Jan 01 2008
9 Easy-to-Fix Dialogue Mistakes
I'm a former assistant editor with advice about how to write novels, comic books and graphic novels. Most of my content applies to fiction-writing in general, but I also provide articles specifically about superhero stories.
This article will help you write better dialogue in novels.
1. Avoid niceties.
Bland lines like “it’s nice to see you” and “how are the kids?” should be removed. Every sentence of a conversation should either advance the plot or develop a character.
2. Readers hate paragraphs of exposition and info-dumping.
“As you know, John, this is what we were working on together right before the book started.” First, any sentence that begins with “as you know” or anything similar probably needs to be rewritten. More generally, if you have to impart a significant chunk of information to your readers, it’s usually more effective to handle it out of conversation. For example, you could show one character’s letter or e-mail to another. One advantage of an e-mail is that, unlike dialogue, the readers aren’t constantly interrupted by interjected dialogue.
3. Please avoid conversations that don’t do anything.
In real life, people chat aimlessly. “How was your weekend?” That’s fine… in real life. In fiction, dialogue should always be goal-driven. Aimless conversations are boring. What do your conversants want to accomplish? For example, if one character is trying to uncover some embarrassing secret that the other character is trying to hide, that will give your dialogue focus and a reason for us to care. The best conversational objectives are concrete and pose one character against another.
Authors sometimes feel that they need dialogue to develop a character. That may be true, but developing the characters is your objective, not theirs. Give the characters a reason of their own to engage in the conversation and that will help flesh out the dialogue as a dramatic conflict, rather than a freestyle psychiatric session.
4. Don’t mislead your readers.
Generally, it is wise to avoid conversations where characters offer dishonest, incorrect or otherwise unreliable information. Unless you have set your readers up for intrigue, conflicting data will probably cause them to feel confused rather than intrigued.
If you must include dishonesty, please make it immediately clear that the character may be (or is) lying and why he has a motive to do so. Mystery writers have more leeway here.
5. Conversations with more than three characters are hard to follow.
Each additional character makes it much harder to understand who’s saying what and who’s trying to accomplish what. The most enjoyable conversations are almost always two-sided.
Having too many parties is especially problematic when some speakers play the same role. For example, if two parents are scolding their son for smoking, they’re probably interchangeable. If you see duplicate characters like this in your own writing, you should eliminate as many as possible. On the other hand, you may find it profitable to embrace the presence of many characters by fully differentiating them, their goals and their mindsets. For example, maybe the mother thinks her son’s smoking habit is really dangerous and wants to punish him, but the father smoked in school and doesn’t think it’s very serious. The son wants to play his father against his mother to escape punishment. This conversation provides an interesting role for all three participants. If the two parents had played the same role (both wanting to punish the kid, for example), including both probably wouldn’t make sense.
6. Conversations that gain or lose tension too quickly are typically less effective.
I’ve seen pieces horrifically close to this: “Honey, I asked you twice this morning to take out the garbage.” “I hate you.” “I want a divorce.” Scale your tension!
For example, if you wanted a conversation to end in a divorce, try this. The wife reminds him to take out the trash and he counters that she hasn’t done her housework in a week. She snaps back. He raises his voice and she runs off muttering. They glower at each other for the rest of the day. They fight again that evening. Over time, a divorce will become increasingly plausible for this family.
7. Don’t have your narrator overanalyze the conversation (“I had him right where I wanted him”)
First-person narrators sometimes feel the need to explain each verbal thrust as they’re jousting with someone. (“I remembered that he had claimed to be out of Miami when the crime was committed. I only had to get him to admit that he was at the Dolphins game and he was sunk.”) Don’t tell us why each move he’s making is so brilliant. If your speaker is genuinely crafty, that should be obvious.
Perhaps your readers won’t immediately appreciate why his strategy is crafty. If we won’t remember why it’s so important to place the suspect in Miami during the game, for example, then your character can explain his strategy to an ally beforehand. That’s a much better approach than trying to describe it to the reader as he’s trying to carry it out. It’s easier to appreciate the strategy if we understand what the plan is beforehand rather than just getting a piecemeal take on his next move.
8. Don’t let your conversations read like transcripts (unless you write for a superhero website, in which case transcripts are totally awesome)
Each conversation should include a scene and body language. Where are your speakers conversing? Try to show them interacting with their scenery. At the very least, remind us where they are. If two characters are talking in a rowdy sports bar, for example, the ambiance will be very different than in a corporate boardroom.
Characters should also be mindful of who they are speaking to. For example, the President will speak very differently at a campaign rally (to his supporters) than at a diplomatic summit (to other world leaders). Closer to home, you probably speak differently with your boss than with your peers or subordinates.
9. Don’t let your characters repeatedly refer to each other by name.
Do your conversations sound like this? “I love you, John.” “I love you too, Martha.” “I know, John.” It’s smoother and more natural to identify the speaker of each line by using tags like “he said” or “Martha said.”
I write dialogue like this: “I know he said ‘I hate you’, but I think he was lying”. But in some of the books I’ve read, it’s reversed: ‘I know he said “I hate you”, but I think he was lying’. Which way is right?
Thanks!
Your way :“I know he said ‘I hate you’, but I think he was lying” is right. Double outside, single inside. always.
Yeah, the double-quotes are used on the outside. The example used by Perdue’s Online Writing Lab is…
However, that’s the set style for American writers. The rules may be reversed for British English. I’ve never written for a British publisher, but my guess is that if you gave one a manuscript that used American-style quotes, they probably wouldn’t hold it against you very much.
Okay, thanks!
Would a publisher hold it against me if I had something like this?
“Oh, ^&%$! I haven’t done my assignment!”
Since I’m writing for teens, I’m not having any word worse than “crap”. But I want to show how upset he is by using a worse word, but censoring it. Would this be a problem?
I think that censoring it might be too intrusive for your readers. I recommend “dang” or “shit.” Dilbert used “carp.”
I’m pretty sure “shit” is worse than “crap”, B.Mac.
I think I’ll go with “dang”. Thanks!
One last thing before I get too far in writing, I can come you with the words and punctuation of the dialogue, but writing it out is the hard part for me. When should the dialogue be part of a paragraph and when shouldn’t it? Also, when a conversation ends, is the last line of dialogue incorporated into the next full paragraph or is it just its own line?
Generally, each set of lines from a speaker gets its own paragraph.
That would look something like this…
“Hello,” said B. Mac.
“It’s time for you to die,” said Cadet Davis.
“Do you have an army of ninja behind that curtain? If not, I find that highly unlikely,” said B. Mac. He found no ninjas behind the curtain.
Here, I think that you could have either three or four paragraphs depending on your preference. “He found no ninjas…” could be made into its own paragraph. (If there were a string of actions there, I’d recommend doing that for aesthetic reasons).
The main spacing/paragraph rule to keep in mind is that line-breaks are only absolutely essential, I think, when the dialogue switches from one speaker to another. You really need to put a line-break between B. Mac’s sentence and Davis’ sentence.
Adrian is a very acting oriented person. How much common stage dialoque could I work into his character voice before it becomes annoying?
I wanted his catch phrase to be “Stage is set, make your move!”
He’d also use a few acting related phrases, some more than others.
“That’s my cue!”
“This is my spotlight, get your own!”
“Are you portraying stupid? Or just letting your true self shine through?”
“An actor never misses his mark”
“If you don’t know me now, you will later”
“I think it’s time for you to make your exit”
What’s the matter, got a little stage fright”
“You obviously can’t handle my stage”
Most of these would be used in battle. Yeah, some of them are meaner than others but what do you think?
Newsflash: The full moon cycle has begun, being an aquarius, my artistic inquiry will be at its best for the next two days. Yay.
In a comic book, I think it’s sort of accepted that you can be a little bit cheesier in fight scenes. That said, I think some of these are more effective than others.
I’m very fond of “that’s my cue!” That feels very natural and subtly reminds us that the character is an actor.
“This is my spotlight, get your own!” has potential, I think, but could be a bit awkward.
“It’s time for you to make your exit.” OK.
“Are you portraying stupid? Or just letting your true self shine through?” I think that this jargon will be awkward for readers that aren’t familiar with the theatre. It also feels like he’s trying too hard to remind us that he’s an actor.
“Stage is set, make your move!” I think this also sounds like he’s trying too hard to remind us that he’s an actor.
“An actor never misses his mark.” I think this would be OK in dialogue. If this comment came up in context, I think it could be smooth. If it were a one-liner that he just threw out of nowhere, it would probably be too corny.
“If you don’t know me now, you will later.” This could probably be rephrased for decisiveness (“you don’t know me yet, but you will”). Without the right context, I think this will sound cheesy.
“What’s the matter, got a little stage fright?” This is a neat taunt that, like most of these one-liners, should probably be used only once. Do you think it would be problematic that he’s using theatre-jargon in combat? Maybe it would make it easier for his enemies to figure out who he really is. (How many theatre programs are there in the ‘hood?)
“You obviously can’t handle my stage.” This is a bit awkward. I think that it may be smoother for him to build a fuller analogy between the world of superheroes and the world of acting. For example, in Superhero Nation, when one football-crazy agent is trying to explain to a new recruit what OSI work is like, he says “It’s like football, but there are no refs, no timeouts, and every play makes the highlight reel.”
How do you do the thinking part in a story, or is that in any books. Like: ~hrm I wonder if I should go out for a drink~ he thinks to him self quietly as he sits on the sofa.
Or should it be more like this: as john sits on his old sofa he mutters “I wonder if I should go for a drink to night” still holding the remote control to the T.V. he changes it to the news, he then turns the volume down till there was only mutters coming from the TV. “The world is going into chaos, and I’m thinking about a cold one” he turns it off and leaves for the bar. Walking the cold and harden streets he looks down on the ground to find a paper the symbols on it were written in ink, but couldn’t be identified as a language at all. he continues to the bar music could be heard from out side and chatter filled the streets as he drew clear, he opens the wooden framed door, to find no one, he begins to think he is going crazy, he runs through the place searching for the people he once heard searching for the music, he gave up and ran out side collapsing on the ground out of breath, he looks to the ground and he heard the sounds again, he looks towards the door, as it was open half way the music playing, people chatting. a woman walks past the door he stands up and walks to the door opening it slowly then walks in everyone seemed to be enjoying them selves, he leaves and walks back down the street scared on what happened he walks and never stops, back home.
Great question, Chosen Few. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the format of a phrase like “I wonder if I should go out for a drink, he thought.” BUT please keep these two things in mind.
1. I wonder if I should go out for a drink is bland. What’s his voice like? This could probably be made more distinctive and interesting. (For example, maybe he’s so thirsty that his throat feels like sandpaper).
2. The “he thought” is usually unnecessary and can probably be removed (although this is probably inconsequential– I know a lot of authors that use it).
In this case, you might have more success moving the thought into conversation. John calls up a friend to meet him at the bar. Here’s an example that helps develop his boredom and personality a bit more.
JOHN: Hey, Larry!
LARRY: What’s rocking? [or adjust voice as appropriate]
JOHN: Bar-run. You in?
LARRY: On a Tuesday? Nah, man.
JOHN: Beats C-SPAN.
I think this does a better job of showing his personality. The conversation also gives you an opportunity to develop another one of your characters– pretty much any character that’s remotely friendly with John can be used as “Larry.”
Finally, I’d recommend bringing in more specific details (show, don’t tell)– for example, “everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves…” — what leads him to conclude that? (Maybe body language, music, someone dancing on a table, etc). How are they enjoying themselves? Give us the details to put us in this scene.