How to Tighten Up Dialogue in Your Novel

Working to tighten up dialogue can feel challenging. When we’re writing dialogue, we typically want our characters to sound real. But real dialogue is a mess! It’s full of fillers, back-tracking and accidental contradictions. It’s meandering and messy, and can take a long time to get to the point. In a novel, you can’t have dialogue behaving like this. Yes, you want the characters to sound real, but you also need to make sure your dialogue is serving a purpose and keeping readers engaged.

How do you tighten up dialogue without having all of your characters sound like robots? That’s what we’re going to look at today.

Before you start looking to tighten up dialogue, consider its purpose

I’ve talked before about the importance of dialogue serving a purpose. Ideally more than one! Before you start cutting away at the dialogue you’ve written, consider what purpose that conversation is serving within your story. For example, it could be:

• Demonstrating character development
• Revealing necessary information to the characters/reader
• Progressing the plot towards the next action point

Start to tighten up dialogue with these three tips

1. Cut any excess words

Real speech is often packed with “um”, “uh”, “like” and so on. When it comes to your writing though, you should leave these out. Similarly, real conversations often start with greetings and small talk; cut this too. Your characters shouldn’t talk about the weather unless that’s going to provide key information to your readers. They shouldn’t hesitate in their speech unless you’re trying to tell us something with that hesitation.

For an example of when it’s valid to use an “uh”, take this conversation in The Poppy War between protagonist Rin and her teacher, Tutor Feyrik:

“Reading books is one thing,” Tutor Feyrik said. “Preparing for the Keju is a different endeavour entirely. My Keju students spend their whole lives studying for it; nine hours a day, seven days a week. You spend more time than that working in the shop.”
“I can study at the shop,” she protested.
“Don’t you have actual responsibilities?”
“I’m good at, uh, multitasking.”
He eyed her skeptically for a moment, then shook his head. “You’d only have two years. It can’t be done.”

– The Poppy War, R. F. Kuang

Rin is being persistent in this scene. As far as she’s concerned, getting her teacher on board with her plan to take the Keju is the only way to avoid a fate she’s terrified of. For the most part, her retorts are coming back quickly to each of Feyrik’s objections. She’s thought this through. But the use of that “uh” shows us that she’s not 100% confident. She’s desperate, and she’s determined, but she’s scrambling and it shows.

Excess words to cut can include dialogue tags. Notice how, in the above example, not every line from a character has a dialogue tag. That helps to make the conversation feel like it’s flowing smoothly, it creates a sense of pace to the dialogue. And when that pace is interrupted, first by Rin’s “uh” and then by the pause when Feyrik gives her a skeptical look, it makes more of an impact.

2. Cut any unnecessary repetition

How often do we repeat ourselves in actual conversation? It might be because we forget how much we’ve already explained about a situation, or because the person we’re talking to has forgotten key details. Sometimes we tell the same story to several people. In a book though, once something has been said once, you need a really good reason to say it again.

Trust your readers. Assume they’re paying attention, and avoid giving them the same information twice.

Cut any repetition that isn’t serving a specific, integral purpose. For example, in the book Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café, there is some dialogue that repeats across the short stories. The waitress repeats her explanation of the rules of the café’s time travel to each new customer looking to make use of the magic.

In this case, the repetition isn’t exact. The author uses it to illustrate the different attitudes that different customers have towards what they’re about to do. Some have pre-existing familiarity with the rules, and cut the waitress off before she can explain all of them. Some are more worried about certain specific aspects of the rules, and ask a lot of questions to make sure they fully understand.

There can be valid reasons to repeat dialogue. Stylistic justifications, or plot-based ones. But, if you’re looking to tighten up your dialogue, you can usually start by cutting anything said more than once.

3. Limit the use of dialogue for exposition and backstory

Some backstory and exposition can absolutely be delivered through conversation. What you want to avoid though is lengthy monologues designed just to deliver information. Or conversations between people who have supposedly known each other for years, where they’re clumsily re-hashing information that should be obvious to them, just so that you can fill the reader in.

Dialogue can do a great job of illustrating relationships, without needing the characters to re-explain their whole backstory for the readers’ benefit. Take this conversation between Darius and his dad in Darius the Great is Not Okay. Darius’ dad is collecting him from work, because his bike’s wheels and seat have been removed and replaced with truck nuts.

“What happened to the truck nuts?”
“I threw them away.”
I did not need the reminder.
Dad pressed the button to close the trunk and got back in. I tossed my backpack onto the backseat and then slumped in the passenger seat with the goldfish suspended in their plastic prison between my legs.
“I almost didn’t believe you.”
“I know.”
It had taken him thirty minutes to come get me.
We only lived a ten-minute drive away.
“Sorry about your bike. Does security know who did it?”
I buckled my seat belt. “No. But I’m sure it was Trent Bolger.”

– Darius the Great is Not Okay, Adib Khorram

They’re both speaking in short sentences, to indicate a lack of comfort with each other. You don’t need to spell that out for readers more obviously in the dialogue; the tension comes through nicely without it needing to be verbalised. Additionally, Darius could have made the point out loud to his dad that they only live ten minutes away, but the fact that it’s just an aside to the reader has a couple of implications. It further cements our understanding that there are a lot of things Darius doesn’t feel comfortable saying out loud to his father. It also helps to build up the sense of intimacy between Darius and the reader.

Constructing your dialogue thoughtfully when it comes to backstory and exposition can be a powerful force in your writing!

If the dialogue still doesn’t sound right, you can get rid of it altogether

Sometimes you can go beyond tightening up dialogue and just cut the whole lot! Yes, dialogue can be a nice way to show rather than tell. But there’s validity to deciding that the most efficient way to get some information across is through narration.

As for how you can tell when this might be the best choice; consider whether you can have the dialogue serve multiple purposes. Is there important relationship development between the characters talking that would be best conveyed through dialogue? Would a conversation help to set or change the tone of the scene in an important way? Do you want to use the conversation to demonstrate character growth or development?

If the answer to all of these sorts of questions is no, or yes – but you can also achieve the same thing more easily elsewhere? That indicates you can probably lose the dialogue.

How do you tighten up dialogue when you’re editing?

Great dialogue can be tricky, but it’s so much fun to read. And it can be a lot of fun to write, when you’re confident in how to do it! If you’ve got any tips or tricks for writing or editing dialogue, please share them in the comments below!

You might also like:

• Punctuating your dialogue like a pro
• Dialogue tags: A crash course
• What is character motivation, and why does it matter?