Dee Ann Waite

"Jack, it's been ages! How have you been?“

"Just great. How about you?“

"I can't complain. How are the wife and kids?“

"Good. Yours?“

"The same. How are you liking that new job?“

"Lots of new challenges. I miss the old place, though.“

"And we miss you, believe me."

All right, enough. But you get it, right? Jack and the other guy used to work together and they haven't seen each other in a while, so now they're catching up.

Do you see what's wrong with this? It reads like it was transcribed verbatim from a real-life exchange. It won't work in a novel because novels aren't about real-life conversations. The dialogue needs to move the story forward.

"What have you heard about the investigation?"

"All I can tell you, Jack, is that the SEC asked me a few questions. But we expected that, didn't we?"

"You didn't tell them about--"

"Of course I didn't tell them. I'm not a fool, Jack!"

See the difference? Hurry past the inconsequential stuff and get straight to the juicy parts. That'll keep your readers reading.

Realistic dialogue is one of the most powerful tools at a writer's disposal, but you must remember, nothing pulls the reader out of a story faster than bad dialogue.

Having a sense of natural speech patterns is essential to good dialogue. Start to pay attention to the expressions that people use in everyday conversation. It should eliminate the routine exchanges of ordinary communication.

Dialogue is not exactly like real speech, but it should read like real speech. Confusing? How do you accomplish that? Alfred Hitchcock said that a good story was "life, with the dull parts taken out." This very much applies to dialogue. Edit out the filler words and unessential dialogue -- that is, the dialogue that doesn't contribute to the plot in some way.

1.

2.It shouldn't be obvious to the reader that they're being fed

important facts. Let the story unfold naturally. You don't have to

tell the reader everything up front. Don't be afraid to trust your

reader to remember details from earlier in the story.

3.Remind your reader that your characters are physical

human beings by grounding their dialogue in the physical

world. What I mean by this is to be sure to add in physical

details to help break up the words on the page. Long

periods of dialogue are easier for the reader's eye when

broken up by description. Help the reader visualize the

characters, as well as hear them.

4.Veering too much beyond "he said/she said" only draws attention to the

tags — and you want the reader's attention centered on your dialogue,

not your ability to think of synonyms for "said." This is a huge downfall

for many-a-writer. I know, we want the reader to understand the

importance of the dialogue, or the intensity, or the vagueness, etc., and

we feel that adding something like: "she said bashfully" will help.

WRONG! The reader’s eyes should brush over them quickly, helping to

keep them in the story, which is exactly where you want them. The tags

are simply there to keep the reader abreast of who is speaking, nothing

more.

5.Be aware of falling back on stereotypes, and use profanity and slang

sparingly. All of these risk distracting or alienating your reader.

Anything that takes the reader out of the fictional world you're

working so hard to create is not your friend.

Dialogue can be a lot of fun to write, though it can be tough to do well. It’s a good idea to go

back and edit your dialogue carefully after writing the first draft.

That concludes our presentation. I hope you found this to be helpful. Please visit my blog at

http://DeeAnnWaite.blogspot.com for more helpful writing information and tips on this

trade.

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