Dialogue: Creative Listening

By Sammie Justesen

Since we spend a huge part of our lives speaking and listening, why is writing dialogue a big issue? It seems you could scribble a dozen pages over morning coffee. But  good dialogue goes far beyond recording everything that’s said.

Everyday dialogue often serves to put other people at ease, as in “I like your skirt,” or “How about that game last night?” Sometimes it provides information: “I’ll be back in 10 minutes,” or “He’s not my type, you know?” These bland exchanges lack the necessary tension to make your readers turn the page.

Dialogue is illusion. The trick is to make conversation sound natural while eliminating the boring repetition of normal speech. Fictional dialogue should focus on highlights—the emotional peaks. Good dialogue becomes part of the action: it moves the story along, reveals character, and provides information.

Have you noticed people rarely speak in complete, well-formed sentences? Most conversations include broken-off comments, incomplete phrases, and plenty of repetition—especially if the speakers are emotional. People don’t always speak what’s on their minds. Often we don’t know why they’re angry or troubled. But for your characters’ sake you must know, and you must make sure the reader also understands.

As you plan your book or screenplay, develop a sense of how each character responds to emotions. Is Fred the strong, silent type? Does Natalie cry easily, or never shed a tear?  Will Tyrone head for a bar and get drunk when he’s angry?  Let your characters speak according to their nature.

Keep it Real
Real people use sentence fragments. Don’t be afraid to use sentence fragments in dialogue; they reflect how people speak in real life and add a realistic touch to your writing. If you’ve ever longed to get away with writing incomplete sentences, here’s your chance.

Real people use contractions. Everyday speech is quick and sloppy. We compress phrases into single words and we use contractions. Writing dialogue minus contractions is a huge error, all too common among fledgling writers.  Here’s an example of stilted dialogue without contractions:

“Mother, I will not walk to school today because is it raining. My hair will be ruined.”
Better: “Mom, you can’t expect me to walk in the rain! What about my hair?”

Prune the word that. Novice writers chronically overuse the word. In most cases, it’s a filler word with no particular meaning. As you edit your work, search for that and remove it whenever possible—even if you need to rework a sentence.

The trick with dialogue is to capture the essence of living speech. Dialogue is an illusion, making your characters seem alive, real, and more exciting than real life.

Sammie Justesen is an agent with Northern Lights Literary Services. This excerpt is from her book  Speaking of Dialogue, available through Northern Lights.

Flickr photo by striatic

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Tagged as: dialogue, fiction writing