Dialogue – good dialogue, anyway – can reveal character, advance the plot and give background details in an unobtrusive way. It can make us laugh out loud or weep with heartache. Here are some tips to crafting effective dialogue:
Good Dialogue Isn’t Real Looking for ways to create realistic dialogue? Listen to real people for tips, but keep the dialogue focused and tight.
Dialogue Tags Using “said” after every dialogue line gets boring, but what to use instead?
Characters Need Unique Dialogue Dialogue becomes real when your characters’ words show their background, attitudes, and culture.
Four Purposes of Dialogue Use dialogue carefully and it will serve different purposes, developing character, story background, plots and pacing.
Description, Dialogue, Narrative An easy way to determine if your novel or short story is balanced between dialogue, description and narrative, plus some tips on corrections if you need them.
Using Dialect in Fiction The modern rule is to not use dialect in writing fiction. But then how do writers make characters sound real?
Historical & Foreign Dialogue Writing dialects and dialogue for historical and foreign characters can be tricky. Here are tips for making them sound real without awkward phonetic spelling.
