Who doesn’t struggle with dialog? Anybody? It’s okay to admit it. Everybody struggles with it. Okay, not quite everybody, but nearly. I don’t struggle with it. Not ever. Okay, now I’ve pissed you off. You feel set up. But … no, don’t quit reading … I’m going to tell you my secret. As I started to say, don’t give up. When you finish reading this post, you’ll have an easier time with dialog, too.

The first thing you need to do, and I can’t make this point strongly enough, is READ YOUR DIALOG OUT LOUD! I know you feel silly. Do it anyway. And don’t just mumble your way through it. READ IT IN CHARACTER! With the emphasis your characters would use. Now I should tell you that I’m an advocate of reading all your work out loud, but you MUST do it with the dialog, if nothing else.

Next, EAVESDROP! Eavesdrop on all different kinds of conversations. Listen in wherever you find yourself. You can learn a lot that way. The first thing you learn is that PEOPLE DON’T SPEAK IN COMPLETE, GRAMMATICALLY PERFECT SENTENCES. That’s a biggie, an important point that writers often miss. The second, equally important thing you will learn is that PEOPLE DON’T TELL EACH OTHER THINGS THEY ALREADY KNOW. Now, I realize that writers use dialog as a way of conveying information to the reader, aka info-loading, but the information must flow organically in the conversation. Other important things you can learn from eavesdropping are:

• You can tell a lot by the way people speak to each other. For example, if they finish each others sentences they likely know each other well or have been together a long time;
• Ditto if they have similar speech patterns;
• How is their tone? Is their diction clipped? Does their tone drip sarcasm? The tones people use when they converse definitely convey their mood or attitude;
• Notice body language. Dialog doesn’t just come from the mouth. It comes from posture, gestures, angle of the head – you need to work all of these things into your dialog;
• What are people doing while they’re speaking? Are they focusing directly on the other(s) in the conversation? Or are they active? Is the activity an avoidance to attend to the conversation or a vehicle to keep the conversation moving?

The point of all the above is to help your dialog appear natural. As humans, we communicate … incessantly. And that very fact is why we can always tell when dialog is stilted or unnatural. Try putting these tips into practice and see if they help your dialog. Then let me know.