(LOGO)
Hellooo, everybody! A lot of writers come to me with their writing woes. And of all the
complaints I hear about, the one that comes up the most is dialogue. You people hate writing dialogue.
It never comes across and naturally, it rambles on and on, you don't know what your
characters would say. As for me, I really like writing dialogue. I love building characters,
analyzing their personalities, creating connections, and obviously dialogue is a great
way to do all these things. So I'm going to give you some tips for creating natural dialogue that's
enjoyable to read. All the stuff I'm about to say is stuff that I do in my own personal writing
process, and I'm pretty damn good at dialogue tooting my own horn. Toot, toot. The first step is
to get to know your characters. This is the work that needs to be done before you start writing the
dialogue. You need to know your characters fully before you start writing for them. Basically,
if your characters don't feel like real people, you're gonna have a really hard time writing their
dialogue. Sounds like some foofy bullshit, but hear me out. Think of the people you know really
well in real life. A mom, a sibling, a significant other. If I asked you, how would they respond to
a difficult situation? Or what would they say if they were really excited? You'd be able to
answer that, right? Not only that, you'd probably be able to give a really specific answer almost
immediately. If you know your characters just as well as you know your family or friends, then
their dialogue should come to you just as quickly. The second step is to give your dialogue purpose.
Typically, dialogue serves one of two purposes: either you're trying to build the character,
or you're trying to move the plot along. But usually, dialogue should be a little bit of
both. You want your dialogue to show the readers what your characters are about. Are they happy,
cynical, rebellious, brooding, and obviously your characters should be discussing shit that's
relevant to the plot or subplots. If neither of these elements are addressed, then your dialogue’s
useless. Which brings me to my third point, avoid meaningless conversation. Here's what
I'm talking about. “Hi.” “Hi, how are you?” “I'm fine. You?” “I'm good. How was work?” “Same old,
same old.” Now this whole conversation’s pretty standard. We've all had exchanges like this,
probably on a daily basis. So it's normal for writers to wanna include it. But here's the thing,
it's boring. No one cares about any of that shit. If you imagine your characters having
an exchange like this, just add a bit of narrative explaining that the exchange went
down. Eve and Jason exchanged pleasantries before sitting down for dinner. Boom, done. Then you can
dive into the dialogue that readers really care about. Now there is an exception to this rule,
as always. Meaningless conversation is okay, iff it's not actually meaningless. You can
include dialogue that doesn't serve a purpose if the way it's spoken or the tone of voice does.
Let's go back and use the same exchange that I did earlier except change the manner in which
it's spoken. “Hi.” (Dry Response) “Hi.” “How are you?” (Dry Response) “Fine, you?” “I'm good. How
was work? (Dry Response) “Same old same old.” In this situation. The words themselves offer pretty
much no value, but the way in which they're spoken could be super important to the story. Someone's
pissed the fuck off and kind off, and kinda passive aggressive. So long as you communicate
the feeling of the moment, basic dialogue won't read as meaningless. The next rule to follow is
to give each character a distinct voice. I don't know if you've noticed, but not all us human folk
talk the same. You’d think that wasn't common knowledge, based on some of the books I've read.
The same robotic voice all spoken with perfect grammar. Look, I'm a writer and I still say:
whatever, like, uh, gonna wanna, poop, dickhole. You need to make sure that all of your characters
speak differently, and in a way that's reflective of who they are and what they've been through. I'm
not saying each character needs to have a unique accent or a catchphrase, but our personality and
life experience plays a role in how we communicate with others. Think about whether or not your
characters would be emotional, or cuss, or use slang, or be polite. All of this crap varies
from person to person. On a related note, the next rule of writing dialogue is to keep it age, time,
and setting appropriate. Sometimes writers think they're writing appropriately for a character and
they're not. I see middle aged writers add hip dialogue for their teenage characters,
and no. Maybe that would have been hip dialogue when they were teenagers, but certainly not
today. And I've read books where the characters were supposed to be speaking in Old English,
but the dialogue sounded more like Siri. (Robotic Voice) Old English does not mean that you cannot
use contractions and that you must type like a robot. Writers, if you don't know about somethin’,
research it cuz if you don't know what you're doing, the dialogue’s gonna read as inauthentic
and unbelievable, and that's a problem. The fifth rule for writing dialogue…is it the fifth rule?
The sixth rule? Whatever. The whatevereth rule for writing dialogue, make sure it flows. This
is actually sort of counterintuitive, because conversations in real life don't always flow. Real
dialogue can be disjointed, or go off on tangents, or someone can interrupt in the middle and be
like, “Oh, wait, before I forget, let me tell you ‘bout blah, blah, blah.” These are things you
should typically avoid. You want the majority of conversations to run smoothly, because then it'll
be much easier for the reader to understand what's going on. It might not be 100% true to real life,
but it'll enhance the entertainment level of your novel. Now there is a trick to writing smooth,
seamless dialogue, and that's that you want to write all the dialogue first,
with a zero narrative. Don't write any of the: he said, she gasped, he wrinkled his nose,
she grabbed his hand. Skip that crap. This will help you focus solely on the words being spoken.
Because sometimes adding the narrative can be distracting. If you have a lot of people talking
you can even color code the dialogue, that way you can track how many times each person
is contributing to the conversation so you don't inadvertently exclude anyone. But bottom line,
write out the entire conversation, dialogue only. Once you're done, you can go through it,
make sure it's nice and pretty. And then add in all that super awesome narrative. Which
brings us to my next rule. Don't just write what your character said, show how they said
it. It's extremely important to illustrate the emotion behind whatever conversation’s going on.
Whenever you're conveying emotion in writing, it's always best show, not tell. What's the easiest way
to do this? Body language. If your character is super crazy mad, maybe he's clenching his fists,
or grinding his teeth, or a vein is bulging from his neck. If another character is super
surprised or scared, maybe his eyes widen, his face drained of color, he flinched,
or his mouth gaped open. These all communicate emotion in a visual way that a reader is gonna be
more apt to connect to. Now it's also important to know when to hold off on these nuances. If you're
trying to write a really fast paced scene, like quick witty banter or a heated shouting match,
then these notes should only be added when necessary. Like when an important action occurs,
or to clarify who’s speaking. If a conversation is really firing off, then excessive narrative will
slow it down. But other than these exceptions, painting a picture of what a character is doing,
or how they're speaking, will really transform basic dialogue into an engaging conversation.
And here is my last rule for writing dialogue, outline the conversation ahead of time. I know
you've already outlined the entire book, right? But if you're gonna be writing an especially
long conversation, or you wanna cover a lot of points, make yourself a little flowchart. That
way you won't forget any points and be forced to awkwardly add them in somewhere at the end. Even
if you don't know exactly what's gonna be said, a flowchart should help guide you in the right
direction. You should already know what you're trying to accomplish with your dialogue. Maybe
you're trying to build a connection between two characters or share pivotal plot points with the
reader. Outline these points in the order in which you want them to occur, and then follow
your outline while you're writing. Boom. Shit just got easier. Anywho those are my rules for writing
dialogue. This is all stuff that I do whenever I write dialogue, and it's made the process super
seamless. I encourage you to implement these steps into your own writing and let me know what you
think. And on that note, don't forget to subscribe to my channel. I post new videos on Wednesdays and
sometimes I draw on my face. (Silly Noises) And if you have any questions or if there's something
you'd like me to talk about in my next video, leave me a comment or tweet me @JennaMoreci! Bye!
Ah fuck. I have to run errands. I didn't think this through.
(Singing) I am the most feminine man in the world. La, la, la, la. Hey!