Dialogue. It’s an indispensable part of every story, and one of the most important literary devices in an author’s playbook. When written well, dialogue can help us create convincing characters, revealing important information about their histories, motivations, strengths and shortcomings, and offering insight into how they feel. Good dialogue doesn’t just bring characters to life; it peels back their layers, exposing all of the wonderful and terrible complexities that make them believable—their trauma, their prejudices, their flaws and their strengths. Their hopes and dreams. All the human things that make us love them, root for them, hate them. 

And character development is just one of the purposes of dialogue. A capable writer uses dialogue to drive a story’s plot forward, to bring the reader closer to its climax and, ultimately its conclusion. Dialogue can also help charge scenes with emotion, heightening tension between characters or building suspense ahead of a key event or turning point in the plot.

Finally, the most basic purpose dialogue serves is to break up the action and descriptions that form the bulk of your manuscript and improve the flow and pacing of your story. When written well, it helps draw readers deeper into the tale, maintaining the “vivid and continuous dream” that American novelist and essayist John Gardner dubbed the cornerstone of good fiction.

Dialogue enhances writing in so many ways—but only if it’s done the right way. 

Beginning writers often make the mistake of assuming dialogue won’t be a tough literary device to master. It seems absurd that it would be, when you think about it—we use words to communicate with each other every day. How difficult could it possibly be to make our characters interact in a way that sounds natural and moves our story along? 

It can be pretty difficult, actually. Getting dialogue right on paper requires skill and an ear for realistic speech patterns, and even then, a practiced editor will probably find a hundred flaws. 

The truth is, even accomplished authors struggle with capturing the natural flow of conversation. But if you’re getting hung up on things like word choice and cadence in the beginning stages of writing your screenplay, novel, or short story, you’re missing the bigger picture:

It doesn’t matter how convincing your dialogue is, if it doesn’t serve any purpose. 

So how do you write great dialogue? These days it seems there are formulas for every aspect of the writing process—for plotting, for developing character arcs and backstories, for building worlds and establishing settings. Surely there’s a trick to it, a tried and tested method for writing convincing forward-focused conversations that breathe life into your story and your characters. 

Right?

Unfortunately, there is no magic recipe. Part of the “secret” is plenty of practice, and a lot of the magic happens in the editing phase. That said, you don’t need to dive into the process blindly. Understanding what makes dialogue powerful will save you a lot of time and effort when you sit down to clean up your first draft. Here are some tips and exercises that can set you on the right track to writing great conversations. 

Start by getting to know your characters’ voices

We don’t all have the same way of speaking. From our levels of education to the neighborhoods we grew up in and even our personalities, so many different factors influence things like the pace at which we speak, whether we’re loud or soft-spoken,  the words we use and the ways that we pronounce them. 

The next time you find yourself in a busy setting, try to eavesdrop on the different conversations happening all around you. Airports are great places to find inspiration for accents and speech patterns, but you can practice this exercise anywhere: a coffee shop, a crowded bar, the break room at your office—any spot will do, as long as there’s chatter. You’ll quickly notice that everyone has a unique way of communicating, whether it’s a hint of an accent, a slight speech impediment, a tendency to emphasize certain vowels or consonants…the list goes on. Real people express themselves in different ways. If you want to draw readers into your story and keep them there, your characters should, too. 

Once you’ve done a little bit of field work, take your findings to the page. Pick two contrasting characters—they don’t need to be your own. For this example, let’s use a young prince who is next in line for the throne and a serving girl attending a royal ball in disguise with the help of her fairy godmother. Both characters come from completely different backgrounds. They likely have very different levels of education. Disparate interests, insecurities and aspirations. Perhaps the girl was raised in a country village where everyone lingers on their vowels and most of the population is illiterate. Maybe the prince was neglected by his parents as a child and thus becomes very talkative the moment somebody pays him any attention. 

Consider your characters’ unique backstories, their personalities, and what their voices might sound like as a result. Then make them interact. 

Accustomed to speaking in public and tutored by the kingdom’s brightest scholars, our prince might feel very comfortable discussing a broad range of subjects, from literature to politics. Small talk spills easily from his lips, fluid and peppered with lofty words our serving girl does not recognize or understand. As the daughter of a stablemaster in a village where everyone lives one bad harvest away from penury, she doesn’t have much to say about courtly affairs or the latest discoveries in astronomy. Embarrassed by her ignorance and terrified that the prince will see through her disguise if she mispeaks, she’s tight-lipped at first, replying to his questions with careful non-answers. But when he mentions his love of horses, her eyes light up and suddenly she has much to say indeed. Emboldened and excited, she interrupts the prince frequently, her sentences long and emphatic. He notices the way she draws out her vowels and begins to suspect she’s no ordinary noble.   

When your characters speak in a way that makes sense given their backgrounds and personalities, they become real. This is why it’s important to remember and use your characters’ voices when writing dialogue. 

Remove any elements that distract from the conversation and the story

Once you have written out a dialogue between two of your characters, go back and clean it up. Look for dialogue tags—things like “he said,” or “she shouted,”— and remove as many as possible. While sometimes necessary, dialogue tags should be used sparingly because they weaken your writing, slowing conversation and distracting from that “vivid and continuous dream” by drawing attention to the author. During the editing process, try to find better ways to clue the reader in on which character is speaking. Every time you come across a dialogue tag, ask yourself, “Would the reader know who was speaking if I took this out?” If the answer is “yes,” kill the tag. If the answer is “no,” look for other means to establish the speaker’s identity, such as gestures and body language.   

Consider these two examples:

Example 1:

“How did you learn so much about horses?” asked the prince. 

“My father breeds them,” replied Cinderella.

Example 2: 

The prince tilted his head. “How did you learn so much about horses?” 

“My father…breeds them.” Cinderella studied the patterns in the marble beneath her feet, cursing inwardly at the near slip. 

The second example establishes which character is speaking and when without having to spell it out for the reader. It keeps the reader’s focus on what is being said and reveals information about each character’s emotions during the exchange.

If you must use a dialogue tag, consider alternative words for “said,” like “whispered,” “sang,” “spat,” or “pleaded.” But use these sparingly, too. While they do help convey emotion, as a rule the best dialogue tags are the ones your reader doesn’t notice.

Use body language

We already talked about using body language as a way to establish who is speaking. It can also help strengthen your dialogue in other ways, especially when it is at odds with what your character is saying. 

For example, a woman laughs at a joke her husband makes at a dinner party, but beneath the table her fingers curl into a fist. On the eve of battle, a group of soldiers in their bunker swap tales of past misadventures. However, in the moments between each bout of laughter, one hardened private can’t seem to stop bouncing his leg, while another bites his lip and picks absently at an old scar along his forearm. Actions like these—nervous ticks, a change in posture, distinct mannerisms—are also a kind of dialogue and often work hand-in-hand with what characters say, revealing interesting things about their state of mind or helping to set the mood of a scene. While using a character’s voice is crucial to crafting good dialogue, it is not the only element you should rely on. Use characters’ movements to make interactions more impactful and keep your story moving forward. 

Keep your dialogue real

Stephen King said, “The key to writing good dialogue is honesty.” That means, keep it real. Very few people go through life saying exactly what’s on their minds. Humans are biased. We lie. We exaggerate. We withhold information for all kinds of reasons and twist the truth to suit our own ends. We tell things the way we want others to see them, not necessarily how they are. 

No matter what the purpose behind any given interaction in your story, one important key to writing powerful, convincing dialogue is to make it realistic. If it’s in line with your character’s personality, let him or her blunder through a lie—or spin one with chilling, practiced ease. And remember that sometimes what characters don’t say can be just as telling about their personalities and motivations as what they do say. Perhaps your character clams up anytime he’s asked about his romantic life. Or maybe she overuses big words to prove her superior intelligence to others. The way your characters speak reveals a lot about who they are, shedding light on insecurities and traits that might ultimately play important roles in how the events in your story unfold. 

Get everything out in the first draft and worry about refining it later

Many seasoned authors will caution you against trying to draft and edit at the same time. It’s a solid piece of professional writing advice and one every aspiring writer should try to remember during the writing process. No matter what kind of project you are working on, when writing your first draft, just focus on getting all of your ideas out onto the page. Remember that nothing you write is set in stone; a lot of it will, and should, change between your first attempt and your final manuscript. The goal during this stage of the process is to get everything out without overthinking any of it—and that includes dialogue. 

If you struggle with capturing cadence, don’t dwell on it too much. You’ve ideally already spent some time figuring out who your characters are and how they speak and act. This is the time to figure out what you want your characters to say and why. You’ll have plenty of time later to go back and make their speech sound convincing. 

Follow inspiration where it leads you. Make your characters interact with each other, regardless of whether or not those conversations drive your plot or enhance your story. Even if it’s just small talk with no concrete purpose behind it, every scrap of dialogue you write for your characters during this initial stage serves as practice and will help you develop and refine their unique voices. 

Question every interaction when you review what you’ve written

During the editing process, analyze every conversation you’ve written so far. Now is when you ask yourself questions like: “Does this dialogue move my plot along? Does it offer any insight into my characters’ pasts, motivations or feelings? Does it sound like my characters? Does it help set the mood or establish the atmosphere in this particular scene?” If the dialogue doesn’t do all of these things, cut it out. Anything less is useless clutter and only distracts from the story you’re trying to tell.

Learning to write powerful dialogue doesn’t happen overnight. Don’t get discouraged if you return to your manuscript and realize many of your characters’ interactions sound dead-end or forced. Remember the only way to get better is to practice, and one of the beautiful things about the drafting stage is that you can refine your writing as many times as you like until you have something that feels right. So create a routine, maybe put together a great music playlist you can write to, and keep at it. Soon you’ll be spinning fantastic dialogue without a second thought.