5 Tricks to Write Great Dialogue

Good dialogue often goes unnoticed. When it’s crafted well, a story continues to flow forward, uninterrupted, as you learn more about the characters and the conflict at hand. Bad dialogue, on the other hand, is often jarring, boring or both. It tears the reader from the story as they struggle to make sense of what’s going on or why a conversation is important.

Dialogue is one the trickier skills in a writer’s tool belt. Because it’s fun to write, it can sometimes seem simple, but in reality it’s difficult to master and easy to get wrong. If you’re often unprepared when writing (as I am as a pantser!), then dialogue is an excellent way to discover who your characters are. Crafting conversations can be one of the simplest ways to get inside your character’s skin and figure out what they care about and why. However, the dialogue in your story can’t just be fun banter—it needs to serve a purpose in the narrative. If you’re not considering the various layers of your dialogue, and how it’s moving the story forward, then you are most likely doing your readers a major disservice.

Ready to craft multi-layered dialogue that serves your story’s momentum? Check out the following 5 tricks for writing great dialogue that draws your reader further into your story every time.

Take Your Dialogue from Okay to Excellent

1. Dialogue should always be intentional and relevant.

Whether a scene’s dialogue is pushing forward the main plot or a subplot, it must drive your story forward with no detours. To do this, give your dialogue a story purpose: show character motivations or fears, reveal obstacles or critical plot information, or show the reader what’s at stake. Eliminate filler dialogue or information that serves no purpose. Pay special attention to eliminating superfluous introductions, unnecessary descriptions of information the reader already knows, or side conversations between non-focal characters. If it doesn’t move the plot forward, tell the reader more about your characters, or create conflict—cut it.

2. Use dialogue to show each character’s underlying goals.

Every conversation is driven by goals. Whether your character is seeking information, hoping to convince someone of something, or trying to figure out what another character wants—they should always enter a conversation with a purpose. Consider what each person in the conversation you’re writing wants and why they want it, then show those desires in the conversation. Tip: Your main character’s dialogue goals should be tied to their overall scene and story goals, even if tangentially!

Of course, most people don’t usually say what they’re really thinking or come out directly with what they want, so you can show their motivations in different ways. For your point-of-view character, you can show us what they really care about and why in the dissonance between their thoughts, emotions, and spoken dialogue. For other characters you can reveal a lot through the body language and expression shifts that occur in between their spoken dialogue, and how the main point-of-view character interprets their motivations.

3. Weave conflict and action throughout the conversation.

Readers do not want to read pages after pages of just dialogue. It might seem fun or interesting to you as the writer, but it gets boring for readers, fast. Instead, work additional plot conflicts and activities into your conversations to increase tension (and don’t forget how that conflict might drive your plot forward!). Have your characters use the action of the scene to do something while they talk. Are they actively pursuing another goal? Talking on the way to implementing a goal? Waiting for something to happen? Debriefing something that just happened? Prepping for something? Adding action to a conversation scene brings it alive and ensures the reader that the story is still moving forward.

4. Use correct grammar, effective dialogue tags, and avoid -ly words.

The actual conventions of writing dialogue seem so simple, but when done incorrectly are extremely distracting. We won’t go too much into grammar rules (read Grammar Girl’s tips if you need to review), but remember to pay special attention when editing. Use dialogue tags (such as “she said”) to guide a reader through the conversation. Only leave them out when it’s very clear who is speaking.

When in doubt, just use “said.” Adverbs and showy dialogue tags can take the reader out of the story, whereas a simple “said” is almost invisible. Instead of “she said happily” or “she exclaimed,” show us through her words or body language that she’s happy.

5. Read your dialogue aloud.

If you haven’t tried this before, you’ll be surprised what it can do to level up your writing! By reading your character’s dialogue aloud, you will get a much better understanding of the conversation’s flow, intonation, and whether the characters’ attitude or motivations are clearly conveyed.

Example:

Scene from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Now, let’s take a look at a scene of dialogue that works and why. In this excerpt from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss we see a conversation between Kvothe and Chronicler. Kvothe, a hero of legend and the main character, has tossed aside the hero mantle to go into hiding and live as an innkeeper in a small town. Chronicler, after hunting Kvothe down, is transcribing Kvothe’s life story to find out how he became the hero of legend and what drove him to abandon the hero’s journey. The story as a whole is told through flashbacks with Kvothe narrating, but is broken up with scenes like this that take place in the present between Kvothe, Chronicler, and Bast (Kvothe’s apprentice).

Right before this excerpt, Kvothe told Chronicler and Bast about a time when he was young, living as a beggar on the streets of Tarbean after his parents and troupe were murdered. He witnessed a young child, close to his own age, being beaten and robbed, and he choose to do nothing in order to keep himself safe.

Kvothe gestured for Chronicler to set down his pen and stretched, lacing his fingers together above his head. “It’s been a long time since I remembered that,” he said. “If you are eager to find the reason I became the Kvothe they tell stories about, you could look there, I suppose.”

Chronicler’s forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean, exactly?”

Kvothe paused for a long moment, looking down at his hands. “Do you know how many times I’ve been beaten over the course of my life?”

Chronicler shook his head.

Looking up, Kvothe grinned and tossed his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. “Neither do I. You’d think that sort of thing would stick in a person’s mind. You’d think I would remember how many bones I’ve had broken. You’d think I’d remember the stitches and bandages.” He shook his head. “I don’t. I remember that young boy sobbing in the dark. Clear as a bell after all these years.”

Chronicler frowned. “You said yourself that there was nothing you could have done.”

“I could have,” Kvothe said seriously, “and I didn’t. I made my choice and I regret it to this day. Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.”

Kvothe pushed himself away from the table. “That’s enough of Tarbean’s darker side, I imagine.” He came to his feet and gave a great stretch, arms over his head.

“Why, [Kvothe*]?” The words poured out of Bast in a sudden gush. “Why did you stay there when it was so awful?”

Kvothe nodded to himself, as if he had been expecting the question. “Where else was there for me to go, Bast? Everyone I knew was dead.”

“Not everyone,” Bast insisted. “There was Abenthy. You could have gone to him.”

“Hallowfell was hundreds of miles away, Bast,” Kvothe said wearily as he wandered to the other side of the room and moved behind the bar. “Hundreds of miles without my father’s maps to guide me. Hundreds of miles without wagons to ride or sleep in. Without help of any sort, or money, or shoes. Not an impossible journey, I suppose. But for a young child, still numb with the shock of losing his parents…”

Kvothe shook his head. “No. In Tarbean at least I could beg or steal. I’d managed to survive in the forest for a summer, barely. But over the winter?” He shook his head. “I would have starved to death.”

Standing at the bar, Kvothe filled his mug and began to add pinches of spice from several small containers, then walked toward the great stone fireplace, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You’re right, of course. Anywhere would have been better than Tarbean.”

He shrugged, facing the fire. “But we are all creatures of habit. It is far too easy to stay in the familiar ruts we dig for ourselves. Perhaps I even viewed it as fair. My punishment for not being there to help when the Chandrian came. My punishment for not dying when I should have, with the rest of my family.”

* Edited for simplicity

In this conversation, we learn a few important things about Kvothe. He regrets not helping others, which he himself considers the beginning of the Legend he becomes. At this point in the story, we don’t know that Legend, but we know that he learns a lot from this event where he turned a blind eye. Rather than remembering his own past injuries, he remembers how past events affect people around him and, more importantly, his mistakes. He carries a heavy burden from those mistakes, one that we as readers don’t fully understand yet. However, we know instinctively that a large part of the story to come is about Kvothe’s regret. Why else would he abandon being a hero? What happened to make him this way? We instantly want to know more. There’s such a strong purpose and intention behind every word that’s spoken.

Pay special attention to how Rothfuss uses dialogue tags and Show, Don’t Tell throughout. He deftly weaves them together, but never in a way that makes it difficult for a reader to understand what’s going on. Rothfuss uses Kvothe’s attitude and manner to tell us how he’s feeling without specifically telling us. Kvothe pauses, shrugs, and pushes himself away from the table. From these small pieces, we understand how Kvothe feels without Rothfuss spelling it out. He also uses Kvothe’s action to break up the conversation. Kvothe moves, he busies himself by pouring himself another mug, adding spices to it, and returning to the fire. All of this, while breaking up the scene, still shows us that Kvothe moves in order to think. He processes information by finding things to do with his hands, which becomes very important to Kvothe’s character further into the story.

Finally, read the excerpt aloud and feel how it moves through your mouth. It flows seamlessly, like a real conversation would. It’s realistic and natural, despite the fantastic setting.

While this is a short excerpt of a larger scene, no pieces of it are irrelevant. The story is driven forward. The entire example is important to understanding who Kvothe is and why his story matters. That is why this truly works.