How to Write Engaging Dialogue
Wondering how to create electrifying dialogue that catches your reader’s attention or conveys emotion in a scene? Let’s talk about it.
In this post:
Differences in speech
Saying less
Realistic-adjacent
What else is happening?
Dialogue tags
Differences in character speech
We’ve talked before about using variation as a tool to write engaging sentences, and last week we looked at how characters can and should be unique. We can use both of those principles when writing out dialogue.
One of the first things to account for in character dialogue is voice. Each of your characters should have their own distinct voice. This could be describing the character’s voice when they talk (e.g., “His voice dripped with honey”), or, as is often preferable in these situations, you could show your readers. There is a place for describing the timbre of a character’s voice, but much like the physical description of a character, your readers won’t necessarily be conjuring the image or sound up as they read. They’ll need the odd reminder, and showing is especially helpful in these cases.
The number of syllables and the kinds of consonants and vowels people favour affects how they come across. If we wanted to show that a character’s voice is smooth, we could deliberately choose softer sounding words for their speech (maybe lots of s- or l-words). A character might speak in clipped tones if they are reserved or brash, so think fewer syllables and maybe even shorter sentences. A long-winded person might render their thoughts in multisyllabic words and meandering sentences.
Other elements of a character’s background might come up in their speech pattern. Class status, region of origin, occupation and close relationships can all affect how a person speaks. Characters might even change their dialect or language in different contexts. This is a linguistic and cultural phenomenon called code-switching which exists in real life.
You’ll want to avoid spelling out phonetic accents, but naming the character’s accent is fine, as is taking into account a person’s background when it comes to word choices. In general, my advice is to not worry too much about this beyond the initial description.
Saying less
Sometimes what we don’t say is the most meaningful. When we talk, a lot of what we say is actually nonverbal. We gesture, make facial expressions, our eyes dart back and forth. In fiction, you can describe these micro-actions (be careful—too much can come across as amateurish), but for the most part, your readers should be able to imagine a character’s expression are based on their word choices.
Here’s where it gets interesting: characters don’t have to say everything they’re thinking. In fact, knowing that a character is holding back is a great way to show dramatic irony.
Sometimes characters don’t feel like they can or should share everything. Maybe they don’t trust each other, or maybe someone has threatened them into staying quiet. Having your characters hold things back creates tension in a scene. So long as not everyone is trying to be coy at all times (which can seem forced), it’s a great way to up the stakes.
As an author, you get to decide this in another aspect: what you show your audience. Sometimes a dialogue between two characters just isn’t interesting enough to warrant space on the page. Evaluate what gets your reader’s focus and why, then excise the rest. Only the very best bits of dialogue should be left.
Realistic-adjacent
While observing how people talk to one another in real life can help expand your repertoire, real-life conversations are not what authors strive to emulate, and for good reason. Even the most eloquent people speak in incomplete or grammatically questionable sentences. We all pause, use filler words and let our thoughts drop off in the middle. Real-life speech has the added dimension of physical communication, which often fills the gaps that would read awkwardly in writing.
Consider how often people (including myself) start to explain something, hit a wall, then say, “You get the idea.” This is such a ubiquitous part of everyday speech, you might not even realize how often it happens. In dialogue, never assume your audience just gets the idea. Even if you’re holding some cards close to the chest, your characters should generally speak in complete sentences.
Of course, dialogue can include pauses and interruptions—otherwise, we wouldn’t get to see our precious em dash nearly as much as we’d like—but there ought to be a good reason for doing so. Assess carefully whether a pause, interruption or stutter adds something to the flow, or better yet the narrative, of the scene. And as for filler words—they have their uses. Maybe you want to show a character being nonchalant or nervous, among other emotions.
What else is happening?
One of the big threats to compelling dialogue is when two characters are talking in a blank room and nothing else is going on. Sometimes this happens when writers feel that their dialogue is better than their description (something I personally felt for many years). But what’s really cool about scenes between characters is that they give you the opportunity to marry these elements together in interesting ways.
Sometimes we focus so much on what the characters are saying to each other that we forget to tell our readers where they are. Setting informs readers a lot about the mood of a scene, so remember to tell us what we’re seeing beyond the characters.
For those of us who see the word “description” and think “one big paragraph to set the scene,” allay your fears. Some of the most dynamic descriptions are the little snippets found amongst dialogue. And don’t forget that description not only means describing the world around the character (or having them think about or reflect on it), but also action. These actions can range from the micro-actions and expressions I referred to earlier as well as bigger interactions with the world surrounding the character. This is how we bring the physical dimension into communication.
Take a look at the differences in these two examples:
Example A:
“I don’t think we need to go to such extreme lengths,” said Mohamed.
“I think these lengths are perfectly reasonable,” said Abigail.
Example B:
“I don’t think we need to go to such extreme lengths,” said Mohamed, crossing his arms.
Abigail ran her fingertips across the countertop and inspected the dust that came away from it. “I think these lengths are perfectly reasonable,” she said.
Even in such a small moment, the added descriptions do three things. They:
slow down the pace of the dialogue,
tell us a little something about the setting without going into much detail,
hint more at what the characters are thinking and at the dynamic between them.
All that said, it’s not impossible to entrance your readers with the characters alone. Leaving the space purposefully blank might be useful when the dialogue needs to be the focal point. Consider the famous interrogation scene in Basic Instinct; the room is minimal, so what the characters are saying and doing takes the focus.
If you’re not sure how to start incorporating action into dialogue, try making it a bigger theme and focus of the scene. Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts exchanging witty banter during their fight elevates the dialogue and the action at the same time. (That said, their heart-to-heart moment before the big fight is a great example of when to keep the action minimal.)
Dialogue tags
Dialogue tags can be a tricky thing. Some people love them, some people despise them. I personally try to find a balance that makes sense for both readers and the overall flow of the dialogue.
Dialogue tags are an aid to what your characters are saying, not the focal point. To that end there are a few things to remember when choosing them.
First and foremost, make sure you’re using a tag and not some action unrelated to speech. People can whine, they can shout their words and they can certainly say them, but perhaps think once or twice before writing that someone “laughed” their words. “Laughed” just doesn’t really work. Characters might say something, then laugh, but rarely do we gasp out words between every hee and ha.
A more egregious example of what I mean (and a personal pet peeve of mine, if you can’t tell) can be found in this sentence:
“I beg your pardon,” Jane frowned.
Do the words appear in writing across Jane’s forehead? Surely not, no matter how upset she is. If they are, I recommend attributing it to some funky kind of magic rather than letting your readers wonder if you made a mistake.
“What about ‘said’?” you may ask. “Said” is terribly underrated, in my opinion. It’s not fancy, but it sure is effective. It just has to be used the right way. When we think of the point of dialogue tags, it really is just to orient your reader in the conversation, to tell them who is speaking in what order. Most of the heavy-lifting should be done by what they’re saying (or doing in between).
Dialogue tags, including “said,” need not appear alongside every piece of dialogue. It’s when they do that gives them such a bad reputation. It’s not that any singular tag lacks value, but that dialogue tags themselves become pointless or tiresome if overused. Our eyes tend to glide past them over time.
Again, I come back to finding balance. Choose dialogue tags that serve a purpose. These are the tags that orient readers, or maybe it’s when a particular tag will quickly convey an emotion. Think something like “shouted,” though I would still argue that showing a character smash something on the floor prior to speaking implies the tone of their voice.
Try an experiment: see how few dialogue tags you really need in a scene. And don’t forget that describing a character’s actions in conjunction with dialogue can also orient readers. You may find that removing most (or in some cases, even all) of them lets the dialogue fall into a more engaging rhythm and allows for your characters’ words to speak for themselves.
Mary Kehoe provides structural, stylistic and copy editing services for a variety of written works through her agency, Elixir Editorial. From time to time she dabbles in her own writing projects which tend toward the speculative genre.
She is a member of both Editors Canada and the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), as well as a founding member and former chair of the Toronto Arts & Letters Club writing group. A longtime lover of the English language, Mary is passionate about supporting writers on the journey to inspire the world.
