Diagnosing Dialogue: How to Craft Crackling Conversations
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Deft dialogue makes readers fall in love with a character (or love to hate them!) … but how do you write compelling conversations in fiction? Despite the fact that we have conversations every day, writing dialogue in a narrative is a different beast entirely. How does each character speak? What do they not say that reveals the depth of their character? How do you make the dialogue sound real?
The truth is, dialogue isn’t just a conversation between characters; it’s also a slantwise conversation with the reader as well to establish tone, advance plot and character development, and hook them to want to read more.
Today we’re going to dive into how to craft dialogue that does the heavy lifting in your storytelling.
Reveal Character Background
To avoid the trap of a lore dump that derails momentum or an ill-placed flashback that breaks tension, you can show who your characters are through how they speak. In fact, forensic linguists profile potential suspects based on how they speak and write, as it can reveal a lot of demographic information about a person, including where they grew up, what level of education they received, whether they were exposed to other languages, their beliefs and temperament, and even their honesty.
When crafting your characters’ dialogue, it’s not just what they say, but how they say it.
For example, let’s look at three instances of an instructor trying to get their class to prepare for a lesson:
Teacher 1: “Good morning, class. Settle down. I said settle down, Mr. Petrie. We have a full day before us, so I expect your undivided attention. Are we clear?”
Teacher 2: “Morning, everyone! I hope you all had a good weekend. Come on, Petrie, your antics can wait for recess. We have a lot to cover, so are we all ready to begin?”
Teacher 3: “Take your seats so we can begin. You’re expected to memorize this for the pop quiz on Friday. Alexander Petrie: you have been warned.”
The way these characters speak tells us a lot about their character. Teacher 1 speaks formally and sternly, but easily loses their temper. Teacher 2 is friendly and playful, and seems more compassionate to their students. Teacher 3 is direct and to the point, but also betrays the least “personality”; are they having a bad day or do they hate their job?
These impressions form before taking into account their genders, background, ages, the age of the class they’re teaching, or the subject they’re presenting. If Teacher 1 teaches at a posh prep school in a historical setting, their brusque formality might be expected. If Teacher 2 addressed a military college this way, it might come across as inappropriate. If Teacher 3 is administering a prep exam to a cram class, we may not expect them to have the same rapport with their students.
So, consider the complexity or accuracy of a character’s word choice, contractions that reflect level of formality, sentence length for tone, language choice if the character speaks multiple languages and their proficiency in each, profanity (if any), pronunciation (such as of times, numbers, or specific words), and dialectic phrases or accents — though be careful accents don’t become parodies!
Keep in mind that many grammatical rules can (and should!) be broken to make dialogue sound more natural. Dialogue must be crafted, which means some of the frills we expect in real-world conversations must be dispensed with.
Avoid Talking Heads
Alexandre Dumas was famously paid “by the line” for his Three Musketeers trilogy, which led to a lot of quick, quippy dialogue that still feels contemporary to readers today. Some writers — and indeed some genres like thriller, contemporary YA, or romance — live for banter. It gives us books full of characters (usually romantic leads or enemies-to-lovers) snapping back and forth in long sequences of witty bon mots.
The risk with these exchanges is two-fold. First, less experienced writers will make their characters say clever things for the sake of entertaining the reader even when such things are entirely out of character, which makes the cast feel flat or inconsistent. Second, readers can lose track of who is saying what or where those characters exist in a scene as a result of “talking heads.”
To prevent falling into these traps, ensure that you make use of action tags or speech tags to keep the reader oriented with who is speaking and what they’re doing while they’re speaking. This can be as simple as clenching a fist in frustration to as complex as chasing a character through a park as the dialogue heats up.
Here is an example in two styles. First, talking heads:
“Wow. I can’t believe you actually showed up,” Celia said. “Aren’t you afraid of what Daniel will say?”
“Not at all,” Thomas replied. “Daniel can’t say anything I haven’t heard a thousand times before.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. So, can you drop it and let me get on with packing up my things?”
“Yes, I can let you in.”
Consider if this conversation went on for several paragraphs without further tags; eventually you’d lose track of who was saying what. This sparse style can be deployed effectively in certain genres but it doesn’t provide the reader with much context, style, or characterization.
Second, with speech and action tags to flesh the scene out:
“Wow. I can’t believe you actually showed up,” Celia said. Both brows were raised and her hand gripped the door jam. “Aren’t you afraid of what Daniel will say?”
“Not at all.” Thomas scoffed, but the way his jaw clenched showed that things between these brothers were far from resolved. “Daniel can’t say anything I haven’t heard a thousand times before.”
“If you say so,” Celia replied doubtfully.
“I do. So, can you drop it and let me get on with packing up my things?”
Celia sighed and pulled the door wide enough for Thomas to slip into the flat.
Context clues provided by the action tags and speech tags tell us that these characters have history and that Celia notices Thomas’s discomfort but chooses to ignore it even before he asks. This version also demonstrates how you can show a character’s intention without explicitly saying it (in that last line, Celia nonverbally agrees to let Thomas in).
Framing gives us not only what the characters are saying but the scene unfolding around them as a whole. In the “talking heads” version, we had no sense of where the characters were or how they were speaking. The fleshed-out version shows both verbal cues and body language, how they interact with their setting, and what the unspoken details tell us about the character dynamics and the tension of the surrounding scene.
Provide Insight into Motivation
Most people curate what they say, whether for politeness, respect, safety, insecurity, fear, love, or any other human emotion. What you choose to have a character say can reveal a lot about what they believe, what they want, and how they handle the situations they’re put in.
In Maggie Stiefvater’s Scorpio Races, for example, she intentionally wrote the character of Sean to speak as little as possible throughout the book. In his point-of-view scenes, we learn that he has rich interiority but silence has become a self-defense mechanism. This choice enabled the author to hide a lot of what Sean feels from the other characters, creating a mysterious but honourable figure. However, speaking so little means that when Sean speaks, what he says has added weight and others around him—even those who dislike him—listen.
How do your characters curate their speech? Some ways might include:
Cracking jokes to hide emotions
Using a lot of slang or jargon to try to fit in with a specific group
Lying to other characters (or to themself)
Being suddenly and unexpectedly earnest
Talking too much, prattling on, gossiping, embellishing the truth
Speaking optimistically to undercut the seriousness of a situation
Speaking pessimistically to find the worst in even seemingly good situations
Being overtly blunt, rude, or impatient, or not listening to others
Missing the point, being unaware (or pretending to be unaware) of insult or criticism
Using half-truths to provide an escape, hide something, or soften difficult topics
Choosing specific word choices or references to communicate secret understanding without giving themself away to other listeners, etc.
To practise these techniques, think about both what the character says and what they’re not saying. Can you show what they’re hiding in body language, dramatic irony, or the knowledge they don’t know their conversation partner already possesses? If you need inspiration, jot down how people around you speak, especially on the same topic. How do they differ in phrasing and delivery? Based on what you know of the individuals, what might influence their choice of words?
Then, try having each of your main characters say the same line or answer the same question in their own ways. How can you make them each sound distinct? While it may not be possible in every passage (or every genre), strive to ensure that if the names were rubbed out of the speech tags, the reader would still recognize who is speaking.
Create Crackling Chemistry
Once you’ve isolated how each of your characters sounds, it’s time to throw them together. You’ll get the most out of your dialogue if it works on multiple levels. Strive to combine at least 2 of the following:
Advance the plot (tell us what characters are doing, plan to do, or an event coming up)
Provide insight into character (how they feel, what they believe, their intentions/desires/needs)
Develop the dynamic (how they can work together, overcome biases, show burgeoning friendship or romance)
Grow character (showcase emotional growth, changes in belief or temperament, release of previous beliefs)
Reveal information (plot points, clues, showcase a character’s knowledge, inform another character and the reader of the rules of worldbuilding)
Misdirect expectations (conceal character knowledge/motivation, establish a red herring, lure a character into danger, mislead another character).
If we look at the example between Celia and Thomas above, this exchange hits 4 of the 6 goals: it advances the plot (Thomas has come to collect his things), provides insight into both characters (Celia is trying to keep the peace and Thomas is just barely suppressing his frustration), develops the dynamic between them (even if Celia doesn’t approve, she’s willing to help), and reveals information (Thomas and Daniel are brothers and have been fighting; Thomas has things stored at Celia’s place; coming over was potentially dangerous).
Once you know the purpose of your dialogue, you can make it crackle by honing its pacing. Witty back-and-forth works best in 3, 5, or 7 beats of exchange (think of it like setting up a joke). Direct allusions to something the previous speaker said are ideally not broken up by an action tag, as this can muddy the connection. Longer speeches should be broken up with a speech or action tag to keep the reader oriented. Three or more people in a conversation will need more frequent use of speech (or action) tags to keep straight who is saying what.
Review your pacing by reading your dialogue aloud. Does it sound like someone would actually say that (keeping in mind the genre and setting for your story)? You might find that dialogue better delivers information you originally placed in exposition; you don’t need to repeat the information both ways. If using a character as a mouthpiece, make sure you don’t proselytize or meander too much. A well placed “um” can provide fitting hesitancy, but ending every sentence with a trailing ellipsis or exclamation point is going to become tiresome very quickly.
Employing all of these techniques as you write or revise your dialogue will give your characters more life and will keep readers invested. You’ll likely find that the conversations in which characters with very different speaking styles will be the most dynamic to write, as the greater contrast results in more impact.
Finally, you don’t need to waste time (and space) re-telling the reader things they already know from previous scenes—unless something has drastically changed. You don’t need to sandwich every phone call with all the utilitarian “hellos” and “goodbyes”—unless doing so tells us something important about the speakers. Find the sweet spot where speech sounds natural and believable while still serving a narrative purpose and your conversations will crackle to life on the page.
Astra Crompton (she/they) is an eclectic writer, editor, and illustrator with over twenty-five years of publishing experience. Her work has been published in anthologies, table-top RPG books, magazines, and in several novels. They have also successfully completed NaNoWriMo six times and counting. Astra is currently the Editing & Illustrations Coordinator at FriesenPress, where they manage, coordinate, and vet FriesenPress’s industry-leading editing and illustrations teams.
