their speech up into multiple paragraphs, you should omit the quotation marks at the end of each paragraph until they stop talking. The final quotation mark indicates that their speech is over.
• Use single quotes when a character quotes someone else. Whenever you have a quote within a quote, you should use single quotation marks (e.g. She said, “He had me at ‘hello.’”)
• Dialogue tags are optional. A dialogue tag is anything that indicates which character is speaking and how, such as “she said,” “he whispered,” or “I shouted.” You can use dialogue tags if you want to give the reader more information about who’s speaking, but you can also choose to omit them if you want the dialogue to flow more naturally. We’ll be discussing more about this rule in our tips below.

Let’s walk through some examples of how to format dialogue .

The simplest formatting option is to write a line of speech without a dialogue tag. In this case, the entire line of speech goes within the quotation marks, including the period at the end.

• Example: “I think I need a nap.”

Another common formatting option is to write a single line of speech that ends with a dialogue tag.

Here, you should separate the speech from the dialogue tag with a comma, which should go inside the quotation marks.

• Example: “I think I need a nap,” Maria said.

You can also write a line of speech that starts with a dialogue tag. Again, you separate the dialogue tag with a comma, but this time, the comma goes outside the quotation marks.

• Example: Maria said, “I think I need a nap.”

As an alternative to a simple dialogue tag, you can write a line of speech accompanied by an action beat. In this case, you should use a period rather than a comma, because the action beat is a full sentence.

• Example: Maria sat down on the bed. “I think I need a nap.”

Finally, you can choose to include an action beat while the character is talking.

In this case, you would use em-dashes to separate the action from the dialogue, to indicate that the action happens without a pause in the speech.

• Example: “I think I need”—Maria sat down on the bed—“a nap.”

Now that we’ve covered the basics, we can move on to the more nuanced aspects of writing dialogue.

Here are our seven favorite tips for writing strong, powerful dialogue that will keep your readers engaged.

Tip #1: Create Character Voices

Dialogue is a great way to reveal your characters. What your characters say, and how they say it, can tell us so much about what kind of people they are.

Some characters are witty and gregarious. Others are timid and unobtrusive.

Speech patterns vary drastically from person to person.

To make someone stop talking to them, one character might say “I would rather not talk about this right now,” while another might say, “Shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”

When you’re writing dialogue, think about your character’s education level, personality, and interests.

• What kind of slang do they use?
• Do they prefer long or short sentences?
• Do they ask questions or make assertions?

Each character should have their own voice.

Ideally, you want to write dialogue that lets your reader identify the person speaking at any point in your story just by looking at what’s between the quotation marks.

Tip #2: Write Realistic Dialogue

Good dialogue should sound natural. Listen to how people talk in real life and try to replicate it on the page when you write dialogue.

Don’t be afraid to break the rules of grammar, or to use an occasional exclamation point to punctuate dialogue.

It’s okay to use contractions , sentence fragments , and run-on sentences , even if you wouldn’t use them in other parts of the story.

This doesn’t mean that realistic dialogue should sound exactly like the way people speak in the real world.

If you’ve ever read a court transcript, you know that real-life speech is riddled with “ums” and “ahs” and repeated words and phrases. A few paragraphs of this might put your readers to sleep.

Compelling dialogue should sound like a real conversation, while still being wittier, smoother, and better worded than real speech.

Tip #3: Simplify Your Dialogue Tags

A dialogue tag is anything that tells the reader which character is talking within that same paragraph, such as “she said” or “I asked.”

When you’re writing dialogue, remember that simple dialogue tags are the most effective .

Often, you can omit dialogue tags after the conversation has started flowing, especially if only two characters are participating.

The reader will be able to keep up with who’s speaking as long as you start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes.

When you do need to use a dialogue tag, a simple “he said” or “she said” will do the trick.

Our brains generally skip over the word “said” when we’re reading, while other dialogue tags are a distraction.

A common mistake beginner writers make is to avoid using the word “said.”

Characters in amateur novels tend to mutter, whisper, declare, or chuckle at every line of dialogue. This feels overblown and distracts from the actual story.

Another common mistake is to attach an adverb to the word “said.” Characters in amateur novels rarely just say things—they have to say things loudly, quietly, cheerfully, or angrily.

If you’re writing great dialogue, readers should be able to figure out whether your character is cheerful or angry from what’s within the quotation marks.

The only exception to this rule is if the dialogue tag contradicts the dialogue itself. For example, consider this sentence:

• “You’ve ruined my life,” she said angrily.

The word “angrily” is redundant here because the words inside the quotation marks already imply that the character is speaking angrily.

In contrast, consider this sentence:

• “You’ve ruined my life,” she said thoughtfully.

Here, the word “thoughtfully” is well-placed because it contrasts with what we might otherwise assume. It adds an additional nuance to the sentence inside the quotation marks.

You can use the ProWritingAid dialogue check when you write dialogue to make sure your dialogue tags are pulling their weight and aren’t distracting readers from the main storyline.

Sign up for your free ProWritingAid account to check your dialogue tags today.

Tip #4: Balance Speech with Action

When you’re writing dialogue, you can use action beats —descriptions of body language or physical action—to show what each character is doing throughout the conversation.

Learning how to write action beats is an important component of learning how to write dialogue.

Good dialogue becomes even more interesting when the characters are doing something active at the same time.

You can watch people in real life, or even characters in movies, to see what kinds of body language they have. Some pick at their fingernails. Some pace the room. Some tap their feet on the floor.

Including physical action when writing dialogue can have multiple benefits:

• It changes the pace of your dialogue and makes the rhythm more interesting
• It prevents “white room syndrome,” which is when a scene feels like it’s happening in a white room because it’s all dialogue and no description
• It shows the reader who’s speaking without using speaker tags

You can decide how often to include physical descriptions in each scene. All dialogue has an ebb and flow to it, and you can use beats to control the pace of your dialogue scenes.

If you want a lot of tension in your scene, you can use fewer action beats to let the dialogue ping-pong back and forth.

If you want a slower scene, you can write dialogue that includes long, detailed action beats to help the reader relax.

You should start a separate sentence, or even a new paragraph, for each of these longer beats.

Tip #5: Write Conversations with Subtext

Every conversation has subtext , because we rarely say exactly what we mean. The best dialogue should include both what is said and what is not said.

I once had a roommate who cared a lot about the tidiness of our apartment, but would never say it outright. We soon figured out that whenever she said something like “I might bring some friends over tonight,” what she meant was “Please wash your dishes, because there are no clean plates left for my friends to use.”

When you’re writing dialogue, it’s important to think about what’s not being said. Even pleasant conversations can hide a lot beneath the surface.

Is one character secretly mad at the other?

Is one secretly in love with the other?

Is one thinking about tomorrow’s math test and only pretending to pay attention to what the other person is saying?

Personally, I find it really hard to use subtext when I write dialogue from scratch.

In my first drafts I let my characters say what they really mean. Then, when I’m editing, I go back and figure out how to convey the same information through subtext instead.

Tip #6: Show, Don’t Tell

When I was in high school, I once wrote a story in which the protagonist’s mother tells her: “As you know, Susan, your dad left us when you were five.”

I’ve learned a lot about the writing craft since high school, but it doesn’t take a brilliant writer to figure out that this is not something any mother would say to her daughter in real life.

The reason I wrote that line of dialogue was because I wanted to tell the reader when Susan last saw her father, but I didn’t do it in a realistic way.

Don’t shoehorn information into your characters’ conversations if they’re not likely to say it to each other.

One useful trick is to have your characters get into an argument.

You can convey a lot of information about a topic through their conflicting opinions, without making it sound like either of the characters is saying things for the reader’s benefit.

Here’s one way my high school self could have conveyed the same information in a more realistic way in just a few lines:

Susan: “Why didn’t you tell me Dad was leaving? Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?”

Mom: “You were only five. I wanted to protect you.”

Tip #7: Keep Your Dialogue Concise

Dialogue tends to flow out easily when you’re drafting your story, so in the editing process, you’ll need to be ruthless. Cut anything that doesn’t move the story forward.

Try not to write dialogue that feels like small talk.

You can eliminate most hellos and goodbyes, or summarize them instead of showing them. Readers don’t want to waste their time reading dialogue that they hear every day.

In addition, try not to write dialogue with too many trigger phrases, which are questions that trigger the next line of dialogue, such as:

• “And then what?”
• “What do you mean?”

It’s tempting to slip these in when you’re writing dialogue because they keep the conversation flowing. I still catch myself doing this from time to time.

Remember that you don’t need three lines of dialogue when one line could accomplish the same thing.

Let’s look at some dialogue examples from successful novels that follow each of our seven tips.

Dialogue Example #1: How to Create Character Voice

Let’s start with an example of a character with a distinct voice from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.

“What happened, Harry? What happened? Is he ill? But you can cure him, can’t you?” Colin had run down from his seat and was now dancing alongside them as they left the field. Ron gave a huge heave and more slugs dribbled down his front. “Oooh,” said Colin, fascinated and raising his camera. “Can you hold him still, Harry?”

Most readers could figure out that this was Colin Creevey speaking, even if his name hadn’t been mentioned in the passage.

This is because Colin Creevey is the only character who speaks with such extreme enthusiasm, even at a time when Ron is belching slugs.

This snippet of written dialogue does a great job of showing us Colin’s personality and how much he worships his hero Harry.

Dialogue Example #2: How to Write Realistic Dialogue

Here’s an example of how to write dialogue that feels realistic from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

“As much as I love this land, some days I think about leaving it,” Babi said. “Where to?” “Anyplace where it’s easy to forget. Pakistan first, I suppose. For a year, maybe two. Wait for our paperwork to get processed.” “And then?” “And then, well, it is a big world. Maybe America. Somewhere near the sea. Like California.”

Notice the punctuation and grammar that these two characters use when they speak.

There are many sentence fragments in this conversation like, “Anyplace where it’s easy to forget.” and “Somewhere near the sea.”

Babi often omits the verbs from his sentences, just like people do in real life. He speaks in short fragments instead of long, flowing paragraphs.

This dialogue shows who Babi is and feels similar to the way a real person would talk, while still remaining concise.

Dialogue Example #3: How to Simplify Your Dialogue Tags

Here’s an example of effective dialogue tags in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

In this passage, the narrator’s been caught exploring the forbidden west wing of her new husband’s house, and she’s trying to make excuses for being there.

“I lost my way,” I said, “I was trying to find my room.” “You have come to the opposite side of the house,” she said; “this is the west wing.” “Yes, I know,” I said. “Did you go into any of the rooms?” she asked me. “No,” I said. “No, I just opened a door, I did not go in. Everything was dark, covered up in dust sheets. I’m sorry. I did not mean to disturb anything. I expect you like to keep all this shut up.” “If you wish to open up the rooms I will have it done,” she said; “you have only to tell me. The rooms are all furnished, and can be used.” “Oh, no,” I said. “No. I did not mean you to think that.”

In this passage, the only dialogue tags Du Maurier uses are “I said,” “she said,” and “she asked.”

Even so, you can feel the narrator’s dread and nervousness. Her emotions are conveyed through what she actually says, rather than through the dialogue tags.

This is a splendid example of evocative speech that doesn’t need fancy dialogue tags to make it come to life.

Dialogue Example #4: How to Balance Speech with Action

Let’s look at a passage from The Princess Bride by William Goldman, where dialogue is melded with physical action.

With a smile the hunchback pushed the knife harder against Buttercup’s throat. It was about to bring blood. “If you wish her dead, by all means keep moving," Vizzini said. The man in black froze. “Better,” Vizzini nodded. No sound now beneath the moonlight. “I understand completely what you are trying to do,” the Sicilian said finally, “and I want it quite clear that I resent your behavior. You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen, and I think it quite ungentlemanly.” “Let me explain,” the man in black began, starting to edge forward. “You’re killing her!” the Sicilian screamed, shoving harder with the knife. A drop of blood appeared now at Buttercup’s throat, red against white.

In this passage, William Goldman brings our attention seamlessly from the action to the dialogue and back again.

This makes the scene twice as interesting, because we’re paying attention not just to what Vizzini and the man in black are saying, but also to what they’re doing.

This is a great way to keep tension high and move the plot forward.

Dialogue Example #5: How to Write Conversations with Subtext

This example from Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card shows how to write dialogue with subtext.

Here is the scene when Ender and his sister Valentine are reunited for the first time, after Ender’s spent most of his childhood away from home training to be a soldier.

Ender didn’t wave when she walked down the hill toward him, didn’t smile when she stepped onto the floating boat slip. But she knew that he was glad to see her, knew it because of the way his eyes never left her face. “You’re bigger than I remembered,” she said stupidly. “You too,” he said. “I also remembered that you were beautiful.” “Memory does play tricks on us.” “No. Your face is the same, but I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore. Come on. Let’s go out into the lake.”

In this scene, we can tell that Valentine missed her brother terribly, and that Ender went through a lot of trauma at Battle School, without either of them saying it outright.

The conversation could have started with Valentine saying “I missed you,” but instead, she goes for a subtler opening: “You’re bigger than I remembered.”

Similarly, Ender could say “You have no idea what I’ve been through,” but instead he says, “I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore.”

We can deduce what each of these characters is thinking and feeling from what they say and from what they leave unsaid.

Dialogue Example #6: How to Show, Not Tell

Let’s look at an example from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. This scene is the story’s first introduction of the ancient creatures called the Chandrian.

“I didn’t know the Chandrian were demons,” the boy said. “I’d heard—” “They ain’t demons,” Jake said firmly. “They were the first six people to refuse Tehlu’s choice of the path, and he cursed them to wander the corners—” “Are you telling this story, Jacob Walker?” Cob said sharply. “Cause if you are, I’ll just let you get on with it.” The two men glared at each other for a long moment. Eventually Jake looked away, muttering something that could, conceivably, have been an apology. Cob turned back to the boy. “That’s the mystery of the Chandrian,” he explained. “Where do they come from? Where do they go after they’ve done their bloody deeds? Are they men who sold their souls? Demons? Spirits? No one knows.” Cob shot Jake a profoundly disdainful look. “Though every half-wit claims he knows...”

The three characters taking part in this conversation all know what the Chandrian are.

Imagine if Cob had said “As we all know, the Chandrian are mysterious demon-spirits.” We would feel like he was talking to us, not to the two other characters.

Instead, Rothfuss has all three characters try to explain their own understanding of what the Chandrian are, and then shoot each other’s explanations down.

When Cob reprimands Jake for interrupting him and then calls him a half-wit for claiming to know what he’s talking about, it feels like a realistic interaction.

This is a clever way for Rothfuss to introduce the Chandrian in a believable way.

Dialogue Example #7: How to Keep Your Dialogue Concise

Here’s an example of concise dialogue from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

“Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?” he said. “No, sir! I certainly don’t,” I said. I wished to hell he’d stop calling me “boy” all the time. He tried chucking my exam paper on the bed when he was through with it. Only, he missed again, naturally. I had to get up again and pick it up and put it on top of the Atlantic Monthly. It’s boring to do that every two minutes. “What would you have done in my place?” he said. “Tell the truth, boy.” Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would’ve done exactly the same thing if I’d been in his place, and how most people didn’t appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull.

Here, the last paragraph diverges from the prior ones. After the teacher says “Tell the truth, boy,” the rest of the conversation is summarized, rather than shown.

The summary of what the narrator says in the last paragraph—“I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff”—serves to hammer home that this is the type of “old bull” that the narrator has fed to his teachers over and over before.

It doesn’t need to be shown because it’s not important to the narrator—it’s just “all that stuff.”

Salinger could have written out the entire conversation in dialogue, but instead he kept the dialogue concise.

Final Words

Now you know how to write clear, effective dialogue! Start with the basic rules for dialogue and try implementing the more advanced tips as you go.

What are your favorite dialogue tips? Let us know in the comments below.

Do you know how to craft memorable, compelling characters? Download this free book now:

Creating Legends: How to Craft Characters Readers Adore… or Despise!

This guide is for all the writers out there who want to create compelling, engaging, relatable characters that readers will adore… or despise., learn how to invent characters based on actions, motives, and their past..

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction writer who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, The Dark, and elsewhere, and two of her stories have been finalists for the Locus Award. Her favorite hobbies include watercolor painting, playing guitar, and rock climbing. You can follow her work on hannahyang.com, or subscribe to her newsletter for publication updates.

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How to Write Dialogue: 3 Effective Ways to Write Dialogue

Learning how to write dialogue is one of the hardest things to write well, but it’s also vital to telling an impactful story.

If you’re writing a novel or even if you're writing a nonfiction book , nailing dialogue is key to maintaining tone, characterization, and pacing in your story. 

We’re going to go over what dialogue is, how to hit it out of the park, and tips that you can apply to your own stories–no matter what genre you’re writing in! 

This guide teaches how to write a dialogue, including:

What is dialogue?

Dialogue is defined as a conversation between two or more characters in a written work, be that a play, book, movie, or stage production. That’s it–if you’ve got characters in your story and they’re having a spoken conversation, you’ve got dialogue.

Here’s an example of a dialogue exchange between two imaginary characters: “How’s it goin’?” Smith asked.  

Rosa sighed. “I suppose I’m alright, but I’ve had a dreadful day.” 

“Aw, that’s too bad. C’mon, let’s get milkshakes.” 

As in the example above, quotation marks are often used to notate dialogue, but not always.

Some authors like James Joyce and Cormac McCarthy take the stylistic liberty of removing the quotation marks from their dialogue.

Here’s an example of dialogue without quotation marks from McCarthy’s novel, The Road. 

Hi, Papa, he said.

I'm right here.

Without the quotation marks, the reader uses context and voice to determine who’s talking, which we’ll talk about in more detail later on.

For new writers, it’s generally best to keep the quotations in, as it can become confusing to readers to take out punctuation without a clear reason for doing so. 

How to write dialogue

So, a conversation between characters. Easy, right? 

Many people think that learning how to write a dialogue is as simple as writing a descriptive paragraph about a character's appearance or even writing about the thoughts they are having in their head. But it's more than that.

If you've ever set down to write a dialogue and make it sound authentic, you already know that writing a conversation between multiple characters can be strangely challenging. So, now that we’ve talked about what dialogue is and what it’s for, let’s talk about how to write dialogue that actually sounds real – and true to your characters.

Related: Narrative Writing Prompts

1. Mimic real people… sort of 

Your characters should be fleshed out like real people, regardless of your genre, and they should act like real people in your story. By extension, they should also talk like real people. 

What’s the most effective way to convey dialogue that’s realistic? Mimic real conversations. 

Sort of. 

See, you should indeed listen to people talking to get an idea of how conversations flow, nonverbal cues, and voice. But if you were to write down word-for-word a conversation between two people, you’d likely find that it’s incoherent.

But real-world conversations go in circles, dive off on tangents, and ramble. Unless that's a character trait you want to intentionally include, we don’t want that stuff in our fiction. 

Not sure what I mean?

Go listen in to a conversation at your local coffee shop. Listen to how often someone gets interrupted or goes on a separate tangent. 

So yes, DO listen to real-world conversations for flow and voice to learn how to write dialogue like a pro. Different people from different backgrounds notice and observe things in unique ways. And this has the ability to enhance your characters' dialogue.

But pay attention to what can be cut out of those conversations. 

Then, find the best of both worlds. Take the body language, flow, and distinct voice from real-world conversations and apply them to fiction. Omit the changes in structure and lack of clarity that simply won't enhance your writing.

It’s a tough balancing act, but it makes for dynamic, realistic dialogue. 

Related: 4 Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills

2. Give each character a distinct voice 

Like we mentioned before, it’s important to use real-world examples of conversations to help you understand how to get across a character’s voice. 

But what is their voice? 

In this section, we aren’t talking about narrative voice or even the tones in your writing . The narrative voice is the prose itself, the narrative point of view that describes the events happening. Here, we’re talking about the voice that individual characters have. 

Let’s look at the example we used earlier when we discussed quotation marks. 

“How’s it goin’?” Smith asked.  

Rosa sighed. “I suppose I’m alright, but I’ve had a dreadful day.”  

These two characters have very different voices. The first speaker, Smith, uses slang and abbreviations when he talks. His manner of speech is much more casual and laid-back. Rosa, on the other hand, uses words with a more formal inflection. ‘Dreadful’ and ‘suppose’ point to someone who’s more uptight, more verbose. 

Without any extra background information on either character, we already have an idea of what they’re like based on their voice. And when we get to the last line, we know that it’s Smith talking, because it matches up with the voice we’ve established on the first line. 

One common mistake new writers make is having all their characters sound the same.

But people aren’t like that! Your characters are all different, unique people, and they should sound like it. A kid who grew up lower class in a big city will talk differently than a wealthy kid from a suburban town. A serf from the countryside won’t talk the same way as the king. 

Ideally, you should know which character is speaking based solely on the way they’re talking. 

Consider who your characters are. Where did they grow up? Who do they hang out with? What are the sorts of things they prioritize, and how does that impact not only what they talk about, but how they talk about it? 

3. Think about how the conversation moves the story forward

We talked about how learning how to write dialogue in fiction shouldn’t necessarily mirror the chaotic structure of real-world conversations. It needs to be believable, but in, truth, it will be more structured and planned.

Basically, this means you should treat your dialogue the same way you treat everything else in your story: it should serve a purpose, it should move the storyline forward, and it should be interesting. 

Dialogue should happen for a reason. It should be motivated.

Characters should have a reason to talk–this might sound obvious, but failing to recognize this can result in some clunky dialogue.

Take exposition, for example.

A common exposition mistake new writers make is having their characters deliver exposition–especially in fantasy, when the author is trying to impart details about their world to the reader.

Let’s take a look at an imaginary dialogue exchange: 

“We’re having wonderful weather,” Ava said. 

Ned nodded. “We always have wonderful spring weather. Our two suns make it so that it never gets too cold here on our planet, and our spring seasons are long and prosperous.” 

Take a look at Ned’s dialogue. If these characters are from this planet, they wouldn’t be talking like this. And even if they are, the sentence reads flat and stilted, more like an excerpt from an encyclopedia than a piece of dialogue. 

When you’re writing dialogue, consider what it is that the characters are trying to convey. If you’re just using them as a mouthpiece for your own exposition, maybe reconsider. 

It’s also okay to skip over some character interactions. You don’t have to document every single minute of an exchange. Instead of typing out everything two people say, stick to the specific interactions that have to do with the plot. 

We’ll talk more about small talk later, but as a rule of thumb for fiction that also applies to dialogue: if you’re bored writing it, the reader’s probably bored reading it. Keep your dialogue motivated and important. 

4. Cut the small talk 

This one builds on point three of learning how to write a dialogue. But we're going to stay here a bit because it's important – and because a common mistake of new authors is including too much small talk in their novel. 

When learning how to write dialogue, just remember that small talk is not necessary (and doesn't make for great writing).

When people get together, especially strangers, there’s often small talk involved. True. We ask each other questions about the weather and make idle conversation to break the ice for more important topics. 

But this is fiction. And in fiction, we get to skip all that! Yay! 

We don’t need to read every word your characters say to each other when they meet up. We don’t need to hear them describe the weather to each other, or try to talk about sports. Unless it’s absolutely vital to the scene, we don’t need to hear about it.

5. Remember to indent for clarity

This may seem like a simple thing, but your book formatting matters hugely when it comes to dialogue.

New authors often don’t know when to hit enter and start a new paragraph, and this can result in long paragraphs where multiple people are talking.

It becomes unclear who is saying what. 

Plus, usually, long paragraphs make reading retention difficult.

There’s a simple rule of thumb to keep in mind: you should start a new paragraph when a new idea is introduced. 

Let’s reference a quick made-up example: 

“I don’t know where he went,” said Clark. “Well, he couldn’t have gone far,” said Synthia. She looked over her shoulder. “Elizabeth! Do you know where Matt went?” “No,” said Elizabeth. “Drat.” Clark folded his arms. 

We have four characters here, three whom are in the scene. The lines of dialogue aren’t correctly spaced out, so it’s difficult to tell who’s talking – and when. On the last line, it’s entirely unclear who says “drat,” for example. 

So how do we fix this? Simple! Just add a new paragraph break every time a new character speaks. 

“I don’t know where he went,” Clark said. 

“Well, he couldn’t have gone far,” said Synthia. She looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Elizabeth! Do you know where Matt went?” 

“No,” said Elizabeth. 

“Drat.” Clark folded his arms. 

Because we’ve properly spaced out our dialogue, we can now clearly see who’s saying what. Not only that, but having it formatted like this is just plain easier on the eyes, and much more inviting to a reader than a block of text. 

Don’t make it harder than it has to be! Format your dialogue correctly. 

6. Be careful with dialogue tags 

Dialogue tags are super important. They let us know who’s talking, and they offer a space for characters to move around during conversations.

But abusing them can ruin the flow of dialogue. For example, let’s look at this exchange: 

“I can’t believe it,” Dennis said. 

“I thought you knew,” Sandra said. 

“I thought you loved me!” Dennis said. 

“I do still love you,” Sandra said. 

In this example, overusing the same dialogue tag and format makes the exchange dull when it should be dramatic.

If you have two characters talking for a prolonged period of time, try dropping dialogue tags altogether and punctuating with action to pack a bigger punch.

Let’s try that exchange again, but with a little more attention to dialogue tags: 

Dennis balled his fists. “I can’t believe it.” 

“I thought you knew.” Sandra blinked back tears. 

“I thought you loved me!” 

“I do still love you.” 

Taking out those dialogue tags makes the dialogue read much more smoothly, and the addition of action beats helps set the tone so the words themselves can carry more weight. 

Try practicing with removing your dialogue tags and letting your character’s voices and actions drive the scene! 

7. Approach accents and foreign languages with caution 

Before we wrap up, let’s touch briefly on accents and foreign languages. This is especially important when it comes to learning how to write dialogue, but most people miss the mark on this one.

First, accents. 

There’s a lot of debate surrounding accents. Some people believe they can be spelled phonetically, and some believe they should never be spelled out, ever. 

This depends largely on your story and on what the spelling achieves–if every character has an accent, for example, reading it spelled phonetically might become cumbersome to read. If only one character has a few lines in an accent, that might be less pervasive, but it might still be confusing or unintentionally comical. 

For an alternative to spelling out accents, try introducing the character’s accent when you introduce the character. For example: 

“Good morning,” John said. He spoke with a bright Irish accent. “How are you?” 

Another point of controversy is how foreign languages should be handled in dialogue: specifically, many writers wonder whether they ought to italicize words in other languages.

 This is a huge and ongoing debate, so we won’t get into all of it here, but if you’re wondering which route to take, do some research and reading within your genre to see what the conventions are, and why those conventions exist, so you can make an informed decision. 

Go write some dialogue!

Whatever your genre, keeping these tips and tricks in mind will help you make your dialogue shine.

If you’re a new writer, hopefully this has given you a great jumping-off point to improve your prose, and if you’re a seasoned expert, we hope you’ve found some great tips and tricks to take your dialogue up a notch. 

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Last updated on Jul 24, 2023

15 Examples of Great Dialogue (And Why They Work So Well)

Great dialogue is hard to pin down, but you know it when you hear or see it. In the earlier parts of this guide, we showed you some well-known tips and rules for writing dialogue. In this section, we'll show you those rules in action with 15 examples of great dialogue, breaking down exactly why they work so well.

1. Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered 

In the opening of Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered, we meet Willa Knox, a middle-aged and newly unemployed writer who has just inherited a ramshackle house. 

     “The simplest thing would be to tear it down,” the man said. “The house is a shambles.”      She took this news as a blood-rush to the ears: a roar of peasant ancestors with rocks in their fists, facing the evictor. But this man was a contractor. Willa had called him here and she could send him away. She waited out her panic while he stood looking at her shambles, appearing to nurse some satisfaction from his diagnosis. She picked out words.      “It’s not a living thing. You can’t just pronounce it dead. Anything that goes wrong with a structure can be replaced with another structure. Am I right?”      “Correct. What I am saying is that the structure needing to be replaced is all of it. I’m sorry. Your foundation is nonexistent.”

Alfred Hitchcock once described drama as "life with the boring bits cut out." In this passage, Kingsolver cuts out the boring parts of Willa's conversation with her contractor and brings us right to the tensest, most interesting part of the conversation.

By entering their conversation late , the reader is spared every tedious detail of their interaction.

Instead of a blow-by-blow account of their negotiations (what she needs done, when he’s free, how she’ll be paying), we’re dropped right into the emotional heart of the discussion. The novel opens with the narrator learning that the home she cherishes can’t be salvaged. 

By starting off in the middle of (relatively obscure) dialogue, it takes a moment for the reader to orient themselves in the story and figure out who is speaking, and what they’re speaking about. This disorientation almost mirrors Willa’s own reaction to the bad news, as her expectations for a new life in her new home are swiftly undermined.

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2. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice  

In the first piece of dialogue in Pride and Prejudice , we meet Mr and Mrs Bennet, as Mrs Bennet attempts to draw her husband into a conversation about neighborhood gossip.

     “My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”      Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.      “But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”      Mr. Bennet made no answer.      “Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.      “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”      This was invitation enough.      “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

Austen’s dialogue is always witty, subtle, and packed with character. This extract from Pride and Prejudice is a great example of dialogue being used to develop character relationships . 

We instantly learn everything we need to know about the dynamic between Mr and Mrs Bennet’s from their first interaction: she’s chatty, and he’s the beleaguered listener who has learned to entertain her idle gossip, if only for his own sake (hence “you want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it”).

There is even a clear difference between the two characters visually on the page: Mr Bennet responds in short sentences, in simple indirect speech, or not at all, but this is “invitation enough” for Mrs Bennet to launch into a rambling and extended response, dominating the conversation in text just as she does audibly.

The fact that Austen manages to imbue her dialogue with so much character-building realism means we hardly notice the amount of crucial plot exposition she has packed in here. This heavily expository dialogue could be a drag to get through, but Austen’s colorful characterization means she slips it under the radar with ease, forwarding both our understanding of these people and the world they live in simultaneously.

3. Naomi Alderman, The Power

In The Power , young women around the world suddenly find themselves capable of generating and controlling electricity. In this passage, between two boys and a girl who just used those powers to light her cigarette.

     Kyle gestures with his chin and says, “Heard a bunch of guys killed a girl in Nebraska last week for doing that.”      “For smoking? Harsh.”      Hunter says, “Half the kids in school know you can do it.”      “So what?”      Hunter says, “Your dad could use you in his factory. Save money on electricity.”      “He’s not my dad.”      She makes the silver flicker at the ends of her fingers again. The boys watch.

Alderman here uses a show, don’t tell approach to expositional dialogue . Within this short exchange, we discover a lot about Allie, her personal circumstances, and the developing situation elsewhere. We learn that women are being punished harshly for their powers; that Allie is expected to be ashamed of those powers and keep them a secret, but doesn’t seem to care to do so; that her father is successful in industry; and that she has a difficult relationship with him. Using dialogue in this way prevents info-dumping backstory all at once, and instead helps us learn about the novel’s world in a natural way.

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4. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Here, friends Tommy and Kathy have a conversation after Tommy has had a meltdown. After being bullied by a group of boys, he has been stomping around in the mud, the precise reaction they were hoping to evoke from him.

     “Tommy,” I said, quite sternly. “There’s mud all over your shirt.”      “So what?” he mumbled. But even as he said this, he looked down and noticed the brown specks, and only just stopped himself crying out in alarm. Then I saw the surprise register on his face that I should know about his feelings for the polo shirt.      “It’s nothing to worry about.” I said, before the silence got humiliating for him. “It’ll come off. If you can’t get it off yourself, just take it to Miss Jody.”      He went on examining his shirt, then said grumpily, “It’s nothing to do with you anyway.”

This episode from Never Let Me Go highlights the power of interspersing action beats within dialogue . These action beats work in several ways to add depth to what would otherwise be a very simple and fairly nondescript exchange.  Firstly, they draw attention to the polo shirt, and highlight its potential significance in the plot. Secondly, they help to further define Kathy’s relationship with Tommy. 

We learn through Tommy’s surprised reaction that he didn’t think Kathy knew how much he loved his seemingly generic polo shirt. This moment of recognition allows us to see that she cares for him and understands him more deeply than even he realized. Kathy breaking the silence before it can “humiliate” Tommy further emphasizes her consideration for him. While the dialogue alone might make us think Kathy is downplaying his concerns with pragmatic advice, it is the action beats that tell the true story here.

5. J R R Tolkien, The Hobbit  

The eponymous hobbit Bilbo is engaged in a game of riddles with the strange creature Gollum.

     "What have I got in my pocket?" he said aloud. He was talking to himself, but Gollum thought it was a riddle, and he was frightfully upset.       "Not fair! not fair!" he hissed. "It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in its nassty little pocketses?"      Bilbo seeing what had happened and having nothing better to ask stuck to his question. "What have I got in my pocket?" he said louder. "S-s-s-s-s," hissed Gollum. "It must give us three guesseses, my precious, three guesseses."      "Very well! Guess away!" said Bilbo.      "Handses!" said Gollum.      "Wrong," said Bilbo, who had luckily just taken his hand out again. "Guess again!"      "S-s-s-s-s," said Gollum, more upset than ever. 

Tolkein’s dialogue for Gollum is a masterclass in creating distinct character voices . By using a repeated catchphrase (“my precious”) and unconventional spelling and grammar to reflect his unusual speech pattern, Tolkien creates an idiosyncratic, unique (and iconic) speech for Gollum. This vivid approach to formatting dialogue, which is almost a transliteration of Gollum's sounds, allows readers to imagine his speech pattern and practically hear it aloud.

We wouldn’t recommend using this extreme level of idiosyncrasy too often in your writing — it can get wearing for readers after a while, and Tolkien deploys it sparingly, as Gollum’s appearances are limited to a handful of scenes. However, you can use Tolkien’s approach as inspiration to create (slightly more subtle) quirks of speech for your own characters.

6. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The narrator, Nick has just done his new neighbour Gatsby a favor by inviting his beloved Daisy over to tea. Perhaps in return, Gatsby then attempts to make a shady business proposition.

     “There’s another little thing,” he said uncertainly, and hesitated.      “Would you rather put it off for a few days?” I asked.      “Oh, it isn’t about that. At least —” He fumbled with a series of beginnings. “Why, I thought — why, look here, old sport, you don’t make much money, do you?”      “Not very much.”      This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.       “I thought you didn’t, if you’ll pardon my — you see, I carry on a little business on the side, a little side line, if you understand. And I thought that if you don’t make very much — You’re selling bonds, aren’t you, old sport?”      “Trying to.” 

This dialogue from The Great Gatsby is a great example of how to make dialogue sound natural. Gatsby tripping over his own words (even interrupting himself , as marked by the em-dashes) not only makes his nerves and awkwardness palpable but also mimics real speech. Just as real people often falter and make false starts when they’re speaking off the cuff, Gatsby too flounders, giving us insight into his self-doubt; his speech isn’t polished and perfect, and neither is he despite all his efforts to appear so.

Fitzgerald also creates a distinctive voice for Gatsby by littering his speech with the character's signature term of endearment, “old sport”. We don’t even really need dialogue markers to know who’s speaking here — a sign of very strong characterization through dialogue.

7. Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet  

In this first meeting between the two heroes of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, John is introduced to Sherlock while the latter is hard at work in the lab.

      “How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”      “How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment.      “Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself. “The question now is about hemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?”     “It is interesting, chemically, no doubt,” I answered, “but practically— ”      “Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years. Don’t you see that it gives us an infallible test for blood stains. Come over here now!” He seized me by the coat-sleeve in his eagerness, and drew me over to the table at which he had been working. “Let us have some fresh blood,” he said, digging a long bodkin into his finger, and drawing off the resulting drop of blood in a chemical pipette. “Now, I add this small quantity of blood to a litre of water. You perceive that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water. The proportion of blood cannot be more than one in a million. I have no doubt, however, that we shall be able to obtain the characteristic reaction.” As he spoke, he threw into the vessel a few white crystals, and then added some drops of a transparent fluid. In an instant the contents assumed a dull mahogany colour, and a brownish dust was precipitated to the bottom of the glass jar.      “Ha! ha!” he cried, clapping his hands, and looking as delighted as a child with a new toy. “What do you think of that?”

This passage uses a number of the key techniques for writing naturalistic and exciting dialogue, including characters speaking over one another and the interspersal of action beats. 

Sherlock cutting off Watson to launch into a monologue about his blood experiment shows immediately where Sherlock’s interest lies — not in small talk, or the person he is speaking to, but in his own pursuits, just like earlier in the conversation when he refuses to explain anything to John and is instead self-absorbedly “chuckling to himself”. This helps establish their initial rapport (or lack thereof) very quickly.

Breaking up that monologue with snippets of him undertaking the forensic tests allows us to experience the full force of his enthusiasm over it without having to read an uninterrupted speech about the ins and outs of a science experiment.

Starting to think you might like to read some Sherlock? Check out our guide to the Sherlock Holmes canon !

8. Brandon Taylor, Real Life

Here, our protagonist Wallace is questioned by Ramon, a friend-of-a-friend, over the fact that he is considering leaving his PhD program.

     Wallace hums. “I mean, I wouldn’t say that I want to leave, but I’ve thought about it, sure.”     “Why would you do that? I mean, the prospects for… black people, you know?”        “What are the prospects for black people?” Wallace asks, though he knows he will be considered the aggressor for this question.

Brandon Taylor’s Real Life is drawn from the author’s own experiences as a queer Black man, attempting to navigate the unwelcoming world of academia, navigating the world of academia, and so it’s no surprise that his dialogue rings so true to life — it’s one of the reasons the novel is one of our picks for must-read books by Black authors . 

This episode is part of a pattern where Wallace is casually cornered and questioned by people who never question for a moment whether they have the right to ambush him or criticize his choices. The use of indirect dialogue at the end shows us this is a well-trodden path for Wallace: he has had this same conversation several times, and can pre-empt the exact outcome.

This scene is also a great example of the dramatic significance of people choosing not to speak. The exchange happens in front of a big group, but — despite their apparent discomfort —  nobody speaks up to defend Wallace, or to criticize Ramon’s patronizing microaggressions. Their silence is deafening, and we get a glimpse of Ramon’s isolation due to the complacency of others, all due to what is not said in this dialogue example.

9. Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants

In this short story, an unnamed man and a young woman discuss whether or not they should terminate a pregnancy while sitting on a train platform.

     “Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”      “And you really want to?”      “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you really don’t want to.”      “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”      “I love you now. You know I love you.”      “I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”      “I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.”      “If I do it you won’t ever worry?”      “I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”

This example of dialogue from Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants moves at quite a clip. The conversation quickly bounces back and forth between the speakers, and the call-and-response format of the woman asking and the man answering is effective because it establishes a clear dynamic between the two speakers: the woman is the one seeking reassurance and trying to understand the man’s feelings, while he is the one who is ultimately in control of the situation.

Note the sparing use of dialogue markers: this minimalist approach keeps the dialogue brisk, and we can still easily understand who is who due to the use of a new paragraph when the speaker changes .

Like this classic author’s style? Head over to our selection of the 11 best Ernest Hemingway books .

10. Madeline Miller, Circe

In Madeline Miller’s retelling of Greek myth, we witness a conversation between the mythical enchantress Circe and Telemachus (son of Odysseus).

     “You do not grieve for your father?”        “I do. I grieve that I never met the father everyone told me I had.”           I narrowed my eyes. “Explain.”      “I am no storyteller.”      “I am not asking for a story. You have come to my island. You owe me truth.”       A moment passed, and then he nodded. “You will have it.” 

This short and punchy exchange hits on a lot of the stylistic points we’ve covered so far. The conversation is a taut tennis match between the two speakers as they volley back and forth with short but impactful sentences, and unnecessary dialogue tags have been shaved off . It also highlights Circe’s imperious attitude, a result of her divine status. Her use of short, snappy declaratives and imperatives demonstrates that she’s used to getting her own way and feels no need to mince her words.

11. Andre Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

This is an early conversation between seventeen-year-old Elio and his family’s handsome new student lodger, Oliver.

     What did one do around here? Nothing. Wait for summer to end. What did one do in the winter, then?      I smiled at the answer I was about to give. He got the gist and said, “Don’t tell me: wait for summer to come, right?”      I liked having my mind read. He’d pick up on dinner drudgery sooner than those before him.      “Actually, in the winter the place gets very gray and dark. We come for Christmas. Otherwise it’s a ghost town.”      “And what else do you do here at Christmas besides roast chestnuts and drink eggnog?”      He was teasing. I offered the same smile as before. He understood, said nothing, we laughed.      He asked what I did. I played tennis. Swam. Went out at night. Jogged. Transcribed music. Read.      He said he jogged too. Early in the morning. Where did one jog around here? Along the promenade, mostly. I could show him if he wanted.      It hit me in the face just when I was starting to like him again: “Later, maybe.”

Dialogue is one of the most crucial aspects of writing romance — what’s a literary relationship without some flirty lines? Here, however, Aciman gives us a great example of efficient dialogue. By removing unnecessary dialogue and instead summarizing with narration, he’s able to confer the gist of the conversation without slowing down the pace unnecessarily. Instead, the emphasis is left on what’s unsaid, the developing romantic subtext. 

Furthermore, the fact that we receive this scene in half-reported snippets rather than as an uninterrupted transcript emphasizes the fact that this is Elio’s own recollection of the story, as the manipulation of the dialogue in this way serves to mimic the nostalgic haziness of memory.

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12. George Eliot, Middlemarch

Two of Eliot’s characters, Mary and Rosamond, are out shopping,

     When she and Rosamond happened both to be reflected in the glass, she said laughingly —      “What a brown patch I am by the side of you, Rosy! You are the most unbecoming companion.”      “Oh no! No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little consequence in reality,” said Rosamond, turning her head towards Mary, but with eyes swerving towards the new view of her neck in the glass.      “You mean my beauty,” said Mary, rather sardonically.       Rosamond thought, “Poor Mary, she takes the kindest things ill.” Aloud she said, “What have you been doing lately?”      “I? Oh, minding the house — pouring out syrup — pretending to be amiable and contented — learning to have a bad opinion of everybody.”

This excerpt, a conversation between the level-headed Mary and vain Rosamond, is an example of dialogue that develops character relationships naturally. Action descriptors allow us to understand what is really happening in the conversation. 

Whilst the speech alone might lead us to believe Rosamond is honestly (if clumsily) engaging with her friend, the description of her simultaneously gazing at herself in a mirror gives us insight not only into her vanity, but also into the fact that she is not really engaged in her conversation with Mary at all.

The use of internal dialogue cut into the conversation (here formatted with quotation marks rather than the usual italics ) lets us know what Rosamond is actually thinking, and the contrast between this and what she says aloud is telling. The fact that we know she privately realizes she has offended Mary, but quickly continues the conversation rather than apologizing, is emphatic of her character. We get to know Rosamond very well within this short passage, which is a hallmark of effective character-driven dialogue.

13. John Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent

Here, Mary (speaking first) reacts to her husband Ethan’s attempts to discuss his previous experiences as a disciplined soldier, his struggles in subsequent life, and his feeling of impending change.

     “You’re trying to tell me something.”      “Sadly enough, I am. And it sounds in my ears like an apology. I hope it is not.”      “I’m going to set out lunch.”

Steinbeck’s Winter of our Discontent is an acute study of alienation and miscommunication, and this exchange exemplifies the ways in which characters can fail to communicate, even when they’re speaking. The pair speaking here are trapped in a dysfunctional marriage which leaves Ethan feeling isolated, and part of his loneliness comes from the accumulation of exchanges such as this one. Whenever he tries to communicate meaningfully with his wife, she shuts the conversation down with a complete non sequitur. 

We expect Mary’s “you’re trying to tell me something” to be followed by a revelation, but Ethan is not forthcoming in his response, and Mary then exits the conversation entirely. Nothing is communicated, and the jarring and frustrating effect of having our expectations subverted goes a long way in mirroring Ethan’s own frustration.

Just like Ethan and Mary, we receive no emotional pay-off, and this passage of characters talking past one another doesn’t further the plot as we hope it might, but instead gives us insight into the extent of these characters’ estrangement.

14. Bret Easton Ellis , Less Than Zero

The disillusioned main character of Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel, Clay, here catches up with a college friend, Daniel, whom he hasn’t seen in a while. 

     He keeps rubbing his mouth and when I realize that he’s not going to answer me, I ask him what he’s been doing.      “Been doing?”      “Yeah.”      “Hanging out.”      “Hanging out where?”      “Where? Around.”

Less Than Zero is an elegy to conversation, and this dialogue is an example of the many vacuous exchanges the protagonist engages in, seemingly just to fill time. The whole book is deliberately unpoetic and flat, and depicts the lives of disaffected youths in 1980s LA. Their misguided attempts to fill the emptiness within them with drink and drugs are ultimately fruitless, and it shows in their conversations: in truth, they have nothing to say to one another at all.

This utterly meaningless exchange would elsewhere be considered dead weight to a story. Here, rather than being fat in need of trimming, the empty conversation is instead thematically resonant.

15. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

The young narrator of du Maurier’s classic gothic novel here has a strained conversation with Robert, one of the young staff members at her new husband’s home, the unwelcoming Manderley.

     “Has Mr. de Winter been in?” I said.      “Yes, Madam,” said Robert; “he came in just after two, and had a quick lunch, and then went out again. He asked for you and Frith said he thought you must have gone down to see the ship.”      “Did he say when he would be back again?” I asked.      “No, Madam.”      “Perhaps he went to the beach another way,” I said; “I may have missed him.”      “Yes, Madam,” said Robert.      I looked at the cold meat and the salad. I felt empty but not hungry. I did not want cold meat now. “Will you be taking lunch?” said Robert.      “No,” I said, “No, you might bring me some tea, Robert, in the library. Nothing like cakes or scones. Just tea and bread and butter.”      “Yes, Madam.”

We’re including this one in our dialogue examples list to show you the power of everything Du Maurier doesn’t do: rather than cycling through a ton of fancy synonyms for “said”, she opts for spare dialogue and tags. 

This interaction's cold, sparse tone complements the lack of warmth the protagonist feels in the moment depicted here. By keeping the dialogue tags simple , the author ratchets up the tension —  without any distracting flourishes taking the reader out of the scene. The subtext of the conversation is able to simmer under the surface, and we aren’t beaten over the head with any stage direction extras.

The inclusion of three sentences of internal dialogue in the middle of the dialogue (“I looked at the cold meat and the salad. I felt empty but not hungry. I did not want cold meat now.”) is also a masterful touch. What could have been a single sentence is stretched into three, creating a massive pregnant pause before Robert continues speaking, without having to explicitly signpost one. Manipulating the pace of dialogue in this way and manufacturing meaningful silence is a great way of adding depth to a scene.

Phew! We've been through a lot of dialogue, from first meetings to idle chit-chat to confrontations, and we hope these dialogue examples have been helpful in illustrating some of the most common techniques.

If you’re looking for more pointers on creating believable and effective dialogue, be sure to check out our course on writing dialogue. Or, if you find you learn better through examples, you can look at our list of 100 books to read before you die — it’s packed full of expert storytellers who’ve honed the art of dialogue.

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Blogs / Character / How to Write Dialogue (with Examples)

Write Your Dream Book

How to write dialogue (with examples).

Writing dialogue provides the subtext, irony, and complexity required for compelling characters and stories. Small words carry heavy loads, when skilfully handled.

“There is only one plot: things are not what they seem.” — Jim Thompson

However, writing dialogue precisely and getting the words right is challenging.

Let’s examine how to transform filler chat to fulfilling dialogue , starting with the basics.

What is Dialogue?

Dialogue is the reported speech between two or more characters in a book, poem, film, or play. In prose, it’s distinguished with apostrophes. When writing dialogue, Americans generally use “double” apostrophes, while Brits use ‘single’ ones.

What Is Dialogue in a Story?

In a story, dialogue is an excellent way to give a glimpse into the thoughts or a character. It can also be used to reveal the setting or actions to readers.

Dialogue can create tension, but too much dialogue can be boring and actually reduce the tension. Getting the balance right can be challenging, but there are a few things you can consider.

How to Use Dialogue

When writing dialogue, consider the following. Dialogue helps you:

• Advance the plot whilst bringing a scene to life: readers ‘watch’ characters interact, feeling immersed.
• Readers ‘hear’ individual characters’ voices, without narrative intrusion.
• Writers ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ details of characters’ personalities, especially though subtext and irony: what characters don’t say is often as or more important than what they do .
• With fictional world-building, e.g. when a seasoned character teaches an ingénue the ways of the world (but apply with caution!).

How to Format Dialogue

New writers may feel overwhelmed by the various rules. An in-depth examination of every rule is beyond this article’s scope, but here’s a brief run-down of the key rules.

• In prose, we format dialogue with apostrophes .
• Dialogue tags indicate who is speaking, and are formatted as follows:

‘I’m cold,’ Jasper said. Or: Jasper said, ‘I’m cold.’

• You can replace dialogue tags with actions. Actions help readers ‘see’ the scene , like this:

Jasper shivered. ‘I’m cold.’

• Or, to show a particular characteristic through subtext , you could write your dialogue this way:

Jasper steeled himself, gritting his teeth. ‘No need to put the central heating on yet.’

• When writing dialogue, you don’t need dialogue tags for every line when context indicates who’s speaking. However, don’t go too long without a reminder. Consider this example:

The guests dispersed, leaving Jasper and Sasha in the room. ‘Aren’t you cold?’ asked Sasha. Jasper wrapped his arms around himself. ‘No.’ ‘Cheapskate. Just put the heating on!’ ‘It’s perfectly cosy in—’ Sasha stood up. ‘Fine. I’ll leave.’

• When someone is interrupted, as above, place the ‘em’ dash (—) inside the apostrophes.
• Always start a new paragraph for a new speaker, ensuring you close the apostrophes of the pervious person, as above.
• But when the same speaker begins a new paragraph of speech, leave the apostrophes open at the paragraph’s end, indicating the speaker hasn’t changed.
• Include an apostrophe opening the first line of dialogue in the new paragraph. This helps the reader know they’re still reading dialogue, not narration, like so:

Jasper drew the curtains. Silver frost carpeted the lawn outside.He glanced at Sasha. ‘I’m not cold at all.’ Sasha headed towards the door, briefcase under arm, buttoning her wool coat. ‘Don’t worry about me. Funny, I was just reading about the need to reduce carbon footprints. Ha! Easy enough when you can’t afford gas in the first place. ‘Change of subject, but talking about gas prices makes me remember the coldest I’ve ever been.’ She paused, hand on the doorknob. ‘That road trip I took. Winter of ‘99. Ran out of petrol on the motorway, didn’t have enough cash for more. A café owner let me wash dishes to cover the tank refill.’ Sasha’s voice grew dreamy. ‘Working for money – those were the days, eh?’ Jasper stomped out of the room without a word.

Sasha’s accusation here is implied through subtext and action , not directly stated.

Writing Dialogue Tip

Said and replied are generally better than exclaimed, protested, expounded , etc. Elaborate dialogue tags draw readers’ attention to your writing, thus taking them out of the story’s action.

For example:

‘I’m cold,’ whispered Sasha. ‘Stop moaning!’ yelled Jasper. ‘Go die of hypothermia,’ cursed Sasha.

Annoyingly melodramatic, right?

That said, exceptions exist for every rule, even when you’re writing dialogue.

Firstly, excessive use of said can be as distracting for the reader as elaborate tags:

‘I’m moving out tomorrow,’ said Sasha. ‘I don’t care,’ said Jasper. Sasha said, ‘You’ll miss me when I’m gone.’

That, in contrast, is annoyingly dull.

Hint: Reading your work out loud can help you hear when your dialogue tags might benefit from variation.

Secondly, your story’s narrative voice may lean towards using more grandiloquent speech tags.

Dialogue in a Story Example

In the Bridgerton Regency Romance novels, Julia Quinn often uses elaborate dialogue tags: flick through The Duke and I and you’ll find extensive use of tags such as shrieked, snapped, admitted, spat out , and so on.

But the elaborate dialogue tags here form part and parcel of the ironic narrative tone.

Quinn leans in to the 18 th Century inspired melodrama for comedic effect, having fun with her speech tags.

She layers her wry, Austen-inspired narrative voice over the characters’ individual voices, laughing good-naturedly at both them and herself.

This works brilliantly: sophisticated readers can excuse themselves for revelling in this historically-inaccurate melodrama by acknowledging that no-one, not even its (Harvard-educated) author, takes it too seriously.

But unless melodrama (whether real or ironic) is your intention, use elaborate dialogue tags sparingly.

Final Tips for How to Write Dialogue in a Narrative

When you’re putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and writing dialogue:

• Avoid the dreaded ‘talking heads’ syndrome by interspersing dialogue with action/ setting, reminding the reader where the scene is playing out.
• Expository dialogue (when ‘info-dumping’) can be dull and unrealistic, unless masterfully handled: use cautiously.
• Avoid ‘holding’/ ‘filler’ dialogue: ‘Hi, how are you?’ etc. No-one cares about this.
• Beware overusing (or underusing) dialogue. Stories need a balance of dialogue, action, thought and setting. The correct balance depends on your story and genre.
• Never forget your characters’ goals when writing their dialogue. Simple, direct, honest communication – whilst an admirable goal in real life – often falls flat in fiction.

The strongest dialogue incorporates subtext and irony, giving us a deeper understanding of the characters than they themselves possess, whilst illuminating the story’s themes. In a skilled writer’s hands, fictional dialogue offers readers new perceptions of themselves and their place in the world.

Now, go have fun writing dialogue!

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• How-To Guides

How To Write Dialogue In A Story (With Examples)

One of the biggest mistakes made by writers is how they use dialogue in their stories. Today, we are going to teach you how to write dialogue in a story using some easy and effective techniques. So, get ready to learn some of the best techniques and tips for writing dialogue!

There are two main reasons why good dialogue is so important in works of fiction. First, good dialogue helps keep the reader interested and engaged in the story. Second, it makes your work easier to write, read and understand. So, if you want to write dialogue that is interesting, engaging and easy to read, keep on reading. We will be teaching you the best techniques and tips for writing dialogue in a story.

Internal vs External Dialogue

Direct vs indirect dialogue, 20 tips for formatting dialogue in stories, step 1: use a dialogue outline, step 2: write down a script, step 3: edit & review your script, step 4: sprinkle in some narrative, step 5: format your dialogue, what is dialogue .

Dialogue is the spoken words that are spoken between the characters of a story. It is also known as the conversation between the characters. Dialogue is a vital part of a story. It is the vehicle of the characters’ thoughts and emotions. Good dialogue helps show the reader how the characters think and feel. It also helps the reader better understand what is happening in the story. Good dialogue should be interesting, informative and natural. 

In a story, dialogue can be expressed internally as thoughts, or externally through conversations between characters. A character thinking to themself would be considered internal dialogue. Here there is no one else, just one character thinking or speaking to themselves:

Mary thought to herself, “what if I can do better…”

While two or more characters talking to each other in a scene would be an external dialogue:

“Watch out!” cried Sam. “What’s wrong with you?” laughed Kate.

In most cases, the words spoken by your character will be inside quotation marks. This is called direct dialogue. And then everything outside the quotation marks is called narrative:

“What do you want?” shrieked Penelope as she grabbed her notebooks. “Oh, nothing… Just checking if you needed anything,” sneered Peter as he tried to peek over at her notes.

Indirect dialogue is a summary of your dialogue. It lets the reader know that a conversation happened without repeating it exactly. For example:

She was still fuming from last night’s argument. After being called a liar and a thief, she had no choice but to leave home for good.

Direct dialogue is useful for quick conversations, while indirect dialogue is useful for summarising long pieces of dialogue. Which otherwise can get boring for the reader. Writers can combine both types of dialogue to increase tension and add drama to their stories.

Now you know some of the different types of dialogue in stories, let’s learn how to write dialogue in a story.

Here are the main tips to remember when formatting dialogue in stories or works of fiction:

• Always use quotation marks: All direct dialogue is written inside quotation marks, along with any punctuation relating to that dialogue.

• Don’t forget about dialogue tags: Dialogue tags are used to explain how a character said something.  Each tag has at least one noun or pronoun, and one verb indicating how the dialogue is spoken. For example, he said, she cried, they laughed and so on.

• Dialogue before tags: Dialogue before the dialogue tags should start with an uppercase. The dialogue tag itself begins with a lowercase.

• Dialogue after tags: Both the dialogue and dialogue tags start with an uppercase to signify the start of a conversation. The dialogue tags also have a comma afterwards, before the first set of quotation marks.

• Lowercase for continued dialogue: If the same character continues to speak after the dialogue tags or action, then this dialogue continues with a lowercase.

• Action after complete dialogue: Any action or narrative text after completed dialogue starts with an uppercase as a new sentence.

• Action interrupting dialogue: If the same character pauses their dialogue to do an action, then this action starts with a lowercase.

• Interruptions by other characters: If another character Interrupts a character’s dialogue, then their action starts with an uppercase on a new line. And an em dash (-) is used inside the quotation marks of the dialogue that was interrupted. 

• Use single quotes correctly: Single quotes mean that a character is quoting someone else.

• New paragraphs equal new speaker: When a new character starts speaking, it should be written in a new paragraph. 

• Use question marks correctly: If the dialogue ends with a question mark, then the part after the dialogue should begin with a lowercase.

• Exclamation marks: Similar to question marks, the next sentence should begin with a lowercase. 

• Em dashes equal being cut off: When a character has been interrupted or cut off in the middle of their speech, use an em dash (-).

• Ellipses mean trailing speech: When a character is trailing off in their speech or going on and on about something use ellipses (…). This is also good to use when a character does not know what to say.

• Spilt long dialogue into paragraphs: If a character is giving a long speech, then you can split this dialogue into multiple paragraphs. 

• Use commas appropriately: If it is not the end of the sentence then end the dialogue with a comma.

• Full stops to end dialogue: Dialogue ending with a full stop means it is the end of the entire sentence. 

• Avoid fancy dialogue tags: For example, ‘he moderated’ or ‘she articulated’. As this can distract the reader from what your characters are actually saying and the content of your story. It’s better to keep things simple, such as using he said or she said.
• No need for names: Avoid repeating your character’s name too many times. You could use pronouns or even nicknames. 
• Keep it informal: Think about how real conversations happen. Do people use technical or fancy language when speaking? Think about your character’s tone of voice and personality, what would they say in a given situation? 

Remember these rules, and you’ll be able to master dialogue writing in no time!

How to Write Dialogue in 5 Steps

Dialogue is tricky. Follow these easy steps to write effective dialogue in your stories or works of fiction:

A dialogue outline is a draft of what your characters will say before you actually write the dialogue down. This draft can be in the form of notes or any scribblings about your planned dialogue. Using your overall book outline , you can pinpoint the areas where you expect to see the most dialogue used in your story. You can then plan out the conversation between characters in these areas. 

A good thing about using a dialogue outline is that you can avoid your characters saying the same thing over and over again. You can also skim out any unnecessary dialogue scenes if you think they are unnecessary or pointless. 

Here is an example of a dialogue outline for a story:

You even use a spreadsheet to outline your story’s dialogue scenes.

In this step, you will just write down what the characters are saying in full. Don’t worry too much about punctuation and the correct formatting of dialogue. The purpose of this step is to determine what the characters will actually say in the scene and whether this provides any interesting information to your readers.

Start by writing down the full script of your character’s conversations for each major dialogue scene in your story. Here is an example of a dialogue script for a story:

Review your script from the previous step, and think about how it can be shortened or made more interesting. You might think about changing a few words that the characters use to make it sound more natural. Normally the use of slang words and informal language is a great way to make dialogue between characters sound more natural. You might also think about replacing any names with nicknames that characters in a close relationship would use. 

The script might also be too long with plenty of unnecessary details that can be removed or summarised as part of the narration in your story (or as indirect dialogue). Remember the purpose of dialogue is to give your story emotion and make your characters more realistic. At this point you might also want to refer back to your character profiles , to see if the script of each character matches their personality. 

Once your script has been perfected, you can add some actions to make your dialogue feel more believable to readers. Action or narrative is the stuff that your characters are actually doing throughout or in between dialogue. For example, a character might be packing up their suitcase, as they are talking about their holiday plans. This ‘narrative’ is a great way to break up a long piece of dialogue which otherwise could become boring and tedious for readers. 

You have now planned your dialogue for your story. The final step is to incorporate these dialogue scenes into your story. Remember to follow our formatting dialogue formatting rules explained above to create effective dialogue for your stories!

That’s all for today! We hope this post has taught you how to write dialogue in a story effectively. If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Home » Blog » How to Write Dialogue that Engages Readers in 9 Steps

How to Write Dialogue that Engages Readers in 9 Steps

TABLE OF CONTENTS

As a writer, you need to constantly improve your writing and draft. You need to work on characters, plot, and story to create your best work. This includes how to develop characters, what writing software to use, and importantly, how to write dialogue.

Dialogues are essential for writing and are the backbone of your story. No New York Times bestseller ever made the list with bad dialogue.

Lauren Grodstein says:

“I like writing dialogue – I can hear my characters so clearly that writing dialogue often feels as much like transcribing something as it does like creating it.”

If you want to hear your characters and if you want to have your readers hear them, you should know how to write dialogue in a book, script, or short story. Dialogues make your story interesting, they hook readers, they make your writing reader-friendly, and have several other benefits (discussed below).

So how to incorporate dialogue in your book? How to write dialogue in a narrative? What steps you should follow to write a great book with compelling dialogue?

All these and many other questions will be answered in this in-depth and actionable guide on how to write dialogue, good dialogue examples, their benefits, and more.

By the time you’ll finish reading this guide, you’ll become a better writer than you are now as the writing tips are useful and valuable.

What is Dialogue?

Dialogue is a conversion between two or more characters. The purpose of dialogue is to exchange information. It isn’t meant to convince someone. Dialogue in writing is two-way communication that’s cooperative and is meant for the exchange of information.

There are several reasons you should use dialogue in your book and how to write a conversation that will keep readers engaged and persuade them to keep reading.

The major benefits of using dialogue in your book are covered in the next section.

The Benefits of Writing Dialogue in Your Book

The leading benefits of writing dialogue in your book are:

• Grabs attention
• Character development
• Information
• Advance your story

1. Dialogue Grabs Attention

Using dialogue in your story helps you grab the reader’s attention. Interesting conversation is something that readers love. What you can achieve with a dialogue (even a short one), you can’t do the same without dialogue.

A story without dialogue will get boring. To hook readers, you have to add dialogue in your book. You need to master how to write a conversation in your book and that’s what makes all the difference.

Here is an example from The Secret History by Donna Tartt :

‘It was Julian and Henry. Neither of them had heard me come up the stairs. Henry was leaving; Julian was standing at the open door. His brow was furrowed and he looked very somber, as if he were saying something of the gravest importance […].

Julian finishes speaking. He looked away for a moment, then bit his lower lip and looked up at Henry.

Then Henry spoke. His words were low but deliberate and distinct. ‘Should I do what is necessary?’

To my surprise, Julian took both Henry’s hands in his own. ‘You should only, ever, do what is necessary,’ he said.’

The suspense Tartt developed with dialogue couldn’t be done without dialogue. It shows an agreement between Julian and Henry which, in the absence of dialogue, wouldn’t be possible to communicate effectively.

This is what makes dialogues so crucial for your story. If you’re ever stuck on finding a good piece of dialogue, try using a writing prompt generator . This will give you some random ideas that may just spark an entire scene or conversation.

2. Character Development

You can write pages upon pages to describe your character or you can use a simple dialogue to show readers everything about your character. Here is an example :

Reported speech: He asked her what she was doing. Dialogue 1: “What’cha doin’?” Dialogue 2: “What the bloody hell are you doing?” Dialogue 3: “W-w-w-what are y-y-you doing?” Dialogue 4: “If I may be so bold, may I ask what the young Miss is doing?” Dialogue 5: “By the bloody battleaxe of the war god Sarnis, what on earth are you up to now?”

You can describe your character in a single sentence with a dialogue. The way your characters speak, what language they use, what words they use, how often they speak, etc. helps you develop your characters and it helps your readers better understand the characters.

You don’t have to put a lot of hard work into explaining who, what, why, and how about your characters if you know how to write dialogue in a story.

3. Information

Dialogues let you share information with the readers. You can share information related to moods, personalities, history, and any other important or even unimportant information via dialogues. Readers get the information unconsciously while reading and they don’t feel burdened.

That’s the beauty of dialogues.

Most importantly, the back story can be best explained through dialogue. If you narrate a back story, it will get boring and readers might lose interest. On the other hand, if the same backstory is expressed in the form of a conversation between two characters, it gets a whole lot more interesting. It then becomes a story in the true sense.

Here is a perfect dialogue example by Tennessee Williams from A Streetcar Named Desire:

“Who do you think you are? A pair of queens? Now just remember what Huey Long said—that every man’s a king—and I’m the king around here, and don’t you forget it!” Again, Stanley wants to undermine Blanche to Stella when he reminds her of the good times the two had before Blanche arrived:

“Listen, baby, when we first met—you and me—you thought I was common. Well, how right you were! I was as common as dirt. You showed me a snapshot of the place with them columns, and I pulled you down off them columns, and you loved it, having them colored lights goin’! And weren’t we happy together? Wasn’t it all OK? Till she showed up here. Hoity-toity, describin’ me like an ape.”

Stanley is sharing information about his past and the writer uses dialogue to share the backstory and other relevant information that doesn’t sound like information. This is one powerful reason you should learn how to write dialogues.

4. Realistic

Dialogues make your story realistic. That’s how the world we live in works. We talk. We have conversations, big and small. Generally, we are always involved in some kind of conversation in our lives.

So if you wish to write a story that’s natural and depicts our real world, you need dialogues. It will make your story more organic and it will be easier for the readers to connect with your plot.

5. Advance Your Story

Perhaps the best feature of using dialogue in your writing is that it helps you move the story forward. When you narrate the story, it complicates it as compared to using dialogues that make your job easier.

Here is a dialogue example that moves the story forward by sharing important information with the readers:

The writer explained the situation and advanced the story in a few dialogues. The same could have taken two paragraphs or maybe more if it were to be done without dialogues.

Dialogues help you convey emotions and describe the complete scene without using too many words. This is the real beauty of using them and that’s why you need to know how to write dialogue in a book.

How to Write Dialogue in a Book

Follow these steps to write dialogue in your book:

• Have a purpose for the dialogue
• Differentiate characters
• Use conflict
• Be consistent
• Keep dialogues natural
• Keep dialogues short
• Improve flow
• Check formatting and punctuation
• Recheck and edit

Step #1: Dialogue Purpose

You should use dialogues for a purpose. They should have a reason.

Not all types of writing need to have dialogues. You can’t fit them anywhere based on your liking. That’s not how it works and that’s not how it will work.

The decision to use dialogue in your writing should be logical and must be purpose-driven. The first thing you should do is ask yourself the following questions:

Do I really need a dialogue here?

If so, what is its purpose?

Can I go without a dialogue?

Will it make any difference if I add a dialogue?

Generally, novels and fiction writing need dialogues. Non-fiction, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily need dialogues. But there isn’t any rule. You’re the best judge. It’s your book so you have to decide rationally what makes more sense – and why.

To make things simple for you, you should use dialogue in your book if it meets one of the conditions:

• Dialogue should provide information that otherwise would be tough to narrate
• Dialogue needs to improve the characterization
• Dialogue is moving the story forward

These are the three primary purposes of using dialogue in your book. It should meet at least one of the conditions above. If it does none of the above, you don’t necessarily need dialogue and you’d be fine without it.

For instance, George Eliot in her novel Middlemarch used the following dialogue between the two sisters and set them apart. The following dialogue shows the difference between the two characters:

Celia was trying not to smile with pleasure. “O Dodo, you must keep the cross yourself.”

“No, no, dear, no,” said Dorothea, putting up her hand with careless deprecation.”

“Yes, indeed you must; it would suit you – in your black dress, now,” said Celia, insistingly. “You might wear that.” “Not for the world, not for the world. A cross is the last thing I would wear as a trinket.” Dorothea shuddered slightly. “Then you will think it wicked in me to wear it,” said Celia, uneasily. “No, dear, no,” said Dorothea, stroking her sister’s cheek.

This character differentiation couldn’t be achieved without dialogue. And that’s how you should ensure that dialogues in your story have a specific purpose.

The easiest way to figure out if your dialogue has a purpose is by removing it. If the story still makes sense after removing a specific dialogue, it has no purpose and should be removed. If, however, the story doesn’t make sense anymore or the message gets distorted, you should retain it.

As a writer, you’re the judge and you should define the purpose and reason of the dialogue before you initiate a conversation.

Step #2: Differentiate Characters

One of the first things you need to understand while learning how to write dialogue is to set your characters apart using dialogue. You can write several pages explaining different characteristics of the characters which might not work well as opposed to a dialogue.

You can express several types of important information about your characters via dialogue such as:

• The character’s background and accent
• Character’s personality, mood, feelings, thoughts, and other traits by the tone and word selection
• How often a character speaks and information on whether he/she is introverted or extrovert

Dialogue helps you define your characters and differentiate them from one another. If you are writing a novel or a screenplay , I’m sure you know how important character development is and what role it plays in novel writing .

You should use dialogue to differentiate characters, set them apart, and for character development. You should also use dialogue to describe changes in motives, feelings, and intentions as the story moves forward. When these changes are conveyed via dialogue, it makes them more meaningful and notable as opposed to the writer narrating the changes a character is going through.

Here is an example from Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White :

“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

“Out to the hog house,” replied Mrs. Arable. “Some pigs were born last night.”

“I don’t see why he needs an ax,” continued Fern, who was only eight. 

“Well,” said her mother, “one of the pigs is a runt. It’s very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.”

“Do away with it?” shrieked Fern. “You mean kill it? Just because it’s smaller than the others?”

Mrs. Arable put a pitcher of cream on the table. “Don’t yell, Fern!” she said. “Your father is right. The pig would probably die anyway.”

The difference in their personalities is evident- no line of dialogue is out of character. This is a perfect way to use dialogue to differentiate characters and who they are.

Use Squibler’s AI tools to create new characters, settings, and objects. You can also develop your elements by adding descriptions and visuals. Then Squibler lets you seamlessly integrate the characters into your dialogues and narrative as you create chapters and scenes.

Step #3: Use Conflict

Imagine your characters are sitting on a couch spending time watching birds in the sky. You can narrate the scene and explain it in detail. You can add dialogue but if everything is moving smoothly and there isn’t anything new or conflicting, what’s the point of having a dialogue?

It won’t add value.

When dialogue doesn’t add value, it should be removed. This is the first rule.

And when there is a conflict or disagreement between two or more characters at any level and of any kind, there has to be a dialogue. This rule is really important.

When there isn’t any conflict and everything is pleasing and normal, and the dialogue doesn’t raise the eyebrows of the readers, they will start losing interest. The fact is: We all do chitchat and conversations in our daily lives that have no purpose. That’s fine.

But if you do the same in your novel will bore your readers. It doesn’t just work.

This is why you must learn how to write dialogue that uses conflict between two characters. It doesn’t have to be severe conflict rather it should be two opposing views. If you’re not using conflict and the dialogue doesn’t advance the story, you don’t need one.

That makes sense, right?

Things, however, get challenging when there isn’t any conflict and the conversation is pleasant and lively. You can’t skip it. That’s also a part of the novel because removing these types of pleasant conversations from your story will ruin it.

What do you do to narrate lively conversations?

You need to keep these conversations brief. Better yet, narrate them. This is something you have to learn. This is why reading is crucial if you want to become a better writer. Check dialogue examples from other writers and see how they write dialogue when characters are happy and when there is a conflict.

You’ll notice that pleasant conversations are kept to a minimum while conflicts are covered in detail because stories rely on conflicts and that’s how it moves forward. When everything is fine and there aren’t any conflicts, that’s the end of the story.

Here is an example from Fat City by Leonard Gardner:

“That’s a good one.” Tully placed the meat in the black encrusted frying pan, pushing in the edge of fat until the steak lay flat.

“I heard what you said.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“You think I’m lying to you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

“All I’m trying to do,” said Tully, now opening a can of peas, “is make us our supper.”

It is a perfect example of how to use dialogue to create conflict in your characters and move the story forward.

Use Squibler if you lack at building more conflict and adding more depth. With advanced AI technology, you can select a certain section of your dialogue and command Squibler to add more conflict and intensity to it and see how your work unfolds before your eyes in a matter of seconds. 

Step #4: Be Consistent

One of the basic lessons of dialogue writing that you’ll learn in every book or screenwriting course on how to write dialogue and how to write a conversation is that dialogues need to be consistent. That is, it keeps characters consistent throughout the book unless you want to depict a change in a character’s behavior.

This means the words your character uses, his attitude, personality, taste, feelings, and language should be consistent. Make them as humane as possible. That’s the key to bringing a story to life.

After spending time with someone, you can anticipate their reaction to a situation and you can anticipate their behavior. This is what exactly readers do. They anticipate the reaction of your characters.

How do you get to know you’re being consistent in dialogue writing?

If readers can anticipate the reaction of your characters, you’re doing a great job. If dialogue surprises them, readers will lose interest. It will become confusing.

Sometimes, it’s essential to keep a character or two mysterious. And that’s fine. When you have such a character, readers expect a different response from him every time – and that’s what you should do.

The thing is: Readers expect characters to behave in a certain way. This expectation is developed by dialogue, narration, and the plot. You need to ensure that the dialogue is consistent and is as per readers’ expectations that you have developed in your book.

The tone, word choice, structure, language, voice, etc. need to be consistent with the character’s personality and with the situation they’re dealing with. If a character is talking to a stranger, he will use a different tone as compared to when he is talking to his wife. You can use the same tone.

Consistency isn’t just relevant to the character but it should be relevant to the situation, the character he is talking to, and the scenario.

Use Squibler to develop your writing piece and the AI technology lets you seamlessly maintain the consistency of character traits and plot elements. You can store all the characteristics in elements next to your editor and later recall the character with just their name and the AI will develop the content based on the ongoing dialogue and traits you provided. AI takes care of the matter, and this way you put less focus on maintaining consistency and more time into writing the story. 

Step #5: Keep Dialogues Natural

While you’re trying to be consistent with the character’s personality and scene, it is equally important to keep dialogues natural as people communicate generally daily.

For instance, you need to use slang appropriately as people use slang all the time. Here is an example of how to make dialogue appear natural and realistic:

Jenna Moreci has created a slang for the novel which fits perfectly.

Make sure dialogues don’t appear alien to the readers. For instance, if you use formal language, it won’t fit well because people don’t use formal language.

Here is an example :

People don’t talk like this. Writing dialogue like this will make readers roll their eyes from boredom.

An easy approach to keeping your dialogues natural and realistic is to listen to how people talk. Spend time in a park or a hotel lobby and record snippets of conversations people have. You can even visit a high school to learn how teenagers talk. You’ll be able to figure out how people talk and communicate. Alternately, check dialogue examples from top authors. See how they make dialogues realistic and world-like.

Needless to say, you don’t have to keep dialogues natural and realistic all the time. You have to, at times, switch to unrealistic dialogues. This is something that fiction writers do a lot especially when they build a new world.

Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you have to adjust dialogue accordingly. At the end of the day though, speech patterns need to stay consistent otherwise characters will lose believability.

Step #6: Keep Dialogue Short

If there is one thing all new writers should know about how to write dialogue, it’s this: Keep them short.

As much as you can.

Here is what Nigel Watts says about dialogues:

“Dialogue is like a rose bush – it often improves after pruning. I recommend you rewrite your dialogue until it is as brief as you can get it. This will mean making it quite unrealistically to the point. That is fine. Your readers don’t want realistic speech, they want talk which spins the story along.”

Why keep it concise?

To make it reader-friendly. When you cut the dialogue, it might not appear realistic because that’s not how people talk. So there is a fine line between realistic dialogues and short dialogues.

You have to write dialogue like it sounds in real life and then shorten it. Remove anything and everything excessive. Get rid of the unnecessary stuff, that once removed doesn’t change the meaning of the dialogue.

Try shortening the dialogue as much as you can. This is something that you’ll learn with time. Practice. Check dialogue examples.

Here is an example. Check the following dialogue that’s not shortened.

Now here is a revised version of the same dialogue:

Both versions have the same meaning. Readers don’t miss anything. That’s what you have to do with your dialogues. Keep them short. This is one of the basic lessons on how to write dialogue in a book.

Here is what you should do to make dialogue concise. Small talk may happen in real life, but it’s not necessary to include it in your novel. It halts the flow and doesn’t add much value.

Edit dialogues multiple times during the editing process. If you use editing software , make sure you edit dialogues manually and make them short. Once you’re done, ask someone else to reduce the word count of the dialogues. Finally, compare the original version with the new version and see if they still deliver the same message.

Avoiding common mistakes like fluffy dialogue is paramount to a good story. 

Use Squibler if you struggle with writing compact and natural dialogue. You can write however you want not worrying about the errors and mistakes, and then select the text and ask AI to rewrite it or summarize based on your instructions. It will generate the dialogue exactly according to your instructions. 

You can also generate the entire screenplay with Squibler. You need to decide the title of the screenplay and the number of pages and the software will generate the screenplay for you within minutes. You can also use an existing draft to generate the screenplay.

Step #7: Improve Flow

If you have ever written a book or a novel and have used book editing software , I’m sure you’ll know the importance of flow in writing. Dialogues are no different. The flow of the dialogues needs to be taken care of specifically. You need to master how to write dialogue that flows well and can be read effortlessly.

What does dialogue flow mean?

It means the dialogue should flow logically and the readers don’t have to put an effort to understand anything. It should move from one character to another smoothly.

There are several ways to improve the flow of the dialogues such as:

• Improve dialogue tags. Too many or too few tags (e.g. she said, he asked, etc.) ruin the flow. Always tag a piece of dialogue when it’s the first time a character is speaking in the conversation, but refrain from adding tags in every single line as it gets too monotonous. Using too few dialogue tags isn’t a good idea either as readers will have to move back after a few lines to identify whose line they’re reading. There has to be a balance. Be smart with tags.
• Describe the character’s actions as to what they’re doing. That makes dialogue natural and that’s the correct way on how to write a conversation in a book. Naturally, when people talk, they’re always doing something like staring at the wall, playing with the key, chopping vegetables, etc. These are the actions that you should explicitly mention to make dialogues appear natural and to improve flow.
• Don’t add long lengthy paragraphs in dialogue. This ruins the flow. And it never happens. When a person is talking continuously, you have to mention the action of the other person. For instance, add umm, ahh, I see, etc. to maintain the flow and to avoid large paragraphs of text.

Follow these three steps to improve the flow of your dialogues and you’ll be able to write better dialogues that make sense.

If you want to enhance the flow in a matter of seconds without much effort, use Squibler’s advanced AI tools that are modeled in a way that maintains the integrity of the dialogue and keeps the plot binging. 

Step #8: Check Formatting and Punctuation

You can’t hook a reader with poorly formatted and punctually incorrect dialogue. It won’t happen. If you want to know how to write dialogue, you also need to learn how to format dialogue and how to punctuate dialogue.

Here are a few basic punctuating rules that you should always stick with when formatting dialogue:

• Add comma and period within the quotation marks.
• Use a comma between the dialogue and the tag.
• Double quotation marks are used for regular dialogue.
• Use single quotation marks if you have to use a quotation inside a dialogue. Single quotes help the quote stand out within the dialogue.
• When quotations extend and move to another paragraph, don’t close it at the end of the first paragraph rather close it towards the end of the last paragraph.
• Start a new paragraph for new lines of dialogue.
• Em dashes can be used instead of a comma at times for extra emphasis. This also creates variety and improves readability. 
• Pay attention to the proper use of uppercase and lowercase letters when appropriate.
• If you’re ending the dialogue with ellipses, don’t add any other punctuation. 

Poorly written dialogues don’t make sense. When the punctuation isn’t correct, it will ruin the flow and the meaning too. For instance, inner dialogues are put in italics and if you aren’t putting them in italics, readers won’t know if they’re inner dialogues.

Simple things like a period, question mark, and exclamation point all need to be placed perfectly. Basic errors like these are inexcusable.  These types of mistakes can change the meaning and context of the book altogether.

Great dialogue starts with perfect dialogue punctuation and formatting.

If you use an editing tool like Grammarly , it will identify the formatting and punctuation-related issues. However, you’ll still need to go through it manually because there are several errors that the software can’t identify and fix.

The best approach is to check dialogue formatting and punctuation as you write. Once you finish writing your novel or screenplay, you can then go through all the dialogues to check their formatting and punctuation.

Step #9: Recheck and Edit

This is the last step in the dialogue writing process where you have to check dialogues for errors. You can set a schedule as to when you need to recheck written dialogue. You can do it daily, weekly, monthly, or after completing a specific word count or chapter-wise.

But you should do it regularly as you write.

What to check?

Everything ranging from character development to story to flow to dialogue length to formatting. The best approach is to check dialogues individually for Step #1 to Step #8. This will perfect dialogues and your book leaving no room for errors.

Using a writing tool like Squibler will make it easier for you to recheck and edit dialogues as managing your draft gets easier. You can easily edit and tweak your document and keep track of the changes.

In the end, it all comes down to how you write dialogue and how you format dialogue. It’s difficult to tell if you’ve written effective dialogue until readers have gotten their hands on it. All you can do is arm yourself with the best information and write the best dialogue you can. 

Spice Up Conversations with Dialogue

Dialogue is essential for fiction writing and if you’re a fiction writer, you should master the art of writing dialogue. It’s an asset to your writing skills.

What you can achieve with dialogue can’t be achieved otherwise. Dialogue gives life to your manuscript. Dialogue gives life to your characters. Dialogue helps you grab the reader’s attention. Dialogue makes your story easy to understand.

You can’t ignore the importance and usefulness of dialogues in writing. I’m confident these 9 steps on how to write dialogue will help you write better novels , screenplays, and books for your readers.

The following are some commonly asked questions about writing dialogue in a narrative:

How do you write engaging dialogue?

To write engaging dialogue, focus on authenticity and purpose. Use a dialogue tag and opt for action beats to convey speakers’ emotions and movements. Keep exchanges concise, injecting tension and subtext where possible. Listen to real conversations to capture natural speech patterns and employ dialogue writing examples to refine your style. Strive for realism while ensuring each line drives the story forward or deepens character development.

How does dialogue engage the reader?

Dialogue engages readers by bringing characters to life through their unique voices and interactions. Realistic dialogue enhances immersion, making characters relatable and believable. Effective dialogue advances the plot, reveals character traits, and conveys emotions, thoughts, and conflicts. By crafting authentic conversations, writers establish connections between characters and readers, fostering empathy and investment in the narrative.

How do you write dialogue step by step?

To write effective dialogue, start by knowing your characters intimately, and understanding their backgrounds, motivations, and personalities. Next, consider the purpose of the conversation within the context of your story. Write dialogue that is concise, authentic, and moves the plot forward. Use tags and action beats judiciously to convey tone and emotion. Finally, revise and refine your dialogue, ensuring it sounds natural and serves the narrative.

How do you engage readers?

Engaging readers hinges on creating compelling characters whose dialogue feels authentic and resonates with the audience. Craft characters with depth, unique voices, and relatable traits. Ensure their dialogue is purposeful, advancing the plot, revealing insights into their personalities, and driving emotional connections. By making the character’s dialogue meaningful and believable, readers become invested in their journeys and the overall narrative.

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Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

Helping authors achieve their dreams

How to write good dialogue in a novel

October 31, 2022 by Nathan Bransford 113 Comments

Few storytelling elements in a novel are as powerful as dialogue. Writing good dialogue is a crucial way of letting characters speak for themselves outside of the narrative voice , and it’s one of the best ways of conveying personality and flavor.

And, as with any powerful device, it can be abused. Over-use of dialogue has become really rampant in the manuscripts I see. I constantly see authors contorting their novels to shoehorn everything into dialogue because they haven’t yet mastered other storytelling techniques.

Dialogue cannot be everything, and, in fact, it’s almost always best when it’s used judiciously. Even novels that appear at first blush to be almost entirely dialogue are clever in the way they weave in other crucial storytelling elements, particularly motivations , physical description , inner thought processes , and context and exposition .

Here are some tips for utilizing dialogue effectively.

Good dialogue is an escalating joust between characters with competing interests

Above all, characters in a novel must want something and be actively going after that thing. The second they put their interests on hold to serve some other separate narrative function is the second they stop feeling human.

So, for instance, when characters are reduced to asking a bunch of leading questions that don’t make any intrinsic sense just so the author can smush in a bunch of information, it won’t feel remotely real. No character should be forced to set aside their motivations for the author’s convenience.

Characters need to be utilizing their words to try to get what they want. Even characters who are nominally aligned might have different ideas about how to achieve a goal. They should always have an angle.

Sometimes you’ll see characters in novels bantering back and forth in a way that is meant to be witty unto itself, reveal character, or just fill space. Unless it’s just so insanely unbelievably clever that the writer somehow makes it work, usually this aimless banter feels hollow and far less interesting than the author thinks it is.

A good conversation is an escalation . The dialogue is about something and builds toward something . If things stay even and neutral, and it mainly just feels like everyone has all the time in the world to chit chat aimlessly, the dialogue just feels empty. Weave cleverness into dialogue that otherwise has a point, don’t just show chit chat for chit chat’s sake.

Characters in a novel never just talk. There’s always more to it.

Good dialogue is not weighed down by exposition

When the dialogue is carrying exposition and trying to tell the reader too much, characters end up saying a lot of very unnatural and unwieldy things. You’ll see things like:

“Remember that time we stole the frog from Miss Jenkins and she ended up giving us two hours of detention and that’s how we met?” “Yeah, totally! And now we’re in 6th Grade and have to dissect frogs for our science project, which is due tomorrow. I don’t know how we’re going to get it finished in time.”

So much of this dialogue would already be already apparent to the characters. They’d know how they met without having to talk about it, they’d know they’re in 6th grade without having to talk about it, they’d know the science project is due without talking about it. So it’s very clear to the reader that they’re not talking to each other: they’re really talking to the reader.

Exposition and dialogue only really mesh when one character genuinely doesn’t know what the other character is telling them and it’s natural for them to explain at the moment they’re explaining it, but even then, try first to find a more active way for the character to make a discovery.

Otherwise, if you’re just trying to smush information into your dialogue , your reader is going to spot the artifice a mile away.

Good dialogue evokes the way people actually talk in real life without sounding precisely like the way people talk in real life

Paraphrasing Elmore Leonard , good writers leave out the boring parts. This goes doubly for dialogue: it’s usually best to cut to the chase rather than spending time on the pleasantries that normal people use in everyday conversation.

Having an “ear for dialogue” means being able to create an effective illusion. Do not insulate yourself from criticism by saying “but this is how people really talk.” You’re not trying to imitate how people really talk . You’re trying to write effective dialogue in a novel. It’s not the same thing.

In real life our conversations wander around all over the place, and a transcribed real life conversation is a meandering mess of free association and stutters. In a novel, a good conversation is focused and has a point. It’s like real life dialogue with the confusing bits stripped out. As my former client Jennifer Hubbard wrote , “good dialogue sounds like conversation, but is not an exact reproduction of conversation.”

And in a novel, dialect, slang, and voice is usually used sparingly unless you have a very specific reason for being precisely accurate. Just a hint of flavor is often enough to get the gist of an accent or dialect across without interfering with the reader’s ability to understand what the character is saying. So for instance, if you tell us a character has a French accent, the reader will infer the accent without you needing to spell every single word phonetically.

Good dialogue reveals personality. Characters only very rarely say precisely what they are thinking.

Human beings are not very articulate creatures, and we’re not wholly self-aware . Despite all the words at our disposal, words tend to fail us at key moments, and even when we know what we want to say we spend a whole lot of time trying to describe and articulate what we feel without being quite able to do it properly. We misunderstand, overemphasize, underemphasize, grasp at what we mean, and conversations go astray.

So when two characters go back and forth explaining precisely what they are feeling and/or thinking, it doesn’t seem remotely real. Good dialogue is instead comprised of attempts at articulation. There’s a whole lot that is kept back, because we rarely put our unvarnished feelings out there.

Now, this shouldn’t be taken too far. A conversation shouldn’t be an endless string of misunderstandings (unless you’re Samuel Beckett ), but the way in which characters express their feelings and how they articulate what they’re feeling is one of the most important ways of revealing character. Are they reserved? Boisterous? Do they bluster? Hold back?

Characters who say exactly what they mean are generic. Characters who talk around their emotions and objectives are much more interesting.

Good dialogue goes easy on the exclamations and exhortations

When a character overuses “Ughs” and “Blechs” they can easily sound petulant. When they overuse exclamations, they can exhaust the reader with their excitability. When they overuse verbal tics and crutches, they can drive the reader crazy.

Interjections and grunts are kind of like carpet cleaning concentrate. They must be diluted or you’ll burn a hole in the floor.

Good dialogue is boosted by dialogue tags, gestures, and action

Poor maligned dialogue tags !!! Every couple of years some advice makes the rounds that advocates stripping books of dialogue tags so that the person who is speaking is solely apparent through gestures and context.

This is overkill. Get behind me, dialogue tags, I will defend you until the end!

As long as you mainly stick to said and asked , your reader won’t notice they’re there, and they’ll be much better able to track who is saying what. Yes, don’t overdo dialogue tags and look for ways to add meaningful gesture and action to back and forths, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The key on the gesture and action is not to simply use it to break up the dialogue for pacing purposes, but to actually make it meaningful, which is hard to do .

Good dialogue is unexpected

There’s nothing worse than reading a stretch of dialogue where the characters are saying precisely what we think they’re going to say.

The best dialogue counters our expectations and surprises us.

“Humphrey Bogart!”

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching ! For my best advice, check out my online classes , my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book . And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter !

Art: The Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Reader Interactions

October 31, 2022 at 11:48 am

What are some books you can recommend with great dialogue scenes?

October 31, 2022 at 12:21 pm

I admire Elmore Leonard’s dialogue a lot for conveying personality while advancing the story. Rachel Cusk is a good example of sustaining a novel that’s almost entirely dialogue while weaving in other storytelling elements in a way that (mostly) still manages to feel natural. Tahereh Mafi has a really great ear for dialogue, particularly A VERY LARGE EXPANSE OF SEA.

October 31, 2022 at 12:55 pm

Ah yes, I’ve read A Very Large Expanse of Sea! She’s great. I hear this about Elmore Leonard (which I believe, at least as far as movie adaptations of his novels go). And I know a lot of writers love Rachel Cusk so I should probably check her out. Thank you!

November 18, 2022 at 4:36 pm

I normally agree with everything you say Nathan, but I have to disagree here. When I think of the masters of dialogue fiction from the sublime to the silly, they would mainly disagree with you. William Peter Blatty and Thomas Harris would disagree with your summation as they would rather keep the drama going with the next comment. Worse still, the always wonderful Aaron Sorkin would also disagree. Lol – who apart from you would disagree with the “master of dialogue” Terry Pratchett would disagree, and I think that you will find messers (lol- obviously, a British thing as it cannot be fixed in “Word” but it simply means many misters). Blatty, Harris, Sorkin and Pratchett have sold the odd book here and there as well as screenwriting two or three of the best TV series of all time. Dinnie worry, I am sure that you will be on the ball again with your next comment.

November 18, 2022 at 4:57 pm

Aaron Sorkin writes novels?

Otherwise, I don’t even really understand what you’re saying these writers you are speaking on behalf of would disagree with?

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Writing effective dialogue in fiction

As an editor, I’ve seen all kinds of dialogue in fiction: poor, excellent, and every possible grade in between. In this article I’m going to give you some basic tools to improve your dialogue.

I think that writers who develop great characters write better dialogue, and that’s a truth absolutely central to what I’d like to discuss with you today. Character creation comes first.

‘How can I get better at writing dialogue?’

This is one of the most frequent questions I’m asked. Good dialogue can be difficult to quantify but most readers instinctively know bad dialogue when they see it.

Let’s establish some guidelines.

Effective dialogue demonstrates character through conflict

As a writer, you should be familiar with the idea of conflict. It’s the lifeblood of every story, and if you have no conflict in a scene, you have no scene – full stop. Conflict can be big or small, obvious or subtle, internal or external, but it must always be there .

For example, take this extract from my novel The Atholl Expedition .

‘Strangers! Ach, damn them – they’ll ruin everything. Sir, we must take our shot now.’

Albert hesitated. He ran a hand down the stock of his rifle, brushing past the lock as if exploring the idea of pulling it back and making it ready for a shot; but he left it where it was, and didn’t raise the piece to his shoulder.

‘They’ll be here in moments, sir!’ McAdie’s face was steadily turning red with frustration and anger. ‘In the name o’ Christ… Damn ye, will ye nae take the shot? We’ve come all this way, and it’s as easy as shooting a scarecrow at this range! The beast couldnae run if he wanted to.’

‘That is precisely the problem. Now that it comes to it – well, look at him. Look at what we have done to him.’

In this scene, Prince Albert is out hunting a prize stag in the Scottish Highlands. Here are the conflicts influencing the characters in this scene:

• They have been seeking their objective – a successful stalk of the hart – for days, without success.
• Prince Albert is late for an engagement back at the castle, and his wife, Queen Victoria, is almost certainly angry with him. He feels torn in two directions.
• Strangers will soon appear on the scene and possibly frighten the hart away. It’s their last chance.
• The ghillie, McAdie, has a lot riding on the outcome of the hunt. His lord has threatened him with eviction if he fails to secure a good outcome for the visiting prince.
• The stag is lame – and it seems likely that the relentless pursuit over moor and mountain has caused his injuries.

Even though they are not all explicitly mentioned, these sources of conflict all affect the behaviour and dialogue of the characters in some way. Prince Albert is torn between his ambition to bag the hart – an ambition inflamed by the long and exciting chase – and his strong sense of honour. McAdie’s practical, no-nonsense nature comes through as he encourages his client to take the shot. He’s thinking about what will happen to his family if the Duke evicts them, and such is his desperation that he forgets himself and raises his voice. Fortunately Albert is too preoccupied to take note 1 .

How characters react to conflict tells the reader a huge amount about them. It’s the old ‘show, don’t tell’ adage, and it really is true – if you can animate the source of conflict by infusing every word your characters say with it, your dialogue will sing.

Good dialogue moves your story forwards

When something important happens in your story, why not use dialogue to show the reader how the characters act and react? Authenticity and suspension of disbelief are important, and not just for science fiction or fantasy authors. Authenticity is enhanced when a scene is acted out by characters instead of the reader simply being told what happens. It’s ‘show, don’t tell’ again.

Let’s put it another way. If a section of dialogue is not driving your story, or conveying character interaction through conflict, then I’d argue it has no place in a scene and should be cut.

Avoid exposition in dialogue where possible

Novice writers often try to avoid lengthy passages of exposition by cramming information into dialogue instead. While it’s necessary to convey some information in dialogue, best practice is to do this in such a way that it also provides conflict-rich character interaction at the same time. Sticking to the first principle of effective dialogue can compensate for any number of sins.

Just about the worst thing you can do is to draw attention to the exposition by having characters tell each other things they already know, purely for the benefit of the reader.

For example:

Sir Edmund crouched behind his shield, breathing heavily. ‘Too many of them! How can we breach the walls of the fortress?’

His squire pointed with his sword. ‘Well, Sir Edmund, as you know, our spy discovered a secret entrance up through the latrines.’

Sir Edmund nodded. ‘We attack at dawn!’

In this contrived example, Sir Edmund already knows about the secret entrance to the castle but the writer can think of no more effective way to convey that fact to the reader. Hence the squire becomes a device at this point and is effectively speaking with the writer’s voice, not his own. The phrase ‘as you know’ is the big giveaway. Writers sometimes try to disguise this by having one of the characters conveniently forget the pertinent fact, but it still comes across as inauthentic. Good writing – or good editing – can avoid this.

Give your characters a voice

‘Voice’ is a somewhat intangible quality, but it’s one of the most important attributes of good dialogue, and good fiction in general.

A sign of bad dialogue is that all the characters sound alike. In the same way that no two people speak exactly alike in real life, the characters in your story must have distinct voices too. These character voices are related to, but distinct from, your voice as a writer 2 .

Many factors contribute to a character’s voice, including:

• Word choice;
• Sentence and phrase length;
• Accent, language, and dialect;
• Mannerisms and turns of phrase;
• Overall tone;
• The character’s age, history, social class, and general demeanour.

Time for some examples! Take this line of dialogue:

Sam smiled. ‘Would you mind opening the door for me, please?’

This version conveys exactly the same information but with a completely different voice:

‘Open the goddamn door,’ Sam snarled.

Good characters usually develop their own voices naturally as you write – it can feel almost like magic – but it’s worth doing a little planning in advance. It’s very important for every main character to have a distinct and recognisable voice.

Pay attention to sound and rhythm, but don’t try to copy real speech

Next time you’re at the bus stop or on the train, listen in on the conversations around you. Real dialogue is repetitive, unfocused, and filled with trivia that is of limited use in fiction. For example, a conversation between two friends might sound something like this:

‘Alright, John?’

‘Alright. What’s up?’

‘Not much. Grim weather, ain’t it?’

‘Yeah, rubbish.’

‘You seen the match?’

‘What, you mean when Roonie—’

‘Yeah, he deserved that, I reckon.’

‘Rubbish, like. Should of gone off sooner.’

‘That’s what I said to the missus.’

‘Got a fag on you?’

And so on. The point is that real-life conversation plays a different role to dialogue in fiction. When you’re chatting to your friend on the bus, you’re reinforcing social bonds, demonstrating your membership of and position within one or more ‘tribes’ (a football club in this example), and perhaps even asserting subtle dominance or submission. There may be conflict behind the dialogue, but there may very well not be. And there is no narrative imperative driving it whatsoever. Real life doesn’t follow a plot.

Dialogue in fiction is best thought of as an abstract but focused interpretation of real dialogue , not a precise replication of it. A good writer will produce dialogue that convinces the reader it’s real speech, while in reality cutting out the random chit-chat not driven by conflict or narrative purpose, the repetitive and boring bits, the extraordinarily clumsy and nonsensical turns of phrase that even the most eloquent speakers use all the time 3 .

But it must sound authentic. Real people generally speak in fairly short bursts most of the time, although character voice can override this (some people are more verbose than others). Resist the urge to speechify – but sprinkle some longer sentences and phrases throughout for good rhythm and variety.

Writing authentic dialogue may involve dialect or accents. With some exceptions, these are generally best handled with restraint. Avoid writing dialogue that’s difficult to read or understand, and aim to include just enough of the accent or dialect to convey that character’s voice.

Watch your dialogue tags

Tags are the bits and pieces of prose that act as the scaffolding for the dialogue itself. There’s a lot of variety in style here; some writers produce very sparse dialogue, where the characters alone do all the talking, while others include far more description, internalisation, and action around the dialogue. For most writers I think the sweet spot is somewhere in between. Completely ‘bare’ dialogue (just line after line of speech) can be very disorienting for the reader unless written with great skill.

The most common dialogue tags are ‘he said’, ‘she said’, or ‘(character name) said’. Some people will tell you not to use these, but they’re almost invisible to the reader and I think they can be used liberally, as a form of structural navigation. This is especially relevant in complex scenes to help identify who is speaking.

This basic dialogue tag is sometimes modified by the use of a verb, for example ‘he whispered’ or ‘he shouted’. These can be effective but are best used rarely to avoid purple prose. Then there are action tags. To illustrate, I’ll use a quote from Sharpe’s Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell. Dialogue tags are shown in bold.

‘She won’t be off Portugal,’ the first lieutenant suggested , ‘for she won’t be sailing direct to France. She’ll put into Cadiz, sir, and my guess is that we’ll catch her during the second week in October, somewhere off Africa.’

‘Ten guineas rides on the result,’ Chase said , ‘and I know I have forsworn gambling, but I shall happily pay you so long as we do catch her. Then we’ll have a rare fight, milady, but let me assure you that you will be safe below the water line.’

Lady Grace smiled . ‘I am to miss all the entertainment aboard, Captain?’

This is a pretty basic example. One tag is used per line of dialogue. The first uses the verb to suggest; the second is a straightforward ‘said’; the third is an action tag for variety, and as a supporting element of that character’s voice.

Where novice writers go wrong is in using overblown or conspicuous dialogue tags, sometimes known as ‘said bookisms’ . Using strong verbs in dialogue tags can create this effect. And while it can be effective very occasionally, using an adverb and a verb in a tag is usually over the top no matter which words are chosen. An example:

‘You, sir, are a buffoon!’ Major Elkington bellowed.

‘A slanderous accusation,’ General Brown roared thunderously. ‘I demand satisfaction.’

‘At dawn it is,’ the major snarled.

See what I mean? It’s purple prose. ‘Bellowed’ and ‘snarled’ both have their place as dialogue tags, when used with discretion, but here the effect is amplified by the downright gratuitous ‘roared thunderously’.

My advice is to use dialogue tags with caution. The ‘said’ variants can be used often, and action tags are very useful for adding description to dialogue, but avoid too many rich verbs and – especially – adjectives in dialogue tags. The stronger your characters’ voices the fewer dialogue tags you are likely to need.

Read it out loud

The best way to gauge the authenticity of your dialogue is simply to read it out loud. Often, this will be enough to highlight problems with pacing or repetition; what sounded good in your head might not sound as good when spoken. Asking a friend to help you assess spoken dialogue can be very useful. This is a valuable stage in the self-editing process and I recommend you give it a try.

Entire books have been written on this subject, but you now have the basic tools you need to start writing better dialogue.

• Use dialogue to demonstrate character through conflict;
• Use dialogue to move the story forwards;
• Avoid exposition where possible;
• Give your characters a voice;
• Don’t try to precisely replicate real speech;
• Watch your tags;
• Read it out loud.
• The two characters have also established a bond of mutual respect by this point in the story, and there are other dynamics at play too, of course. But broadly these are the main sources of conflict acting on the characters at this point. ↩︎
• This is another issue altogether and beyond the scope of this article, but you’re probably familiar with the phrase ‘finding your voice as a writer’. Think of it this way – Charles Dickens’s voice is completely different to, say, that of Michael Crichton. ↩︎
• Don’t believe me? Try reading a transcript of a recorded conversation or interview. I think you’ll be surprised. ↩︎
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Alex Roddie

Happiest on a mountain. Writer, story-wrangler, digital and film photographer. Editor of Sidetracked magazine (I make the words come out good).

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30 Dialogue Exercises to Light Up Your Fiction

If you want practice writing some dialogue, these exercises will stretch your creative writing muscles.

More importantly, you’ll learn techniques that you can apply to all your future dialogue writing.

If you want to see examples of dialogue, please visit my post on 50 Examples of Dialogue Writing .

Otherwise, please read on and make sure to try out at least one of these exercises (seriously: don’t read these all and then avoid trying a single one).

Write a scene of dialogue between teenagers arguing about whether to shoplift a designer jacket. One has done it before, while the other one has never stolen anything. Halfway through the conversation, reverse their positions, and have them start arguing for the opposite course of action. This is what’s known as a dialogue twist, and it will help you create surprising reversals in your dialogue.

Write an argument between a mother and a daughter where every single line of dialogue is accompanied by an action, a thought, or a description. You should have zero standalone lines of dialogue, until the very last line. For the very last line, which should involve a big decision or statement by one of the characters, have that line be dialogue alone.

This is a great way to learn how to use structure for emphasis – the standalone dialogue is more important, so you’re using formatting to set it apart.

Write a sex scene where one partner becomes frustrated and it turns into a conversation between the two instead. Use the physical body language to accentuate the dialogue (one tries to touch the other, and is rebuffed both physically and verbally). By the end, resolve the disagreement and have them start romantic intimacy once more.

Amy comes home and notices that John has spent a lot of money on several items, even though they’re on a strict budget and he recently lost his job. But she doesn’t say anything directly to John about what he bought. The dialogue should be critical of John, but not for anything to do with the budget, money, or what he bought. Give the reader access to Amy’s head – her thoughts should stand in strong contrast with what she actually says out loud.

This is a contrast exercise where you learn how to oppose thoughts and dialogue in a way that gives maximum pleasure to the reader.

It’s important to write one-sided dialogue, in order to get the feeling of extended speaking. For this exercise, you’ll write what a mother or father would say to their infant. The adult is going to work on an oil rig and won’t see them for a year or more. What do they want to tell their child?

Write an argument between two people as a third person yells from off-stage: “C’mon, we gotta go!” This is yelled with increasing urgency each time, until the fourth time when the speakers finally stop the conversation and leave. This is an excellent way to give dialogue a sense of escalation and climax. It comes from an external force, not from the conversation itself.

Take dialogue that you’ve already written in a short story and novel, and do a word count. Now try to compress it by cutting at least 50% of the words. Focus on cutting the dialogue itself rather than the thoughts/actions surrounding the dialogue. When you’re doing, read both the uncompressed version and compressed version out loud – which one sounds better? Which one sounds more natural? Which one sounds punchier?

This dialogue exercise is one in artificial limitation: You’re only allowed to write five words per line of dialogue. That’s right – each character only gets to speak five words max before the other character speaks. The result should be sharp and staccato sounding, and rip off the tongue quickly.

Create a conversation between two classes of people: one rich, highbrow and well educated, and the other poor, lowbrow, and working class. They are arguing over the how to save a dog that’s fallen in a deep pit. Use slang and formality to help the reader distinguish between the two.

Print out this comic page and write your own dialogue for what the characters could be saying. Bonus points for creating sharp contrasts in how each character speaks.

It’s very important to have your characters talking TOWARD something. Here is the last line of a dialogue between two people: “Fine, I’ll do it.” Now write a page of dialogue between these people ending in that line.

What inspired this exercise was a quote from William Sloane, who said, “Know what the scene is supposed to accomplish and have your characters write toward it, not in circles.”

When our audience is different, we change how we speak. Have a character explain why she left her parents and sought emancipation from the court when she was only sixteen (she’s older now). Have her explain this to four different types of people:

• Her five-year-old child
• A police officer
• A friend from high school
• An older woman in a bar

For this exercise, you’re going to practice making different characters sound different. This is your standard line: “I’d like you to stop doing that.” Now write that line the way a vast array of characters might say it:  

• Harvard Graduate
• Valley girl
• European snob
• Computer Geek

Take 3 lines of dialogue from each of your two main characters and put the lines in a separate file. Does the dialogue look different? Sound different? Could someone who hasn’t read the book tell these characters apart?

Write dialogue between two characters who are about to be executed. Don’t let them talk about their impending death at all, but only about their favorite foods. Make sure their discussion of their favorite food has an underlying meaning of their last hours.

Write a one page scene where each of the characters refuse to respond to what the other one is saying. Give them both separate agendas that they want to discuss, and neither gives in to the other person’s topic.

For this dialogue exercise, a husband comes home from work and his wife has just learned that he cheated on her. What would she say to him without revealing that she knows about his infidelity?

Exercise: Try writing dialogue where one character keeps repeating the exact same phrase throughout the whole conversation. Try one of these three phrases, no matter what the other person says.

• Are you sure about that?
• I don’t believe you.
• But I’m the greatest.

Kibitizing is a chess term for when people are watching a chess game and talking about it. It’s very annoying for the people who are playing the game – it’s like real-time gossip, or a backseat driver.

For this writing exercise, you’ll have two characters who are talking about a third character who is playing a tabletop boardgame. The third is not in the conversation, but he/she can hear everything the two characters say. How does their conversation change if they realize halfway through that the third person can hear them?

Try to write a conversation between five separate characters, and figure out how to make the reader remember who is who. Use all the techniques in How to Write Dialogue to make each character seem distinct and unique.

A mother and father are driving somewhere and their five-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son are in the back seat. Make the parents discuss a very sensitive topic (divorce, miscarriage, drug use, etc) by speaking elliptically, hinting at the topic so the children won’t understand what they’re saying. This is a great way to learn how to write dialogue that isn’t so direct and punches the reader in the face with its obviousness.

In the Psalms of the Bible, there are some Psalms that call down fire and brimstone upon the enemies of the Israelites. These are called Imprecatory Psalms.

You’re going to write some Imprecatory dialogue. Although most of the time, characters hold back from saying what they think, you’re going to have a character break and pour out a diatribe against someone or something they despise.

Build the scene with very polite dialogue, and then a tipping point followed by the angry rant.

Write a scene of dialogue a father and his teenage son. The son has gotten in trouble in school, and his father is reprimanding him. In the first half, make the dialogue extremely quick (reference the “Pacing” section of How to Write Dialogue if you want more instruction on how to do this). In the second half, slow down the dialogue between both characters.

Watch two television shows and pick out a random line of dialogue from each. Then put the dialogue back to back and make a conversation out of it between two characters. It will appear as a non-sequitur (obviously) and that’s excellent – people often talk in non-sequiturs. You want to have them talk at cross-purposes, each refusing to each with what the other one is saying and asking, almost as if they are each having their own little separate conversation.

In J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zoey, there is a character who prays “the Jesus Prayer” as a kind of mantra. Give your character a mantra that they repeat again and again as another character is interrogating them.

The Ouroboros Exercise: Go to a public place and eavesdrop on a conversation. Pick out a single line of dialogue (a short one) that strikes you as memorable and contains a hint of conflict. Start a dialogue between two fictional characters beginning with that line of dialogue, and by the end, have one of the characters repeat that exact same first line.

Start with two characters having a conversation: one is talkative and the other one says very little. The one who says very little should communicate mostly through:

• Body language
• Actions (holding up a knife? Or report card?)
• Facial expressions
• Non-verbal noises (snorts).

This exercise will strengthen your ability to add physicality to your dialogue, and prevent you from relying too heavily on dialogue alone in a scene.

Two characters are angry about something, but they refuse to argue directly about it. Instead, make them argue about an ancillary topic.

Write an argument between two characters. One character will have to use the words:

The other character must use these words:

Pick a dialect (southern, Australian, etc.). Now put this character in a scene where they are misunderstood because of their dialect. What do they say in response?

Try to write a dialogue with five or more characters, and try to make it easy for the reader to keep them all separate by these methods:

• Make them speak differently
• Give them mantras or frequent phrases
• Give them personality and attitude

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Whether writing your book or revising it, this will be the most helpful book you’ll ever buy.

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Free learning resource on English grammar, punctuation, usage, and style.

• Punctuation |

Quotation marks

How to punctuate dialogue in fiction.

Structure and punctuate the dialogue in your novel or story to make readers believe they are listening to a real conversation and watching your characters interact with one another. You want to make it clear who is saying what, but achieve this as unobtrusively as possible.

Enclose direct speech (also called quoted speech, in which you repeat a character’s exact words) in quotation marks.

• “The cake tastes like bread,” Maya said.
• Lulu said, “The water tastes like paper.”
• “And the apples smell like tangerines,” said Farley.
• “Run!” she shouted.
• He asked, “Why?”

In American and Canadian writing, double quotation marks enclose quoted speech. Single quotes are generally used instead as speech marks in British, Australian, and other writing.

Use a comma to separate quoted speech from the speaker.

• “This vacation is boring , ” said Lulu.
• “I knew that , ” Maya said.
• She yelled , “Dragon!”
• Farley said , “I can’t find my shoes.”

Such clauses (“Maya said,” “she yelled”) identify the speaker and are called speech tags. Use commas both before and after a speech tag if it interrupts a speaker’s sentence.

• “The cake , ” she said , “tastes like bread.”
• “Why , ” she wondered , “do we need money?”

But use a period after a speech tag if a new sentence of quoted speech begins after it.

• “The cake tastes like bread,” said Maya . “ T he tea smells of coffee.”
• “I don’t know,” she said . “ Y ou can ask him yourself.”
• “We sell all kinds of packages,” Poco said . “ L et me show you our catalog.”

Capitalization

Capitalize the first word of a sentence of direct or quoted speech.

• Maya said, “ T he hens are loose again.”
• Lulu asked, “ D o you know where they are?”
• Farley cried, “ N ot again!”
• “ W e haven’t booked our tickets yet,” said Maya.

Capitalize the first word after a speech tag if it starts a new sentence.

• “We’ll call him again tonight,” Maya said. “ M aybe this time he’ll answer.” A new sentence begins after the speech tag.
• “Is he here?” she asked. “ W e need to speak with him.”

If a sentence of quoted speech that began before a speech tag continues after it (i.e., the speech tag appears mid-sentence), don’t capitalize the word that follows.

• “I think,” Maya said, “ w e should call him again tonight.” The same sentence continues after the speech tag.
• “Do you know,” she asked, “ i f he is here yet?”

Question marks and exclamation points

If a line of quoted speech ends in a question mark or an exclamation point, omit the comma that generally appears before the speech tag.

• Incorrect: “Who are you? , ” she asked. Correct: “Who are you?” she asked.
• Incorrect: “It’s here! , ” she cried. Correct: “It’s here!” she cried.

However, if the question or exclamation follows the speech tag, use a comma as usual.

• She asked , “Who are you?”
• She cried , “It’s here!”

Dashes and ellipses

Mark interrupted speech using an em dash .

• “You really should—” “Don’t you tell me what to do, Farley Dash!”

An ellipsis (three consecutive periods) can also mark an interruption. More often, it signifies indecision, an incomplete thought, or a pause. In dialogue, an ellipsis can show faltering speech or a thought trailing off.

• Maya asked, “Would you like another slice of chocolate cake?” “Oh, I really shouldn’t, but . . .”
• “I heard . . . what was that? Did you hear that?”

Speech tags: Who said what

Use a speech tag (also called a dialogue tag) to identify the character who is speaking. Here is a dialogue from The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett.

• The tree , in a voice like a very old door swinging open, said , “Serves you right.” There was a long silence. Then Rincewind said , “Did you say that?” “Yes.” “And that too?” “Yes.”

See how the conversation continues without a speech tag attached to every line of dialogue? Once the two speakers have been identified, the reader understands that they take turns speaking. Another speech tag is needed only when a new speaker is introduced or clarification is needed, as in the following conversation from Little Women .

• “Jo does use such slang words!” observed Amy , with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug. Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle. “Don’t, Jo. It’s so boyish!” “That’s why I do it.” “I detest rude, unladylike girls!” “I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!” “Birds in their little nests agree,” sang Beth , the peacemaker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices softened to a laugh, and the “pecking” ended for that time. “Really, girls, you are both to be blamed,” said Meg , beginning to lecture in her elder-sisterly fashion.

Omitting unnecessary speech tags helps the reader follow along with minimal disruption. You can also omit speech tags the first time a person speaks if it is clear who is speaking, as in the following excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , where both boys have already been introduced to us.

• Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved—but only sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all the time. Finally Tom said : “I can lick you!” “I’d like to see you try it.” “Well, I can do it.” “No you can’t, either.” “Yes I can.” “No you can’t.” “I can.” “You can’t.” “Can!” “Can’t!”

Of course in a conversation with more than two characters involved, you may have to use speech tags more often, as in the following extract from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

• We stared at him until he spoke: “Hey.” “Hey yourself,” said Jem pleasantly. “I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said . “I can read.” “So what?” I said . “I just thought you’d like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin’ I can do it. . .” “How old are you,” asked Jem , “four-and-a-half?” “Goin’ on seven.”

Use clear and simple speech tags. Don’t try to mix things up by unnecessarily finding synonyms for the verb say . Use alternatives to the word said (such as observed , whispered , cried , shouted , yelled , noted , remarked ) only if necessary to convey meaning to the reader.

Action tags

Action tags describe an action different from speaking and merit a sentence of their own. They are therefore separated from speech using a period, unlike speech tags, which take commas.

• “Farley says he ate a whole bar of chocolate this morning,” said Poco, looking up from his phone. Rita leaned forward . “Did he say chocolate ?” “Hmm? Yes. Why?” “Farley hates chocolate. It’s code . ” She got up and peered out the window . “Someone’s watching us.” “Nobody’s watching us, Rita . ” Poco scratched irritably at his chin . “You and Farley are always worrying about nothing.” “Oh yeah?” Rita pointed to the building opposite . “Then who is that?”

Here is an extract from The House of Mirth in which Edith Wharton effectively uses action tags to make us feel we are in the room, watching what’s going on. Note how she uses commas with speech tags but periods with action tags.

• “How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman . ” She leaned back in a luxury of discontent . Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake. “Even women , ” he said , “have been known to enjoy the privileges of a flat.” “Oh, governesses—or widows. But not girls—not poor, miserable, marriageable girls!” “I even know a girl who lives in a flat.” She sat up in surprise . “You do?” “I do , ” he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for cake.

If the action is described in an adverbial phrase appended to a speech tag, use commas as usual, as in the final line of the example above. But don’t use verbs that don’t describe speech as speech tags. Smiling , yawning , winking , and laughing , for example, are acts different from speaking.

• Incorrect: I don’t know what you mean,” she yawned . Correct: “I don’t know what you mean,” she said with a yawn.
• Incorrect: “Here it is,” he smiled . Correct: “Here it is,” he said , smiling.

Of course you can use such verbs in action tags, but use a period then rather than a comma to separate the tag from the speech.

• Incorrect: She yawned , “I don’t know what you mean.” Correct: She yawned . “I don’t know what you mean.”
• Incorrect: He smiled , “Here it is.” Correct: He smiled . “Here it is.”

New line for each speaker

To make it easy for the reader to follow a conversation, use a new line (paragraph change) each time the speaker changes. End each line of dialogue with a period. The paragraph change indicates to the reader a change in speaker, as in the following extract from The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler.

• “Sarah, it’s bad for you to talk like that.” “Oh? How am I supposed to talk?” “I mean if you let yourself get angry you’ll be . . . consumed. You’ll burn up. It’s not productive.” “Oh, productive! Well, goodness, no, let’s not waste time on anything unproductive.”

Multiple paragraphs, single speaker

In the rare case that speech by a single speaker runs into multiple paragraphs (a running quotation), place an opening quotation mark at the start of each paragraph but a closing quotation mark only at the end of the final paragraph. All previous paragraphs remain unclosed. This tells the reader that the speaker has not changed at paragraph change.

• As Dash writes: “ Paragraph 1. “ Paragraph 2. “ Paragraph 3. ”

You will probably need to do this only when quoting a long speech, essay, or monologue. In normal dialogue, characters don’t speak entire paragraphs’ worth of words in one go.

Thoughts and internal dialogue

A character’s thoughts are often enclosed in quotation marks.

• “Why not?” he thought. “I can always change my mind later.”
• “She seems kind,” mused Maya. “I’m glad he met her.”

Quotation marks may be omitted with interior monologue. This can make it seem as though you are in a person’s head, listening in on their thoughts.

• It is, thought Peter Walsh, beginning to keep step with them, a very fine training. ( Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf)
• Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought in exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly turning upside down! ( Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery)

When quotation marks are omitted and a thought appears mid-sentence, the first word is often capitalized to set off the thought from the rest of the sentence.

• Then suddenly I thought: Why, what would life be without my puppy! ( A Dog’s Tale by Mark Twain)
• So I thought, Why waste five hours trying to versify the incident? ( Something Else Again by Franklin P. Adams)

But it is not essential to capitalize the first word of a thought if it is clearly being directly quoted, as in the following sentence from Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea .

• I suddenly thought, if he is no longer in the army, why does he have to come and see me at a holiday weekend when the roads are full of traffic?

A writer may also use formatting options, such as italics, as Terry Pratchett does in Going Postal , where the main character, Moist (yes, that’s his name), is in conversation with another character. Moist’s spoken words are enclosed in quotes and his thoughts shown in italics.

• Hold on a minute , Moist thought, this is only one city. It’s got gates. It’s completely surrounded by different directions to run. Does it matter what I sign?

Indirect or reported speech

Don’t use quotation marks if you are reporting a conversation or dialogue instead of quoting the speaker’s exact words.

• Direct (quoted) speech Poco started washing the apples. “Why didn’t you call me last night?” “I had a migraine,” Lulu said. but Indirect (reported) speech As he started washing the apples, Poco asked Lulu why she hadn’t called him the night before. She said it was because she’d had a migraine.

Dashes instead of quotes to mark dialogue

Dashes may be used instead of quotation marks to punctuate dialogue, as in this excerpt from A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle.

• — Will we go for a stroll, so? he said. — Yes, she said. — Right. He wiped the blade of the shovel on his sleeve. — Let’s get this gleaming for the lady. He let the spade hop gently on the path. Melody heard music. — Now we’re right, said Henry Smart. He held out his arm, offered it to Melody. — Hang on, said Melody.

Dashes can make dialogue seem more immediate, as though you’re watching two people talking. However, dashes are less common than quotation marks, which are more popular as speech marks for a reason: they indicate clearly where quoted speech begins and ends.

Omitting speech marks from dialogue

Some writers prefer to omit punctuation altogether, using neither quotation marks nor dashes. Cynan Jones’s The Dig omits speech marks to create an effect that is more immediate, more direct, more urgent.

• We’ve had a report of fly-tipping. He waited. I just wanted to ask whether you would know anything about that. What did they tip? asked the man. The policeman didn’t respond. He was looking at the junk and the big man saw and said, Does it look like I throw things away? Just wondered if you could help, sir, said the policeman.

Before opting for this minimalist style, ask yourself if your short story or novel requires it. Speech marks clearly outline quoted speech in a passage. By omitting them, you are making the reader pay extra attention to understand which words are quoted speech and which are narration. If you do use this method, review your writing carefully to make sure you don’t confuse (and irritate or tire out) the reader.

Share this article

Use a comma instead of a period at the end of a quote to separate it from the speaker.

Don’t use a comma after an exclamation point, even at the end of quoted text.

Don’t use a comma after a question mark.

Use a comma after a speech tag before the start of quoted speech.

Internal discourse can be punctuated with or without speech marks. A thought can begin either with a capital or a lowercase letter.

Both quotation marks and dashes can mark dialogue in fiction. Quotation marks are more common.

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Yes, You Get to Write Military SF

Your sergeant major says it's fine..

Hey, gang! Mike here with Raconteur Press.

I had some thoughts as I was enjoying the company of new friends last weekend at Writers Cantina. We were discussing all the exciting projects Rac Press has lined up for the rest of the year and going into 2025 . Of course, I pitched Pogue One heavily, as I am particularly excited about that anthology.

“Oh, man, I would love to write military SF!” One of my new buddies was caught up in the excitement of short fiction possibilities, then visibly deflated. “But I’m not a veteran.”

Cue screeching tires sound effects as I brought the discussion to a halt and called BS.

Let me begin by declaring everybody gets to write about whatever the heck they want to. The notion that we have to be “qualified” to explore speculative worlds through storytelling is ridiculous in the extreme. And full disclosure: Raconteur Press has been around for a couple of years now, and none of us on the staff are “qualified” to work in the publishing industry, so there’s that.

And before all the Vet Bros descend, openly pondering my credibility in the matter, I am a retired Marine Corps sergeant major with twenty-six years of worldwide service, spanning peacetime and war. Though I’m an infantryman by trade, I’ve served in nearly every kind of unit the Corps contains. This includes service support outfits and air wing squadrons. In that capacity, I officially give everyone permission to write military science fiction stories, except for the fact you don’t need my stupid-ass permission.

Does my background lend itself to writing mil sf? Sure, I suspect the dialogue between my space grunts as they vent tobacco spit from their power armor into the void of space will sound familiar and credible to most veterans. You know what, though? I know next to nothing about spaceflight and need to double-check to make sure I spell Kuiper Belt correctly. I’m just fortunate enough to drag my knuckles across a keyboard in such a way as to formulate a coherent sentence. Then an editor fixes it.

The point is you don’t have to limit yourself to particular proto-sub-genres of fiction made up by gatekeepers whose highest achievement in life is to point out how everyone else is doing it wrong. What’s my genre? Cool Nerd Stuff. I’m a Cool Nerd Stuff fiction writer, and so are you.

So get on board and grab an oar. The tide is rising.

Write Cool Nerd Stuff.

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