Creating Believable Dialogue

This week I ran a workshop on 'Creating Believable Dialogue' for about 20 writers. I love using dialogue in my writing and it can serve many functions if executed well. This is what we covered:

Reasons to use dialogue

1) To advance the story: Moves the story forward in a more straight-forward way than a narrator’s explanation would.

2) To develop character: Characters can evolve through dialogue. The way people speak can indicate their age, gender, class, geographical background, and level of education. Real people don’t all talk the same. Just think of the people you know. Probably some of them talk a lot without a filter, others don’t say much. Some will use more complex words (‘object’ instead of ‘thing’). Some will swear while others never go beyond ‘gosh’.

3) Provides information: Dialogue provides information for the reader about the plot, the relationship between the characters, their personalities, their moods. BUT the warning here is not to over explain, or it will lose credibility.

4) Adds drama: Dialogue increases the story’s pace and allows for conflict and action. It is harder to read a whole paragraph of step by step narration which cover the same things a dialogue can transmit in a few lines.

5) Adds realism: Dialogue shows what is happening instead of telling it. It portrays a scene vividly and breathes life into the characters.

But you should never use dialogue if:

• It is only used to break up a narrative passage.
• It provides exposition that isn’t credible.
• It slows down the plot.
• It inappropriately provides setting that is better in narrative.
• It expresses author opinion rather than the opinion of the character.

It mimics directly what a character might say in the real world. Dialogue is stylised talk. It should give a flavour of real speech, without seeking to recreate it on the page.



Listening to real people talk
After looking at the principles, we listened to some real dialogue from Radio 4's The Listening Project, and along with a transcript, reflected on the nature of real speech. At points the two talkers spoke over eachother, there were many 'umms' and at one point a: "Yeah. No. Definitely" in response to a question.

We asked ourselves:

• Which parts work written down?
• What makes those interesting? Is it the subject of conversation? The situation? The characters? Language? Is it funny?
• Is dialogue logical?
• Does it fit character desire and motivation?
• Does it support theme and meaning?
• Does it move?

We then spent individual time editing the dialogue, using either a snippet or significant chunk to inspire us to write a short piece, the basis of a story.