![]() ![]() Have you done research on the dialect you’re employing? Is that dialect best imitated in the dialogue or explained in the surrounding text via accent or other descriptors?.Are you an authority on yours? Consider the following questions: Take a step back and remember that an author is meant to be an authority on their subject. If you’re writing anything outside of your best-known paths, there’s a good chance you’re going to miss some nuance. ![]() You know how the people in your life speak, what the culture is like at your home or work, and you know the turns of phrases your community uses most frequently. Keep in mind that you know your life best. You may even want to consider getting an accuracy reader to help you with authenticity in dialect, pronunciation, and idioms-particularly if you’re speaking outside of your culture or experience. There is no better time than the present to think about how your work will be viewed and the way you’re representing the characters within it than now, through dialogue. If your goal is to reach a wide or international audience, you need to be aware of the different perspectives your book will be seen from. If you’ve done your research, you might already have an idea of your audience. Done purposefully, a bit of internal musings go a long way to creating tension or showing conflict. ![]() unless maybe you have some Dostoyevsky-esque themes in play. However, paragraphs and paragraphs of exposition-as-inner-monologue isn’t going to win you lots of reader friends. Here, you can get away with fewer dialogue tags and operate as your own devil’s advocate with more freedom. Should I use my inside voice? We’re focusing mostly on external dialogue, but internal dialogue has a big role to play in some stories as well.Unless you’re purposely making this a theme for your book, now’s the time to address what your dialogue is telling you about the state of characters in your work. Your reader will come to understand that nothing important happens in the story unless it happens to or is processed by the MC. In other words, you’re creating a predictable and potentially boring MC. But if they’re prone to monologuing, that might be a good indication that you’re lacking significant challenges or foils to this character. Who does the majority of the speaking? Often we have one main character (MC) and it’s important they have the lion’s share of talking points.Can you break it up, use the setting or scenery to help the idea along, turn it into action, or perhaps let the lack of dialogue speak for itself? While I’m not necessarily one to say you should “show, not tell” (that’s a whole nother conversation about narrative style and cultural lens), consider carefully if what you’re depicting is best served in the conversation you created. The easiest way to do that is to control both sides of the conversation, right? Well. Is the scene necessary? Sometimes we want to explain things to the reader.So how do you make sure you’re not falling into this literary trap? We know they happen! But do you really want to bring that level of real life to your book? While an intentionally mundane conversation can serve a purpose, those accidental meanderings are more likely to remind the reader they have something better to do than read your work. Listen, we’ve all been party to boring conversations. From using the right dialogue tags to accurately depicting emotions and dialects, this article will help you navigate the crucial conversations within your writing. Figuring out how to write dialogue that conveys your meaning and propels the action of your work is hard, but not impossible. Writing convincing dialogue is one of the trickiest things to do as a writer. ![]()
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