Writing Dialogue

Writing good dialogue can make or break a story and although my narrative doesn't involve a great deal (it is the first chapter, with the protagonist largely alone during it) I figured it would be prudent to check out some helpful tips on the internet with regards to writing it.

Writing dialogue in the same way as one talks is a bad idea, oftentimes, we spend time in conversations not saying very much and using a lot of filler words. This would play havoc with story pacing and would immediately end any immersion in the storyline as the reader would switch off at such boring speech. The main thing to remember when writing dialogue is to move the story onward with what the characters are saying and not get stuck in some sort of conversational mire in which no pertinent information is revealed.

After checking out a couple of websites with tips on writing dialogue I found the following rules to be very helpful:

• Don't use any other word than "said" or  "replied" when writing who said what, anything else is needlessly unnecessary.
• Show the emotion of your characters through what they say and not with adjectives before the aforementioned "said".
• On the point of writing "said", it is needed but not on every line, often writers can get away with not writing the name of who said what because of a number of situations, such as; there are two characters speaking and you can immediately tell who is saying what, this can help the dialogue and thus, story, flow a whole lot better.
• Use the dialogue to give characterisation, it is easy to do this with characters words as you can express the kind of person they are by how they speak, as much as how they act.
• Use it to progress the storyline, but don't give away too much information in any one conversation, and remember to keep it moving, don't spend too much time on any single conversation, remember, pacing!
• Make sure your characters talk as they should sound, I read an interesting point about how one can end up with a street savy modern day character talking like something from Shakespeare. Research if necessary!
• The next one comes with practice in writing and familiarisation with your characters, but once you get it, it will ultimately help you more than any other tip on writing dialogue, after a time you will get to know your characters so well that a distinct "voice" will develop when you write their words for them.
• Dialogue is just as important as descriptive paragraphs and in some cases can reveal more about a character than page upon page of descriptions of them.

I enjoy writing as it is, and do it as a hobby in some of my spare time, I hope that these tips will help me in my future endeavours.