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INTRODUCTION
MOST NEW writers (and a surprising number of experienced writers) are wary of dialogue. I tell them to be brave. You cannot write prose without it. In fact writing dialogue can actually help you plan what happens in your prose. Many writers report learning things they didn’t know about characters and plot while writing dialogue as part of a planning process. When character’s speak we begin to understand them. We develop sympathy for their needs and motivation.
In a finished piece of writing, dialogue is a good way of freeing the reader from the authorial voice. No matter how subtle you think your authorial voice is, no matter how sensitive, poetic, spare, it is a treat for the reader to do without it for a while. Dialogue allows the reader to experience a character at first hand. It helps create characters the reader cares about.
For a lengthy piece of prose, especially a novel, dialogue also helps change the pace. When writing at length, we need variety. We need scenes and we need reflection, we need action – and we need dialogue.
Writing good dialogue takes practice, but most of all it takes editing. Before you write good dialogue, you have to write bad dialogue – nearly every time. Dialogue almost invariably has to go though several drafts. First draft you overwrite. Second, third, fourth, fifth draft you edit. You try to cut by half. You take out a word per line. You test every word to see if you can do without it.
Here are a few rules of thumb:
Never write dialogue that overtly conveys information:
‘In 1949, when I was twenty and working for the newly established NHS, Nigel, the man who later left me to go back to his wife, took me to meet Nye Bevan, then Labour Minister of Health.’
Let important information come out piecemeal in the course of a conversation that may have nothing to do with it.
Try not to write repetitive Ping-Pong dialogue:
‘I’m going to the shops.’
‘Not the shops.’
‘I’m out of bread.’
‘Well goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’
Instead try:
‘I’m out to the shops.’
‘See you.’
All dialogue should be significant:
Did you really need that exchange at all? How did it help further your narrative, or help us understand your characters?
Good dialogue allows for the expression of both characters’ motivation: A problem I often encounter is a situation with one character speaking while another acts as an interviewer.
‘I hate Nigel.’
‘Why is that?’
‘He ruined my life.’
‘When was that?’
These rules are important, but frankly, you have to write bad dialogue in order to write good dialogue. It is not that you will soon get better and will not have to write bad dialogue at all. Bad dialogue is part of the process towards good dialogue. You have to do it every time. Try it.
Like spinach, it’s good for you.
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EXERCISES
#1
Motivation
Try writing dialogue in third person between yourself now and your eight-year-old self. (Or your 80-year-old self.) Both characters are going out to a restaurant. Before you start writing, note what each character wants from the outing, and what each character wants in general (their agenda). Write the dialogue trying to convey each character’s agenda. (Remember this might only be hinted at.)
Now count the number of words and try to cut by half.
Look next at the vocabulary. Make sure the words the characters use are appropriate to them and to the tone of the piece. Try to replace complex, abstract or poetic language with simpler concrete phrases and slang. See how this changes the tone of the piece.
#2
Voice
One character wakes another in the middle of the night with something important to discuss. One speaks Standard English, the other is from the place where you grew up and is using local slang. It should be possible to identify the speaker simply from the vocabulary, syntax, rhythm of the voice.
#3
Content
Put an exterior sound (siren, barking dog, etc.) into one of the dialogues you have already written. Make the characters stop what they are saying and notice the sound. This adds a kind of random quality. Nothing is worse than dialogue that is telling us something insistently.
#4
Pace
Re-write one of your dialogues so that one character uses short sentences and the other uses long ones. Halfway though, make them swap over.
#5
Character
Select two types from the following list:
a Russian; an old woman; an insomniac; a poet; a child; a teenager; a haunted woman; a homeless person; a saint
Imagine one telling the other about their day.
Now choose an emotion for the person who is listening and allow this emotion to colour their responses.
Is the listener in love with, jealous of, angry with, bored by, worried about, or frightened of the speaker?
#6
Translation
Find a piece of prose you have already written and replace a long bit of description or reflection with dialogue. Prose writers often slow their work by using too much description or reflection. Dialogue can quicken, energise and revive tired prose.
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