Continuing our Saturday series for writers, here is a handout I did called “Tips For Writing Effective Dialogue.”
Hope you find it useful!!
Leslie
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Tips For Writing Effective Dialogue
by
Leslie Kelly
1. Make sure the dialogue matches the “tone” of the scene you want to convey.
2. Keep the dialogue realistic to the time period, style of your book. Different books contain different types of dialogue:
A. Historical vs. contemporary
B. Suspense vs. warm family saga.
C. Comedy vs. drama.
3. Make sure the dialogue matches the character you’re writing.
A. Example: A society woman’s reservations can’t be found. “I’m quite sure you’re mistaken, can you check again?” vs.
B. A young, loud teen’s reservations can’t be found: “Yo, lady, you better double-check that book because somebody has screwed this up.”
4. Choose slang and pop cultural references carefully, but don’t be afraid to use them for fear of it being outdated in reprints in ten years.
5. To speed pacing, use bouncy dialogue…think of it as a tennis game, or a game of hot potato. Lob that sucker right back over the net!
6. To slow pacing, use longer sentences and interject more scene descriptions or emotions between each spoken sentence.
7. Keep the reader feeling what the characters are feeling by showing the internal dialogue with external.
A. Example: “Yes, I’ll be at the party.”. God, she so did not want to go to a party honoring a backstabbing witch, but there was no way out of it.
8. Use physical responses to convey how the dialogue is spoken. Examples:
A. (from above) “Yes, I’ll be at the party,” Karen said with a heavy, resigned sign.
B. “Yes, I’ll be at the party.” Karen nearly bounced on her toes and her voice shook with excitement.
C. “I’m so scared,” Jess whispered as she hugged the shadows along the side of the building.
D. Jess smirked, not a bit concerned about Don’s threat. “I’m so scared.”
E. Elizabeth’s hand shook as she reached for the envelope containing the results of her lab work. With a calm resignation that belied the raging beat of her heart, she admitted, “I’m so scared.”
9. Try to avoid excessive use of attributions.
A. Stick to said, asked, replied. The K-I-S-S principle is important in attributions.
B. Use character traits or action to identify the speaker. Example: As usual, when cornered, he began to stammer excuses. “I’m…I’m sorry, I, I d-didn’t mean to do it.” (Don’t need to say, “he said” or “he stuttered”. The reader can see that.)
10. Read your dialogue out loud to see if it sounds natural.
Dialogue should:
Advance the plot
Develop character
Set or match the tone of the book
Speed up or slow down the pacing
It should never:
Be inane
Be clunky
Take Up Space!!
Leslie Kelly used to say she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up, but then she discovered Nancy Drew books. Being a flashlight-under-the-covers-nose-in-book reader throughout her childhood, she couldn’t think of anything else she’d rather do as an adult than continue to lose herself in fictional stories. Her real life marriage of 20 years to the man of her dreams is a constant reinforcement that happily-ever-afters really can happen…and that they’re worth writing about. Living in Maryland, Leslie spends her non-writing time laughing a lot with the above-mentioned romance hero and their three daughters. Though an author of more than thirty sexy, contemporary comedies, she has recently branched out to write dark romantic suspense under the pseudonym Leslie Parrish.
Destiny
Dirty Little Secrets
Once Upon A Valentine
Through The Night
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Good morning! And many thanks again.
I really struggle with dialogue. I think, because I’ve read so many books where the dialogue wasn’t realistic (especially for guys) that I’m hyper aware of it. I remember reading a book where the big, tough cop guy said something looked “lovely.” And he wasn’t being sarcastic! It just so didn’t fit with everything else about him and I really, really don’t want to make the same mistakes.
Thanks for the nifty handout. I’m actually going to copy and paste to a file so I’ll have it as a handy reference (hope that’s OK).
Hope it’s a great weekend for everyone and, Leslie, thanks again!!!
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Great advice. I am also going to save this entry because this is an area in a book that you can slack on and you don’t want the reader to be questioning your characters, because their “voice” doesn’t much them. Great handout. Thanks again.:wave:
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Hi Leslie :wave:
I got my copt of HEATWAVE today
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Thanks Cherylann! Hope you like it!
Jodie & Patty–glad to be of some assistance! Feel free to hold onto it for future reference.
Guys who don’t talk like guys are a major pet peeve of mine as a reader, tooo!
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I like these articles…I am learning alot about my craft from just reading these helpful pieces of literature…thanx guys…