Most writers have to get reasonably comfortable with it, but how many write honestly great dialogue? The question of how to polish speech in your writing is one that plagues a lot of writers, but stress no longer! I’ve got some handy, straightforward tips for you to get you loving your characters’ conversations in no time.

Realism isn’t always the goal

Real speech is clumsy. It’s full of filler words, redundancies, and people losing their trains of thought. Because of all that, writing perfectly realistic conversation shouldn’t be your aim.

There are certain elements of character conversation in which you may want to shoot for realism. For example, when it comes to dialogue tags, you want to consider whether a character would actually be able to speak in the way you’ve tagged the line! I’ve talked more about dialogue tags in this post. My main point here is that, if you suggest that a character ‘laughed’ a certain line, you might want to consider how viable that is as a dialogue tag.

I’ve also written a post on punctuating dialogue, in case that’s something you’re looking to improve!

Great dialogue serves a purpose

There are a few different purposes that dialogue can serve within a story. It can be used for character development, it can move the plot forward, or it can be an opportunity to provide necessary information or exposition for readers.

Of course, ideally, you want speech in your writing to serve more than one of these purposes! If you need one character to explain something to another, so that the reader will understand important context for your story, see if you can also use the conversation to illustrate something important about the characters speaking.

Great dialogue can convey a lot about a character’s priorities and personality, even when that isn’t its primary purpose.

Don’t forget about body language and subtext

What happens around the dialogue can be as important as the dialogue itself. Firstly, body language and facial expressions can communicate a lot alongside what a character is actually saying.

Secondly, don’t forget about the importance of subtext! A lot of the time people don’t say exactly what they mean, deliberately or otherwise. Sometimes people are hiding their true intentions, other times they may have subconscious goals or desires that they haven’t fully realised themselves. In either case, hinting towards that subtext can make your characters’ speech more nuanced and interesting.

What are your favourite tips for great dialogue?

Do you have any writers who you think are particularly good at writing dialogue? Share any recommendations in the comments!