Say What?...3 Exercises for Realistic Dialogue

We've all read it…really awful dialogue. Writing realistic dialogue is the hardest part of writing (in my opinion). Here are three exercises that I picked up studying script writing. Maybe they will help you hone your skills for realistic dialogue.

1) The Art of Eavesdropping

Pay attention to the conversations around you while you're standing in line at the bank or in a restaurant. Listen specifically for word choice and how much detail the speakers give. At your first opportunity, recreate the conversation on paper, a cocktail napkin or whatever's handy. Sketch out each person's character based on what you heard, including what that person does for a living, how old, economic status, region, etc. Remember to base it just on what you heard, not what you saw.

2) Who's That?


Write sets of dialogue between your main characters at various points in your story idea--the opening or first meeting, midway, and at the climax. Then record yourself reading the dialogue aloud with no mention of the names to see if the characters can be distinguished by their speech patterns and content when you play it back. If you have a writing partner or someone else you trust, let him listen to the recording.

3) I Can Do That

Dialogue doesn't happen in a vacuum. Your characters are usually going to be doing something while they are speaking. So act out the scenes with dialogue to see if you can really maintain a conversation during jogging when you're a 45-year-old desk jockey who has not missed many meals. Or if you're lifting a box full of 40 pounds of the stuff that's been gathering dust in the back of your closet for the last 20 years, will you really say politely "Honey, would you mind getting the door? Thank you so much!" I think not.




One Bonus Tip:

Recording your dialogue helps to gauge rhythm and flow, helps eliminate unintentional wordplay like cutesy alliterations or tongue twisters. If you can't read it without faltering, your characters can't say it realistically. Recording also helps to catch when your characters are using names too frequently or giving "idiot speeches," when one character says to another "do remember when you did this, that and this and it got us in trouble over here and your mom grounded us and…" Of course the other character remembers. He was there. The whole span is there to fill the reader in on the backstory.. Soap Operas do it all the time, but that doesn't make it great literature. "…and my dad was really your oldest brother and…." There are other ways to reveal the backstory.