3 Tips for Writing Good Dialogue
Dialogue is tricky. Here’s how to make it easier. And a lot better.
Photo by Alex Holyoake on Unsplash
Dialogue is one of those sticky wickets when it comes to writing fiction.
It’s hard to do. And when you don’t do it right, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
When I took my last Spanish class in college, I got my one and only failing grade. Ever. In fact, I’d never even had a C grade before. But I failed that Spanish class.
Because I never knew when I did something wrong. It all felt right to me.
I didn’t turn in papers that I knew deserved F grades. I thought I had it right.
That’s what a lot of bad writing is like for new writers. It all reads okay to us. We need someone else to read it and tell us that it stinks so that we can say oooh, right. Thanks. And go tighten it up and make it better.
But dialogue? Usually, we know it’s bad. We cringe when we read it. But it can be really, really hard to know how to fix it. Because we don’t know why it’s bad.
Someone asked me during a Ninja Writer’s Club call last weekend if I have any ideas for that and here’s what I came up with. I hope it will help you, too.