Make Your Story Sing — Write Great Dialogue!

How do I write dialogue? Dialogue is the interplay between PLOT and CHARACTERS within the SCENE. Here are 7 DOs of Dialogue:

1. MUSICAL - get the rhythm right, make it sing
2. NATURAL - conversational, how your characters would speak in real life
3. VARIED - give characters distinct speech patterns
4. SHORT - snappy exchanges
5. UNSAID - imply rather than state outright
6. ACTION - body language, physical movements, gestures
7. PERFORM - say it out loud, act it out

We will also review 3 DON'Ts of Dialogue and The 4 Mechanics of Dialogue.

Why Is It So Hard to Write Good Dialogue?

I struggle sometimes with wanting to write dialogue that sings and what comes out is either flat and uninspired, or it doesn’t sound like real people talking, or it sounds TOO MUCH like real people talking (a rambling mess).

So why is it so hard to write good dialogue? It comes down to these three things: we try too hard, we write stilted or fancy, and we lack clear direction in the dialogue.

TRYING TOO HARD

We’re trying to write the great dialogue, the snappy turns of phrases.

When we do, we subconsciously (or maybe consciously) turn to what we have read in books and seen in film and on television.

We try to make it sound “real”, by overdoing dialect, including current slang words that might quickly get out of date.

We overwrite the dialogue, letting it take over and forget that it’s there to serve the purpose of the story.

We’re just trying too hard.

STILTED AND FANCY

We forget that dialogue is spoken by real people (our StoryPEOPLE).

So, we get stilted, writing long, grammatically correct sentences, with subclauses, and sub-subclauses.

Real people talk over each other, they interrupt, they speak in incomplete sentences, they repeat themselves.

Instead, we get fancy and stilted, letting our poor StoryPEOPLE sound like politicians orating, like actors declaiming from the stage.

Real people sound real, not stilted, not fancy.

LACKING CLEAR DIRECTION

When we find ourselves with characters that ramble on, that may actually be a good sign.

Go back and look at your dialogue. Is it a rambling mess that goes on and on, around and around?

That may mean that it’s not stilted nor fancy, so you may be approaching “real” — the problem is, it’s now “too real”, floating, bloated, aimless.

The truth is, in real life we do tend to ramble, talking just to talk.

But in fiction, dialogue is a vital part of telling the story. So the dialogue must be sharpened to focus on what’s important to tell the story, and everything else should be cut.

Rambling dialogue is a symptom of lacking clear direction.

Dialogue is the Interplay of PLOT and CHARACTERS Within the SCENE

So, let’s start with the basics: what is the purpose of dialogue?

Dialogue is the interplay of plot and characters within the scene.

The intent of dialogue should always be to move the plot forward, to reveal the characters, and to serve the purposes of the scene itself (we’ll get into what that means in a little bit).

Once you focus your dialogue in this way, it’s not mysterious. It may even become easy. With this mentality, you will …

• … not lack direction for your dialogue (keep bringing it back to plot, characters, scene),

• … no longer write stilted or fancy dialogue (because the dialogue is simply there to serve plot, characters, scene), and

• … let go and not try so hard (after all, if it serves plot, characters, scene, then the dialogue has done its job, that’s all it needs to do).

Let the words spoken by your StoryPEOPLE pull all of your writing craft together: plot, characters, and scenes.

In the examples below, I will use Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”. Most of us are already familiar with the story (even if we haven’t read the original).

Maybe you don’t think of Dickens as a shining example of dialogue. He is great at characterization and in creating memorable stories, but … dialogue?

What you will see if you study Dickens is that he is at master of using dialogue to drive the story forward (plot), to let his characters show who they are by how they speak and what they say, and he uses dialogue effectively in scenes, making key scenes feel like mini-stories, animated by effective dialogue.

PLOT

Dialogue is a means for advancing the plot.

Let’s use the plot structure of the FictionMAP with its three acts (Act I: Challenge, Act II: Complications, Act III: Conclusion).

Act I (Challenge) has three “beats” (three steps of action), and you should use dialogue to set up the “context”, introduce the “catalyst”, then debate (and fret) through the “conversion” to enter into Act II.

Let’s take the familiar example of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”:

“Context” – Primarily through dialogue we see Scrooge interacting with other characters, and through that interaction, we set up the context of Scrooge’s worldview in contrast to everyone around him. You see Scrooge ridiculing his nephew Fred, challenging the two gentlemen who come to collect for charity, domineering his employee Bob Cratchit, and in general behaving like a cold, unfeeling miser (“Bah, humbug!”)

“Catalyst” – Marley’s Ghost shows up, and the scene is almost all dialogue. Marley explains his situation in the afterlife (“I wear the chains I made in life”) and sets up the challenge for Scrooge to change his ways or be doomed to the same fate.

“Conversion” - The “conversion” is the part of Act I where the protagonist has to work through their reaction to the catalyst event. Scrooge first challenges Marley, claiming he is not really there:

“You don’t believe in me.”

“I don’t.”

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because”, said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

Then Scrooge questions, challenges, and even tries to negotiate:

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.”

“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?”

“It is.”

“I — I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge.

“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.”

“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?”

So you see how dialogue has moved the plot forward from “Context” to “Catalyst” and through “Conversion” into Act II of the story.

CHARACTERS 

Reveal characters through dialogue. Let each character’s voice set them apart from others, and use dialogue to drop clues about their personality, their worldview, their attitude, fears, their wants and needs, their emotional arc, and their relationships with the other characters.

In Act I of “A Christmas Carol”, we see how Dickens uses dialogue to show contrast between the characters, for example between Scrooge (stubborn, grumbling, cynical, closed off) and his nephew (equally stubborn but in a positive way, full of Christmas cheer, open and seeking friendship even with his miserly uncle).

Here are two brief exchanges. First when the nephew enters:

A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew [….] 

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

And here is an exchange towards the end, when Scrooge has repeatedly turned down the nephew’s kind invitation to Christmas dinner with him and his wife:

“Why did you get married?” said Scrooge.

“Because I fell in love.”

“Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “Good afternoon!”

“[….] You never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?”

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.

“I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?”

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.

“[….] I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!”

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.

“And A Happy New Year!”

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.

In Act I we see Scrooge’s personality and worldview repeatedly hammered in through the dialogue in four exchanges, first the nephew, then the two gentlemen who are collecting for charity, then with his clerk, Bob Cratchitt, and finally with Marley’s Ghost.

With each of the first three interactions (nephew, charitable gentlemen, Bob Cratchitt), Scrooge is unmoved, stuck in his ways, his dialogue consistently cynical, closed off, cold.

In the dialogue with Marley’s Ghost, Scrooge starts in a similar way, but begins “thawing” and starts to sound more human towards the end of the interchange with the ghost of his old business partner, showing the beginnings of the character transformation that will occur in the story.

In a sense, dialogue is really always about what the characters want. They don’t talk just to hear themselves talk. They talk because they’re trying to influence, manipulate, ask, and in some way seeking to achieve something. Dialogue really comes alive when the characters have conflicting purposes.

SCENE 

Use dialogue as you write your scene as a mini-story, for callbacks and foreshadow, to open and close loops, create conflict, set up choices, hint at subtext, cause disruption, introduce complications, and bringing your scene to a powerful conclusion.

You can use dialogue to weave connections to prior or future scenes. You do that by dialogue that includes callbacks to what was said or happened in prior scenes, dialogue that foreshadows a future scene, and dialogue that opens and closes loops.

• “Opening loops” means that what is said raises questions, poses a challenge, or creates suspense in some other way by stating something that’s not complete, unresolved.

• “Closing loops” means that the dialog answers a question, or resolves something that was left unresolved in a prior scene.

You can use dialogue for the story elements of conflict, choice, subtext, and disruption within the scene:

• To create conflict, imagine using dialogue to show two characters arguing.

• Dialogue is an effective way to set up choices as in the example from “A Christmas Carol” where the dialogue between Scrooge and Marley’s Ghost sets up the central choice: will Scrooge change his ways or be doomed to the same fate as Marley in the afterlife?

• What is left unsaid in dialogue can sometimes be as important as what is said. This is subtext. It is also a natural way of speaking. We don’t complete our thoughts. We don’t share everything we’re thinking, especially in situations where the other characters in the scene are already in the know.

• You can use dialogue to cause disruption: a character suddenly blurting out something that is shocking, upsetting, unexpected.

Dialogue is very useful in creating complications within the scene:

• Action/Reaction - dialogue can be a form of “action” that there will be a “reaction” to as the characters engage in verbal sparring.

• Danger - dialogue can show that there is danger either because of a direct verbal threat or by having the characters speaking about their fears and the scary situation they find themselves in.

• Revelations - the characters say something that reveals a fact or feeling that wasn’t known before to the other characters in the scene (or the reader).

• Obstacles - either where one character tells another that they can’t do something, explains how they are going to be stymied or stopped, or two characters discuss how to overcome an obstacle.

• Confrontation - for example by one character challenging another and the other character taking up the challenge in a verbal match.

• Twists - for example by two characters revealing through their conversation that they are secretly conspiring.

• Raising stakes - for example by the characters escalating their verbal conflict and threats, taking it to the “next level.”

• Contemplation - the actual “contemplation” should not be spoken aloud (unless you’re writing a monologue for a play). Instead use dialogue to trigger inner thoughts in “scene and sequel” interplay between what the characters say and think.

• Withholding - this is another example (as with subtext) of what is left unsaid in dialogue. Let your characters omit, speak in half-truths, or straight up tell lies to withhold information or feelings. A character can also blatantly state that they refuse to share.

Finally, you can use dialogue to end the scene in a compelling way:

• Revelatory dialogue - you can punch out of the scene by ending it with revelation coming out in the exchange of words between the characters.

• Concluding words - let the characters speak about what has happened in the scene, reflecting on it.

• Cliffhanger - a surprising exchange of words leaves the reader in suspense, then the scene ends.

***

In summary, dialogue is the interplay of plot and characters within the scene.

The purpose of dialogue is to drive the story forward and to reveal characters (including relationships between the characters), and to let you tell your scene like a mini-story.

If your dialogue is not focused on these three things (plot, characters, scene), even if it’s “good” dialogue, even if you love it … you should cut it (or fix it).

10 DOs and DON’Ts of Dialogue

I want to first of all give credit that these 10 DOs and DON’Ts of Dialogue is a synthesis of the wisdom of the writers (and one actor) who shared their lessons on MasterClass.

In particular, David Mamet and Aaron Sorkin are both known for their strong dialogue, so I started with them, and their insight and inspiration gave me the overall framework.

I also reviewed, learned from, and was inspired by lessons on dialogue from Neil Gaiman, David Baldacci, Judy Blume, Dan Brown, Margaret Atwood, R.L. Stine, Shonda Rhimes, James Patterson, Walter Mosley, the Duffer Brothers (of “Stranger Things” fame), and Steve Martin (who, in addition to being a great standup comedian and actor, is a playwright and script writer).

Helen Mirren’s lesson on breaking down a script was also interesting, exploring dialogue from the actor’s perspective.

If you’re not already signed up for MasterClass, do yourself a favor and check it out.

7 DOs OF DIALOGUE

These are the seven DOs of dialogue.

MUSICAL

Dialogue is musical. There’s a rhythm to dialogue.

David Mamet takes it all the way back to Shakespeare, who wrote in iambic pentameter. Mamet believes that this is the natural rhythm of speech, whether or not we are aware of it, and he strives to write his dialogue in what approximates this rhythm.

Iambic pentameter alternates short and long syllables. Each of this pair of a short and a long syllable is called an "iamb", and this is what creates the rhythm. Stringing together five of these pairs of short and long syllables sounds like this:

“da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM.”

Here’s an example from his play (and film) Glenngarry Glen Ross. Notice how he uses small “filler” words, deliberate word repetition, and pauses in some places to achieve the rhythm, which is exactly how we speak.

LEVENE
I can’t close these leads, John.
No one can. It’s a joke. John,
look, just give me a hot lead.
Just give me two of the premium
leads. As a “test,” alright? As a
“test” and I promise you…

WILLIAMSON
I can’t do it, Shel.
Pause.

LEVENE
I’ll give you ten percent.
Pause.

Also, notice that it’s not exactly the five-syllable pairs (ten syllables in total) of iambic pentameter. The example from Mamet’s dialogue above are actually between six and nine syllables per (go ahead, count the syllables), so it’s more of an approximation. If you actually tried to force the dialogue into strict iambic pentameter, it would sound like a poem, a Shakespeare sonnet.

But even if you take up Mamet’s challenge and try your hand at emulating iambic pentameter in your dialogue, there should be rhythmic differences in the speech patterns of different characters, based on their personality and other aspects of the character description. Some characters may have a long, drawn out speech pattern, like a saxophone, another character will be speaking in short, choppy sentences, like a jazz piano.

Aaron Sorkin has a great point that music is made from more than one note. If you just have one note, that’s a whine, a blaring siren. It’s when you combine multiple notes that you start getting music. And that, of course, is the the give and take dialogue.

Aaron Sorkin also takes it further to say that you can think about dialogue in musical terms including tone, volume, timbre, cadence, and even in terms of the components of a musical work: arias (monologues), duets (dialogues), trios (trialogues?), quartets (quadralogues?), etc.

Or think about the speed of the dialogue in terms of the musical tempos: vivaces (very lively and fast), allegros (brisk, lively), andantes (steady walking pace, moderate) adagios (slow, with great expression), lentos and largos (very slow).

Think about dialogue as being MUSICAL, and you will make your story sing!

NATURAL

Make your dialogue sound natural.

People don’t speak in perfectly grammatical sentences. They use contractions, broken phrases and interruptions.

Aaron Sorkin calls these “idiosyncrasies” since they should also be unique to different characters. He recommends approaching this in two steps:

• Step 1 - write your dialogue without thinking about the “idiosyncrasies.”

• Step 2 - go back over and add in character idiosyncrasies, thinking about how different characters will speak. One character will have more false starts, stops, uhs and uhms, while another speaks in more complete sentences. There can even be idiosyncrasies between characters, such as a relationship so close that they complete each other sentences, or characters that are awkward around each other, stuttering and using more uhs and uhms when they speak, or an age difference and/or power relationship between the characters so that there is an interplay of hesitation/deference and directness/command in their speech.

By adding in the idiosyncrasies in a separate step, you will be doing it thoughtfully, deliberately, and you can guard against overuse of these quirks of natural speech — a little goes a long way. Think of the idiosyncrasies as seasoning, and apply just a pinch here and there.

You should be careful about slang and accents and dialect, with just a little of it placed here and there in the dialogue, so it doesn’t take over and become distracting and difficult to read.

You should know your world, including the historical time period. Once again, use idiosyncrasies as seasoning. Give the reader the “flavor” of, for example, 1930s gangster lingo.

David Mamet talks about how culture should influence how characters speak. By that he doesn’t just mean ethnic and socio-economic cultures, but also the culture of the group they belong to. Law enforcement, criminals, sales people, they all have their culture which influences the way they speak. Any group has their own culture and way of speaking.

Is their culture one that enjoys witty banter, jokes, storytelling? Or are they in a culture that is very factual, no-nonsense, precise in expression?

If you don’t know the culture you’re writing about first hand, do your homework. Read fiction and non-fiction, watch film and documentaries, or go out into that culture, listen and observe. How do they talk?

Make your dialogue NATURAL by seasoning in idiosyncrasies that are right for your characters and their environment (including time period and culture).

VARIED

Vary speech pattern, so that different characters speak in distinct ways.

As you work on your character descriptions, thinking through the layers from the external (skin) layer to the internal (flesh & bone, soul) layers, how will they come across based on their education, their social economic status, their background, their education and their personality?

Are they confident? Are they fearful? Are they educated and smart or uneducated, slow? Are they positive and upbeat or melancholy and negative? What’s their age and how does that affect their speech pattern?

Make each character have a distinct voice, a unique way of speaking, perhaps in the pattern and rhythm, their vocabulary, their tone, their unique idiosyncrasies.

Make your dialogue VARIED by giving each character a distinct voice and speech pattern

SHORT

Avoid long speeches, monologues disguised as dialogue.

Go for short, snappy exchanges that keep the story moving forward. You want the reader to see visually on the page that there is a quick back and forth going on with lots of white space on the page.

Readers love dialogue in part because it feels fast, fewer words on a page, so they’re turning the pages quickly. If you instead have your dialogue consist of long paragraphs with the characters throwing mini-monologues at each other, that will ruin this effect for the reader.

Yes, it’s fine to have the occasional longer block of speech, especially where one character is telling a story to another. But that should be the exception.

Keep it SHORT with snappy exchanges and lots of white space on the page.

UNSAID

Let your characters leave things unsaid, implying rather than stating outright.

In real life, people don’t info-dump, especially not about feelings and deeper core issues, and especially-especially not about things that the other characters already know about.

You as the writer will know things that you’ll be tempted to have a character say. Don’t.

Instead, hold back. Let the subtext work subconsciously and trust that the reader will get the sense of what is unsaid, and will understand. Trust the reader.

This is Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory that you can leave the bulk unsaid, and the reader will not only get it, but it will make a stronger emotional impact because it’s not dragged out into the open, but left for the reader to discover (or wonder about).

Leave things UNSAID and trust the reader to pick up on the subtext.

ACTION

Use body language and other character action interspersed with dialogue to make the dialogue come alive.

Let your characters speaks while at the same time moving around the space, pick up things, give hugs and backslaps, point a finger, lean forward in a chair, take a sip of coffee, shrug, shake their head, all the little gestures and twitches as well as the big actions.

An added benefit is that actions can go instead of “tags” (he said, she said) to let the reader know who’s talking. More about this in the section on “The Mechanics of Dialogue” below.

ACTION makes dialogue come alive.

PERFORM

The real test of dialogue comes when you say it out loud. Does it ring true? Does if feel natural on the tongue? Does it have rhythm? Does it sing?

Better yet, act it out, PERFORM the dialogue, as in a play, adding in the action around the dialogue, playing all the parts yourself, to “performance test” it.

If you’re using dictation/transcription (my favorite app is Otter.ai,) you can say your dialogue out loud, acting it out, speaking the “Ugly First Draft”.

PERFORM your dialogue to make sure it sings.

3 DON’Ts OF DIALOGUE

Now for the 3 DON’Ts of dialogue.

THE KNOWN

Don’t say the known.

You can think of this as a flavor of leaving things unsaid, but specifically don’t have the characters tell each other what they already know. And don’t tell the reader what the reader already knows.

If the reader already knows, but another character in the scene doesn’t, so that it needs to be said, there are two ways to approach this (plus a hybrid):

• Summary - Instead of having the character dialogue back and forth about something the reader already knows (which is boring to the reader, so they will likely skim and skip the dialogue), just summarize it, as in: I told her about …

• Emotional Reaction - go ahead, say “the known”, but in such a way that what the dialogue is really about is the emotional reaction of the other character, along with the conflict and tension and other complications that come from the revelation of the information. Focus the dialogue on the reaction and cut the (already known) information to the bone. Often the other character may “get it” with just a hint, and then the rest of the dialogue is about what happens in the aftermath of sharing.

• Hybrid: Emotional Reaction + Summary - tee up the emotional reaction with a short, barely-hinted-at statement and get right into the emotional reaction, then add a summary (which may not even be a summary at all since the reader already knows, (When I told her the rest of it …) and then more emotional reaction. This will make “the known” slip in, practically unnoticed, into the dialogue.

In the more common example where the reader doesn’t know, but both characters do, you must NOT have the characters directly state what they know, because that’s not how it would come out in a real conversation.

One option is to add another character who stands in for the reader, who doesn’t know and has to be told.

Another option is to have the characters hint about this shared knowledge and then add in an aside narrative summary for the benefit of the reader.

Finally, and most sophisticated, let the characters hint, but leave almost all of it unsaid, so that it is subtext, which also opens a loop for the reader — something is going on, you don’t quite know what, so as the reader, you’re curious. In a later scene it can be fully revealed, or another hint dropped, so that bit by bit the reader clues in.

Don’t say THE KNOWN straight out, instead hint, summarize, and focus on the emotional reactions.

THE END

It’s hard to know where to end a dialogue. Most often, we will write “past the end”, meaning that there was a point in the dialogue where cutting it off would leave the reader with a more meaningful and memorable impression. The trick is to spot “the true end” of the dialogue.

As with the example above in writing natural dialogue, this is best done in a two-step process:

• Step 1 - write the dialogue without worrying about the “true end.”

• Step 2 - as you review your dialogue, ask yourself where you should cut if off (it’s most likely going to be somewhere before the last sentence you wrote). Find the “button” that perfectly ends the dialogue. Cut everything after that point (even if you love the words you wrote).

Don’t go past THE END — find “the button”, the “true end”, and cut everything after.

OVERTHINK

Don’t overthink your dialogue.

This goes back to the problem of trying too hard. Keep the focus on plot, characters, and scene. Has the dialogue moved the plot forward, revealed characters, and served the purposes of the scene? Does it sound like real people talking? Great, you’re done!

And as you’re writing the “Ugly First Draft”, just “let it rip” and get into the natural flow. The best dialogue is improv.

Don’t OVERTHINK it, just go for it, let it rip, and “improv” your dialogue.

The 4 Mechanics of Dialogue

The “mechanics” of dialogue are the things that surround the actual spoken words. Here are the 4 main areas of dialogue mechanics, using the acronym mnemonic TAPS — Tags, Action, Punctuation, and Scene & Sequel.

TAGS

Tags are the small words that are used to quickly identify (i.e. “tag”) the speaker, so the reader doesn’t get confused and lost in the dialogue. In a play this is easy, because it’s actually the name of the speaker directly before the spoken line. In prose fiction, you need to find natural ways of identifying the speaker. Here are the best practices for Tags.

• Primarily, use ‘said’ (he said, she said, John said) … or ‘says’ if writing in present tense.

• Sometimes use other simple words (answered, asked, stated).

• Never (or veeery rarely) use ‘vigorous’ dialogue tags (‘roared’, ‘spat’, etc.) — these are sometimes referred to as "fancy" or "creative" tags.

• Never (or extreeeemely rarely) use adverbs - ‘he roared angrily’. Adverbs are a form of “telling”, a clichéd and lazy way of avoiding the harder work of “showing” the way a character speaks, thinks, feels, and acts. Instead of using the adverb ‘angrily’, let the anger come across in the words and in the body language.

ACTION

Instead of a “tag”, such as ‘said’, describe what the character does. You can either do this right before or right after the spoken line, or start the spoken line, then intersperse an action, then continue the line.

This is not an either-or. You should change it up, using tags, action, and no-tags. I’ve never seen a rule or direction on this, but here’s my suggestion:

• Said - 40% of the time (a little less than half)
• No Tag - 30% of the time (3 times for every 10 lines)
• Action - 20% of the time (2 times for every 10 lines)
• Another Simple Tag - 9-10% (1 time for every 10 lines)
• Vigorous Tags and Adverbs - 0-1% (either never or max 1 time every 100 lines)

SAID

this is the simplest and cleanest way of showing who speaks. Nothing fancy, just:

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Chief Brody said.

Use the ‘said’ tag about half the time (a little bit less, so let’s say 40% of the time.)

If you use it all the time, it gets irritating to the reader’s eye. But if you use it around half the time with other options as described below, you’ll find that the little word ‘said’ disappears into the background and the reader just pictures the speaker.

NO TAG

Once you get into the rhythm of the back and forth, and you intersperse enough ‘said’ tags, so that your readers are not confused about who is speaking, you can and should skip the tags and just have the dialogue without any attribution.

That is if you only have two people speaking. With only two people speaking, and once you have the ‘said’ in the prior line, then you know that the other person is the one responding, so you can skip the ‘said’ tag for that line, and maybe for the next one.

Do this about 30% of the time and your reader will be able to follow, plus it makes the dialogue zoom along like a high-speed bullet-train, or the rat-at-at of a machine gun.

30% means that roughly every third line, or three lines out of ten on the page should be with no tag. Sometimes it can be more, sometimes less.

Again, the exception is when you have three people speaking (trialogue?) or four (quadralogue?) or more. Then, for just about every line you need a tag or an action to identify the speaker.

ACTION

Now we get to the action interjections, where we don’t have a tag (or no-tag), but instead the character does something in-between the spoken words.

This action can be body language, picking up something or setting it down, sitting down or standing up, pacing back and forth, etc.

Do this around 20% of the time, meaning that every fifth line or twice in ten lines, have one of the characters do an action that identifies them as the speaker instead of a tag (or no-tag).

For extra credit, work in actions that provide subtext to the spoken words. Let the actions illustrate the unsaid. Let the actions take the place of adverbs — instead of ‘angrily’ show through body language that the speaker is angry.

ANOTHER SIMPLE TAG

The tag ‘said’ is not the only one that feels natural. Sometimes, for example, when there is a question and an answer, it’s fine to use ‘asked’ and ‘answered’.

You can use other words such as ‘stated’ (gives the sense that the the line spoken is a more formal or perhaps commanding, definitive statement), but any time you stray from the clean, simple ‘said’, ‘asked’, and ‘answered’, you’re entering dangerous territory, walking into a Grimpen Mire bog full of quicksand. Watch your steps (and your tags)!

VIGOROUS TAGS AND ADVERBS

A ‘vigorous’ tag (sometimes called a ‘creative’ or 'fancy' tag) is one where the writer tries to be clever with the tags. It almost never works. It’s almost never as clever as the writer thinks.

Sometimes the word chosen is actually an action, and it would be much better to make it an action.

For example: “I don't' know,” she sighed.

The sighing is actually an action, so just put a period after “know” and write it this way: “I don’t know.” She sighed.

I’m sure she didn’t speak those words as one long sigh, right?

Same thing with laughed: I’m sure you don’t actually laugh a sentence, no, you speak the sentence and then you laugh.

Trying to help the humble ‘said’ tag by adding an adverb is, as we said before, a clichéd and lazy way to avoid the work of showing what the character is thinking, feeling, or doing. Do the work!

So, how often should we used ‘vigorous’ (i.e. ‘creative’, 'fancy') tags and adverbs?

How about never?

A little too extreme for you?

Yes, we agree. But somewhere between 0–1%, at most. Maybe allow yourself just one every ten pages or so, if you absolutely must.

PUNCTUATION

Here are some rules on punctuation in dialogue:

• Each line gets its own line (i.e. paragraph), even if it’s very short.

• Quotation marks go around the spoken words.

• Quotes start with a capital letter, even after a comma. Ex. He said, "What do you want?"  

• Comma (inside the quotation mark) before the tag. Ex: “I don’t know,” she said.

• Question mark or exclamation mark - you still don’t capitalize the tag. Ex: “What’s there to know?” he said.

• Interjected tag in a continuous sentence - use commas before and after (and also note that since it's a continuous sentence with the tag interjected as an aside, the second quote is NOT capitalized). Ex: “That,” she said, “is a philosophical question.”

• Action - most of the time, the action taken around the dialogue should be on it’s own paragraph, separated from the speech. But, sometimes (and especially if you want to use the action as a tag) you can insert a (short) full sentence between the parts of the dialogue. Ex: “I didn’t mean it that way.” John smiled, shrugged. “Maybe we should just try.”

• Em Dash vs Ellipsis - The em dash (a long dash like this: — ) is used when there’s an aside — like this — and it’s also used to show that the sentence is cut short, like —. By contrast, the ellipsis (three dots, like this: …) is used to show that there is a … pause or that the sentence trails off, like …

For even more rules and examples, check out Beth Hill's "Punctation in Dialogue", a 25-page guide which is an excellent reference.

SCENE & SEQUEL

By Scene & Sequel we mean dialogue that is followed by thoughts, the interior reflection of one (or more) of the speakers.

The spoken word is the “scene”, the thoughts are the “sequel”.

This originally referred to a full scene of dialogue and action, followed by the “sequel” of reflecting on the prior scene, and transition to the next scene. Sort of a breather between scenes, where the reader gets to be inside the head of the narrator.

Using “Scene & Sequel” in the middle of a dialogue doesn’t mean that you’re shifting to a different scene. It’s a mini-breather of reflection interspersed with the spoken words.

Similar to action, this can be used instead of a tag to identify the speaker, but the real reason for the “Scene & Sequel” is to enrich the dialogue with the narrator’s thoughts. It’s also a good way to get across information that needs to be left unsaid in the spoken words, but that you want to make sure the reader is in on.

How often to use “Scene & Sequel”? It depends on the mood and rhythm of the story. If it’s a very interior story, where the reader is just as interested in the narrator’s inner world as the words and actions of the outside world, then … a lot. In most cases, it’s best to use it sparingly. Let’s say once or twice every three pages.

Resources

Here are some examples of great dialogue along with other resources that will be helpful as you write your stories.

PUNCTUATION IN DIALOGUE

• Beth Hill's "Punctation in Dialogue" - a 25-page guide which is an excellent reference 

EXAMPLES OF GREAT DIALOGUE

• 15 Examples of Great Dialogue (And Why They Work So Well)
  
  
• 50 Examples of Dialogue to Inspire Writers
  
  
• Goodreads: Best Dialogue Books
  
  
• The Top 10 Best Dialogue Movies
  
  
• The 20 Best Dialogue Scenes in Cinema History
  
  
• IMDB: Best Dialogue Movies
  
  

MY FAVORITE ALL-PURPOSE RESOURCE

The Writer's Treasure Chest - everything in one place, curated, organized, this is a great reference for all things writing craft, with tons of prompts, plot/character generators and other tools to inspire you to write a great story with great dialogue.

RELATED ARTICLES

Dialogue is the interplay between PLOT and CHARACTER within the SCENE, here are some articles that will be helpful as you work on all the aspects of the writing craft and your writing process: 

• Write Fiction Faster! — How to Speed Up Your Story Writing 
  
  
• Need a Great Idea for Your Next Story? Try the Story IDEA Formula
  
  
• From Idea to Story: 3 Methods to Develop Your Story Idea 
  
  
• How to Write Characters Who Stick in the Reader's Mind 
  
  
• What Makes a Good Story? — Great Scenes! Here's How to Write Them
  
  
• Flash Fiction: How To Use It To Supercharge Your Writing 
  
  
• Blast Through Writer's Block: How to Get Unstuck 
  
  
• Find Your Stagecoach — How to Master the Art of Writing Fiction

FREE COURSE, GUIDE AND WORKBOOK

Do you want to write fiction faster, while practicing your craft and your writing process to consistently get better? Check out this link to the "Write Fiction Faster ... and better" guide and workbook, which comes with a companion course with 23 bite-sized video lessons and 4 worksheets.