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Explore how dialogue can reveal a character's feelings, emotions, personality, and reactions in a narrative. Learn how to craft dialogue that shows instead of tells, and how to use dialogue to advance the story. Includes tips for realistic dialogue and subtext.
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Dialogue is a writing tool to reveal a character’s feelings/emotions/ personality/reactions, without having to TELL your readers. • In other words, dialogue SHOWS (reveals) your characters.
Dialogue is great for advancing your story by having one character inform another. • Dialogue reveals, admits, incites, accuses, lies, etc.
Dialogue can show how someone speaks: • their accent, vocabulary, use of language: slang (idiom, inflection). • Note: don’t overdo the accent: “Eeez too smull wiz air lack ludz uv blok sneks.” Trawling through lengthy dialogue like this is too difficult for readers. Just a hint is good enough: “Eeez too small wiz hair like lots of black znakes.”
Dialogue is about SHOWING, not TELLING. • Actions speak louder than words, but dialogue can be a type of action, a revelation of thought.
How realistic should your dialogue be? • Note: fictional dialogue is only an approximation of true speech, written speech is shaped, pointed and concentrated by the author. Readers will be bored with lots of ums and ers, and repetition, and heavy accents they can’t decipher.
You can use dialogue to get across what is NOT said (the subtext). It’s a bit like being dumped – do they ever say what they really mean?
Tips: tagging speech with ‘he saids’ and ‘she saids’ can be a little tedious – sometimes you can leave them out when they are obvious. Yet this is the rule today, we write ‘he said’ and ‘she said’. • Avoid using adverbs… she says suggestively! One or two here and there are fine, but these days established writers/critics frown on them.
Dialogue needs to simulate ‘real talk’ but must artfully waste no words. It is there to reveal character, provide tension, and move the story forward. Therefore, craft it. Make it tight.
Activity • Add dialogue between Maria and Spanner as it would appear in a narrative, include non dialogue.
The Life of the Party (Ref: Writing Great Short Stories, p.51-53) The party was full of noisy, unpleasant people, and Spanner was eager to get out of there until he saw Maria come in with James. Very nice, he thought as he watched her stroll across the room. Maria noticed him. She abandoned James at the bar, leaving him feeling sullen and resentful as he ordered his first gin and tonic of the evening. She walked up to Spanner and smiled, trying hard to charm him. (ADD DIALOGUE HERE) Alison watched them with dismay. She’d been optimistic as the start of the evening, but now, seeing the sparks fly between Spanner and Maria, her hopes were dashed. Gary was alarmed by the encounter too. “Uh-oh, there’s going to be trouble,” he muttered as he dug his pen and his palm-sized notebook out of his pocket. Spanner and Maria, enjoying each other’s company, were oblivious to the hateful looks Alison was giving them. James noticed, though. He sidled over to Gary. “Wanna make a deal?” he asked.
Now take out all your speech tags (said Maria/said Spanner). Do your characters reveal themselves through their dialogue alone? If not, adjust it. Can you remove the speech tags from the original and still know who the speaker is? Why?
The Life of the Party (Ref: Writing Great Short Stories, p.51-53) The party was full of noisy, unpleasant people, and Spanner was eager to get out of there until he saw Maria come in with James. Very nice, he thought as he watched her stroll across the room. Maria noticed him. She abandoned James at the bar, leaving him feeling sullen and resentful as he ordered his first gin and tonic of the evening. She walked up to Spanner and smiled, trying hard to charm him. Alison watched them with dismay. She’d been optimistic as the start of the evening, but now, seeing the sparks fly between Spanner and Maria, her hopes were dashed. Gary was alarmed by the encounter too. “Uh-oh, there’s going to be trouble,” he muttered as he dug his pen and his palm- sized notebook out of his pocket. Spanner and Maria, enjoying each other’s company, were oblivious to the hateful looks Alison was giving them. James noticed, though. He sidled over to Gary. “Wanna make a deal?” he asked.
The Life of the Party (Ref: Writing Great Short Stories, p.51-53) The party was full of noisy, unpleasant people, and Spanner was eager to get out of there until he saw Maria come in with James. Very nice, he thought as he watched her stroll across the room. Maria noticed him. She abandoned James at the bar, leaving him feeling sullen and resentful as he ordered his first gin and tonic of the evening. She walked up to Spanner and smiled, trying hard to charm him. Alison watched them with dismay. She’d been optimistic as the start of the evening, but now, seeing the sparks fly between Spanner and Maria, her hopes were dashed. Gary was alarmed by the encounter too. “Uh-oh, there’s going to be trouble,” he muttered as he dug his pen and his palm-sized notebook out of his pocket. Spanner and Maria, enjoying each other’s company, were oblivious to the hateful looks Alison was giving them. James noticed, though. He sidled over to Gary. “Wanna make a deal?” he asked.
See dialogue handoutandDialogue from Things to Do in Denver When You’re Deadwhich will show you how ‘dialogue only’ can reveal character.
