20 Rules for Writing Dialogue

Depending on your style, you can have little or a lot of dialogue in your story. But you have to have it.

Writing dialogue is not an easy task. The dialogue has to sound like a real conversation, but not too much. 

What Is Dialogue?

Dialogue is defined as a conversation between two or more characters in a book, play, or film.

There are 2 types of dialogue:

Outer dialogue. This is what a character says out loud to another character or as a monologue. Inner dialogue. Character’s thoughts that happen within a character’s mind. 

Dialogue Rules

1. Dialogue moves the story forward. If the dialogue doesn’t add anything to your story, cut it.

2. Dialogue should reveal information about the character. Either through spoken words or internal thoughts.

3. Every time a new person speaks, create a new paragraph. For stylistic reasons, you can stay in the same paragraph if you have back-and-forth dialogue between characters. You can also have dialogue and narration in the same paragraph if the narration refers to the character. 

4. The first line of dialogue is always indented.

5. Said is not dead. Use simple dialogue tags like said, answered, replied, and avoid more colorful tags like roared, defended, exclaimed… Most of the time, readers don’t notice the word ‘said.’ But they sure notice if you use ‘ejaculated.’

6. Keep it brief. Don’t use unnecessary words and don’t have pages and pages of dialogue with little or no action.  

7. Skip the small talk. Get rid of hellos, how-are-yous, and goodbyes. Get right to the point of the dialogue. Small talk slows the pacing of your story. Use small talk intentionally, for example, if a character is stalling. 

8. The Three-Beat Rule. Have a maximum of 3 dialogue beats at a time. After that, you should insert a dialogue tag, an action tag, or another character speaking. 

9. Say the dialogue out loud or use text-to-speech software or a website to hear if the dialogue sounds realistic. 

10. Give each character a unique way of speaking and thinking. A character can be forceful or passive. One may say little, while another rambles. You accomplish that with word choice, sentence length, and structure. One character speaks in short sentences, other uses long and complex sentences. Do the characters use informal or formal language?  

11. Be consistent. Make sure a character speaks the same way throughout the book. If a character doesn’t speak a lot at the beginning of the book, don’t give him paragraphs of dialogue at the end of the book.

12. Use appropriate slang. Hospital staff has their own way of speaking that is different from the way teenagers speak.

13. Dialogue changes depending on who the character is speaking to. A character will talk differently with their parents than with their friends or their boss.

14. Show, don’t tell. Instead of the character saying “I’m angry.” use action tags to show the character is angry. Or show it through dialogue by give them a clipped way of speaking (one word answers, short sentences).

15. Long speeches should be avoided. Long paragraphs of dialogue get boring for the readers and they start to skip through it. Have other characters interrupt or add action tags to make long dialogue easier to read.

16. Don’t info dump. Don’t use dialogue as a way to get information to the reader. If you do, be short and to the point. Do not start the dialogue with “As you know…”

17. Keep names to a minimum. Don’t have the characters say each other’s name out loud. Include names in the dialogue only when it makes sense or for emphasis.

18. Don’t repeat dialogue tags. Every line of dialogue doesn’t need a dialogue tag, especially if you have only 2 characters talking. Remove unnecessary dialogue tags and replace some of them with action tags.

19. Don’t use the same dialogue style throughout your book. Mix it up. Have the characters interrupt each other. Have dialogue tags or action tags at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the dialogue. Have single lines of dialogue without dialogue tags.

20. Don’t write an accent the way it’s heard. It’ll distract the reader and pull them out of the story. Saying the character speaks with an accent is enough. You can have another character comment on the accent. You can also give the character a word or a phrase that represents the accent, but be careful about using it too often.

Conclusion

There is a lot to know about writing dialogue, but with reading books and a little practice, you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Happy writing,

xo Knox