How to Write Great Dialogue in Your Book

​Today I’m going to be discussing dialogue, dialogue tags, and how to write great dialogue in your book.
 
Joshua walked into the room. “How’s the coffee?” he said. “It’s fine,” said Charlene. “Is it hot enough?” Joshua asked. Charlene took a sip. “Yes, it’s hot enough,” she said. “Good,” said Joshua, and went to make himself some tea. . . . If you want me to be interested in that dialogue right there, I had SO better know that the coffee is poisoned.
 
(If you’d like to view this post in video format, click here. It’s part of our “Advice from an Editor” series on YouTube.)

As an editor, I see the same problem over and over again with longer sequences of dialogue, and what it boils down to is quite simply: They’re really boring. And there are a couple of reasons that they are boring. The first and biggest reason is that they are inconsequential or that the (as I like to call them) stage directions that go alongside them are inconsequential. Things like poisoning aside, talking about the coffee or lifting your cup to take a sip, or if a character is walking along in winter and you say “She shivered because it was cold” . . . Yes. We know it’s cold. We don’t care; you don’t need to remind us readers.

Instead, these “stage directions” need to be important. In fact, there are two things that every single longer exchange of dialogue—and most shorter exchanges too—should have, which are: 1) It should move the action forward, and 2) It should reveal character. And a lot of the time, it should serve other functions as well, such as giving commentary or description of what’s going on, or of the people it’s going on with, or providing comic relief.

When I was in college, I took a drama course, and in that course, we did one-minute monologues. Something my drama teacher said has always stuck with me: Whenever you’re doing a monologue, no matter how short it is, you should always have a moment where the audience is meant to laugh and a moment when the audience should cry. Although not every short exchange of dialogue needs to have this, I do think it’s an important thing to remember. Having a book be one note (all funny or all serious) gets boring. It’s the juxtaposition of different moods and different styles that lends depth to precisely those feelings and those emotions. It makes them matter.

Let’s get back to dialogue. When I talk about stage directions in dialogue—this is a problem I see a lot, and in addition to not being very interesting, it can actually be confusing for the reader sometimes. I’ve seen entire books starting this way, with a chapter that is 90% dialogue and 10% “He stood up and closed the door.” “He sat down and sipped his coffee.” “He took another sip of coffee.” . . . Yes, I get that he likes coffee or at least is sipping it for some reason.

In order to avoid the boredom, the first thing to do is to look at a scene of dialogue and ask yourself, “If I took this entire scene out of the book, would anything really change? Would I lose something essential to the book?” This is a lot of the same thing that I talked about in my video/article on action, that action sequences should be essential to the book or they should be deleted. Same goes for dialogue.

An interesting tip here is, if you’re good at writing action scenes and have trouble writing dialogue scenes, you can always write one like the other. Approach a dialogue scene like an action scene. Each character in the scene has a motivation or goal, and they’re going to try to get it done. But instead of trying to get it done with guns and physical actions, they’re going to try to get it done with words. You’ll see a combination of this in action films a lot, because if you have a scene in which it’s just people sitting down and talking, such as asking, “Oh, how’s your relationship going?”, the action movie, which will want to keep things moving, will instead put this conversation during an action scene. So they’re rappelling from a building and about to break in and suddenly one of them asks the other, “Hey, so how’s your relationship going?” And the other one says, “Is this really the time or place for this?” And of course it’s not, but it makes it fun and interesting and it does give a juxtaposition—it gives that little bit of humor in what is otherwise a serious scene.

You can do this, but you don’t have to do this, because since the dialogue itself should be moving the action along, the dialogue itself can be the action scene. To give an example, I am in fact going to pick a scene that is entirely dialogue. Despite being entirely dialogue, it is also absolutely riveting and absolutely matters. And to do this, to really cut out all the extra stuff—which I’ll talk about a little bit more—I want to turn to manga. Specifically, to the second Death Note book. So: spoilers for that, if you haven’t read it. And if you have no intention of reading it, don’t worry, I will explain what you need to know. What makes it such a brilliant, quite long, dialogue exchange that matters is that it reveals character, gives commentary, and does in fact have bits of humor.

The premise of Death Note is that our main character, Light, has found a Shinigami’s (god of death’s) notebook, and if he writes a name in that notebook while visualizing the person’s face, the person will die forty seconds later. Light has been using this to kill off criminals, to try to make the world a better place. Now, of course, the police aren’t too keen about him murdering all these criminals, although the public does seem to like him and starts calling him Kira, which is more or less what “killer” sounds like in a Japanese accent. So, although some of the public are lauding him, the police are trying to figure out who Kira is, how he is killing all these criminals, and how they can stop him—whereas Light is, of course, trying to keep his identity secret while trying to build his new world order via mass murder. Well, technically serial killing, but they call it mass murder in the books.

This is our setup: Light’s father is actually the person in charge of the Kira task force at the police station, and one day Light goes to the police station to deliver something to his father, only to discover that no one from the task force is there. But he does overhear a conversation involving a young woman who has appeared at the police station, and she claims to need to talk to the task force because she has essential information for bringing down Kira. And this is important also: the Shinigami who owns the notebook follows Light around, and only Light can see and hear him. The Shinigami himself says straight out what the stakes of the scene are: If this woman actually has such information, that could be lethal for Kira.

Those are our stakes—Light has to figure out if she has the information, and if she does, he has to stop her, or the police will figure out who he is and take him down, and he will probably be executed. On the other hand, we have this young woman, whose motivation is to bring down Kira, who killed her fiancé. But at the same time, although she’s very bright and she has ideas of how to find Kira, she’s not entirely confident in them, and so she wants someone to validate her ideas. These are our two motivations. (And the Shinigami just wants to be amused, essentially, and is giving commentary on the two humans.) So the scene matters.

Let’s start the scene: They’re in the police station. Do we need a lot of details about the police station? No—the only thing we really need to know is that there are security cameras, and so Light wants to leave the station. There are, of course, drawings here because this is manga, but the drawings are for the most part just them (Light and the young woman). I’d like to imagine that, if it was written as a novel, it wouldn’t say things like “Her coat shifted as she looked at him” or “He looked back at her.” Instead, we only have the essential bits, many of which are brought through dialogue. When Light first engages with this woman, he is charming, and the Shinigami comments on this—giving us commentary and character analysis. Who is this person who’s acting like this; who’s this charming young man? Because up to this point, we’ve been told a bit that Light is charming, and we know that he’s a top student and he’s intelligent, but all the real interactions he’s had that show his manipulation and his charm have been from a distance or have just been told to us. This is the first time we’ve really seen it ourselves, and the commentary from the Shinigami just backs up how unusual this behavior is compared to how Light acts in private.

So Light becomes very charming and he gets the woman to walk outside with him. He suspects that she may indeed have information that could prove fatal to him, and so he uses a very simple but intelligent tactic, which is, “Hi, my name’s Light; what’s your name?” She gives him her name, and he writes it down in the Death Note. Again, this is not a stage direction. The only text we need to know: he is writing it down on, well, technically a piece of paper torn from the Death Note. And then he’s looking at his watch—not stage directions. These are essential. We don’t need to know if it’s windy, or what color her hair is, or that they walked a few more steps. We need to know that he writes down her name and that he looks at the watch. And then forty seconds pass, and she does not die. And Light realizes this is a careful, cautious, intelligent woman; she gave a fake name. And as they continue to talk, he realizes that she does indeed have essential information for the police that could prove lethal to him.

So, her motivations: she likes this young man, and she wants to prove her theory. But his motivations have become very sharp: “I have to kill this woman, and I have to do it before she gets back to the police station, and she’s going to turn back within a couple of minutes. But she’s already given me a fake name—how do I get her real name from her when she’s already cautious, when she knows that Kira can kill if he has a name?” The Shinigami in the background is saying, “Well, you can do this . . .” But Light is determined—again showing character—and through his thoughts (thoughts count as dialogue, in some ways) we see what he actually thinks of this woman, and we see that he’s determined to beat her through dialogue, not through making a deal with the Shinigami or through physical violence. He is proud and he is determined . . .

And he succeeds. While they’re walking together, at the last moment, he does indeed charmingly manipulate her into giving him her name. So here, non–stage directions are that they turn back toward the police station. That’s all we really need to know. And then, once he gets her real name, he writes it down in the notebook and he keeps checking his watch. Of all parts of the scene, the one that is most essential to the series as a whole comes next, and it comes through dialogue. She says, “Why do you keep checking your watch?” And at the very last second, at the very moment before the forty seconds are up and his victory is complete, he says, “Because I’m Kira.” He gloats in the moment of victory, he wants her to know he’s won, and he is absolutely confident that he’s won. And he gloats before the Death Note takes hold to kill her.

This matters. The reader needs to know this; it needs to be set up for later. It tells us so much that is essential to his character and also to the person he is becoming through using the Death Note. We already knew some things about him, but this . . . this is essential.

We’ve seen her character, we’ve seen his character, and we even learned a little more about the Shinigami. It pushed the plot forward. There were a few moments of comic relief and commentary, especially from the Shinigami but also in Light’s thoughts. And there was no fluff, nothing inessential. It was a supreme action scene almost entirely done through dialogue.

Go and do likewise.

Before I go—as an editor, I must get into, at least briefly, the concept of dialogue tags. This is something a lot of people get right, except once in a while they don’t. And I have come across a couple of published books that . . . I can’t help but notice, I found them fairly unreadable. So, dialogue tags. Our former CMO, Jeannie, likes to refer to dialogue tags as part of the punctuation. That’s not a bad way to think about it. A dialogue tag is part of the same sentence as the dialogue it’s attached to and is separated from the dialogue by typically a comma, although occasionally an exclamation mark or question mark. A dialogue tag is simply a noun (either a pronoun or the speaker’s name) plus a speaking verb. So “she said,” “he replied,” “Jeremy explained,” “Susan answered.” All of these are speaking words; you can say or reply or tell or exclaim—but mostly say. Mostly, use “say/said” with words. You cannot smile words. You can, arguably, laugh or hiss words, but you cannot “sit down” words. You cannot “look in the mirror” words.

An example of a proper dialogue tag would be: “My goodness, that’s a long list,” he said. Not: “My, that’s a big camera,” he smiled. Instead, you need to have “he smiled” as a separate sentence. So: “My, that’s a big camera.” He smiled. [The video contains a cheat sheet to help you out.]

Do you have any other advice, comments, or questions about how to write great dialogue in a book? Leave them in the comments!

For more writing tips, check out our Advice from an Editor YouTube series, or this set of blog posts.

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Deborah J. Natelson

Deborah lives with a fluffy member of fauna named Flora and two pretty black kitties. She is the author of Bargaining Power, a smart, twisty fantasy thriller; and various other books. Her author website is www.deborahjnatelson.com.