7 essential tips to make surprisingly strong Dialog

There are certain skills a writer is supposed to master. We tend to concentrate on narrative – long, flowery descriptions that form as a substitute for poetry to people who can’t stand poetry (like me!).

But the single most essential tool you have to master is dialog. It doesn’t matter if you describe the fog as creeping in on little cat’s feet, or if you describe the rosy fingered dawn playing contrasting hues of pink and orange across the chrome percolator, as it began to chuff like the wheezing of a groggy locomotive. When you follow it with this:

“Yo bob.” He announced. “How is your day?” Bob looked up, intent on trying to read his cell phone messages. “Good.”

…it’s time to pack it up.
Try this….

“Bob.” He announced. “Still mastering the art of influencing people and winning friends?” Bob looked up, intent on trying to read his cell phone messages. “You can see I’m trying to read my texts, right?”

Okay. What was wrong with example one?

Literally, according to many of the writing books, it was fine. It sounded somewhat like real human conversation. But it didn’t convey a sense of who the character was, and it didn’t move the story forward.

[Tweet “Good Dialog has to Move the Story Forward – Nicholas Reicher”]

I just told you a lot about he (whoever that is) and Bob. They’re a little adversarial, get along somewhat, but argue more. And Bob is essentially unapologetically self centered. So let’s look at the essential tips to strong dialog, and see how we can improve our writing.

1. It has to sound real. Now, this is in every last book you read on writing. Dull, and tells you nothing. I actually started out writing good dialog in the 1980’s. It was the rest of my writing that needed improvement. One thing I did to really improve my dialog was to actually learn to mimic the music patterns that people make when speaking. It sounds cliche, but spend two weeks listening to conversations without putting yourself into them. Listen to the choices of words people use. Hint – it’s going to freak out the Hemingway app, because most people use passive voice when they speak.
2. It has to convey something. Maybe I’ve spent too much time writing movie scripts, but if you were to view your daily writing as having only 1700 words to write and convey something, your dialog will tighten up remarkably. The sample discussion with Bob above conveyed an entire working relationship all at once. Backstory was completed.
3. It has conflict. If you’ve got a whimsical character who spends time in introspection in front of someone else, make their friend impatient or sarcastic. That way your exposition you’re trying so hard to work in doesn’t sound like “As you know, Bob”… If Sarah is musing about life in general, get Nicole to be abrasive and rude. That way the dialog now is interesting. You can get reader sympathy (this is a principle called “Save the Cat”) if Nicole starts in with her “You always say that!” and now Sarah is hurt and defensive. You’re trying to arouse sympathy for Sarah, not Nicole. And of course, there’s nothing like two men shouting at each other (”I WANT THE TRUTH!” ”YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”) to make for good dialog, or a man and a woman when you know the reveal of their emotions for one another is FINALLY about to happen.
4. It has timing. I think this is the secret to my dialog. I know the timing people use – and also the melody – when they’re speaking. Try this… imagine the punctuation in your sentences is where your characters breathe. Now READ OUT LOUD a long monologue you’ve written. Rule is you can only breathe when you see a comma, period, question mark or exclamation point. GO. Do this several times, and if you aren’t in the emergency room now, you’ll learn proper dialog pacing.
5. It has to move the story forward. I’ve got a lot of dialog in my books. Not all of it really moves the story forward. But each piece of it is a building block, a key to the puzzle that builds something that moves the scene forward, fills in background, sets the scene for a coming plot point, something like that. If there’s no reason for the talking, if they don’t have something to say, better to say nothing! I wrote a scene where two assassins are trying to kill one another, and they are talking to one another on cell phones while they attempt it. Here’s the key to the scene – you get an entire history of friendship between the two without me directly saying “As you know, Bob, we’ve been friends for 12 years…”. You see the friendship, you see the rivalry, and you see the dedication they both have, and the ambition. And you see glimpses of their lives as they manuever. I could post the sccene online and you’d know everything about the two of them! And if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know already that one of them is Lynch.
6. It often has subtext. How can you drastically reduce your word count? Seriously, it takes a lot of words to describe a ruined warehouse. And now you’ve got two men clandestinely meeting. You don’t have many words left for the dialog! So, try to find ways to say ONE thing while you’re saying SOMETHING else. That way, you’re cutting out half the dialog. “Do you think this will work?” Dialog is better wrapped in a container that says something else.
7. Subtext adds tension. If you master the art of writing subtext – which is really difficult to do! – the longer you can have two people speaking in subtext about something , the more the tension rises. Rising tension equals book contract, equals literary agent, equals that dream house you’ve always wanted in Woonsocket Rhode Island (don’t laugh – ever been there? Houses there have atmosphere, and inspire writing).

Conclusion

Okay, today’s post was a little long. But this is a really key element to good fiction writing. And if you’re a reader, not a writer, then you now can spot when you’re reading something – and believe it or not, it enhances the ability to enjoy a good book!