Creating Believable Dialogue That Doesn't Annoy
Pay attention to conversations around you. Listen to how people speak to each other. How do you speak to your closest friends? We're actually very boring, and sometimes downright annoying. I'll give you an example. The other day, I was in a coffee shop listening to people talk. Two friends sat down at the table next to me and the following conversation took place.
-- "Hey."
-- "Hi."
-- "How're you?"
-- "Okay. You see Idol last night?"
-- "Yeah. It was ... like ... umm ... lame. You know?"
-- "Lame. You goin' to Jim's later?"
-- "Don't know. Did he restock the beer?"
The conversation went on from there. Completely inane, as are most of the conversations we have during the day. These conversations might be accurate, but they'll bore your readers to tears. Dialogue must be natural, but don't write exactly what you and your buddy might say about the situation. Cut through the inane and get to the heart of the matter. Forget all the little bits and share what's important.
Once you have the heart of the conversation fleshed out, you want to make it real and accessible. Do this by eliminating endless exposition. In other words, don't let any of your characters sound like walking infomercials. Yes, it's tempting to use a single character to explain everything, but he starts to sound like an encyclopedia. Make his conversation natural and normal, not bookish (unless that character is completely bookish, in which case you can use this character for a lot of things, including humor).
Finally, clean up the speech. Most people are not illiterate and they don't talk like movie gangsters. If you do have characters that don't speak as well as everyone else, indicate this sparingly. Every word doesn't have to be garbled. Remember that your readers want the story, and having to puzzle through dialect and illiterate speech will detract from that.
Be Careful With Dialogue Tags
You have to let your readers know who's speaking. There are three ways to do this. The first is dialogue tags. Use them only when necessary, and avoid getting fancy. A simple "Arianna said" is usually sufficient (if the character is named Arianna!). If the character is actually mumbling, you might choose "Arianna mumbled" or another alternative tag, but if you use these alternatives constantly, you'll look like an amateur. Keep it simple when using dialogue tags.
Don't use any tags if you can get away with it. This is where the second method for indicating the speaker comes in. You can make the dialogue distinctive enough that no tags are necessary. For example, I have a character who constantly says "It's not fair." She says it a lot, and she's the only character in the book who ever says it. No tag needed. I have another character who has a different native language than everyone else. This results in odd phrases and you always know when he's speaking.
And then we come to the third method. You can use action and description to indicate who is speaking. For example:
Crawling slowly to his feet, Payton just shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’re not doing this.”
No dialogue tag, and the dialogue itself doesn't really tell you who might be speaking, but you know it's Payton because he crawled to his feet and shook his head. This is my favorite method because I can accomplish two goals. I can tell you who's speaking while I describe what he's doing.
Writing believable dialogue is a bit of an art form. You'll have to practice until you get it right. Read a few well written novels, then sit down and get to work. If you can master the nuances of dialogue, you'll be well on your way towards writing a novel readers will love.
