8: Writing Dialogue

The Voice of the People

Good dialogue elevates a story to a completely different level. It is one thing to narrate a story, but having fictional characters speak as if it is their own words is magical. These characters have now been given a distinct voice, which is a far better representation of who they truly are. It is easy for an author to write that their character has anger issues, but to have a character shout “I’m going to set my couch on fire if the Solar Sparks lose tonight!” makes it feel more real. Speech coming directly out of the mouths of characters will exude more personality—highlighting their wants, their desires, and their souls.

However, writing good dialogue takes practice and observation. Like poetry, dialogue doesn’t often follow the same rules as traditional writing. It works off of its own logic, and once that logic is understood, there is a boundless amount of creativity to explore.

Creating “Realistic” Dialogue with a Voice

Sometimes, critics will say something like “people don’t talk like that” or “their dialogue isn’t realistic.” When readers expect “realistic” dialogue, they often do not mean it literally. Surprisingly, recording people talking to one another and then transcribing that onto text doesn’t often produce realistic dialogue. Take this exchange between two teenage boys ordering a pizza:

This is, technically, realistic dialogue. However, it’s boring. In real life, people often have mundane conversations with no significance whatsoever. When we mean realistic dialogue in writing, we mean what would appear natural with that particular character’s personality. It’s more trying to capture the essence of that character and less of what they would say in the real world. After all, all of this is fiction, so it doesn’t need to be 100 percent accurate to real life.

Instead, what is more important is making sure that both characters have a clear voice established, and it is reflected in their dialogue.

Realistic dialogue is making sure that the character’s personality is accurately reflected via their voice. Let’s rewrite this scene and try to better capture the voices of the two teenage boys ordering a pizza.

In the previous scene, we knew nothing about the personalities of Harry and Steve. We could have flipped their dialogue, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. However, in this scene, Harry’s personality comes out a bit more: he doesn’t have money on him and often takes advantage of his cash-carrying friend. Meanwhile, Steve is well aware of Harry taking advantage of him but is still willing to pay, after adding strict conditions in exchange.

In the previous chapters, I talked about the importance of Developing Character Traits and Character Likeability. It’s important to remember what traits and personality you design with your character because the character’s voice needs to represent that. For example, if a character is nervous about asking someone out and that nervousness leads to rambling, the character’s voice needs to feel nervous to the reader. Take Flynn for instance:

Is Flynn’s dialogue something you would find in real life? Probably not, but the concept of a person being nervous about asking someone out is. If you can symbolically represent that in a character’s voice, then that’s the realistic tone people seek.

Breaking The Rules

When it comes to dialogue and grammar, dialogue does not follow the rules of the English language, but the soul of the character it represents. This guide you’re reading mostly follows the traditional rules of English grammar: complete sentences, proper syntax, and correct spelling. However, when it comes to developing dialogue, those rules often don’t apply. In fact, good dialogue will often break these rules in order to represent the character more accurately. This is not to say that dialogue needs to be an unintelligible mess, but it is more important to focus on what the character wants to say as opposed to what the English teacher expects you to say.

For example, imagine if this section appeared in your math textbook:

While understandable, the lack of complete sentences, the use of ain’t, and other improper grammar, doesn’t make this suitable for a textbook. However, if you are developing a character who is going over his daughter’s homework, but has no formal education, then this section is far more suitable:

However, let’s see what happens if we change the dialogue here to be more accurate to proper grammar:

While this is more grammatically correct, the dialogue conflicts with Kyle’s representation. If Kyle has had no formal education, some of his syntax may break from traditional wording. In this context, having Kyle speak with perfect grammar makes no sense in the scene because it does a disservice to his voice.

Therefore, it’s important to understand your character’s background, desires, and emotions when writing dialogue. These elements of your character are far more important than being grammatically correct. In most cases, saying got in academic writing is discouraged, but if your character would say got, then it is important to use that word. Inversely, if your character graduated from a prodigious university, then they might rarely use the word got.

We could even take a step further and completely use incomplete and fake words. For example, Aya has just woken up from a deep sleep. Her speech is mumbled, and she isn’t fully awake:

In this context, the dialogue needs to represent Aya and her being barely awake. Because her lips are barely moving, the hard D’s or T’s were removed. In addition, to increase the mumbling, the words were combined or abbreviated using apostrophes. Finally, since she is still in a semi-dream state, a nonsensical phrase like “chicken in the cheese shop” was added. Again, in proper writing, this is forbidden, but when writing dialogue, breaking the rules to better fit the character’s voice is strongly encouraged.

Learning To “Hear” Voices

One of the biggest mistakes that leads to bad dialogue is that writers will borrow words, vernacular, and slang but not try to understand the voice of the character. That is, writers will be too preoccupied with how a person talks as opposed to why a person talks. Simply inserting words into a character without generating an authentic personality can lead to stereotypes, caricatures, and offensive content.

For example, let’s say that two characters who are both very wealthy are going over a business deal:

This interaction seems almost comical because of how disingenuous the wording is. The scene uses words that rich people may use like sommelier as well as a very sophisticated vocabulary. However, what are Aisha’s and Ahmed’s personalities? What are their traits as people? Other than rich, they are empty characters with no voice. Let’s rewrite the scene with better voices:

In this revision, the scene is essentially the same, as well as some of the key phrases. However, what I amended this time were the personalities of Ahmed and Aisha. Ahmed is arrogant and full of himself. In his mind, the only reason why Aisha agreed to the proposal was because he wrote it. However, Aisha is annoyed by the arrogance, but she needs to be tactful—as this is her potential business partner. When pressing him on the wine, he isn’t that smart on the subject, but still boasts about his amazing wine expert. She particularly embarrasses him with the smart reply, “I prefer someone with taste.” This pun suggests that Ahmed lacks a taste for wine and is also not her type. The point is, by focusing on developing personalities with these two characters, their voices don’t feel nearly as fake. As demonstrated, all the sophisticated wording can still be in their scene, but without underlying voices, the interaction will feel shallow.

To put it another way, when designing a cake, you can put all the nice decorations and frosting on the top to make it look like a fantastic cake. However, if the cake batter is runny and undercooked, all the decorations won’t save the cake from being inedible.

Focus on developing a strong character first, one who possesses a unique and interesting voice, and better dialogue will naturally emerge.

Check In: Writing Dialogue Exercise