The ability to write good dialogue is, quite possibly, a writer’s most important tool in his arsenal. Good dialogue breathes life into your characters, fleshes out and diversifies a world, and can tell a story better than any number of descriptive sentences. Bad dialogue will leave characters paper thin and a plot uninteresting and flat. In short, it’ll make or break a novel. What follows are a few good practices that can improve your ability to write good dialogue.
1. Pay attention!
The most crucial of these points, and one that applies not only to your dialogue but to all aspects of your work, is you must pay attention to the world around you. Inspiration for new scenarios, characters and locations are all around us, waiting to be tapped by a skilled writer. None moreso, I believe, than dialogue. The world is a melting pot; different sounds and dialects mixing together to create a rich tapestry of language. No two people will articulate their thoughts and express themselves in the same way, and it is good to take notice of this. You never know when you might come across a phrase that is particularly memorable, or a way of saying a word that is particularly unusual.
2. Read, read, read…
Of course, if you want to write good dialogue you must first read good dialogue. And bad dialogue, for that matter, as this can also teach us many things. Authors like Elmore Leonard (an all time favourite of mine; the man writes with such a cinematic flair that his dialogue is utterly entrancing), Ernest Hemingway (a true pioneer in this respect), Douglas Adams (thoroughly entertaining and quippy; you may not always believe that somebody would say these things, but boy do you love to read them) and Stephen King (an actual king of character building if ever there was one) are all great examples here.
3. …But don’t overlook the movies.
Not a popular opinion amongst writers, but movies and tv shows can be incredibly helpful when improving one’s writing style. Of course you should, primarily, be reading rather than watching tv, but that isn’t to say you can’t learn a few things. Quentin Tarantino is my favourite when it comes to dialogue; the man just has a way of presenting a perfectly mundane conversation in an interesting and entertaining way. I mean, when has anybody ever wanted to sit and watch a ten minute scene about two guys talking about burgers. I have, for one, in Pulp Fiction and I’d do it again and enjoy it again. We do, after all, hear dialogue rather than see it written on a page in real life, so you could do far worse than put on a good movie from time to time.
4. Follow the threads.
Going back to directors and authors, it also good practice to find out who influenced your favourite authors/directors. Stephen King, for instance, led me to Ernest hemingway; Quentin Tarantino to Elmore Leonard. If you pry a little into the life of any good writer you’ll likely find that they have a string of influences on their writing style. If you go and read these, and then pry into their influences, you’ll find the same again. Chase these threads, constantly reading, constantly improving.
5. Remove the gunk.
Typically an amateur writer (and I have been guilty of this when reading back my own amateur work) he or she will clutter up his dialogue with with unnecessary descriptives. You may constantly splice in long intervals of description between sentences of dialogue; you may mix up your verb attributions (“she grated”, then “he gasped” then “she jerked out.”) Stephen King (I know, I know, but he’s one of my favourites) touches upon this in his excellent book On Writing. Show don’t tell, as they say. Basically, don’t clutter your dialogue; it is usually best to keep it he said/she said for most of the time.
6. Don’t shy away from product placement.
Say “I grabbed myself a Big Mac before work,” rather than, “I grabbed myself a sandwich.” We all talk without barriers when it comes to products. We often say “Tesco” instead of “shop”; “Mars bar” instead of “chocolate bar” and “Coke” instead of “soda.” It’s natural, and so it should be in your writing.
7. Don’t shy away from mispronunciations.
You might find this one very strange, but the simple fact is: we’re all human and sometimes we make mistakes. We might say “on tender hooks,” rather than “on tenterhooks”, or “first come, first serve” rather than “served.” Include these from time to time, these little mistakes in pronouncing a word or saying a phase, but maybe not go overboard with it. And try to recognise that you’ve done this on purpose in your writing, if you can, by making a comment or spelling the pronunciation out on the page.
The Writer's Block 