Ask Sally # 19 Writing Dialogue

Have you any tips for making dialogue sound more natural?

I'm not exactly the best person to ask about this. The other week I was editing a story and realised that every one of my characters started their dialogue with 'Oh' as in 'Oh, alright then' or 'Oh, I didn't realise that' or 'Oh, thanks'. I suddenly imagined them all with permanent looks of surprise on their faces, and I'm sure my readers, had all those 'ohs' got through the final cut would have thought the same. I began to think about how many times I use the word 'oh' in my life - when I'm actually speaking out loud, I mean - and could only come up with my occasional and very affected 'Oh my God!'

A lot of writers hate writing dialogue and with good reason. It's very hard to get right without sounding stilted. But, ohs notwithstanding, here are some tips for writing good dialogue.

Writing good dialogue is very important as it's a good way of showing what your character is thinking. I'll do something about show and tell at a later date, but in the Open University literature courses, 'tell' is everything that the narrator says and 'show' is everything that the characters say. If you say any different, you'll lose points in your exams. So great dialogue can bring your characters alive.

1. Listen to people talking. Go on, we all love to eavesdrop, and if you get caught, you have the perfect excuse. You're a writer. Listen to how people speak to each other. They um and ahh a lot. They seldom finish sentences. They interrupt each other. Obviously it's not going to work if you put all those ums and ahhs into your dialogue in your stories or novels, but you can put one or two in order to ape natural speech patterns. Also take note of how people speak in different situations. My children always tease me about my telephone voice, calling it my 'Law Centre' voice as it's the voice I used to use when dealing with clients at Chesterfield Law Centre. When I'm with the immediate family I speak (nowadays) in a Derbyshire accent with Derbyshire dialect. When I speak to my aunty in Wales for a little while, my Welsh accent creeps back. That would probably be nigh on impossible to recreate in a story, but it gives an idea of the different speech patterns we use at work, at home and in various situations. An example might be a female character who is quite bossy at work, yet docile when speaking to her demanding bedridden mother. The trick is to try and bring this change alive in her dialogue rather than have the narrator tell the reader.

2. Try and give your characters distinctive voices, so that the reader can tell who's speaking even if you don't tell them. This is one of the hardest things to do, but it does help if you can give each character a distinctive speech pattern (or character discourse as it's known in literary circles). This can be as simple as having a character who says 'like' every now and then. 'You know, like, it was her fault and I told her that.' Don't overdo it, as that can get very irritating. One of the most distinctive voices I've read in recent times was in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. His heroine, Lyra's voice is so distinctive that he doesn't even have to signify that she's spoken. The reader knows.

3. Use contractions. In formal prose, you might use can not, and will not. In dialogue, people seldom speak like that, so use contractions such as can't and won't. However, you might have a character for whom English is not their first language. In this instance, don't use contractions (or maybe that should be 'do not' use contractions) as they've a tendency to speak English much better than we do!

4. Use slang, but carefully. When people speak they often use slang terms, so it's a good idea to pepper their speech with slang. However, be aware that there are many different dialects in the English language, so what may seem familiar to you may not be familiar to your readers. For example, in Derbyshire a packed lunch is often called 'snap', and if you had a story which featured a pit worker from the Peak District, he definitely wouldn't ask for his 'packed lunch' (not unless he wanted the lads to beat him up at breaktime!) So it may be necessary to make it plain what snap means.

"Where's my snap, Sheila?" Sheila handed Eddie his sandwiches.

Assuming your reader is smart, they'll make the connection.

5. Don't overdo dialect. Writing dialect might add some authenticity to your story or novel, but it might also alienate your reader. So keep it simple, just peppering the dialogue with occasional words rather than trying to recreate a whole dialogue. If you've got a Scotsman, perhaps have him saying 'wee' instead of little (but beware stereotyping). One of the worst example of using dialect I've seen in recent years was in Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, where she had a Greek/Scottish scholar speaking in what I'm sure Ms Kostova believed was the authentic Scottish dialect, but which totally overwhelmed that section of her novel to the point that I could barely read it and I'm still not clear what important information he gave to our intrepid sleuths. Likewise if you're writing about a character who's Russian or Middle Eastern, try not to give them any speech patterns that make them sound too much like that old series 'Mind Your Language' or Manuel from Fawlty Towers! My trick when I'm writing a 'foreigner' is to have them speaking perfect English, maybe stumbling over one or two words (but not in such a way that makes fun).

6. Keep it snappy. Keep dialogue short and sweet. No more than one or two lines at a time. Unless it's absolutely necessary, don't have one of your characters speaking uninterrupted for several pages. People just don't speak like that. In real life, others would interrupt with their own thoughts and questions. Your character will need to draw breath, take a drink of tea or coffee. One exception is if you want to show that your character is quite garrulous. But even then, someone would interrupt them eventually. It's human nature. Break up dialogue with actions, as in:

"I don't think I can go on like this." Dave tapped his fingers on the table. "Unless we get the money we need by next week, the business is going to fail." He looked up at Cathy, waiting for her to say something.

Okay, not the best example, but you get the idea. However, try not to break it up too much. Here's a really bad example:

"I don't think I can go on like this." Dave tapped his fingers on the table. "Unless we get the money we need by next week, the business is going to fail." He looked up at Cathy, waiting for her to say something. "Cathy, say something." He got up and walked around the room. "Well, aren't you going to say something?" Dave looked out of the window. "You're no help at all, are you?" He turned on her. "No help at all!"

The following might be better:

"I don't think I can go on like this." Dave tapped his fingers on the table. "Unless we get the money we need by next week, the business is going to fail." He looked up at Cathy, then got up and paced the room. "Cathy, say something ... Well, aren't you going to say something? You're no help at all, are you? No help at all." He turned on her.

These are just examples off the top of my head, but I hope they give some idea of how to lay out dialogue, and not have one character 'talking' for too long. Of course, a long speech might sometimes be necessary. Think Hercule Poirot revealing the murderer at the end of each novel or episode. He's going to be speaking a long time, so he can explain whodunnit and how they dun it.

7. Have your characters doing something while they're speaking as you can see from the above examples, it does help to have your characters doing something while they speak. They don't have to move around, like poor Dave, but you can describe facial expressions or mood (though the mood should come out in the dialogue) or actions. Some people (me included) wave their arms around quite a lot when they speak. Others scratch their head or their nose, twiddle their fingers, move their eyes around. People seldom sit perfectly still. As long as you don't end up making them sound like one of the Thunderbirds, it's good to give your characters an affectation.

8. Avoid speech tags. If you can, avoid using speech tags (note I don't say 'don't use'!) Speech tags, if you're not sure, are things like she murmured, or he raged, or she stammered. It should be pretty clear from what's gone before what sort of a mood your character is in, and if not, you could say something like: Her voice dropped to a murmer. "Don't tell Dave I spent last week's wages on a new dress'.

Said is 'said' to be the invisible word, and it works very well. If you think you've got too many saids, then find some other way to show which character is speaking. You can have one character saying the other's name, i.e. 'Say something, Cathy?' Then it should be obvious that Dave is speaking and Cathy will be the next one to speak (if she ever plucks up the courage to tell Dave she spent the wages!)

Another way to get rid of the saids is as I've shown above. 'I don't think we can go on like this.' Dave tapped his fingers on the table. That should easily signify that it's Dave doing the speaking. If you've got two characters, you could have quite a long section without saids, actions or speech tags, but you need to be very clear who's speaking which lines at the beginning, and don't go on for too long, so you don't lose your reader. Ten lines of dialogue between two people is, I think, quite enough before you need to bring back in some sort of action or 'said' to remind the reader who is speaking.

You could just vary the structure of speech tags, for example,

"Hello," he said.

"Hello," said Dave.

Dave said: "Hello"

which breaks it up a little.


9. Read other books If you're a writer you should be reading a lot anyway, but if you want to improve your use of dialogue, read lots of books to see how it's done, how it's laid out on the page. What works? What doesn't work?

That's all folks (though I will return to this topic as more occurs to me) Oh, I do hope I've helped a little, she twittered.