Tips for Realistic Dialogue
including prompts!
Hi, I’m Kate. Ask an Author is an advice column for authors at all stages of writing, publishing, and hand-wringing. Have a question? Fill out this form and I’ll answer it in a future response! Looking to work one-on-one? Find me at Broad Editorial for additional support.
Dear Kate,
Do you have any tips for writing realistic dialogue? I feel like mine sounds so stilted, but I’m not sure what to do to make it better.
- All Talked Out
Dear All Talked Out,
This is a great question! Dialogue is so underappreciated, in my opinion, and truly hard to get “right.” Underappreciated because it can do a ton of heavy lifting in a narrative, and yet for it to really do that work, it has to seem as though it’s not working so hard. It has to be present without being intrusive, which I think is what’s meant by “realistic.”
I’m going to approach this question in two ways: in terms of the sounds and rhythms of the language itself, and then the actual content and purpose of dialogue as a key component of narrative.
At the end, find some prompts you can try to help practice!
How to Make Dialogue Sound Better:
Pay attention to actual people talking. Eavesdrop. Write down things you hear. Write down the things you yourself say. You want to better attune your ear to how people actually sound when they’re talking.
Read your dialogue aloud. (Even better: read your whole manuscript aloud.) Record yourself reading and play it back to yourself. Close your eyes and just listen.
Use contractions. In a lot of beginning writing, people are for some reason averse to using contractions. And yet we use contractions all the time in our actual speech. Writing in general, and dialogue in particular, can sound overly formal and awkward without them. True story: this was the very first writing tip I got in the very fiction writing group I joined. I hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t using contractions until someone pointed it out. (“I had not even noticed that I was not using contractions” — see how different that sounds?)
But don’t overdo it. Dialect and/or overly informal speech is often a bad idea and hard to pull off. Sure, your favorite best-seller might have dialect. But as you’re developing your craft, I think it’s best to avoid. It can be jarring to the reader and feel like a subsitute for deeper character work.
Leave out verbal tics. Yeah, I’m telling you here to be realistic. But all those “ums,” “uh,” “well,” “wow,” “hmm,” etc. that real people use when speaking don’t translate well to the page. It slows the dialogue way down and just isn’t necessary. Some of these words, when used sparingly, can do work to show your character’s responses or feelings in a moment, but it’s easy to overdo it. It can feel like something beginning writers throw in because they aren’t sure how else to fill the page or show characterization.
Stick only to the dialogue that’s absolutely necessary to move the story forward. Too much unnecessary talking can contribute to an unnatural and wooden sound to your characters. When in doubt, cut! See how trimming the dialogue speeds up the pacing and animates your characters more.
Keep it natural!
How to Make Dialogue Serve a Purpose
In addition to sounding stilted, dialogue can come across as awkward if doesn’t feel 100% necessary and essential to the story. Make sure your dialogue is always doing work on the page—work to reveal character, convey information, and show plot happening.
What isn’t being said is just as important as what is. Characters relate to each other through dialogue, and there’s often a fruitful chasm between what a character says and what they’re actually thinking, or what they say and what they do. Just like the negative space is a key part of a work of art, pay equal attention what’s not being said, and why it’s been left out.
Dialogue can show backstory, but you want to keep it natural. I don’t pick up the phone and say “Hello to my best friend!” Sure, that conveys to the reader that the other character is my friend, but it’s clearly not realistic. The talking itself should convey details about the relationship, without us needing to be told in such a flat and uninteresting way.
Likewise, avoid info-dumping. It can be tempting to sneak in a chunk of info by having a character say it instead of writing it in exposition—but it’s still info-dumping, and it’s still clunky. You can weave story into the dialogue, but the idea, with everything, is for those details to feel natural and important—like the conversation gives us something happening on the page and makes us want to read on.
Dialogue is one of the tools you use to make things happen in a narrative, and to convey those events and emotions on the page. Sometimes, less is more. When I feel like a scene is awkward, choppy, maudlin, or just not working, often I go through and trim down the dialogue and my descriptions (my efforts to explain the dialogue). It can make the scene pop where it was dragging before.
Leave space for the reader—but don’t leave us in the dark. Even as I’m suggesting cuts, you may need to go back through and look for what’s latent in the story and bring that more to the forefront. If it feels like your characters are talking around an issue, you may need to refocus the dialogue to get us directly into the story. One of the biggest things I do in my own revisions is amp up the dialogue. I’ll know in my Draft 1 that I need these characters to be having a conversation in a particular place in a particular moment, but it’s only in revising that I finally zero in on what that conversation should really be about, and how every line their speaking will push the story along.
How to Use Dialogue Tags
Dialogue tags are the things like “he said” and “she exclaimed nervously” that tell us who’s speaking and, often, how they’re speaking. As with everything in your writing, they should be used effectively, which often means sparingly.
Dialogue tags clarify who’s doing the talking. If it’s clear who’s speaking, you can often leave them out. For example, if two people are having a back and forth, you don’t need to use “____ said” for every. single. line. We know who’s talking, and it becomes repetitive and, frankly, boring to have the same sentence pattern and the same dialogue tag repeated each line.
Similarly, if a character talks, and then talks some more, you don’t need multiple dialogue tags if it remains clear they’re still the one speaking.
You can also cut dialogue tags and clarify who’s speaking and the way they’re doing the talking by using an action instead. “I wish you’d gone to the store when you’d promised.” She slammed the refrigerator door. “Now we have nothing to eat.” In my genius example here, it’s clear she’s the one talking, and that she’s checking the fridge and exasperated to find it empty. You don’t need “she said,” and you don’t need to tell us she’s frustrated—the words and the corresponding action show that all on their own.
To that end, avoid explanatory tags that repeat what’s being said, or that overly interpret the dialogue for the reader. If the character’s words express anxiety, you don’t need to also tell us they’re anxious. If the character is angry, the words themselves should convey and express that emotion. This means trusting the reader to follow your story. And it means making sure the dialogue itself is doing the work you need it to, so the author doesn’t have to butt in and tell the reader what to think about what’s been said.
Moments that show what a character is doing or thinking in a scene can be a great way to break up long sections of dialogue and keep the characters feeling vibrant and alive on the page. At the same time, we don’t always need every single action to interrupt an important conversation. This is the kind of balance that takes time, experience, and revision to start to get a feel for. But you WILL get a feel for it. Ask yourself what the dialogue is showing, and what the actions are showing. What do they reveal that the reader didn’t know before? What purpose do all these words show? Those questions—which all boil down to “why am I writing what I’m writing in this scene?” — will help you start to see where you need to cut and where you need to add in order to strike the right balance.
Prompts and Extra Practice
As with all components of narrative, it’s largely a question of both reading more and writing more. Read with an eye toward how other authors are using dialogue and how they’re creating natural and effective speech on the page. Then write your own dialogue to practice those scenes. You can write short exercises to flex your dialogue muscles. Here are some prompts you can try:
Two people are in a car. One of them has a secret the other one is trying to find out.
Two people are eating dinner. One of them has a secret they’re desperate to tell, but they don’t know how.
Character A has to break bad news to Character B, and they don’t know how they’ll take it.
Character A calls Character B after a long time without speaking. What do they talk about? Why the call, and why now?
Write a scene of dialogue based on the above prompts or one of your own. Then:
Rewrite it with different characters.
Rewrite it with the same characters in a completely different setting or location.
Rewrite it with the same characters and character traits, only swap which one is telling/keeping the secret or the news.
Get writing!
Above all, keep going!
Kate