The Four Threes of Dialogue

If you want to let your story ‘show’ rather than tell, then using dialogue to do so is often overlooked or underutilised. Perhaps this is because many writers, particularly those just beginning on the writer’s journey, fail to understand how powerful dialogue can be when used effectively. When you get it right, dialogue – whether it is in soliloquy or conversation between two or more people – can help move a story along as well as open up information about your characters and how they feel and react: in other words, who they are.

But, how to write great dialogue that does the job you want it to do? Here are a few tips that will get you on your way:

3 Grammatical Rules of Speech

• Every time the speaker changes use a new paragraph.
• Each new paragraph within a single conversation should be indented.
• Use speech marks correctly – all dialogue should be enclosed within them, and when a person’s speech stretches over more than one paragraph then then each new paragraph is opened with speech marks but only the final paragraph should have closing speech marks.

3 dialogue do’s to keep the flow

• Keep your dialogue short and sweet. Lengthy passages of dialogue might seem like a great way to get loads of information to the reader, but they become boring and therefore ineffectual.
• Make what a person says, and how he says it, tell the reader something about that character. Think about the words used, and how they will be used. Let what the character says say something about situation and circumstance, and how that character reacts.
• Give the dialogue action. Most people keep doing something else while they are talking. Perhaps they wring their hands, or they could be flipping through paperwork, opening a bottle of wine, or pouring a cup of tea. You get the picture. Let you reader get it, too.

3 dialogue don’ts to keep the reader engaged

• Don’t punctuate every sentence with ‘he said’, ‘she said’. Use them sparsely. When your dialogue is good, it will be obvious who is speaking (partly because of the grammar, but also because your characters talk differently).
• The same goes for adverbs. You shouldn’t need to say “he said angrily” because it should be clear from his words and the context of the passage that is the emotion portrayed.
• Don’t use dialect. Your reader will add accent in his or her head. You don’t need to overdo the little abbreviations and missed ‘h’s’, for example. Keep your speech in proper English, and let the reader’s imagination do the rest.

 It’s tricky, but it can work

Good dialogue can be tricky. It needs to move the story forward and reveal important character information without seeming artificial. It needs to seem realistic without actually being realistic.

Here’s a passage of dialogue from a short story I wrote for WordPlay’s Shorts for Autumn, our Writers’ Circle Anthology Award winner. The story was titled ‘The One that Got Away’, and is a coming-of-age tale.

‘Next Saturday, Dad…do you mind if I give fishing a miss? Only I sort of promised a friend that I’d go to the cinema.’

I’ve always known this day would come, of course, but no matter how prepared I thought I would be, I’m not.

‘Who is she?’ I ask. It’s the only thing I can think of saying.

Once more he does that teenage reddening thing and gives me a ‘please don’t pester me’ look.

‘I suppose I could always come to the cinema, too, if you like.’

He looks at me in horror. ‘Dad, you wouldn’t!’

I look directly at him, raise my eyebrows, and shrug my shoulders in a sort of ’what else have I got to do?’ way.

‘She’s just a friend, Dad.’

‘Uh, huh. And does this friend have a name, then?’ I ask, sticking with the ‘I really want to watch a movie next week’ stare.

‘You won’t believe me if I tell you.’

‘Try me.’

Notice that the exchange tells you something about the moods of both myself and my son. This single passage gives you some idea of character traits, how we both react to each other. It’s punctuated with just enough action points to add to the flow, not distract from it, and this helps to move the story along.

3 ways to improve your dialogue

If you want to write better dialogue, then here are three things you can do to improve: click to tweet

• Take notice of how your favourite authors do it. Read their work and listen to the speech they give their characters.
• Talking about listening, when you are out and about, listen to what is going on around you and how others speak. You never know, you might also pick up a tale or two.
• When you’ve written your dialogue, read it back, out loud to yourself or, if you’re brave enough, to a friend or writing buddy.

The four threes of dialogue: stick to these and you’ll soon be writing speech like the bestsellers.