Writing authentic dialogue – you might be doing it wrong

There’s a lot of advice floating around on the internet about writing dialogue and not all of it is great. I mean, did you know real people stutter? And they use filler words a lot?? Yeah, I bet they do, but that has nothing to do with writing.

In this post, we’re going to talk about how to make your characters sound like real people WITHOUT making your writing clunky and unpleasant to read.

What is dialogue?

Let’s get back to the basics for a moment to make sure we’re on the same page.

Dialogue is what your characters say to each other in your story and it’s separate from the narration. There are three types of dialogue: direct, indirect and summarised. Here are examples respectively:

“Julie is such a big dumbass,” Stacy said.

Stacy said Julie was such a big dumbass.

Stacy questioned Julie’s intelligence.

Although you’ll most likely use direct speech in your dialogue the most, all of these can and should be used in your story. Summarised dialogue is especially useful when the subject has already been talked about because you don’t want your readers to suffer through reading the same thing twice.

You can also combine all three types of dialogue.

“Julie is such a big dumbass,” Stacy said and described what had happened the day before.

Stacy questioned Julie’s intelligence, and continued: “Besides, she thinks Oxford has something to do with bulls.”

Stacy said Julie was such a big dumbass. “But at least she’s pretty.”

No offence to anyone called Julie – I’m sure you’re wicked smart and Stacy is just being unfair. That’s so like Stacy.

What are dialogue tags? What about action tags?

Dialogue tags are the things that come after direct dialogue, like “said” or “shouted”. Action tag is when you end the dialogue but then have the character do something to show who was doing the talking.

Here’s an example of using a dialogue tag after dialogue:

“I’m so tired,” I said.

And here’s an action tag… in action:

“I’m so tired.” I closed my eyes and pretended to be sleeping.

You may have heard that “said is dead”, but that’s the silliest load of bollocks I’ve ever heard in the realm of writing tips!

“Said” is perfect because it’s practically invisible. No, your readers won’t get sick of you “over-using” it because they’ll be too busy reading to notice it. You can use “replied” or “answered” as well as asked, and the occasional “shouted” isn’t bad, either. But if you need to describe the way something was said, use something else besides the dialogue tag for that.

Should dialogue be like real speech?

In short, no. Dialogue should be kind of like real speech, but better.

See, real people mumble and stutter a lot and they use far more filler words than they probably should. These are not needed in fiction unless you want to make a point of how uncertain someone is. People also tend to ramble, change the subject mid-sentence and end their sentences in a different tense than they started with, just to mention a couple of things. In other words, unpracticed, spontaneous speech is a mess.

Now, it’s totally fine to have all kinds of extra words in your dialogue when you’re just writing your first draft – that’s literally what editing is for. Don’t just take out the filler words but remove everything that isn’t needed. If you take out too much, just put something back in until you’ve only got exactly what is needed to convey what you want to convey.

Let’s look at an example! I’m just going to write something random as dialogue and then fix it to the best of my abilities.

“Anyway, so I was thinking that maybe I could go shopping later, like after work, you know? And, um, I just wondered if you could maybe pick up the books from the library if that’s okay.”

There could be a reason for your character to talk that way, but while that’s totally normal, kind of distracted way of speaking in real life, in fiction it’s just too bloated unless you’re trying to say the character is insecure or kind of spaced out. Let’s make it more succinct:

“I was thinking I could go shopping after work. Could you maybe pick up the books from the library?”

Now, that’s a lot more tight. More often than not, you want to tighten your writing, including your dialogue. If it ends up too impersonal, add some personal flair. You’ll get the hand of how to edit your dialogue just the right amount the more you do it.

That said, remember how people actually talk

Although I said that dialogue should be better than real speech, it should still sound natural. Some sentence structures totally make sense in writing while being out of place in spoken language, unless someone was reciting a practiced speech or reading from their notes.

Let’s look at this:

In order for you to preserve your dignity, that of yourself and of your acquaintances, you are required to pay utmost attention to both your attire and your personal odour.

First of all, I have no idea what I just wrote, so no, you can’t have context. There isn’t any. But what I just wrote couldn’t be something you just say when you come up to them, unless you’re perhaps a robot. Human people don’t talk like that, so maybe you actually meant to say “If you want to preserve you and your friends’ dignity, you really should make sure your clothes are decent and you don’t smell.” Vary as needed depending on your character and your setting.

Yes, people can use big words and sound smart. But the reality is, spoken sentence structure is almost always simpler than in writing. People need to breathe, too, so try reading your dialogue out loud and add a full stop to parts where it seems like you might run out of air!

Another thing to remember that is related to being economical in your dialogue is that actual people also leave out a lot of words. “Have you been anywhere interesting?” frequently becomes “Been anywhere interesting?” in informal speech. People also tend to try to get to their point first unless they have a reason to delay it, so remember this in your writing too.

Don’t infodump in dialogue

Another thing that makes readers go “uh, they totally wouldn’t say that” is having your characters say things just for the reader’s benefit. Yes, you can share information in dialogue because that’s one of the functions of dialogue, but your characters shouldn’t be saying stuff that your other characters already know.

If your protagonist Amelie was talking to her best, lifelong friend, she wouldn’t be saying something like “My job as a paralegal in the biggest law firm in town, Horse & Sons, is so stressful” or “My father Paul, the successful businessman, is at work today” because that’s a lot of information that the bestie would likely already know. She’d just be like “Gawd, work is totally killing me” and “Dad is at work now”.

And although dialogue should also help you set the scene and reveal something about the world to your readers, you want to do that just a little at a time. Not whole paragraphs at once unless your character is a tour guide.

Recently I finished reading The Librarian Of Auschwitz, and the writer had a really annoying habit of having one character explain details of Nazi Germany to another character, who in turn would ask questions to the tune of “and then what happened?” The book was written in omniscient POV anyway, so all that could have just been included in the narration instead, but generally it wasn’t a very well-written book anyway.

People don’t all sound the same

It’s not realistic that everyone sounds the same. Although you can’t hear a character’s voice and tell them apart that way, there are still ways that you can make your characters sound distinct.

One character could be more formal while someone else uses slang frequently. An educated character who loves to read could speak in longer, more complex sentences than someone who’s not really “wordy” and just wants to get their point across. (Remember what we just talked about sentence structure, though.)

And of course, the same person would sound different in different situations, so hopefully your character with a PhD doesn’t talk to his colleagues during lunch break the same way as to his girlfriend during intimate moments.

Characters who are from different backgrounds shouldn’t sound different just to help tell them apart, they should sound different because that’s realistic. A character who has lived in poverty and crime all his life would likely sound very different to someone very sheltered, for example. And if you made all your characters sound like you, your readers would certainly notice that!

Be careful with unique expressions and words. For example, if two of your characters use the same, less commonly used words, it could seem very unrealistic unless they had a reason to speak in a similar manner. (I certainly take after my dad’s speech more than I’d like to admit.) I’m not saying don’t use uncommon words at all – simply be careful with multiple characters sharing the same unusual vocabulary with no reason.

Don’t go overboard with accents

I have no doubt you’ve read a novel or two where someone’s accent was written as it sounds like throughout the whole book. However, modern novels don’t really do that, and for a good reason. It’s kind of tiring to read that and trying to sound out what the characters are saying.

So how do you show that a character is from somewhere different, whether that’s a specific part of the country or a different country altogether? You can sprinkle in a few words in the accent, add some slang words and use different sentence structures. A foreigner could use a different word order or perhaps use words and phrases that are kind of outdated or rarely used.

How to become better at writing dialogue

Now that you know a few ways to make your dialogue sound more realistic, you might be wondering how to make your dialogue better in general. Fortunately it’s simple, just practice! And also, read books that you enjoy and copy bits of dialogue you really like into a notebook, and do the same with movies or TV shows. Then try to write something that is similar and try it with a few different scenes.

If you’re interested in learning more about dialogue, I also have this workshop on how to improve it in your writing.

Lastly, here’s a writing exercise you can do every day: Pick a conversation you had that day and write it down as well as you can remember it. Then, re-write it like you were characters in a book, remembering everything I learned in this blog post. Look back on your old exercises every now and then to edit them and make them even better.

If there’s something else you’d like to learn about dialogue, let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for new ideas for blog posts.

Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.