Dialogue in Fiction - Part 2

How to Make Dialogue Realistic...

It might be counter-intuitive to say that "realistic" dialogue in a story should not be as mundane as dialogue is in real life or be dialogue that doesn't move the story along, that it should show character traits by what is said and how it is said, and that it should add information to the story. That's counter-intuitive because in real life, many times dialogue is very mundane. So, I guess the real point about "realistic" dialogue in fiction is whether or not it unfolds the way real-life dialogue does. [Of course, there are writers who are masterful at writing surreal dialogue, which better fits the need of their stories, which are also surrealistic.]

I'll get into creating realistic dialogue in a minute. But first let's consider what the job of dialogue is in a story. As I indicated it should have certain characteristics:

1. It should not be mundane and should have a purpose.

"What do you want for dinner?"

"Oh, I don't care. Whatever you want."

"How about pizza, then?"

"Sure, what kind?"

"Pepperoni."

Please, please don't use dialogue like this—even though it occurs in real life all the time. Maybe that's why we read fiction, to get into more interesting lives.

2. It should show the traits of the characters by what they say and how they say it.
We want to read dialogue that deliberately or inadvertently reveals character traits.

3. It should add information to the story that is not handled by the narrative portion of the story. Dialogue is a good way, for example, for one character to reveal something to another character that wouldn't otherwise be forthcoming.

But how do we make fictional dialogue feel authentic?

In a previous post on dialogue, I talked about the three main elements of dialogue: what is said, who said it, and how it is said. I hinted that dialogue should also occur in that order, most of the time. Here's an example of dialogue that is NOT presented in this order:

Jonathan was hurt and confused when Jessica came into the room and screamed, "I hate you!"

This is obviously an extreme example of inverted dialogue order, but it easily illustrates a departure from realistic-feeling dialogue. How could Jonathan feel hurt and confused...before Jessica comes into the the room and screams, "I hate you!"? First, he doesn't know that Jessica is going to speak; second, he doesn't know that she is going to declare her hatred; and third. he doesn't know that she will be screaming it. But new writers do dialogue this way much too often. They have one character react to another character's speech before the character speaks. They describe how something is said before it is said.

In a sense, the order in which the elements of dialogue are presented is the main way to make fictional dialogue realistic.

A second way to make dialogue realistic is to use only two tags, either "said" or "asked." The main function of a dialogue tag is to indicate which character is speaking. Many times writers think that they have to vary the dialogue tags to help characterize how a characters speaks, and we get some really funny and really awkward examples. Yes, I'm guilty of using "she screamed" as a dialogue tag, but sometimes departure from "he said" or "he asked" feels right. But let's look at another one of my awful made-up examples. I'm avoiding dialogue description in this example to highlight the use of dialogue tags.

"Give me your money," demanded the thief.
"I don't have any money," cried the girl.
"Oh, yes you do. I saw you put it in your purse," the thief chuckled evilly.

In the first statement, the "demanding" is imbedded in the dialogue, so it's not necessary to repeat it in the dialogue tag. In the next two statements, the girl cries her answer and the thief evilly chuckles his response; just try crying and chuckling as you speak their lines. You'll see that you sound like the novice actors in a high school play, who actually attempt to laugh their lines.

Now, let's add dialogue description (how it is said) to this same example. We will see that the writer can add a bit of dimension to the dialogue which helps characterize each of the characters and keep the dialogue tags simple.

"Give me your money,"the thief said, his tone gruff and demanding.
"I don't have any money,"the girl said, crying.
"Oh, yes you do. I saw you put it in your purse," the thief said. His chuckle sounded evil.

I know...I know...this example stinks. But you get the point. We don't want the dialogue tags to characterize how something is said. We leave that up to the third element in dialogue. Quite often how something is said can be greatly extended into descriptive action that accompanies the dialogue. Also note that when there are only two characters in a dialogue, we don't have to use dialogue tags for every exchange, unless the exchanges take up so many lines that readers can get confused as to who is speaking.

Finally, realistic dialogue accomplishes something beyond just having characters come together in a scene and chat or chatter. You know in real life when you're in a group and people are chattering about nothing, it's quite easy to tune out the conversation. That's what readers will do if the dialogue is not compelling, interesting, and rich with information in a work of fiction.