Writing Novel Dialogue: Making Your Character's Speech Engaging

For newbie writers, creating effective, clear dialogue can be tricky and daunting. Here are a few tips I have learned from my writing mentor Rachel Dickerson, the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, Crawford Kilian (see http://www.darkwaves.com/sfch/writing/ckilian/#1 ) and various other authors since beginning my first novel last fall.

Make it clear who is speaking, succinctly.

When writing dialogue, everyone knows to use a new paragraph when a new character speaks. More specifically however, every time a separate character is being discussed, there should be a new paragraph, whether or not they are speaking. This is done so that the reader can easily decipher who is being referred to by the author. The writer should not use the word "said" every time a character says something. We should know who is speaking by what they say. Don't get too creative with how they said it; the actions should show how it is being said. Words like "ejaculated" might not add to the dialogue, so use them sparingly. 

Decide beforehand who your character is.

You should have a thorough description of your character written down before beginning your story. If you can see the world from your character's perspective, the dialogue will be much more believable to the reader. A useful technique I have seen is to write a dialogue of an imaginary interview you have with your character. The more detailed a character is, the more easily the dialogue will come to you. Some authors suggest that you think of someone that you may have known in order to create a more realistic character. Whatever you do, please make your characters dynamic and three dimensional. Nothing grates on a reader's nerves more than a bad guy who is bad without reason or a good guy without flaws. 

Use storyboarding to flesh out the scenes so that you know where this discussion is leading.

One of the problems I have run into is how to get from point A in the plot to point B. Details in the dialogue should move the plot forward, so have a plan. A good way to do this is to use index cards, each describing briefly the events in your story. This should definitely be used for the chapters of a novel, but can also be used to organize the thoughts within each chapter.

Read it out loud in the voice you imagine your character to be using.

Reading your dialogue out loud is a good way to discover whether the characters seem stilted or out of character. Some phrases may sound better in your head than they do out loud, so trust your ears. If the dialogue is exciting to you, it will be exciting to your reader as well, and visa versa.

Try feeling your character's emotion as you write.

Surprisingly, this is something that Anne McCaffrey and Karen Kingsbury have in common. They think about something really sad when writing a tragic scene, even to the point of tears. By making your feelings like the characters', you will make your readers weep or rejoice with them.

Writing great dialogue can be exacting and exhausting, but with perseverance you too can write like a professional!