forum dialogue help?

Started February 16, 2018 by dope

tune

im new at writing and i cant seem to grasp how to create strong dialogue can anyone share some tips please

Don't add in much dialogue that isn't important to the story or doesn't progress the plot along. Yeah, you an add in some jokes here and there, normal conversations and stuff, that's not what I mean.
Try and get your point across as fast and easy as possible. If your character is sitting there, trying to explain something to one of their friends for like 1 hour of the story, that's pointless!

"Use different dialogue tags," she said.
"These can also be combined with actions," he added while shifting in his seat.
"And if two persons are speaking, you don't need to at a dialogue tag every single time."
"And maybe," he continued, "you can break up a sentence by putting the dialogue tag in between."
She nodded and said: "or put it in the beginning."
"It is also important to let your characters have a conversation like you have conversations in real life, everybody speaks differently."
"But beware." She pointed a finger at him. "Real life conversations are messy, they jump from one topic to another."
The boy nodded, she was right. He also realised that if there is non-stop talking, the reader could be bored. Therefore parts of the dialogue could be split up in smaller parts by thoughts and descriptions.
"Also what @Celestial-B said," she shrugged, "hope this helped!"

Dialogue should flow like a real conversation. Pay attention to your surroundings, how people interact, how you talk when you speak to others. People in real life interrupt themselves, repeat certain words, trip over their words, laugh at themselves, interrupt others, say things kind of off topic, avoid questions, etc. I agree that dialogue has to be relevant to the plot and flow of the story, but don't make it an information dump. Change up the structure, try to recreate the flow of the conversations you hear irl, read a lot of books with good dialogue, and watch movies and TV shows with good writers. It's hard. I used to suck at it, and I still kind of do. It takes practice, patience, and focus. Good luck!

Everyone else has good advice! Although I disagree with the different dialogue tags thing, I personally believe that you should use forms of "said" 75% of the time (and also "replied" and
asked"). It's a filler word like "the" that readers naturally gloss over. That won't distract from what the characters are actually saying. If you need fancy dialogue tags to make what your characters are saying sound more interesting, I think you're writing the dialogue wrong.

I only have one thing to add. I have actually heard that when you're writing a short story, you should use as much dialogue as possible, conveying the plot and actions through the verbal cues of the characters. And I actually think that can be applied to regular novels, too: the more dialogue you have like that, the better your book will be. I think the most interesting book will have a nice mixture of reading descriptions for a few pages, then reading dialogue for a few pages, always having some variety. For me at least, I think dialogue should take up 1/4 to 1/2 of the book.