The Secret to Writing Dialogue that Sizzles

How to write dialogue that excites your readers.

Dialogue in a story is what your characters say to each other or themselves. Most of the time, dialogue is spoken aloud between characters with dialogue tags; however, sometimes, writers use internal dialogue to clue a reader in on what is happening inside the character’s mind.

There are no strict rules for writing character conversations, but there are some tricks to writing great dialogue.

Avoid Information Dumping

When writing dialogue, you want to write how people talk. This means avoiding big information dumps in conversations, like:

“As you already know, I work at the insurance company…” Sarah said.

People don’t talk like this in real life. Chances are, whomever Sarah is talking to already knows she works at an insurance company, so it comes across as false when people read it written like this.

Nix the Monologues and Talking Heads

Try to keep your character’s dialogue short and to the point. Readers generally don’t want to read a monologue that goes on for pages and pages.

Talking heads is a term for when characters are speaking, but there is nothing concrete in the scene that lets the reader know what’s going on apart from the conversation. To the reader, your characters are “talking heads.” To avoid this, break up your dialogue with some action now and then.

Read more: Three Elements for Writing the Setting of Your Story

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Even though in real life, people greet each other and say things like, “Hi, how are you?” It would be best if you avoid it in your writing. Imagine you’re reading a book and come across this conversation:

“Hi, Joe,” Sarah said.

“Hi, Sarah,” Joe said.

“How are you?” Sarah said.

“I’m fine. How are you?” Joe said.

“I’m good,” Sarah said.

Pretty painful, right? Your readers will think so, too.

Instead, jump straight into the meat of whatever your character has to say and leave the small talk to quick exposition. That could look like, “Sarah and Joe greeted each other.”

Read more: How to Develop Your Main Character

Dialogue Tags

Dialogue tags are the identifiers at the end of the speech that tells the reader who was speaking. For example, “I am speaking,” Sarah said.

Newer writers typically think they’re adding excitement to their dialogue by using unique tags, like spat, roared, attacked, etc. However, tags like this distract from the conversation.

Keep dialogue tags simple: said, asked, replied, answered, etc. Your reader should understand that your character is talking normally, yelling, whispering, etc., by the context around the conversation. Sometimes, dialogue tags aren’t even necessary.

How to Format Dialogue

There are no formal dialogue rules for the format; however, some general conventions exist in the United States.

• Put your punctuation inside the quotation. For example, “The punctuation goes here.”

• Use double quotations.

• Use a single quotation mark inside of the double quotations if your character is quoting something when they’re speaking. For example, “Like Joe always says, ‘Don’t eat your dinner before dessert.’”

• Use an em dash (—) to show that your character is interrupted. To create an em dash on Mac computers, type “option+shift+hyphen.” For PC, type “alt+ctrl+minus.”

• When a new character speaks, start a new paragraph, even if it’s just one word.

Remember, these are general rules for US writers. Some writers use only single quotation marks to mark when characters speak, and others, like Cormac McCarthy, don’t use quotation marks at all.

Whatever method of formatting dialogue you choose, keep it consistent throughout your story.

If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear them. Send me a message or find me on social media.