Writing realistic dialogue

How can you begin to flesh your dialogue out to create realistic conversations between characters in fiction writing? 

First, let's break the process of writing dialogue down.

When writing dialogue, it can be easy to want to dive straight in and lay everything out in one fell swoop. This is a trap that even the greatest writers can fall into and, while it seems fine to do in the moment, trying to write everything at once can create many problems down the line. These issues usually result in unclear scenes and confusing moments for the reader. 

For this reason, it can be useful to break things down and, initially, strip your writing back to the basics. 

• Only one speaker per line.
• "Did you know," I say. "One character's speech can continue for more than one paragraph. 
• "If their dialogue remains unbroken, you may omit the speech marks (") at the end of the first paragraph and include speech marks at the first of the following paragraph and closing speech marks at the end of the entire dialogue." Just like I did for the above two paragraphs. 
• "You should use commas inside of the speech marks to denote what is being said," I tell you. "Note that I close the sentence with a full stop and begin the next, in the speech marks, with a capital letter."
• “And if a character—” I pause suddenly, raising a hand to stop you. “See how the dialogue gets cut off? An em dash can do that for you!”
• "Or, when lost in thought, you may trail off..."
• "Or shout!" But it's important to remember that if only the last word of a sentence is italicised for emphasis or stylistic effect, the punctuation that follows it should not be italicised, because it’s not part of the emphasised word.
• However, I think to myself. It is sometimes okay to write in italics in place of quotation marks. This is often done for stylistic effect. In sentences like this, punctuation like exclamation marks, question marks, commas and full stops should also be italicised if they’re part of the italicised dialogue or thought.
• "And always," I push my glasses up further and look at you a little more closely before continuing, "remember that you can include more detail between passages of dialogue for further effect. Just remember to start that second passage of dialogue, after the comma, with a lowercase letter!"
• Remember, while standard British English formats dialogue in 'inverted commas' and US English tends to use "quotation marks," you may use whichever you prefer when writing. Just note, some style guides, literary agents and publishers will prefer to see things in a specific style guide.

• Use or omit dialogue tags thoughtfully
  “Did you know,” I ask, leaning closer, “that ‘he said/she said’ isn’t always necessary?” Sometimes, your dialogue speaks for itself, but when you do need tags, it's good to stick to basics like said or asked—they’re nearly invisible to readers, which helps to keep them engaged in what is being said.
• Reflect your character’s voice 
  “Dialogue should sound like your character,” I remind you, tapping my temple. “Consider how their background, personality or even their mood would influence how they speak.” Someone formal might say, “I will not tolerate this,” while another might say, “Nah, that’s not happening.”
• Watch out for adverbs
  “Rather than telling me that 'he said something angrily,'” I raise my brow. “Show it through his words and actions. Let his anger come through in the dialogue, not just the tag.”
• Action beats can replace tags 
  “Sometimes you don’t need a ‘he said’ at all,” I pour a second cup of tea and hand you the cup. “An action beat like this can do the work instead!”
• Avoid info-dumping
  “You want to avoid characters explaining things too obviously,” I mention casually. “It sounds unnatural if one character is just telling the reader information they already know. Weave it in more subtly.”

Now that that's out of the way, here's a short example of some dialogue which has been completely parred back to the basics, no frills nor embellishments.

'Hey, what was it we were meant to be doing again?'

'You didn't take the assignment sheet?'

'No... There was an assignment sheet?'

'For goodness—here. Take this.'

'Thanks.'

'Don't mention it.'

Technically speaking, there's nothing wrong with it. Right? It's grammatically correct and we can understand the basic context of what's going on. 

Going back to the basics and writing what is spoken can be a great place to start if you feel like your dialogue is stilted and unnatural. For more help making the dialogue sound like actual speech, you could even try speaking aloud and recording what you say and how it's said, then write that.

But just writing the basics doesn't really do what we want it to in terms of conveying emotions, tone or indications of general character traits. 

If I told you this was supposed to be a jovial scene between two best friends, you'd probably struggle to see it, right? 

Let's take this layer by layer and add some more details. 

If we imagine dialogue writing as a cake (I know! Not another cake metaphor! Sorry, it's one of the best ways to visualise it, but you can picture an ice cream sundae instead if you prefer), we can picture each step as a separate layer. 

Your dialogue – the actual text that is spoken by one or more characters in a scene – is arguably the most important and is, therefore, the largest base layer (unless you're used to baking cakes like the fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty, that is). 

Following the basics, you're likely going to want to outline what is actually happening in the scene through physical markers.

Where are the characters located? What actions are taking place? Who is speaking?

Let's take a look at how much our example can expand by only adding the physical aspects of what's happening in the scene:

Sarah jolted awake the instant her head slipped from her palm, eyes snapping open and blinking as they struggled to break through the fluorescent lighting of their school's science labs. A furtive glance around the room told her that everyone was already moving in a bustle of activity. 

'Hey,' she whispered to her friend, June, 'what was it we were meant to be doing again?'

June looked up from her work. From the desk beside Sarah's, her mouth slowly curled into a small smirk. 'You didn't take the assignment sheet?' she asked quietly as their teacher began to walk down the aisle.

'No...' Sarah rubbed at her eyes and cocked her head at the white paper that June had been furiously scribbling on. 'There was an assignment sheet?'

'For goodness—' June laughed and shook her head before ripping a page out of her notebook. 'Here. Take this.'

Sarah sighed and took the work with a grateful smile. 'Thanks.'

'Don't mention it,' June chuckled and shook her head before turning back to her work. 

By simply adding a few physical markers to describe the scene and what's happening, we gain a lot more context.

But, how can we flesh this out and take our dialogue even further? 

Now, you may not always want to add any more than just the physical layer – and this is fine – but there are times when adding more layers to the scene and expanding your dialogue can help to explain difficult events or flesh out scenes where needed.

Generally, a scene will usually only have one narrator. This is typically referred to as the point of view character. 

In the next step of fleshing out our dialogue, it's great to offer the reader a little more context of how our characters are feeling in the scene. One of the best ways of doing this is by offering some of the point of view character's emotions or thoughts and how they perceive the feelings of other characters in the scene. 

Sarah jolted awake the instant her head slipped from her palm, eyes snapping open and blinking as they struggled to break through the fluorescent lighting of their school's science labs. A furtive glance around the room told her that everyone was already moving in a bustle of activity and she began to anxiously chew at her bottom lip while silently cursing herself for falling asleep. 

'Hey,' she whispered to her friend, June, who jumped at the intensity of her tone. 'What was it we were meant to be doing again?'

June's worry quickly faded as she looked up from her work. From the desk beside Sarah's, her mouth curled into a small smirk of amusement. 'You didn't take the assignment sheet?' she asked quietly as their teacher began to walk down the aisle.

'No...' Sarah rubbed at her eyes and cocked her head at the white paper that June had been furiously scribbling on, brows furrowing with her growing nerves. 'There was an assignment sheet?'

'For goodness—' June laughed at her friend's panic and shook her head before quickly ripping a page out of her notebook. 'Here. Take this.' 

Sarah sighed in relief and thanks and took the work with a grateful smile. 'Thanks.'

'Don't mention it,' June chuckled and shook her head once more before turning back to her work, seemingly uplifted by the events. 

By adding some basic emotional markers to the scene, we create a new layer of dialogue for the readers, allowing them to gain a greater emotional understanding of this interaction. 

Many writers will stop at this layer and not go on to add the final layer of dialogue, however, adding sensory details can be the final step to helping immerse your readers fully into the story. 

Sensory details are different to any of the other story or plot points that are conveyed through the dialogue. Instead of focusing on what the characters are saying, feeling or doing, sensory details help to give a wider view of what's happening in the background of the scene around the characters as they speak. 

These sensory details can help convey sights, sounds, textures, tastes and smells as they happen around the characters to provide a fully fleshed-out landscape in which the conversation is taking place, helping readers to picture what's happening around them. They are – if you want to go back to the cake metaphor – like the sprinkles on top of a cake. 

The world your story takes place in really can affect everything. For this reason, it can often be useful to only add sensory details after you've outlined the basis of your story. Adding sensory details is about delving into the deeper world and allowing readers to immerse themselves in the scene you're describing to create a vibrant reading experience for the reader.

For the sake of this example, let's imagine that Sarah and June's school is located in the real-world English countryside. 

Sarah jolted awake the instant her head slipped from her palm, eyes snapping open and blinking as they struggled to break through the fluorescent lighting of their school's science labs. Outside the birds were chirping, the sound rising to a cacophony of high-pitched tweets that seemed jarring in the sterile room. A furtive glance around told her that everyone was already moving in a bustle of activity and she began to anxiously chew at her bottom lip while silently cursing herself for falling asleep. 

'Hey,' she whispered to her friend, June, who jumped at the intensity of her tone. Her words were quiet in terms of decibel, but there's always something about the hissing of whispers that cuts through silence like a knife. 'What was it we were meant to be doing again?'

June's worry quickly faded as she looked up from her work. From the desk beside Sarah's, her mouth curled into a small smirk of amusement. 'You didn't take the assignment sheet?' she asked quietly as their teacher began to walk down the aisle, students unanimously jumping into action as he neared them.

'No...' Sarah rubbed at her eyes and cocked her head at the white paper that June had been furiously scribbling on, brows furrowing with her growing nerves. 'There was an assignment sheet?'

'For goodness—' June laughed at her friend's panic and shook her head before quickly ripping a page out of her notebook. 'Here. Take this.' 

Sarah sighed in relief and thanks and took the work with a grateful smile, cool paper dousing her fingertips in relief. 'Thanks.'

'Don't mention it,' June chuckled and shook her head once more before turning back to her work, seemingly uplifted by the events. 

They worked in silence, side by side, and the chirping of the birds no longer sounded like chaos to Sarah but were instead serene to her ear. 

And, just like that, we've added some intrigue to the scene by fleshing the dialogue out and providing more information for the reader to explore. 

Granted, in a span of dialogue this short, you may not need to add every single one of these layers – especially all the time – but, on occasion, incorporating at least one or even a mixture can invigorate your writing. 

Adding layers to your dialogue can help expand confusing scenes and offer more insight into scenes where, on the surface, not a lot is happening. 

So, why not give compiling layers and adding them to your dialogue a try? Your writing may even become better for it!

Adding layers to your writing can be daunting when starting – but, hopefully, this blog has given you an idea of how to begin. 

If you're still struggling, why not contact an editor to see how they can help?