5 Tips for Writing Dialogue in a Novel (with Examples)
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If you're writing a novel or even a short story, then dialogue is likely going to be a large component of your storytelling. Nearly all novel-length works include some amount of dialogue to illustrate how the characters interact with each other and propel the plot forward.
But writing effective dialogue can be challenging. If you don't do it right, you run the risk of alienating the reader or looking amateurish.
To alleviate these issues, in this article I will walk through five tips for writing dialogue in a novel, and also go through some real examples to show exactly how to fix these mistakes. With this knowledge, you can go back through your own manuscript and be able to better spot these errors with your dialogue.
1. Fix Mismatched Attributions
The first of my tips for writing dialogue in a novel relates to mismatched attributions. Attribution lines are very important when writing dialogue, as they are what the reader is looking for in order to determine which character is saying what line. When something is off with the attribution, whether it's incorrectly placed or worded, the reader will get confused.
Specifically, what I mean when I say mismatched attributions is that the action line that comes after a line of dialogue is actually following the other character in the dialogue, not the character who just spoke.
This is something better understood through an example, so let me go through the first here:
“Where did Ryan go?” Joey asked.
“I thought he told you,” Joey looked concerned. Kelsey’s eyes widened.
Can you tell which character, Joey or Kelsey, is saying that second line? It's quite confusing because the attribution line is “Joey looked concerned,” but does that mean he said, “‘I thought he told you”? In this example, it looks like Joey both asked and answered his own question, when really it should be Kelsey answering his question.
I see this dialogue mistake all the time. I think it happens because you, as the writer, know exactly who is speaking at any given moment. Of course Kelsey is the other speaker in this exchange.
However, the reader is experiencing your story for the first time. They don’t have the behind the scenes knowledge you do, so injecting Joey’s reaction into the second attribution line becomes confusing.
What you need to do here is ensure that the speaker is the first person you mention after the line of dialogue, whether it's a simple attribution, like “Joey said” or “Kelsey said,” or some kind of action line, like “Kelsey shrugged.” By doing that, you will keep the lines of dialogue clearly attached to their speaker, making for a smoother reading experience for the reader.
Let me show you what a revised version of this exchange would look like.
“Where did Ryan go?” Joey asked.
“I thought he told you,” Kelsey said, her eyes widening. Joey looked concerned.
Now it is crystal clear that Kelsey is the one who is responding. The reader sees that her eyes are widening first, then Joey being concerned. We know exactly what is happening as well as who is saying what.
2. Don’t Forget Reactions
The next mistake I often see in dialogue exchanges, especially in novels, is skipped character reactions. Reactions are critical components of any dialogue scene, but all too often books will have pages and pages of dialogue without any break to illustrate what's going on in the characters’ broader environment. Doing this is a mistake for many reasons, one of which being that it can quickly get tiring to read.
Thus, whenever you're writing a scene of dialogue, make sure you are not just showing the characters’ lines one after another, but also showing what the characters are doing throughout the scene. What their physical reactions are, what the tone of their voices are, and other such details are going to give the reader as much intel on the dynamics and emotional underpinnings of the scene as the actual dialogue is.
Showing character reactions becomes especially important when there is a dramatic or shocking moment within the dialogue. If something consequential is being revealed, there should be a moment where you take a step back from the conversation, just for a line or two, to show the reader how the character is reacting. If you overlook that, then it will feel like something is missing from the scene.
Here’s an example:
“Did you hear about what happened at the gym?” Steven asked.
“No, I've been in class all day,” Mark replied.
“One of the treadmills caught fire while a woman was running on it. She had to be rushed to the hospital and everything.”
“Do they know the cause?”
As you read through this exchange, did you feel that something was missing or unspoken? There’s a pretty big gap here, specifically from Mark. Before Mark asks what the cause of the fire was, it feels like we need to see him reacting to this shocking news. As is, Mark comes across as fairly cold and robotic for not acknowledging this crazy news.
Here’s the exchange edited to show the emotional reaction:
“Did you hear about what happened at the gym?” Steven asked.
“No, I've been in class all day,” Mark replied.
“One of the treadmills caught fire while a woman was running on it. She had to be rushed to the hospital and everything.”
Mark gasped. He'd been running on one of the treadmills just that morning. “Do they know the cause?”
This scene flows much more realistically, and we have a deeper glimpse into the emotional state of Mark. Now, we see that he is shocked by the news, specifically because he too uses those machines at the gym. He gasps at the news, so the reader registers that he's shocked by this revelation, and when he adds the detail that he was there just that morning, it signals to the reader how he is personally interpreting the news.
Again, while you might be aware of the characters’ emotional reactions, your reader won’t unless you show them. So try to take that into consideration, especially during long bouts of dialogue.
3. Watch Your Paragraph Breaks
My next tip for writing dialogue in a novel is watching incorrect paragraph breaks. Just like attribution lines, where you break paragraphs and lines of text is very important to the reader's understanding of the scene. You need to get the formatting of your paragraph breaks right, or else the conversation can become impossible for the reader to follow.
Let me show you what an incorrect paragraph break looks like in an example:
“When I got to the grocery store this morning, I saw a strange man waiting by the main entrance,” Jordan said. “I took the long way and went into the other door to avoid him, but then once I got inside, he was right there in front of me. It freaked me out.”
“So I rushed past him, then made my way to the back of the store to pick up some milk. But he followed me.”
Can you tell who is meant to be speaking in the second paragraph? By the contents of the text, it seems like a continuation of Jordan's story. However, the formatting denotes another person speaking. There is a full quotation in the first paragraph and then a full quotation in the second.
Coming across something like this in a novel is confusing, because the reader doesn't know whether that was Jordan talking or some other person responding. It throws off the entire exchange too, as each consecutive line of dialogue is mismatched to its speaker.
Ensure that your paragraph breaks are correct by keeping all of the text from the same speaker in the same paragraph. That is the easiest way to keep the lines of dialogue clear.
However, in some cases, you have to break paragraphs up, especially if a character is telling a long story and you want the monologue to be more digestible for the reader. In that case, when you break the long dialogue into a new paragraph, leave off the previous paragraph’s closing quotation mark. That will signal to the reader that they are still speaking.
Here is the revised example:
“When I got to the grocery store this morning, I saw a strange man waiting by the main entrance,” Jordan said. “I took the long way and went into the other door to avoid him, but then once I got inside, he was right there in front of me. It freaked me out.
“So I rushed past him then made my way to the back of the store to pick up some milk, but he followed me.”
By simply removing the ending quotation mark in the first paragraph, the reader now knows that Jordan is the continued speaker.
4. Don’t Use Distracting Dialects
The next dialogue mistake is distracting dialects. This is when, in order to convey how a character is speaking, you write their dialogue phonetically, rather than in standard English. While this technique can certainly be successfully done, it runs the large risk of being distracting to read and, in the most severe cases, being impossible to interpret, defeating the point of dialogue.
Another risk with phonetically spelling out dialects is that you can give the reader an impression of the character they wouldn’t have if you didn’t write out their dialect, and you might inadvertently stereotype that character.
That said, it is true that, in some cases, it is more authentic to have a character’s accent come through their dialogue. For example, if you have a Southern character and are familiar with the accent, having their dialogue carry a Southern drawl will add to their characterization. But if you aren’t familiar with the Southern accent, attempting to write out their accent can come off as unnatural or stereotypical.
The bottom line is that there are instances where writing out a character’s dialect works, and cases where it does not work at all. For the most part, I recommend avoiding it unless totally necessary, as an improperly executed dialect can make for a bad reading experience. If you do choose to go this route, make sure you are well informed on how the accent comes across on the page and that you aren’t going overboard.
Basically, do it right or don't do it at all. In most cases, it's not necessary.
5. Remove Overt Name Dropping
The final dialogue mistake is what I'm calling name calling or name dropping. This is when a character is either directly calling the person they are speaking to by name when it isn't necessary, or they are dropping the name of another character when it’s not necessary.
As an editor, I am a big stickler for having dialogue sound authentic and true to how we actually speak. If I'm speaking to my mom, I'm not going to call her by her first name, for example.
These techniques of name calling and name dropping are often used by the writer whenever they are trying to give another character's name without using an attribution line. For whatever reason, you don't want to say “Jane said'' or “John said.” Instead, Jane and John call each other by their names in the actual conversation.
Alternatively, it's the first time we're meeting a character and the only way we can get their name is to hear someone else say it. This especially happens with first person stories.
There are totally valid ways to use these techniques, such as if it’s a personality trait for a quirky character to constantly say everyone’s full name. However, I do believe there are other ways you can get this information across more seamlessly.
Let's go through an example:
“What are you making for breakfast?”
“For you, Mary? I'm making your favorite, of course: pancakes! Now go upstairs and grab your sister Molly, will you?”
Do you see here how it's awkward that the second character is calling Mary by name, when it seems like they're the only two people in the scene? There’s not really a reason for her to say Mary’s name. Secondly, she's saying “your sister Molly,” but of course Mary already knows her sister's name. The dialogue comes across as forced, rather than natural.
How do you fix this? The first approach is to move mentioned names to the attribution line. You can use the narration to your advantage and have it be the way the reader learns character names, especially if you're working in third person. You can also reveal the character's name in another action line in the narration that's totally unrelated to the conversation.
Here’s a revised example:
“What are you making for breakfast?” Mary asked.
“For you? I'm making your favorite, of course: pancakes! Now go upstairs and grab your sister, will you?”
Mary headed upstairs to Molly's room.
Doesn't this just sound more natural, like an exchange between two people who know each other intimately? At the same time, we still get the same information the prior example has. We learned Mary’s name because we see it in the attribution line, and we also learned her sister's name through the narration line that comes after the conversation.
I hope these tips for writing dialogue in a novel help you find some mistakes in your own manuscript and correct them so that your characters’ conversations read smoother. I admit, I did hold back on the biggest dialogue mistake I see because I wanted to delve deeper into it in another article, so check it out if you want more tips for writing strong dialogue.
Thanks so much for reading and happy writing!