Dialogue.
Most novels need it, and of course writers want to craft it well. But like all the elements of a novel, it can be tricky.
After all, we’re expecting it to do some heavy lifting. Dialogue is showing our readers who our characters are. It may be coloring our scene with emotion. It can also add essential information that forwards a story, or cleverly provide moments of comedic relief.
We also want our characters to speak in ways that seem natural (whether that’s natural for a contemporary teenage girl or a wizened old elf king). We want the conversations to come across as authentic speech between the speakers, capturing the flavour of a place or a time as well as the energy of a given scene.
So, how do we get there in our own writing?
My Best Advice on How to Write Dialogue in a Novel
The first bit of advice I will offer is one you’ve surely heard before: read. Especially in the genre you are writing in! Review favorite books by favorite authors and pay attention to how they craft and deliver dialogue in their stories. Let the techniques and patterns you notice help inspire your own writing. While this might sound vague at first, I believe that once you start deliberately reading as a writer with an eye to dialogue, it will have a huge impact on your work! (Don’t do it every time you read, though—enjoy your own fiction breaks, writers!)
The second bit of advice is more practical and more personal. It’s something that I actually learned taking an Improv class, a class that was somehow wonderfully timed to the months in which I was finishing up a first draft of what was to become my first published novel: Lights! Curtains! Cows!. Our instructor was giving us tips for making an improvised scene crackle with life and energy. One of the tips he emphasized again and again was to “avoid ‘talking heads’”. In the context of a performance, what this meant was to incorporate action or dynamic movement of some kind into scenes. Even if we didn’t know what the scene was going to be about (and this was Improv, so we often didn’t), he urged us to consider to simply start moving, start doing something. Sweep the floor with an invisible broom. Stack a few invisible boxes. Make a phantom cappuccino. What was most important was that we didn’t just stand there and simply exchange words with the other improvisers (i.e., become “talking heads”). By moving around, doing something, taking specific action, the implied “world” where the scene was taking place more quickly and quite richly came to life.
As I swept, stacked and “cappuccino-ed” on stage, I sensed that this concept could help my fiction writing! I remember taking the idea back to my fledgling draft novel. I became very aware of what was or could be going on in my scenes besides “just talk”. To this day, “avoid ‘talking heads’” is a constant mantra I return to when crafting dialogue. It leads me to ask: What are the characters actually doing as they talk? How can I weave action into this scene so that it illuminates the larger world of my story?
Incidentally, action can be big and bold, but it doesn’t have to be. Is your character stirring honey into a cup of tea? That’s action, and it helps paint a picture. Maybe another character is speaking nonchalantly while anxiously arranging and rearranging the same five items on a desk. Another evocative picture. Action can be scaling a mountain under gruelling conditions, but it doesn’t have to be.
Related to weaving action and movement into scenes with dialogue is to watch for opportunities to bring in the senses and emotions. We don’t want to get too heavy-handed here following every line of dialogue with descriptive text. But here and there we can add text that has a delicious impact. Where is the action taking place? Can I weave in details about the sights, smells, sounds and textures of the place (e.g., What fragrance rises up from tea? How can I describe the sound of the spoon circling in the mug?) How can I use these sensory details about the story’s world to create atmosphere and set the appropriate tone? (Is the person rearranging the items on the desk aware of what he’s doing, or not? What about the peron he’s talking to…how does she feel about this bit of action? And how do her feelings show?)
Of course, not every bit of dialogue will benefit from or even allow for constant action. Nor do we need to add sensory flourishes all over the place “just because”. But avoiding page after page of “talking heads” is something to keep in mind as you write, especially when a scene or sequence heavy in dialogue feels flat or stale. Writing after all is about immersing your reader in a world rather than simply laying out plot points one after another. When we try to craft dialogue with movement, action, and with the senses and emotions, our characters can help talk that world into being.