by Simon Wright

Created on: May 25, 2009

Character dialogue is essential if you want your novel or short story to really come to life. Dialogue helps to break up the narrative and it is nearly always better to allow the progression of the story to be told through your characters' lips. Writing dialogue isn't always easy, however, so let's look at how writers can improve on this important facet of their profession.

Well developed characters are easier to write dialogue for:

This is a pretty obvious point but the more developed a character is, the easier it should be for you to find their voice. You know their background, what motivates them and the intricacies of their personality, so you know what words they would use, their level of literacy and their sense of humour. This is why it's useful to devote some time, before you commence your novel, on fleshing out your main characters' traits and personality.

Differentiating your characters:

A common challenge that writers face is the threat that their characters ending up sounding too similar. This might be particularly the case if all your characters are the same gender, same age and from the same social strata. This is where characters personalities become important. One of the group may be a joker, another may be naturally pessimistic and another may be easily riled. If you've taken the time to establish what the differences are between your characters, then it should become easier to write dialogue that is both natural and where the reader can readily differentiate between the various characters.

Idealized speech:

If you ever observe people speaking in real life, you'll be aware how most of our conversations are punctuated by ums and ers and other clumsy utterances. However, most writers choose to cut these out of their dialogue, so novel dialogue can be seen as a form of idealized speech. On the other hand, you do need a degree of realism to it. If you have a character who is meant to be an uneducated uncivilized brute, then you probably don't want them to sound like they've just swallowed a dictionary.

Regional dialects:

There may be occasions where you want to convey that a character is from a particular part of a country and, in such circumstances, it is valid to use local dialect when they speak. However, one of the really big challenges that this can present to the author is ensuring that the character then remains true to that dialect through the remainder of the novel. If you have a character speaking in broad Scottish dialect in

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>