• Literacy Tips

How To Write Dialogue In A Story (With Examples)

One of the biggest mistakes made by writers is how they use dialogue in their stories. Today, we are going to teach you how to write dialogue in a story using some easy and effective techniques. So, get ready to learn some of the best techniques and tips for writing dialogue!

There are two main reasons why good dialogue is so important in works of fiction. First, good dialogue helps keep the reader interested and engaged in the story. Second, it makes your work easier to write, read and understand. So, if you want to write dialogue that is interesting, engaging and easy to read, keep on reading. We will be teaching you the best techniques and tips for writing dialogue in a story.

Internal vs External Dialogue

Direct vs indirect dialogue, 20 tips for formatting dialogue in stories, step 1: use a dialogue outline, step 2: write down a script, step 3: edit & review your script, step 4: sprinkle in some narrative, step 5: format your dialogue, what is dialogue .

Dialogue is the spoken words that are spoken between the characters of a story. It is also known as the conversation between the characters. Dialogue is a vital part of a story. It is the vehicle of the characters’ thoughts and emotions. Good dialogue helps show the reader how the characters think and feel. It also helps the reader better understand what is happening in the story. Good dialogue should be interesting, informative and natural. 

In a story, dialogue can be expressed internally as thoughts, or externally through conversations between characters. A character thinking to themself would be considered internal dialogue. Here there is no one else, just one character thinking or speaking to themselves:

Mary thought to herself, “what if I can do better…”

While two or more characters talking to each other in a scene would be an external dialogue:

“Watch out!” cried Sam. “What’s wrong with you?” laughed Kate.

In most cases, the words spoken by your character will be inside quotation marks. This is called direct dialogue. And then everything outside the quotation marks is called narrative:

“What do you want?” shrieked Penelope as she grabbed her notebooks. “Oh, nothing… Just checking if you needed anything,” sneered Peter as he tried to peek over at her notes.

Indirect dialogue is a summary of your dialogue. It lets the reader know that a conversation happened without repeating it exactly. For example:

She was still fuming from last night’s argument. After being called a liar and a thief, she had no choice but to leave home for good.

Direct dialogue is useful for quick conversations, while indirect dialogue is useful for summarising long pieces of dialogue. Which otherwise can get boring for the reader. Writers can combine both types of dialogue to increase tension and add drama to their stories.

Now you know some of the different types of dialogue in stories, let’s learn how to write dialogue in a story.

Here are the main tips to remember when formatting dialogue in stories or works of fiction:

  • Always use quotation marks: All direct dialogue is written inside quotation marks, along with any punctuation relating to that dialogue.

example of dialogue 1

  • Don’t forget about dialogue tags: Dialogue tags are used to explain how a character said something.  Each tag has at least one noun or pronoun, and one verb indicating how the dialogue is spoken. For example, he said, she cried, they laughed and so on.

example of dialogue 2

  • Dialogue before tags: Dialogue before the dialogue tags should start with an uppercase. The dialogue tag itself begins with a lowercase.

example of dialogue 3

  • Dialogue after tags: Both the dialogue and dialogue tags start with an uppercase to signify the start of a conversation. The dialogue tags also have a comma afterwards, before the first set of quotation marks.

example of dialogue 4

  • Lowercase for continued dialogue: If the same character continues to speak after the dialogue tags or action, then this dialogue continues with a lowercase.

example of dialogue 5

  • Action after complete dialogue: Any action or narrative text after completed dialogue starts with an uppercase as a new sentence.

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Action interrupting dialogue: If the same character pauses their dialogue to do an action, then this action starts with a lowercase.

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Interruptions by other characters: If another character Interrupts a character’s dialogue, then their action starts with an uppercase on a new line. And an em dash (-) is used inside the quotation marks of the dialogue that was interrupted. 

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Use single quotes correctly: Single quotes mean that a character is quoting someone else.

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • New paragraphs equal new speaker: When a new character starts speaking, it should be written in a new paragraph. 

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Use question marks correctly: If the dialogue ends with a question mark, then the part after the dialogue should begin with a lowercase.

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Exclamation marks: Similar to question marks, the next sentence should begin with a lowercase. 

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Em dashes equal being cut off: When a character has been interrupted or cut off in the middle of their speech, use an em dash (-).

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Ellipses mean trailing speech: When a character is trailing off in their speech or going on and on about something use ellipses (…). This is also good to use when a character does not know what to say.

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Spilt long dialogue into paragraphs: If a character is giving a long speech, then you can split this dialogue into multiple paragraphs. 

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Use commas appropriately: If it is not the end of the sentence then end the dialogue with a comma.

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Full stops to end dialogue: Dialogue ending with a full stop means it is the end of the entire sentence. 

how to write dialogue in a first person story

  • Avoid fancy dialogue tags: For example, ‘he moderated’ or ‘she articulated’. As this can distract the reader from what your characters are actually saying and the content of your story. It’s better to keep things simple, such as using he said or she said.
  • No need for names: Avoid repeating your character’s name too many times. You could use pronouns or even nicknames. 
  • Keep it informal: Think about how real conversations happen. Do people use technical or fancy language when speaking? Think about your character’s tone of voice and personality, what would they say in a given situation? 

Remember these rules, and you’ll be able to master dialogue writing in no time!

How to Write Dialogue in 5 Steps

Dialogue is tricky. Follow these easy steps to write effective dialogue in your stories or works of fiction:

A dialogue outline is a draft of what your characters will say before you actually write the dialogue down. This draft can be in the form of notes or any scribblings about your planned dialogue. Using your overall book outline , you can pinpoint the areas where you expect to see the most dialogue used in your story. You can then plan out the conversation between characters in these areas. 

A good thing about using a dialogue outline is that you can avoid your characters saying the same thing over and over again. You can also skim out any unnecessary dialogue scenes if you think they are unnecessary or pointless. 

Here is an example of a dialogue outline for a story:

dialogue outline example

You even use a spreadsheet to outline your story’s dialogue scenes.

In this step, you will just write down what the characters are saying in full. Don’t worry too much about punctuation and the correct formatting of dialogue. The purpose of this step is to determine what the characters will actually say in the scene and whether this provides any interesting information to your readers.

Start by writing down the full script of your character’s conversations for each major dialogue scene in your story. Here is an example of a dialogue script for a story:

write down your script

Review your script from the previous step, and think about how it can be shortened or made more interesting. You might think about changing a few words that the characters use to make it sound more natural. Normally the use of slang words and informal language is a great way to make dialogue between characters sound more natural. You might also think about replacing any names with nicknames that characters in a close relationship would use. 

The script might also be too long with plenty of unnecessary details that can be removed or summarised as part of the narration in your story (or as indirect dialogue). Remember the purpose of dialogue is to give your story emotion and make your characters more realistic. At this point you might also want to refer back to your character profiles , to see if the script of each character matches their personality. 

edit your script

Once your script has been perfected, you can add some actions to make your dialogue feel more believable to readers. Action or narrative is the stuff that your characters are actually doing throughout or in between dialogue. For example, a character might be packing up their suitcase, as they are talking about their holiday plans. This ‘narrative’ is a great way to break up a long piece of dialogue which otherwise could become boring and tedious for readers. 

add action to script

You have now planned your dialogue for your story. The final step is to incorporate these dialogue scenes into your story. Remember to follow our formatting dialogue formatting rules explained above to create effective dialogue for your stories!

format dialogue example

That’s all for today! We hope this post has taught you how to write dialogue in a story effectively. If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments below!

How To Write Dialogue In A Story

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Writing dialogue in a story requires us to step into the minds of our characters. When our characters speak, they should speak as fully developed human beings, complete with their own linguistic quirks and unique pronunciations.

Indeed, dialogue writing is essential to the art of storytelling . In real life, we learn about other people through their ideas and the words they use to express them. It is much the same for dialogue in fiction. Knowing how to write dialogue in a story will transform your character development , your prose style , and your story as a whole.

We’ve packed this article with dialogue writing tips and good examples of dialogue in a story. These tools will help your characters speak with their full uniqueness and complexity, while also helping you fully inhabit the people that populate your stories.

Let’s get into how to write dialogue effectively. First, what is dialogue in a story?

Inner Dialogue Definition

Indirect dialogue definition.

  • How to Write Dialogue: Elements of Good Dialogue Writing

How to Write Dialogue in a Story: 4 DOs of Dialogue Writing

  • How to Write Dialogue in a Story: 4 DON’Ts of Dialogue Writing

9 Devices for Writing Dialogue in a Story

Dialogue writing exercises, how to format dialogue, what is dialogue in a story.

Dialogue refers to any direct communication from one or more characters in the text. This communication is almost always verbal, except for instances of inner dialogue, where the character is speaking to themselves.

Dialogue definition: Direct communication from one or more characters in the text.

In works of Fantasy or Science Fiction, characters might communicate with each other telepathically or through non-human means. This would also count as dialogue in a story.

The importance of dialogue in a story cannot be overstated. The words that characters speak act as windows into their psyches: we can learn lots about people by what they say, as well as what they omit.

Additionally, dialogue allows for the exchange of information, which will advance the story’s plot. Any story that involves conflict between two or more people must involve dialogue, or else the story will never reach its climax and resolution.

Inner dialogue is a form of communication in which a character speaks with themselves. This is, essentially, a form of monologue or soliloquy . Inner dialogue allows the reader to view the character’s thoughts as they happen, transcribing their doubts, ideas, and emotions onto the page.

Inner dialogue definition: a form of communication in which a character speaks with themselves.

Inner dialogue can also be a memory or reminiscence, even if the character is not consciously speaking to themselves. If the narrator shows us a memory that the character is currently thinking about, then that character is still offering something to the narrative by means of unspoken conversation.

It is not necessary for any story to have inner dialogue. However, if you plan to use dynamic characters in your writing, then it probably makes sense to show the reader what that character’s inner world looks like. Developing complex, three dimensional characters is essential to telling a good story, which requires us to have some sort of window into those characters’ minds.

Indirect dialogue is dialogue, summarized. It is not put in quotes or italics; rather, it neatly sums up what a character said, without going into detail.

Indirect dialogue definition: dialogued, summarized.

In other words, we don’t get to see  how the character said something , we are only told what they said. This is useful for when the information is better summarized than told in excruciating details, because the narrator wants to get to the important dialogue, the dialogue that introduces new information or reveals important aspects of the character’s personality.

Haruki Murakami gives us a great example in  Kafka on the Shore :

I tell her that I’m actually fifteen, in junior high, that I stole my father’s money and ran away from my home in Nakano Ward in Tokyo. That I’m staying in a hotel in Takamatsu and spending my days reading at a library. That all of a sudden I found myself collapsed outside a shrine, covered in blood. Everything. Well,  almost everything. Not the important stuff I can’t talk about.

How to Write Dialogue: The Elements of Good Dialogue Writing

Every story needs dialogue. Unless you’re writing highly experimental fiction , your story will have main characters, and those characters will interact with the world and its other people.

That said, there’s no “correct” way to write dialogue. It all depends on who your characters are, the decisions they make, and how they interact with one another.

Nonetheless, good dialogue writing should do the following:

Develop Your Characters

A close study in how to write dialogue requires a close study in characterization. Your characters reveal who they are through dialogue: by paying close attention to your characters’ word choice , you can clue your reader into their personality traits and hidden psyches.

Your characters will often reveal key aspects of their personality through dialogue.

One character who can’t stop characterizing himself is Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye . J. D. Salinger’s anti-hero could be psychoanalyzed for hours. Take, for example, this excerpt from Holden’s inner dialogue:

“Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.”

What do we learn about Holden through this line? For starters, we learn that Holden is the type of person who analyzes and scrutinizes each word – just like writers do, perhaps. We also learn that Holden hates anything positive. Always a downer, Holden despises words of praise or grandeur, thinking the whole world is irresolvably flat, boring, and monotonous. He hates grandness almost as much as he hates phoniness, and both concepts are sure to make him sick.

Holden is a character who puts his entire personality on the page, and as readers, we can’t help but understand him – no matter how much we like him or hate him.

Set the Scene

Dialogue is a great way to explore the setting of your story. When the setting is explored through dialogue writing, both the characters and the reader experience the world of the story at the same time, making the writing feel more intimate and immediate.

When the setting is explored through dialogue writing, the writing feels more intimate and immediate.

You might have your character wander through the streets of New York, as Theo does in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Here’s an excerpt of inner dialogue:

“It was rainy, trees leafing out, spring deepening into summer; and the forlorn cry of horns on the street, the dank smell of the wet pavement had an electricity about it, a sense of crowds and static, lonely secretaries and fat guys with bags of carry-out, everywhere the ungainly sadness of creatures pushing and struggling to live.”

Notice Theo’s attention to detail, and the vibrant imagery he uses to capture the city’s energy. Of course, you might set the scene more simply, as Dorothy does when she says:

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

In only a few words, this line of dialogue advances not only the setting but also Dorothy’s characterization. She is innocent and operating from a limited frame of reference, and the setting could not be more different from her homely Kansas background.

Both methods of scene setting help advance the world that the reader is exploring. However, don’t explore the setting exclusively through dialogue. Characters are not objective observers of their world, so some information is better explained through narration since the narrator is (often) a more reliable voice.

Advance the Plot

Dialogue doesn’t just tell us about the story and the people inside it; good dialogue writing also advances the plot . We often need dialogue to reveal important details to the protagonist , and sometimes, an emotionally tense conversation will lead to the next event in the story.

At times, dialogue will advance the plot by offering a twist or revealing sudden information. We can all agree that the following lines of dialogue advanced the plot of Star Wars :

“Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.”

“He told me enough! He told me you killed him!”

“No. I am your father.”

And the following bit of dialogue catalyzed the plot of the entire Harry Potter series:

“You’re a wizard, Harry.”

The exchange of information is often what accelerates (0r resolves) a story’s conflict. Paying attention to word choice and the strategic revelation of information is key to using dialogue in a story.

Just like in real life, your characters don’t always say what they mean. Characters can lie, hint, suggest, confuse, conceal, and deceive. But one of the most powerful uses of dialogue writing is to foreshadow future events.

In Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet , Romeo foreshadows the death of both lovers when he exclaims to Juliet:

“Life were better ended by their hate, / Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.”

In saying he would rather die lovers than live in longing, Romeo unknowingly predicts what will soon happen in the play.

Foreshadowing is an important literary device that many fiction stories should utilize. Foreshadowing helps build suspense in the story, and it also underlines the important events that make your story worth reading. Don’t try to trick your readers, but definitely use foreshadowing to keep them reading.

Learn more about foreshadowing here:

Foreshadowing Definition: How to Use Foreshadowing in Your Fiction

We’ve talked about what dialogue writing should accomplish, but that doesn’t answer the question of how to write dialogue in a story. Let’s answer that question now—with some more dialogue writing examples in the mix.

1. How to Write Dialogue in a Story: Differentiate Each Character

Each character will have their own style of speaking, and will emphasize different things when they talk.

Your characters’ dialogue should be like thumbprints, because no two people are alike. Each character will have their own style of speaking, and will emphasize different things when they talk. You can make each character unique by altering the following elements of dialogue style:

  • Sentence length: Some people are verbose and loquacious, others terse and stoic.
  • Dialogue Punctuation: Do your characters let their sentences linger… or do they ask a lot of questions? Are they really excited all the time?! Or do they interrupt themselves frequently—always remembering something they forgot to mention—struggling to put their complex thoughts into words?
  • Adjectives/adverbs: Characters that are expressive and verbose tend to use a lot of adjectives and adverbs, whereas characters that are quiet or less expressive might stick to their nouns and verbs.
  • Spellings and pronunciation: Do your characters omit certain vowels? Do they lisp? The way you write a line of dialogue might reveal a character’s dialect, and adding consistent quirks to a character’s speech will certainly make them more memorable.
  • Repetitions and emphasis:  Do your characters have any catchphrases? Do they use any words or phrases as crutches? Maybe they emphasize words periodically, or have a strange cadence as they speak. We tend to repeat certain words and phrases in our own everyday vocabularies; repetition is also a useful device for writing dialogue in a story.

You’ve already seen character differentiation from the previous quotes in this article. In this scene from The Catcher in the Rye , notice how differently Holden Caulfield speaks from the young woman he’s talking to—and just how much characterization is implied in their divergent voices:

“You don’t come from New York, do you?” I said finally. That’s all I could think of.

“Hollywood,” she said. Then she got up and went over to where she’d put her dress down, on the bed. “Ya got a hanger? I don’t want to get my dress all wrinkly. It’s brand-clean.”

“Sure,” I said right away. I was only too glad to get up and do something.

Aside from these two characters being different from one another, Holden speak differently than characters in other works of fiction. Can you imagine Holden Caulfield being Romeo in R&J ? He’d say something stupid, like “Juliet’s family are all phonies, but the funny thing is you can’t help but fall half in love with her.”

A more contemporary example comes from  White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Every character in this novel is exceptionally well differentiated, even the minor characters—like Brother Ibrahim ad-Din Shukrallah, who appears only briefly towards the novel’s end. Here’s an excerpt:

“Look around you. And what do you see? What is the result of this so-called democracy, this so-called freedom, this so-called liberty ? Oppression, persecution, slaughter . Brothers, you can see it on national television every day, every evening, every night ! Chaos, disorder, confusion . They are not ashamed or embarrassed or self-conscious ! They don’t try to hide, to conceal, to disguise . They know as we know: the entire world is in a turmoil!”

Pay attention to the dialogue. What do you notice? What’s odd about the way he speaks? If you don’t notice it, the novel’s narrator gives us a hint:

“No one in the hall was going to admit it, but Brother Ibrahim ad-Din Shukrallah was no great speaker, when you got down to it. Even if you overlooked his habit of using three words where one would do, of emphasizing the last word of such triplets with his see-saw Caribbean inflections, even if you ignored these as everybody tried to, he was still physically disappointing.”

For more advice on characterization, check out our article on character development.

https://writers.com/character-development-definition

2. How to Write Dialogue in a Story: Consider the Context

A common mistake writers often make when writing dialogue in a story: they use the same speaking style for that character throughout the entire story.

For example, if you have a character that tends to speak in wordy, roundabout sentences, you might think that every sentence of dialogue should be wordy and roundabout.

However, your character’s dialogue needs to take context into consideration. A wordy character probably won’t be so wordy if they’re being held at gunpoint, and their words might stammer or falter when talking to a crush. Or, in the case of Jane Eyre , the context might make your statement more powerful. Jane proclaims:

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you—and full as much heart!”

As she lives in a society with strict gender roles, Jane’s statement—to a man, no less—is thrillingly bold and controversial for its time.

Your characters aren’t monotonous, they’re dynamic and fluid, so let them speak according to their surroundings.

3. How to Write Dialogue in a Story: Space Out Moments of Dialogue

If your characters just had a lengthy conversation, give them a page or two before they start speaking again. Dialogue is an important part of storytelling, but equally important is narration and description.

The following excerpt from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy has a great balance of dialogue (underlined) and narration.

“Are there any papers from the office?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.

“On the table,” replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, “ They’ve sent from the carriage-jobbers.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another. Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes asked: “Why do you tell me that? don’t you know?”

Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.

“I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or themselves for nothing,” he said. He had obviously prepared the sentence beforehand.

You can see, in the above text, that about 1/3 of the writing is dialogue. This allows the reader to see the full scene while still viewing the conversation, making this an excellent balance of narration and dialogue writing.

Simply put: balance dialogue with your narrator’s voice, or else the reader might lose their attention, or else miss out on key information.

4. How to Write Dialogue in a Story: Use Consistent Formatting

There are several different ways to format your dialogue, which we explain later in this article. For now, make sure you’re consistent with how you format your dialogue. If you choose to indent your characters’ speech, make sure every new exchange is indented. Inconsistent formatting will throw the reader out of the story, and it could also prevent your story from being published.

How to Write Dialogue in a Story: 4 DON’Ts of Dialogue Writing

Just as important as the DOs, the DON’Ts of dialogue writing are just as important to crafting an effective story. Let’s further our discussion of how to write dialogue in a story: we’ll dive into what you shouldn’t do when writing dialogue, alongside some more dialogue examples.

1. DON’T Include Every Verbal Interjection

When people talk, they don’t always talk linearly. People interrupt themselves, they change direction, they forget what they were talking about, they use pauses and “ums” and “ohs” and “ehs.” You can include a few of these verbal interjections from time to time, but don’t make your dialogue too true-to-life. Otherwise, the dialogue becomes hard to read, and the reader loses interest.

Let’s take a famous line from The Catcher in the Rye and fill it in with verbal interjections.

“I have a feeling that you are riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don’t honestly know what kind.”

With interjections:

Oh, man—I have a feeling, like, that you are riding for some kind of… a terrible, terrible fall. But, uh, I don’t honestly know what kind?

What do you think of the edited quote? The interjections make it much harder to read, much less personable, and honestly, they become kind of annoying. However, the quote with interjections is much more “true to life” than the original quote. Your characters don’t need to speak perfectly, but the dialogue needs to be enjoyable to read.

2. DON’T Overwrite Dialogue Tags

Dialogue tags are how your character expresses what they say. In the quote “‘You’re all phonies,’ Holden said,” the dialogue tag is “Holden said.”

Unique dialogue tags are fine to use on occasion. Your characters might yell, stammer, whisper, or even explode with words! However, don’t use these tags too frequently—the tag “said” is often perfectly fine. Notice how overused dialogue tags ruin the following conversation:

“How are you?” I stammered.

“Great! How are you?” she inquired.

“I’m hungry,” I announced.

“We should get lunch,” she blurted.

“I’m on a diet,” I cried.

“You poor thing,” she rejoined.

Sure, the conversation isn’t interesting to begin with, but the dialogue tags make this writing cringe-worthy. All of this dialogue can be described with “said” or “replied,” and many of these quotes don’t even need dialogue tags, because it’s clear who’s speaking each time.

This is doubly serious when dialogue tags are combined with adverbs : adjectives that modify the verbs themselves. Our intent with these adverbs is to intensify our writing, but what results is a strong case of diminishing returns. Let’s see an example:

“I don’t love you anymore,” she said.

“I don’t love you anymore,” she spat contemptuously.

Yikes! If your dialogue tags start distracting the reader, then your dialogue isn’t doing enough work on its own. The reader’s focus should be on the character’s statement, not on the way they delivered that statement. If she spoke those words with contempt, show the reader this in the dialogue itself, or even in the character’s body language.

Lastly: if you’re going to use a dialogue tag other than “said,” make sure the verb you use actually corresponds to dialogue. In other words, there needs to be a speaking verb before you describe some other sort of action.

Here’s an example of what NOT to do:

“I don’t love you anymore,” she stomped.

She might have stomped while saying that line, but “to stomp” is not a kind of communication.

The dialogue tag “said” is perfectly fine for most situations.

3. DON’T Stereotype

Everybody’s speech has a myriad of influences. Your characters’ way of speaking will be influenced by their parents, upbringing, schooling, socioeconomic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, and their own unique personality traits.

Of course, these personal backgrounds will influence your character’s dialogue. However, you shouldn’t let those traits overpower the character’s dialogue—otherwise, you’ll end up stereotyping.

Stereotyped characters are both glaringly obvious and embarrassing for the author. For example, J. K. Rowling didn’t do herself any favors by naming a character Cho Chang—both of which are Korean last names. Similarly, if all of your male characters are strong, charismatic, and loud, while all of your female characters are meek, helpless, and insecure, your writing will be both offensive and inaccurate to life.

Let’s explore this with two ways of writing a policeman.

“Don’t stand here,” said the policeman in front of the caution tape. “We need to keep this street clear.”

And here is lazy writing that takes no real interest in the character beyond one-dimensional surface traits:

“Move it along, folks, move it along,” said the policeman in front of the caution tape. “Nothing to see here.”

Neither policeman is going to win a dialogue award, but the second policeman doesn’t even seem like a real person . He’s written in unconsidered cliché: phrases we’ve all heard a thousand times, general ideas of what policemen tend to say.

Simply put, stereotyped dialogue is bad writing. Not only does it make your characters one-dimensional, it’s also offensive to whomever your characters resemble. If you’re going to be writing your characters from a careless, surface-level take, you might reconsider whether you want to write them at all.

What to do about this? The safest way to avoid stereotyping is to write using identities that you know both personally and intimately. If your writing takes you beyond those identities, then do your research: seek out, and truly work to internalize, a diverse array of input from people whose identities resemble those you’d like to write about.

4. DON’T Get Discouraged

For some writers, dialogue is the hardest part about writing fiction. It’s much easier to describe a character than to get in the character’s head, transcribing their thoughts into language.

If you feel like your characters aren’t saying the right things, or if the dialogue feels tricky to master, don’t get discouraged. Dialogue writing is difficult!

The following devices and exercises will help you master the art of writing dialogue in a story.

An important consideration for your characters is giving them distinct speech patterns. In real life, everyone talks differently; in fiction it’s much the same. The following devices will help you write dialogue in a story, as they offer ways to make your characters unique, compelling, and conversational.

Note: don’t try to use all nine of these devices for one character. Your dialogue should flow and feel consistent with the way people speak in real life, but if you overload your character’s speech with idioms, colloquialisms, proverbs, slang, and jargon, they won’t speak like anyone in the real world.

Use these devices as quirks for your characters. You can even use colloquialisms and vernacular to establish the setting, or use jargon to assign your character their occupation and social standing. Be wise, be strategic, and keep an ear for how people sound in real life.

Now, here’s how to write dialogue using 9 specific devices.

1. Colloquialism

A colloquialism is a word or phrase that’s specific to a language, geographical region, and/or historical period. Mostly used in informal speech, colloquialisms will rarely show up in the boardroom or the courtroom, but they pop up all the time in casual conversation.

We often use colloquialisms without realizing it. Take, for example, the shopping cart. Someone in the U.S. Northeast might call it a “cart,” while someone in the South might call it a “buggy.”

In fact, colloquialisms abound in the history of the English language. When it rains but the sun is out, a native Floridian might call it a sunshower. A Wisconsinite will call a water fountain a “bubbler.” In the 1950s, a small child might have been called an “ankle-biter.” Nowadays, a New Yorker might describe cold weather as being “brick outside.” (Yes, brick.)

Colloquialisms help define a character’s geographic background and historical time period. They also help signify when the character feels comfortable and informal, versus when they are speaking in an uncomfortable or professional situation.

2. Vernacular

Vernacular refers to language that is simple and commonplace. When a character’s speech is unadorned and everyday, they are speaking in vernacular, using words that can be understood by every person in that character’s time period. (A colloquialism is often an example of vernacular.) For dialogue in a story, your characters will likely use vernacular, unless they try to avoid it at all costs.

The opposite of vernacular would be dialect, which is speech that is tailored to a specific setting, and is therefore not commonplace or universally understood. An example of vernacular is contrasted with dialect below.

A dialect is a type of speech reserved for a particular time period, geographical location, social class, group of people, or other specific setting. It is language that the entire population might not comprehend, as it uses words, phrases, and grammatical decisions that aren’t universally understood.

Here’s an example of modern day vernacular. The same sentence has been rewritten as though it were spoken by someone with a Southern dialect.

Vernacular: I am craving some coleslaw and a soft drink.

Southern Dialect: I’m fixin’ for some slaw and soda pop.

An English speaker who doesn’t hail from the American South may be tripped up by “fixing” and “slaw,” as those terms aren’t universally understood.

Do note: the words “coleslaw” and “soft drink” can also be considered dialects of other regions in the United States. However, these words will likely be understood across the nation.

A slang is a word or phrase that is not part of conventional language usage, but which is still used in everyday speech. Generally, younger generations coin slang words, as well as queer communities and communities of color. (Some of the terms below started in AAVE , or African American Vernacular English.) Those words then become dictionary entries when the word has circulated long enough in popular usage. Slang is a form of colloquialism, as well as a form of dialect, because slang terms are not universally understood and are often associated with a specific age group in a specific region.

Some recent examples of slang words and phrases include:

  • No cap—“no lie.”
  • Boots—this is a sort of grammatical intensifier, placed  after the thing being intensified. “I’m hungry, boots” is basically the same as “I’m  so hungry.”
  • Bop—a catchy or irresistible song.
  • Drip—a particularly fashionable or interesting style of clothes.
  • It’s sending me—“that’s hilarious.”
  • Periodt—a more “final” use of the word “period” when a salient point has been made.
  • Snatched—used when someone’s fashion is impeccable. In the case of someone’s waist size, snatched refers to an hourglass figure.
  • Pressed—“stressed” or “annoyed.”
  • Slaps—“exceptionally good.”
  • Stan—stan is a portmanteau of “stalker fan,” but really what it means is that you enjoy something intensely or obsessively. You “stan” a song or a movie, for example.
  • Werk—a term to describe something done exceedingly well. If you’re dancing tremendously, I might just yell “werk!”
  • Wig—when something shocks, excites, or moves you, just say “wig.”

Jargon is a word or phrase that is specific to a profession or industry. Usually, a jargon word intentionally obfuscates the meaning of what it represents, as the word is meant to be understood solely by people within a certain profession.

Often, people let jargon slip from their tongues without realizing the word is inaccessible. For example, a doctor might tell their friend they have rhinitis, rather than a seasonal allergy. Or, someone well-versed in mid-century diner lingo might ask for “Adam and Eve on a raft” rather than “two poached eggs on toast.”

When it comes to dialogue in a story, the occasional use of jargon can help characterize someone through their profession. However, too much jargon usage will start to sound comical and inane, as most people don’t speak in jargon all the time.

An idiom is a phrase that is specifically understood by speakers of a certain language, and which has a figurative meaning that differs from its literal one. Idioms are incredibly hard to translate, because the meaning conveyed by the idiom does not appear within the words themselves.

For example, a common idiom in the United States is to say someone is “under the weather” when they’re feeling ill. No part of the phrase “under the weather” conveys a sense of sickness; at most, it might communicate that that person feels pushed down by the weather. But then, what weather? Could they be under “good” weather, too? These are questions that someone who doesn’t speak English natively will likely ask.

So, the literal meaning of “under the weather” is different from the figurative meaning, which is “ill.” Some other idioms in the English language include:

  • Pulling your leg—just having fun with someone or messing with them.
  • Bat a thousand—to be successful 100% of the time.
  • The last straw—the final incident before something (usually negative) occurs.
  • Big fish in a little sea—someone is famous or hugely successful, but in a very small corner of the world.
  • Eat your heart out—be envious of something.

An idiom can also reveal regionality, as some idioms are only spoken in certain dialects. For example, when it rains while the sun is shining, a common idiom in the South is that “the devil is beating his wife.” This phrase is understood in other parts of the U.S. and might have its roots in folklore, but it is primarily spoken by people in the American South.

7. Euphemism

A euphemism is the substitution of one word for another, more innocuous word. We often use euphemisms in place of words and phrases that are sexual, uncomfortable, or otherwise taboo.

For example, when someone dies, you might hear their family member say “they kicked the bucket.” Or, if someone were unemployed but didn’t want to say it, they might say they are “between jobs” or “searching for better opportunities.”

Euphemisms present something psychologically interesting to a person’s dialogue. We often use language to mask that which upsets us most but which we are unwilling to confront or communicate. A euphemism for death is intended to mask the pain of death; a euphemism about unemployment is intended to mask the shame of unemployment.

We might also use euphemisms to hide information from people we don’t trust. Let’s say you’re in an intimate relationship, and don’t want the person you’re conversing with to know about it. You might pull out your knowledge of Middle English and say you’re “giving a girl a green gown.” Or, you might simply say you’re rolling in the hay with someone, to communicate your relationship while also communicating you don’t want to talk about it.

Note: even “intimate relationship” is a bit of a euphemism!

In dialogue writing, use euphemisms as hints to your characters’ psyches. In speech, what is omitted often says more than what is included.

A proverb is a short, oft-repeated saying that bears a wise and powerful message. Proverbs are often based on common sense advice, but they use metaphors and symbols to convey that advice, prompting the listener to place themselves in the world of the proverb.

For example, a common English proverb is “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” This means that it’s better to take away modest gains than to sacrifice those gains for something that may be unobtainable. Sacrificing the bird in your hand for two birds which may be impossible to own is a risky endeavor.

When it comes to writing dialogue in a story, proverbs educate both the protagonist and the audience. A proverb will often be spoken by an elder or someone with relevant experience to help guide the protagonist. The story’s events might also be a reaction to that proverb, either fulfilling or complicating it. Finally, a proverb might characterize the speaker themselves, cluing the reader into the speaker’s beliefs. Not all stories have proverbs, but stories with wise characters often do.

9. Neologism

A neologism is a coined word that describes something new. Some neologisms are coined by authors themselves—Shakespeare, for example, coined over 2,000 words, many of which we use today. “Baseless,” “footfall,” and “murkiest” come from The Tempest , just one of Shakespeare’s many plays and poems.

Nowadays, most neologisms describe advancements in technology, medicine, and society. “Doomscrolling,” for example, describes the act of consuming large quantities of negative news, often to the detriment of one’s mental health. The word was likely invented in 2018, due in part to the increased access to information that technology gives us.

Other modern day neologisms include:

  • Google (as a verb: to google something)
  • Crowdsourcing

Some neologisms are portmanteaus, which is a word made from two other words combined in both sound and meaning. For example, “smog” is a portmanteau of “smoke and fog,” and it’s a neologism only relevant to the Industrial Revolution and beyond.

Neologisms are not to be confused with grandiloquent words , which are invented words used for the sole purpose of sounding intelligent (and which have become enduring facets of modern English).

In dialogue writing, neologisms primarily help situate the reader in the story’s temporal setting. No one would use the word malware in the year 1920. Additionally, words like “crowdsourcing” are far more likely to be used by younger generations, and they signify a certain sense of tech savviness and modernity that not everyone has.

Finally, neologisms are fun! You might even invent some new words in your own writing, though a neologism should be elegant and relevant, without drawing too much attention to itself.

Of course, the best way to learn how to write dialogue in a story is to practice it yourself. Below are some dialogue writing exercises to try in your fiction.

Dialogue Writing Exercise: Write out a character’s “personal vocabulary.”

All of us have a personal vocabulary, meaning that we tend to choose the same set of words to describe something, even though our vocabularies are much larger. For example, I have a tendency to use the word “scandalous” when describing something. I often use it ironically or as a compliment, which is a trait of word-usage associated with Millennials and older Gen Z kids. This word is a part of my personal vocabulary, and though I don’t say it constantly, I often use it when I can’t think of a better word.

Your characters are the same way! Writing out a personal vocabulary for your characters might jumpstart your dialogue writing, and it also gives you something to fall back on in your dialogue while still providing depth and character.

Coming back—once again—to Holden Caulfield, his personal vocabulary might include words like: phony , prostitute , goddam , miserable , lousy , jerk . These words and phrases are rare overall, but they’re exceedingly common in his own personal way of verbalizing his experience of the world.

Dialogue Writing Exercise: Consider different settings.

Sometimes, you just need to generate dialogue until you come across the right line or turn-of-phrase. One way to do that is to write what your character would say in different situations.

On a separate document or piece of paper, write what would happen if your character was talking to different people or talking in different situations. For example, your character might:

  • Talk to a grocery store clerk
  • Be a hostage in a bank robbery
  • Take the SAT
  • Run into their crush
  • Get pulled over for speeding

Explore what your character would say in each of these (and other) different scenarios, and you might just trick your brain into writing the next sentence of your story.

Dialogue Writing Exercise: Pretend you are your character.

Instead of writing your character in different settings, be your character in different settings. Think about what your character would think while you’re doing the laundry, driving to work, or paying the bills. This habit will help you approach this character’s dialogue, as you develop the ability to turn their personality on in your brain, like a switch!

(Hopefully, you’re never caught in a bank robbery. If you are, maybe your character can save you.)

We’ve covered how to write dialogue in a story, but not how to format dialogue. Dialogue formatting is a relatively minor concern for fiction writers, but it’s still important to format correctly. Otherwise, you’ll waste hours of your writing time trying to fix formatting errors, and you might prevent your stories from finding publication.

There are a few different ways to format dialogue; for each of these examples, we will reformat the sentence “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” said Chief Brody.

Most writers and publishers use standard quotation marks at the beginning and end of the dialogue.

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” said Chief Brody.

A comma always separates the dialogue from the speaker. In this case, the comma goes inside of the quotation marks. Periods, semicolons, and em dashes also go inside the quotation marks. If you’re writing in British English, some conventions place the dialogue punctuation outside of the quotation, but both ways are acceptable.

Another way some people format their dialogue is by italicizing instead of using quotation marks.

You’re gonna need a bigger boat, said Chief Brody.

In this instance, you would fit the comma within the italicized text, as you would any other punctuation in the dialogue. Only the quote is italicized; the speaker remains unitalicized. The drawback of this formatting is that your dialogue might be confused with the character’s inner dialogue, which should also be italicized.

Finally, your dialogue formatting can eschew the use of quotation marks and italics. In this case, you would indent any part of the text that is dialogue, and leave narration un-indented.

Suddenly, the shark loomed behind the orca.

This way of formatting makes it easier to write without worrying about punctuation marks, but be warned that most publishers will change that formatting before publication.

If your sentence starts with the dialogue tag, put a comma before the quotation mark. Do capitalize the first letter inside the quotation marks, as this is, grammatically, the start of a sentence.

Chief Brody said, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

And, if your dialogue spans multiple paragraphs, do not use the end-quote until the very end of the dialogue, but start each paragraph with a new start-quote.

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat. “A boat this size can’t handle a shark,” Chief Brody continued.

Looking for More Dialogue Writing Tips?

Great dialogue is the true test of whether you understand your characters or not. However, developing this skill takes a lot of time and practice. If you’re looking for more advice on how to write dialogue in a story, check out our online fiction writing courses for dialogue writing tips from the best instructors on the net!

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Sean Glatch

10 comments.

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This was very helpful: I’m a French Canadian, living here in the US for the past 28 years, very fluent in English and this article will help me to polish my stories telling. I love to write spending a lot of time doing so, whether it’s a story, an email, documentation in my field (I’m an IT guy) and I’m now more confident about my writing.

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I’m so happy to hear that, Richard. Happy writing!

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As an aspiring writer, this helped me a lot!

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Great article! Nice job capturing so many elements and explaining things so well. I enjoyed it from beginning to end.

The only thing that puzzled me was in the following section (watch for the **):

If your sentence starts with the dialogue tag, put a comma before the quotation mark. **In this case, do not capitalize the first letter inside the quotation marks.**

Chief Brody said, “you’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

I’ve never seen that guidance before. I thought you were supposed to capitalize the first word of complete dialogue sentences regardless of speaker attribution placement. Might this be a mistake? Or a vestige from a previous edit?

You’re absolutely right–that bit of advice was written in error. The start of a new sentence of dialogue should always begin with a capital letter. I’ve updated the text accordingly. Many thanks for your comment!

[…] How to Write Dialogue in a Story […]

Thank you, Nicole! I’m so glad you found it helpful. Happy writing!

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Directed here from somewhere else. A novice when it comes to fiction writing and the proper use of English. I fid dialogue my most difficult in writing. I am glad for this. I get most of the gist now.

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I came across your website while doing some research for my writing students and I have to say this is one of the best resources I’ve found when it comes to writing dialogue. Thank you for taking the time to put together such a valuable resource and one which I’ll be passing on to my students.

Thank you again!

' src=

Really great advice. One thing I often do is get my students to ‘capture conversations’ so they can hear the cadence of real dialogue. Then we look at how to make it more powerful by taking out most if not all of the ‘um’s, ah’s’ and other interruptions or interjections. It has improved the quality of my students written dialogue immensely. 🙂

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  • Scriptwriting

How to Write Dialogue — Examples, Tips & Techniques

E very screenwriter wants to write quippy, smart dialogue that makes the page sparkle and keeps the actors inspired. But how do you do it? There are dozens, if not hundreds, of lists and guides that provide useful tips for how to write dialogue in a story. In this post, we’ll look at dialogue writing examples, examine a few tried-and-true methods for how to write good dialogue, and provide you with all the best dialogue writing tips. 

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How to Write Dialogue Format

1. study dialogue writing.

A good first step is to look to accomplished writers to see how they became skilled at how to write dialogue . But we have to know what we’re looking for. You can start by reading some dialogue examples from different mediums or practice with some dialogue prompts .

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino is as famous for his dialogue as he is for breaking the rules of screenwriting. Sure, to be able to craft dialogue that is so compelling it becomes a set piece unto itself, a la Tarantino, may be a good aesthetic model. 

But trying to emulate his more stream-of-consciousness approach to dialogue writing may prove disorienting. Check out our video below and see if you notice anything that stands out about his approach to writing dialogue.

Tarantino Dialogue  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Though Tarantino doesn’t necessarily write according to plotted out script templates, and he probably doesn't adhere to proper dialogue format all the time. His creative choices might be largely unconscious, and his secret weapon in how to write a good dialogue may be his well-developed characters. 

He knows who his characters are and what they want, and the characters’ desires shape his dialogue writing.

And as we will see when we look at other screenwriters’ methods, character is everything in how to write dialogue in a script. 

How to Write Dialogue Tarantino on set

Tarantino on set

As the old adage goes, learning the rules in order to break them can make you a stronger writer – and in this case, we want to look at some of the best writing dialogue rules. 

Writing from a structure can help make sure you don’t lose the thread of your story by getting too caught up in crafting clever, flashy dialogue that doesn’t connect to anything.

And, a good structure can provide the perimeters for your writing to flow within, so you don’t have to pause to remember fifteen different rules of how to do dialogue!  

How to Write a Good Dialogue 

2. make your character's wants clear.

In a post about how to approach how to write dialogue it may seem contradictory to say this, but a good rule for dialogue writing in a scene is to write the dialogue last. 

After building out the other elements of your story (your arcs, acts, scenes, and story beats) you will have a better sense of how each scene connects to the larger unfolding of the story and, most importantly, what each character wants in a given scene. 

You may not need a “how to write good dialogue format” if you always keep in mind your larger story arc, how each scene drives the story forward, and what character motivations are in every scene. 

How to Write Dialogue An iconic dialogue scene from The Social Network

An iconic dialogue scene from The Social Network

A good starting place in thinking about how to write dialogue in a script is to remember that in a screenplay, dialogue is not mere conversation. It always serves a larger purpose, which is to move the story forward. 

The function of dialogue can be broken down into three purposes: exposition , characterization , or action. If we’re always clear on the larger purpose of a scene and we know each character’s motivations, we know what our dialogue is “doing” in that scene. 

When we know what a character wants, we don’t have to worry as much about how to write dialogue because the motivations of the characters drive what they say. See our post on story beats to dig into story beats, which help illuminate what each character wants, and when they want it.

Functions of Dialogue

Exposition (to relay important information to other characters) 

Characterization (to flesh out who a character is and what they want)

Action (to make decisions, reveal what they’re going to do)

The famous diner scene from Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally is an excellent example of both exposition and characterization, critical components of how to write dialogue between two characters. Here's a breakdown we did of the iconic When Harry Met Sally screenplay .

The ongoing question of the film, and of Harry and Sally’s relationship, is whether heterosexual women and heterosexual men can really be platonic friends. Every other character in the film and their issues (the friend in an affair with a married man, the friends who are in a happy couple and getting married) all support the driving dilemma of the film: the desire to partner and escape the presumed suffering of dating. 

Take a look at the scene:

When Harry Met Sally

Underneath this question of whether men and women can be friends is the subtext that they may ultimately end up together after all. The overriding question of the film is, after knowing each other, “how come they haven’t already?” The diner scene teases out the idea of sexual tension in a supposedly platonic friendship, raising the stakes. 

Here's a breakdown of subtext.

The Art of Subtext  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Remember, though the scene depicts Harry and Sally having a conversation in a diner, the words they are speaking are not mere “conversation” – it is dialogue written to sound like a natural conversation. There is a difference. 

Each word in Ephron’s dialogue writing has a purpose. Sally says she is upset about how Harry treats the women he dates and that she’s glad she never dated him (underscoring the ongoing conflict of the film). 

Harry defends himself, saying he doesn’t hear any of them complaining (alluding to how he wouldn’t disappoint her, either). When Sally suggests the women he dates might be faking orgasm, Harry doesn’t believe her.

This prompts her to fake an orgasm right there in the diner to make her point (ratcheting up the primary conflict, while also providing some comic relief). 

You can read the scene, which we imported into StudioBinder’s screenwriting software , below:

Training Day Script Teardown - Full Script PDF Download - StudioBinder Screenwriting Software

When Harry Met Sally script

This scene works so well because it serves a crystal clear purpose in driving the story forward. 

Great dialogue writing examples always drive the plot from one scene to the next. You may not like plotting out your story beats, thinking about story arcs in a methodological way, or approaching how to write dialogue between two characters systematically at all. 

Just remember, most professional screenwriters do, and Writing Dialogue rules might be an instance where it is worth learning the rules in order to break them. Check out more great dinner scenes to inspire how to tackle this awkward but important type of scene!

How to Write Dinner Dialogue  •   Subscribe on YouTube

How to write dialogue in a script , 3. give your dialogue purpose.

Finally, we’ve come to our favorite part. The lines. Famed playwright and screenwriter David Mamet says great dialogue boils down to this one concept:

David Mamet Headshot StudioBinder

“Nobody says anything unless they want something.” 

— David Mamet

This handy motto is one of the best dialogue writing tips, if not the only one you need. This principle encapsulates what many other rules of dialogue writing are getting at. What they want also may not be spoken aloud, which is where writing internal dialogue comes in handy.

The advice to use as few words as possible, to cut the fat, to arrive late and leave early, to write with subtext in mind, to show rather than tell – all of those goals can be met by keeping the focus on what the characters want. 

How to Write Dialogue David Mamet at work

David Mamet at work

If they don’t want anything, they don’t need to say anything. If you have a clear idea of who your characters are, and what the function of each scene is in the story, then your characters' agendas, conflicts, and obstacles, and their manner of speaking to express themselves, can come forward more naturally.

If you know what your characters want, you may find that you know how to write dialogue in a story very naturally! 

And yet, there is a caveat here: Screenwriter Karl Iglesias warns that it can be easy to have the character saying what you , the writer, want, not what they , the character, want. 

Below is a playlist from our 4 Endings video series where we look at how "wants and needs" play out in a screenplay.

Wants vs. Needs  •   Watch the entire playlist

Because what you , the writer, want them to do is of course to carry some part of the story for you. So another important tool to put in your toolbox of dialogue writing tips is to always zoom in on the character , and stay tuned into what they want at any given point in the story. 

Check out the last scene from Mamet’s  Glengarry Glen Ross , a film based on the screenplay, also by Mamet, and a gold standard of excellent movie dialogue. 

Mamet’s principle that each character has to show what they want is demonstrated brilliantly in the final scene. At the beginning of the film, everyone at a New York City real estate office learns all but the top two salesmen will be fired in two weeks. 

Levene (Jack Lemmon) is a salesman who wants to keep his job and survive. In the final scene, Williamson (Kevin Spacey) accuses Levene of stealing leads from the office. By this final scene, what Levene wants has shifted. Now he wants to convince Williamson of his innocence.

Take a look:

How to Write Dialogue Glendarry Ross Dialogue Example StudioBinder Screenwriting Software

                                                                                                   Final Scene from Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992

Dialogue writing examples  , 4. edit and focus the dialogue.

Now it’s time to sculpt the general arc of your story into form – and the minimalist principles of how to write dialogue in a story can help bring your vision to life. 

You want to cast a harsh light on your text in order to whittle down everything you’ve written. Make sure every last word really needs to be there. You want to yank anything that gets in the way of telling the great story you want to tell. That way, the lines will be focused, compelling, and inspire great actors to want to bring them to life. 

Remember: We’re not yanking lines if they’re not sparkly or punchy enough, we’re yanking them if they don’t serve a purpose. 

Even the cutest remark can actually be clutter, and even the more mundane lines can play a vital role by elucidating our character’s motives, the conflict they’ve encountered, and where the story is going next. The more dialogue writing examples you read, the more you’ll see how the characters’ motivations are driving not only what is said, but how it is said. 

Related Posts

  • 22 Essential Screenwriting Tips →    
  • What is a Story Beat in a Screenplay? →
  • FREE: Search StudioBinder’s Database of Film & TV Screenplays →

Another approach for how to write great dialogue in a script is to read through every line of the script aloud to make sure it flows naturally. 

You could also try putting your hand or a piece of paper of the names of the characters. Can you tell who is saying what? 

If each character doesn’t have a discernible way of speaking, revisit your character development and really define who this person is, what they want, and all their quirks and characteristics. Then revamp their lines to make all of that come to the forefront in each line. And when in doubt, revisit dialogue writing examples from your favorite movies and shows to get the juices flowing. 

Another tip for how to properly write dialogue is to scan your script for “dialogue dumps.” The best way to avoid “As you know, Bob…” information dumps in your dialogue is to let the characters bat pieces of information back and forth. Check out our video on exposition below:

How to write good exposition  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Let them reveal bits of it over time, scattered throughout a scene like breadcrumbs. Let them argue about it, challenge what each other knows. Do they already know it, or are they wrestling with it?  

Assess your dialogue to make sure what you’re trying to accomplish with a line of dialogue couldn’t better be said with an action, an adjustment to scene or setting, a facial expression, or some other nonverbal detail. 

The “Good to See Another Brother” scene from Get Out is a great example of keeping the dialogue minimal and letting facial expression, costume, and tone convey the information: 

How to Write Dialogue Get Out Dialogue Example StudioBinder Screenwriting Software

Get Out screenplay

At this point in the story, Chris still thinks he is simply one of the few black people in his white girlfriend’s upper middle class white family and their social circle. 

We, the audience, still might think we’re watching a rom com that conveys only a mild awareness of race, somewhere off in the background of the story. But in this scene, race starts moving forward as a central plot point. 

Chris approaches Andre, because he wants to feel a sense of connection in an isolating environment. In order to convey layers of social anxiety and racial tension, all that Jordan Peele needs is the line, “It’s good to see another brother around here.”

Throughout the film, Peele exemplifies how spreading information out like bread crumbs can help build tension and curiosity about a scene. 

How to Write Dialogue Jordan Peele on the set of Get Out

Jordan Peele on the set of Get Out

Look at how much room Peele leaves in the script to describe how Andre’s character should convey his response (“soft-spoken,” “no trace of an urban dialect”). This helps load every word in the scene with more weight and purpose. When Andre does speak, his words are few.

He has visibly changed his style and manner of speaking since Chris first saw him, he won’t say much, and has a glazed over expression on his face. All of this raises the stakes: What is going on here? 

How to Write Dialogue Get Out still

Get Out still

In order to learn how to write dialogue, one of the most important writing dialogue rules is to stay in touch with where your characters are in the story at all times. 

Building your story, your character arcs, and your story beats before writing can help provide a structure that will give your writing a container in which to flow. Developing compelling characters and making sure that every bit of dialogue real estate on the page is devoted to serving a function in your screenplay can help streamline the whole dialogue writing process.

But regardless of which method you use, if anything, just remember the Mamet Motto: “Nobody says anything unless they want something.” 

Up Next 

How to introduce your characters.

Writing great dialogue is the icing on the cake of a great story. The importance of building out your story and really being clear on where we’re going, who wants what, and what the conflicts and motivations are the foundation beneath all the other writing dialogue rules. But having solid character descriptions is only the first step. You also have to give each one a great entrance. Check out our post to get some tips on how each compelling, amazing character you write can make their grand entrance. 

Up Next: Introducing Characters →

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How to Write Effective Dialogue, with Examples

how to write dialogue in a first person story

by Chris Snellgrove

Good dialogue can help elevate your story while making your characters seem realistic and relatable. Bad dialogue, though, can turn even the coolest literary concept into a poorly executed mess.

To help you better understand how to write dialogue in your story, let’s take a look at why it’s important and how you can make your story’s dialogue really shine.

Knowing how to write dialogue is one of the most important skills in a writer’s toolbox

Why is effective dialogue important?

Effective dialogue is important because it brings your characters to life, helps readers relate to the character, and helps to move the story along.

On the most basic level, dialogue is what animates your characters. Just think: without dialogue—the kind between two characters who speak to each other, as well as the “dialogue” of body language—your characters would just be random people undertaking a series of different actions.

Realistic dialogue is also how readers relate to and understand character dynamics—dialogue give characters depth. Has a character suffered some kind of defining trauma? Or do they have a special code of honor that dictates their behavior? Revealing these things through a few lines of dialogue rather than exposition helps your story live up to the old chestnut: show, don’t tell!

A well-placed line of dialogue has the power to elevate any scene.

Good dialogue serves other story functions as well: It helps to break up action and exposition, giving your story time to breathe; it’s the primary way to add emotion to a scene; and dialogue helps to establish character relationships. Are these two characters secretly in love, or maybe they openly hate each other? Or both ?? Good dialogue helps reveal who these characters are as well as their primary motivations.

Dialogue helps break up the action

A key factor in any story is pacing. If the characters do little else but talk to each other, then your story can come across as boring instead of engaging.

However, it’s possible to have too much action and too little dialogue. Readers love it when a story moves quickly, but maintaining a constant breakneck pace can leave readers exhausted. You can use dialogue tags to identify speakers as well as speed up or slow down moments of a story.

Try using a line of dialogue to break up your story’s exposition.

By having your characters speak to one another between and even during action, you can maintain upbeat pacing without tiring your readers out.

Dialogue helps establish character relationships

One of the biggest challenges for any writer is creating convincing relationships between characters—and better dialogue is the single best way to do that!

For example, when readers see one character speak lightly and casually to one person, and gruffly angrily to another, they instantly understand from a line of dialogue how the one character feels about the two others. In turn, the speech patterns and inflections that respond to the first character’s dialogue let readers see whether these relationships (friendly in one case and antagonistic in the other) are one-sided or mutual.

Body language and tone of voice can say as much as the spoken words.

Dialogue creates relatable characters

Something beginning writers often struggle with is that description can only tell us what a character is. It’s only through writing great dialogue that the writer tells us who a character is.

That’s because readers relate to characters based on their personalities, and personalities are most apparent in characters’ voices, or the way the dialogue sounds. One reader may love sarcastic characters and another may love noble characters, but these readers won’t really understand the character personalities until those characters are speaking to one another.

Think about some of your favourite moments throughout literary and film history. These lines of dialogue define the person speaking and help define how we relate to the characters. A relatable character without realistic dialogue is, simply put, not relatable at all!

How story dialogue differs from real-life dialogue

Story dialogue differs from dialogue you might hear in your own life because characters in a story typically skip small talk, avoid speaking over one another, and have a clear motivation for everything they say, whereas dialogue in real life is filled with polite chatter, crosstalk, and completely random points of conversation.

The earliest advice most writers get is “write what you know.” This may explain why learning to write dialogue is so difficult: we naturally learn how to speak to others, but we don’t naturally learn how characters should communicate in a well-crafted story.

Learning to write dialogue effectively means separating the essential from the superfluous.

A line of dialogue should always help to move a story forward. In real life, two people who know each other might engage in half an hour of small talk before getting down to business. But in a story, your characters should skip things like greetings and small talk and get down to business right away.

In real life, characters talk over each other constantly. But that would create chaos in a book or short story. Instead, characters should mostly speak one at a time. If you rarely have characters speaking over one another, then it’ll have more impact on your readers when it does happen.

Finally, in real life, we don’t actually know the motivations of different people. It’s why we so often ask ourselves “why the heck did he say that?” after a weird conversation with a real-life person. But within the confines of your story, you should know what motivates every single character. This can help you craft dialogue that fleshes those characters out and moves the story along without breaking the readers’ internal understanding of the characters. That way, your readers will never wonder why a character uttered a specific bit of dialogue.

Examples of great dialogue

To really understand great dialogue, you must do more than learn about different writing techniques. Instead, you must study great dialogue directly. As T. S. Eliot famously wrote, “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’ Let us go and make our visit.”

Learning from the masters is the key to writing better dialogue.

Many examples of amazing dialogue and dialogue tags can be found in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . Let’s take a closer look at this scene, in which Gatsby tries to invite the naive Nick into a less-than-savory business.

“There’s another little thing,” he said uncertainly, and hesitated. “Would you rather put it off for a few days?” I asked. “Oh, it isn’t about that. At least—” He fumbled with a series of beginnings. “Why, I thought why, look here, old sport, you don’t make much money, do you?” “Not very much.” This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently. “I thought you didn’t, if you’ll pardon my—you see, I carry on a little business on the side, a little side line, if you understand. And I thought that if you don’t make very much—You’re selling bonds, aren’t you, old sport?” “Trying to.”

Imagine that you’ve never read The Great Gatsby before. What does this dialogue exchange tell you about the characters?

We instantly see that Gatsby is uncertain about various things despite his material success. Though this dialogue doesn’t spell out the unsavory nature of Gatsby’s business, the circumspect way he brings it up shows that he seems to be ashamed of it.

Nick, for his part, comes across as both conscientious and easy to please. Finally, the dialogue includes character markers (like Gatsby calling others “old sport”) so that we never lose track of who’s talking, even as Gatsby manages to interrupt himself.

Part of what makes Fitzgerald such a skilled writer is that he threads the needle between realistic writing and literary writing. Gatsby’s fumbling dialogue is realistic because everyone knows what it’s like to get nervous and trip over our own words. At the same time, Fitzgerald keeps the dialogue short and to the point, which moves the plot along.

Another great inspiration for dialogue is Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s a master of sparse dialogue. As you’ll see, Heh keeps dialogue tags and lets the words speak for themselves. While your dialogue doesn’t have to be as sparse as Hemingway’s was, the famous author shows us how much you can say without saying much. This is especially true in this passage from his short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” in which a man and a woman discuss whether the woman should abort their baby:

“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.” “And you really want to?” “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you really don’t want to.” “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?” “I love you now. You know I love you.” “I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?” “I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.” “If I do it you won’t ever worry?” “I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”

What does this passage reveal about these characters? For one thing, despite the male character’s reassurances that he cares about what the woman wants, it’s perfectly clear that he maintains control within the relationship. It’s equally clear that she’s emotionally dependent on the man, relying on him for reassurance about their love and their relationship.

Sometimes, natural dialogue is all the scene description you need.

The dialogue also reveals dark and tragic overtones. For example, we as readers understand how traumatic an abortion can be on the woman, so the man’s frequent insistence that it’s “perfectly simple” reveals that he may not care much about her thoughts and feelings.

Meanwhile, the woman has realized their love isn’t as idyllic as she once imagined, but is convinced that an abortion can return things to the way they are. As readers, we can imagine how depressing the status quo of this codependent relationship is, while immediately understanding that things will probably never be the same for these characters again. This is why good dialogue is such a useful tool in character development.

Examples of bad dialogue

As writers, it’s often easier to learn from our own mistakes rather than our successes. When it comes to writing better dialogue, it’s surprisingly easy to learn how to write dialogue by studying the mistakes of others!

Let’s take a look at examples of bad dialogue from famous authors and what we can learn from these mistakes. We’ll start with an excerpt from Frank Herbert’s Dune :

A chuckle sounded beside the globe. A basso voice rumbled out of the chuckle: “There it is, Piter—the biggest mantrap in all history. And the Duke’s headed into its jaws. Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, do?’

Dune may be one the most influential books ever written, but this bit of dialogue is one clunker after another. The fact that Harkonnen drops his own name like this is cringe-inducing; since the reader already knows who he is, this information is redundant. Nobody actually talks like that, so Harkonnen’s dialogue makes him come across like a reject from a bad B-movie.

Additionally, Herbert is violating the “show, don’t tell” rule. It’s much more effective when readers can gauge the danger in a situation themselves based on description and well-written dialogue. Instead, here we must either dismiss the claim of “the biggest mantrap in all history” as hyperbole because we can’t actually gauge the magnitude of the threat for ourselves, or just take this repetitive villain at his word.

Another major dialogue offender in the world of science fiction is Neal Stephenson. His novel Snow Crash helped to predict our modern digital world, but it didn’t always reflect how people actually talk. Just look at this excerpt:

“‘Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people’s minds.” ”So none of that stuff I learned in church has anything to do with what you’re talking about?” Juanita thinks for a while, eyeing him. Then she pulls a hypercard out of her pocket. “Here. Take this.”

What’s so bad about this dialogue? For one thing, it’s didactic in a very off-putting way. As readers, we can practically feel Stephenson grabbing us by our lapels to yell at us about religion.

This is underscored by the fact that the character speaking doesn’t really answer the question. We can see that the rant about faith, religion, and intelligence isn’t important, and it’s not going to move the plot forward.

Be careful not to slip into preaching in your dialogue!

Finally, this dialogue “exchange” is a great example of characters talking at each other rather than to each other. It’s tough to imagine anyone just sitting there while Juanita blithely says that everyone of faith is an idiot. In a science fiction story meant to be very immersive, stilted and didactic dialogue quickly takes the reader out of the moment and out of the narrative.

Writing internal dialogue

There are two basic styles of writing internal dialogue: indirect internal dialogue, which doesn’t directly draw the reader’s attention, and direct internal dialogue, which is marked with special dialogue tags.

Indirect internal dialogue is what readers are most familiar with. In this case, “indirect” simply means you don’t draw attention to the dialogue through italics or a dialogue tag. Instead, you simply write out what the character is thinking to themselves as a description, the same way that you’d write out what they’re doing. For example:

Tommy peered through the abandoned room with his flashlight, the electricity having long since been turned off. He couldn’t help but feel like the last ghost haunting the abandoned building long after the other spirits had moved on.

See how we’re privy to his internal thoughts, which are told to the reader as part of the narrative?

On the other hand, with direct internal dialogue you highlight internal thoughts in a way that’s distinct from spoken dialogue. The most common way to do this is to place the internal thoughts in italics. For example:

This is crazy , Tommy thought, shining his flashlight over the darkened room. What did I ever expect to find in here ? Wind howling through a broken window was the only answer to his thoughts.

Here the thoughts are set apart from the narrative by a dialogue tag, “Tommy thought.”

Which method of expressing internal dialogue you use mostly comes down to your own personal style. Just keep in mind that readers place special attention to text that has been italicized. So if you put internal dialogue in italics, make sure it counts!

Writing first-person dialogue

Writing in first person PoV is fairly easy: you simply use first-person pronouns to create statements about what your character has seen and said. Then why do some writers struggle with learning to write dialogue in the first person?

Firstly, some writers struggle with incorporating their character’s feelings and emotions into first-person dialogue. Without dialogue that conveys emotion, the first-person narrator may come across as a floating camera simply recording events rather than a real person having real thoughts and feelings about different events.

Secondly, it’s easy to accidentally slip into the passive voice. As with any other kind of writing, first-person dialogue should remain in the active voice to keep the reader engaged.

Finally, it’s easy to be annoyingly repetitive, like including countless instances of “I said” and “I felt.” To really make first-person dialogue work, you’ll need to change things up to keep the narrative exciting.

How, then, can we avoid these mistakes and craft better first-person dialogue?

When you’re writing first-person internal dialogue, make sure that it’s consistent with the character’s previous characterization and motivation. Readers should be able to distinguish the internal voice of different characters because no two characters should have the same internal voice.

It’s also important for internal dialogue to stay in the active voice. This helps it seem more dynamic and also keeps you from bogging down your narrative with confusing passive text.

To avoid constantly writing “I said” and “I felt,” you’ll need to convey to the reader how characters feel by expressing it in the dialogue. For example, if a character’s dialogue is is using angry vocabulary and expressions, then writing “I felt angry” or “I thought angrily” is unnecessary.

You can also experiment with having characters communicate using fewer words. For instance, writing “I touched the wall. Cold. Slimy. Pulsating,” communicates the same idea as saying “it felt cold, slimy, and pulsating,” but in a more concise and captivating way.

Ultimately, whether it’s said out loud or only in their heads, the real trick to character dialogue is using it to give your characters their own definitive voice.

Using dialogue to establish your protagonist’s voice

Through dialogue, you give your characters a literal voice. With the right dialogue techniques, you can give each character their own metaphorical voice that helps make each character distinct.

Remember: all your characters should have distinctive voices, just like real people.

A metaphorical voice refers to things like a character’s inflection, speech pattern, temperament, slang, and other ways of speaking. Think about some of your favorite literary characters: chances are you have a firm idea of the kinds of things they would and wouldn’t say, and that’s because the characters’ voices are written well enough that you’ve internalized their voice.

The best way to make character’s voices unique is to make sure the character’s voices fit their personality. For example, if a character is a college professor, they’re likelier to speak in a formal way and to use precise and technical terminology. That same character’s students, however, are likelier to speak informally, using shorter sentences and less precise language.

As an added bonus, saying various characters’ dialogue in your own voice helps you workshop creative ways to avoid having too many “so-and-so said” dialogue tags . You’ll know your characters all have unique voices when reading them out loud makes your home sound like a one-person stage play!

Finally, don’t forget that how a character speaks helps flesh out their personality for readers. A character who’s always shouting, for example, will come across as nervous and excitable. A character who’s always giving advice to others will come across as wiser or maybe even as a bit of a know-it-all.

Writing dialogue between characters

Writing characters who speak to each other through effective dialogue is the key to crafting realistic stories that helps keep the plot moving. Here’s how to approach a few different common dialogue situations:

Dialogue between two characters

Remember when we said that dialogue in writing should skip the small talk? When two of your characters are talking to each other, you should have a clear idea of their individual motivations. These motivations should help propel the conversation and inform how they talk to each other, avoiding the small talk that happens in real life but that would bore a reader.

Another major factor informing character dialogue is how the characters feel about each other. If they’re joking and laughing together, we can infer they have a positive relationship. If they’re speaking formally and get right to the point, we can infer they have a more transactional relationship.

What if the characters are enemies? In that case, their exchanges might be short and tense, and the characters might be more likely to interrupt each other. Someone should be able to read the exchange without looking at the rest of your story and instantly understand that these characters don’t like each other.

Dialogue between more than two characters

Dialogue between more than two characters can become chaotic and confusing to readers. However, you can take a few easy steps to help clarify things.

For example, your initial dialogue will need to have the “X said” and “Y said” dialogue tags so the reader can keep the characters straight. But a constant onslaught of “he said” and “she said” can quickly get boring. Instead of using a new dialogue tag every time, you should sometimes have your characters address each other by name, and you should give each character a unique dialogue style that stands out on its own.

It’s also important that these scenes don’t feel like characters sitting perfectly still. Make sure the reader knows where each character is within the room and pepper the dialogue with actions the characters are taking. This further distinguishes one character from another while breaking up the dialogue and helping to move the story along.

For example:

“I can’t believe this is taking so long,” Joseph said, nervously pacing around the room. “Everyone should be here by now.”

“You really need to relax,” Morgan told him, crossing the room to pour herself a drink. “Take the edge off.”

“I’ll relax when they’re here,” Joseph pouted, plopping down into the beat-up recliner in the corner of the room.

“You’ll relax when you’re dead!” Stacy laughed as she walked into the room. “The rest of us would like to start a bit earlier.

Finally, never forget that stories are driven by conflict . By giving your characters unique motivations that sometimes oppose one another, you can create the kind of tension that really transforms a scene.

Writing overlapping dialogue

Sometimes, characters are going to talk over each other. This is likelier when more than two characters are talking. Fortunately, there are multiple ways to craft convincing overlapping dialogue.

One classic way of writing overlapping dialogue is the use of the em-dash . You can prematurely end one character’s dialogue with the dash and then have another character begin speaking. This clearly shows that the second character cut the first character off.

It’s natural for people to talk over each other, so this can make your dialogue more realistic.

Billy tentatively spoke up. “Look, I’m ready to do my part, I just—” “You just what?” Sally barked. “You’re finally ready to do your part? Well, I’m ready to stop hearing excuses!”

An alternative way to express overlapping dialogue is to separate different characters’ dialogue into short phrases, with each phrase on its own line and dialogue tag. Between this formatting and the use of ellipses, you can easily show how the dialogue overlap. This technique is particularly handy for ongoing dialogue in which the characters keep cutting each other off.

Writing dialogue interruptions

Characters speaking over other characters is only one kind of dialogue interruption. But how should you write other events, including dialogue being cut off by action?

If the character is interrupting themselves, you can express this with a hyphen. If a character is interrupted by an action, we recommend ending their dialogue with an em dash and then providing a description of the action.

You may be tempted to use punctuation for an interruption followed by a comment such as “he suddenly stopped.” However, your reader will understand that an interruption has taken place. Following the em dash with a specific action is much more dynamic and helps readers learn more about your characters by seeing how they react to the interruption. For example:

“Look, you need to all pay attention. It’s very important that—”

Suddenly, she whirled around and looked all of us directly in the eye. I felt my skin crawl as she continued.

“It’s very important that you treat this as a matter of life and death. Because now, it really is.”

In this case, the character interrupting her own dialogue to stare at everyone stands out because she stopped her own speech to do so.

Writing pauses into your dialogue

Sometimes, your characters may pause in their dialogue even if they’re not interrupted. When this happens, you can use the techniques we already described (such as cutting certain words off with hyphens) to express the pause.

Ellipses (better known as the three dots, or “…”) are a great way to show that a character has trailed off. This may indicate they’re deep in thought or having an emotional reaction to what they’re thinking.

Likewise, the em-dash is a great way to express a sudden pause in what a character is saying. While ellipses indicate a slow trailing off, an em dash indicates a sudden stop. This may indicate that a character had a sudden thought or is beginning to react to something that another character said or did.

Writing dialogue for specific scenarios

So far, we’ve focused primarily on basic dialogue tips that apply to almost any scenario. However, different scenarios sometimes call for a different way of writing dialogue. Let’s review a few different scenarios and how to structure your dialogue for each one.

Writing military dialogue

Military dialogue is often difficult for writers. That’s mostly because unless the writer has been in the military before, they probably have a distorted view of how soldiers actually speak.

For example, we’ve all read a book or watched a movie that involves a hardened soldier giving a deep and introspective speech. For fantasy fans, perhaps the most famous version of this comes from Aragorn in the movie adaptation of Return of the King :

Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers, I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!

However, soldiers are typically very direct and goal-oriented in conversations as well as action and speech. Your average soldier is far likelier to engage in quick banter and dirty jokes with a colleague than to get seriously introspective.

Additionally, your military characters should use slang and acronyms correctly. For example, a World War II soldier is far likelier to call white phosphorous by its nickname “Willy Pete” than by its proper name. Modern soldiers are likelier to phonetically say an acronym rather than spell it out (i.e., a soldier would say “Dima” rather than spell out “D-M-A” in speech when referring to a “defense media activity.”) It’s important to get this right because soldiers are likelier to use specialized terms and acronyms than civilians are.

Finally, try to avoid using military cliches whenever possible. Such cliches may include famous movie lines like “stay frosty” or generic action lines like “come get some” or “lock and load.” These cliches can make your fictional soldiers sound more like generic action heroes, and this really takes readers out of the story.

Writing scientific dialogue

Interestingly, there’s some overlap between writing military dialogue and writing scientific dialogue. That’s because scientists, too, are likely to use a variety of specialized terms and acronyms. On top of that, their dialogue should be informed by actual science, so you’ll need to do extra research to make these characters sound authentic.

If you’re writing beyond your expertise, make sure you do your research so your dialogue sounds authentic.

One tip for writing dialogue between scientists or any other specialists is to make sure they aren’t explaining things to each other that they should already know. For instance, if you’re writing a conversation between two accomplished scientists, one of them explaining what the Big Bang Theory is to the other would be completely absurd. If you must explain concepts to your readers, do so via narration rather than dialogue.

Finally, if your story is more of a science fiction story, try to make sure that conversations about your future technology are consistent with modern science. This helps to ground the narrative, and this grounding is doubly important in a fictional world full of futuristic wonders.

Writing drunk dialogue

Writing drunk characters is harder than you might imagine. There are multiple approaches you might take.

One of these approaches is to visually show that being drunk is affecting how someone speaks. You can do this by stretching out words with hyphens and extra letters (like turning “hey” into a “h-h-h-eeeeeyyyy”), or by having the character frequently trailing off or cutting themselves off with ellipses and em dashes (refer to our interrupted dialogue section for help with this). You might also turn short phrases into a single word (like turning “how are you doing” into “howryadoing”) to show slurred speech.

If you don’t want to visually represent drunken dialogue, you can always write the dialogue normally and use actions to indicate the character is drunk. For example:

“No, I’m fine,” he said, his body slightly lurching as soon as he stood up. “Stop bothering me.” It wasn’t clear who he was talking to because he couldn’t seem to focus on any one person.

This works especially well if you can accurately write the body language of a drunken person.

Writing slang in dialogue

Think of slang as a kind of “secret sauce” for your dialogue. This sauce can add a lot of flavor, but the last thing you want to do is use too much of it!

First, make sure you’re using slang accurately. Websites like Urban Dictionary can help you verify the exact meaning of a term. Urban Dictionary can also help you understand whether to use this bit of slang as a noun, a verb, or something else entirely.

Second, choose the right moments to use slang. Overusing slang is one of the quickest ways to annoy your readers, so it needs to be sprinkled into your story rather than poured.

Finally, make sure slang fits the character using it and fits into your existing dialogue. The last thing you want is for weirdly-placed slang to take the reader out of the story.

Writing child dialogue

Writing dialogue for children can be especially difficult. Tthe only way to really make it easier is to try to match the dialogue to the age and development of your characters.

For example, very young children (think two years old or younger) will communicate in short bursts of badly-spelled dialogue (“daddy” becoming “dadda,” for instance). When that same child is a little older, their dialogue should no longer be misspelled, but the sentences are still likely to be very short.

In later years, child dialogue may also reflect other developments. For example, a teenage character might alternate between short, sarcastic sentences and emotional outbursts. That’s because puberty, and the complex mix of emotions it engenders, can hover over a teenager like a cloud of radiation.

It may be helpful to read passages of short stories and books written for the age of the children you’re writing for. YA authors are typically more tuned into how children actually speak.

You can also research letters and other writings that children have written. A quick Google search for “letters written by children” will reveal some interesting examples that can give you an idea of what a child’s voice sounds like.

Very young characters present an interesting challenge for writers.

Finally, if possible, you should have your children’s dialogue reviewed by parents, teachers, and others who work with children. They can give you a better idea of whether you’re on target or far off the mark.

Adding emotion to dialogue

Of course, teenagers aren’t the only characters who might be prone to emotional outbursts. Your characters should all experience a full range of emotions, and these emotions may dictate how they communicate. Here are some ideas on how to incorporate anger, distress, and joy into your dialogue:

Writing screaming in dialogue

By the time a character is screaming, it’s safe to say they’ve lost control of themselves. There are different ways to express that loss of control in dialogue.

The most basic option is to end the character’s lines with exclamation points. As an additional flourish, you can describe what the character is doing while they’re talking (such as pacing, frantically looking around, and so on).

You can also visually set the screaming dialogue apart. Italics work best for this, though you shouldn’t overuse either technique.

Finally, be sure to showcase how others react to the scream. This helps convince the reader of how intense the noise really was.

Writing laughter in dialogue

Your characters are going to laugh from time to time. You have a few different options for showing that laughter in your dialogue.

The first option is to mix amused dialogue with action indicating laughter, such as “she laughed” or “he chuckled.” If the characters will be laughing a lot, make sure to change up the verbiage you use for the sake of variety.

Another option is to actually write the laughter out, such as writing out “ha ha.” Visually, this really stands out, so using it too often may become disruptive to your reader.

The third option is to write a shortened form of the laughter, such as a singular “ha.” This is useful for expressing dry amusement or showing that a character was mildly amused but didn’t break into full-throated laughter.

Mixing dialogue with actions

Even though you’re writing a story and not a screenplay, your characters should often be in motion. Showing characters taking action helps them appear more dynamic and helps to break up the dialogue.

Here are a few methods for incorporating common character actions into your dialogue:

Writing coughing in dialogue

A character may cough in the middle of speaking. This can indicate things like illness or a reaction to the environment. As usual, you have multiple options for writing coughing in dialogue.

The first option is to simply describe the cough. After a character speaks, and possibly after they cut themselves off, you can write a vivid description of the cough. The advantage of this approach is that you can flesh out whether this was a wet cough, a hacking cough, and so on.

The second option is to express the cough within the dialogue itself as a form of onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia refers to words that are spelled like how they sound. For example, “buzz” and “hum.” With some creativity, you can create unique words to indicate that a character’s dialogue suddenly turned into a cough.

Writers may use words like “ahem” to show a character clearing their throat (and probably getting the attention of the room). To express more sudden and violent coughs, you could always write out kaff , khoff , khak , and so on, with the sound written as a word in italics.

Onomatopoeia might be your secret dialogue weapon, but it should be used sparingly.

Writing stuttering in dialogue

Whether it’s due to fear, excitement, or a speech condition, our characters sometimes stutter. The only real way to express this in dialogue is to have the first letter or consonant followed by hyphens. Do this multiple times and then complete the word, like “h-h-how’s it going?”

Don’t overuse stuttering in your dialogue. Otherwise, instances of stuttering will lose their impact.

Writing eating in dialogue

One of the most common actions your characters can take is eating. This means you must know how to properly write eating into your dialogue.

The most basic way of doing this is to describe the characters’ eating in actions between dialogue. For example, after a character finishes a sentence, you may write that “He then forked the remains of the last pancake through the syrup on his plate with deliberate intensity.”

While it’s not polite, our characters may sometimes end up speaking with their mouths full. To express this, you can merge words in creative ways, similar to slurred speech. From a person eating, “stop it” may come out more like “stoppid.” Depending on what the character is eating and saying, you may need to replace various syllables (for example, “cutting” may sound like “cuhhing” from a character who is biting down on something and can’t use their tongue).

Another option is to express the act of eating within the dialogue itself. For example:

“Wow, these tacos”— crunch —“you can really taste every flavor”— slorp —“I could eat these all day!”

If you want to sound convincing, research isn’t very hard to do. Just record yourself talking with your mouthful as you try to say the dialogue in question. This gives you a perfect reference as you write!

How to write better dialogue every time

Dialogue is hard to learn and even harder to master. But serious writers know that mastery is rewarding because it helps you craft the most convincing characters and the most compelling stories!

Now that you know a few of our best tips for writing dialogue, it’s time to put those skills to use. Next time you sit down to write, you can begin using these dialogue tips and tricks to create exchanges between your characters that practically leap off the page.

Get feedback on your writing today!

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How to Write Dialogue: 7 Great Tips for Writers (With Examples)

Hannah Yang headshot

Hannah Yang

How to write dialogue title

Great dialogue serves multiple purposes. It moves your plot forward. It develops your characters and it makes the story more engaging.

It’s not easy to do all these things at once, but when you master the art of writing dialogue, readers won’t be able to put your book down.

In this article, we will teach you the rules for writing dialogue and share our top dialogue tips that will make your story sing.

Dialogue Rules

How to format dialogue, 7 tips for writing dialogue in a story or book, dialogue examples.

Before we look at tips for writing powerful dialogue, let’s start with an overview of basic dialogue rules.

  • Start a new paragraph each time there’s a new speaker. Whenever a new character begins to speak, you should give them their own paragraph. This rule makes it easier for the reader to follow the conversation.
  • Keep all speech between quotation marks . Everything that a character says should go between quotation marks, including the final punctuation marks. For example, periods and commas should always come before the final quotation mark, not after.
  • Don’t use end quotations for paragraphs within long speeches. If a single character speaks for such a long time that you break their speech up into multiple paragraphs, you should omit the quotation marks at the end of each paragraph until they stop talking. The final quotation mark indicates that their speech is over.
  • Use single quotes when a character quotes someone else. Whenever you have a quote within a quote, you should use single quotation marks (e.g. She said, “He had me at ‘hello.’”)
  • Dialogue tags are optional. A dialogue tag is anything that indicates which character is speaking and how, such as “she said,” “he whispered,” or “I shouted.” You can use dialogue tags if you want to give the reader more information about who’s speaking, but you can also choose to omit them if you want the dialogue to flow more naturally. We’ll be discussing more about this rule in our tips below.

The purpose of dialogue

Let’s walk through some examples of how to format dialogue .

The simplest formatting option is to write a line of speech without a dialogue tag. In this case, the entire line of speech goes within the quotation marks, including the period at the end.

  • Example: “I think I need a nap.”

Another common formatting option is to write a single line of speech that ends with a dialogue tag.

Here, you should separate the speech from the dialogue tag with a comma, which should go inside the quotation marks.

  • Example: “I think I need a nap,” Maria said.

How to puntuate dialogue

You can also write a line of speech that starts with a dialogue tag. Again, you separate the dialogue tag with a comma, but this time, the comma goes outside the quotation marks.

  • Example: Maria said, “I think I need a nap.”

As an alternative to a simple dialogue tag, you can write a line of speech accompanied by an action beat. In this case, you should use a period rather than a comma, because the action beat is a full sentence.

  • Example: Maria sat down on the bed. “I think I need a nap.”

Finally, you can choose to include an action beat while the character is talking.

In this case, you would use em-dashes to separate the action from the dialogue, to indicate that the action happens without a pause in the speech.

  • Example: “I think I need”—Maria sat down on the bed—“a nap.”

Now that we’ve covered the basics, we can move on to the more nuanced aspects of writing dialogue.

Here are our seven favorite tips for writing strong, powerful dialogue that will keep your readers engaged.

Tip #1: Create Character Voices

Dialogue is a great way to reveal your characters. What your characters say, and how they say it, can tell us so much about what kind of people they are.

Some characters are witty and gregarious. Others are timid and unobtrusive.

Speech patterns vary drastically from person to person.

To make someone stop talking to them, one character might say “I would rather not talk about this right now,” while another might say, “Shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”

When you’re writing dialogue, think about your character’s education level, personality, and interests.

  • What kind of slang do they use?
  • Do they prefer long or short sentences?
  • Do they ask questions or make assertions?

What goes in to character voice

Each character should have their own voice.

Ideally, you want to write dialogue that lets your reader identify the person speaking at any point in your story just by looking at what’s between the quotation marks.

Tip #2: Write Realistic Dialogue

Good dialogue should sound natural. Listen to how people talk in real life and try to replicate it on the page when you write dialogue.

Don’t be afraid to break the rules of grammar, or to use an occasional exclamation point to punctuate dialogue.

It’s okay to use contractions , sentence fragments , and run-on sentences , even if you wouldn’t use them in other parts of the story.

Contractions, sentence fragments, and run-on sentences

This doesn’t mean that realistic dialogue should sound exactly like the way people speak in the real world.

If you’ve ever read a court transcript, you know that real-life speech is riddled with “ums” and “ahs” and repeated words and phrases. A few paragraphs of this might put your readers to sleep.

Compelling dialogue should sound like a real conversation, while still being wittier, smoother, and better worded than real speech.

Tip #3: Simplify Your Dialogue Tags

A dialogue tag is anything that tells the reader which character is talking within that same paragraph, such as “she said” or “I asked.”

When you’re writing dialogue, remember that simple dialogue tags are the most effective .

Often, you can omit dialogue tags after the conversation has started flowing, especially if only two characters are participating.

The reader will be able to keep up with who’s speaking as long as you start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes.

When you do need to use a dialogue tag, a simple “he said” or “she said” will do the trick.

Our brains generally skip over the word “said” when we’re reading, while other dialogue tags are a distraction.

Which dialogue tags to use

A common mistake beginner writers make is to avoid using the word “said.”

Characters in amateur novels tend to mutter, whisper, declare, or chuckle at every line of dialogue. This feels overblown and distracts from the actual story.

Another common mistake is to attach an adverb to the word “said.” Characters in amateur novels rarely just say things—they have to say things loudly, quietly, cheerfully, or angrily.

If you’re writing great dialogue, readers should be able to figure out whether your character is cheerful or angry from what’s within the quotation marks.

The only exception to this rule is if the dialogue tag contradicts the dialogue itself. For example, consider this sentence:

  • “You’ve ruined my life,” she said angrily.

The word “angrily” is redundant here because the words inside the quotation marks already imply that the character is speaking angrily.

In contrast, consider this sentence:

  • “You’ve ruined my life,” she said thoughtfully.

Here, the word “thoughtfully” is well-placed because it contrasts with what we might otherwise assume. It adds an additional nuance to the sentence inside the quotation marks.

Dos and don'ts of dialogue tags

You can use the ProWritingAid dialogue check when you write dialogue to make sure your dialogue tags are pulling their weight and aren’t distracting readers from the main storyline.

Dialogue tags check

Sign up for your free ProWritingAid account to check your dialogue tags today.

Tip #4: Balance Speech with Action

When you’re writing dialogue, you can use action beats —descriptions of body language or physical action—to show what each character is doing throughout the conversation.

Learning how to write action beats is an important component of learning how to write dialogue.

Good dialogue becomes even more interesting when the characters are doing something active at the same time.

You can watch people in real life, or even characters in movies, to see what kinds of body language they have. Some pick at their fingernails. Some pace the room. Some tap their feet on the floor.

Common action beats for dialogue

Including physical action when writing dialogue can have multiple benefits:

  • It changes the pace of your dialogue and makes the rhythm more interesting
  • It prevents “white room syndrome,” which is when a scene feels like it’s happening in a white room because it’s all dialogue and no description
  • It shows the reader who’s speaking without using speaker tags

You can decide how often to include physical descriptions in each scene. All dialogue has an ebb and flow to it, and you can use beats to control the pace of your dialogue scenes.

If you want a lot of tension in your scene, you can use fewer action beats to let the dialogue ping-pong back and forth.

If you want a slower scene, you can write dialogue that includes long, detailed action beats to help the reader relax.

You should start a separate sentence, or even a new paragraph, for each of these longer beats.

Action beats for dialogue tip

Tip #5: Write Conversations with Subtext

Every conversation has subtext , because we rarely say exactly what we mean. The best dialogue should include both what is said and what is not said.

I once had a roommate who cared a lot about the tidiness of our apartment, but would never say it outright. We soon figured out that whenever she said something like “I might bring some friends over tonight,” what she meant was “Please wash your dishes, because there are no clean plates left for my friends to use.”

Tip for dialogue subtext

When you’re writing dialogue, it’s important to think about what’s not being said. Even pleasant conversations can hide a lot beneath the surface.

Is one character secretly mad at the other?

Is one secretly in love with the other?

Is one thinking about tomorrow’s math test and only pretending to pay attention to what the other person is saying?

Personally, I find it really hard to use subtext when I write dialogue from scratch.

In my first drafts I let my characters say what they really mean. Then, when I’m editing, I go back and figure out how to convey the same information through subtext instead.

Tip #6: Show, Don’t Tell

When I was in high school, I once wrote a story in which the protagonist’s mother tells her: “As you know, Susan, your dad left us when you were five.”

I’ve learned a lot about the writing craft since high school, but it doesn’t take a brilliant writer to figure out that this is not something any mother would say to her daughter in real life.

Characters sould talk to each other, not the reader

The reason I wrote that line of dialogue was because I wanted to tell the reader when Susan last saw her father, but I didn’t do it in a realistic way.

Don’t shoehorn information into your characters’ conversations if they’re not likely to say it to each other.

One useful trick is to have your characters get into an argument.

You can convey a lot of information about a topic through their conflicting opinions, without making it sound like either of the characters is saying things for the reader’s benefit.

Here’s one way my high school self could have conveyed the same information in a more realistic way in just a few lines:

Susan: “Why didn’t you tell me Dad was leaving? Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?”

Mom: “You were only five. I wanted to protect you.”

Tip #7: Keep Your Dialogue Concise

Dialogue tends to flow out easily when you’re drafting your story, so in the editing process, you’ll need to be ruthless. Cut anything that doesn’t move the story forward.

Try not to write dialogue that feels like small talk.

You can eliminate most hellos and goodbyes, or summarize them instead of showing them. Readers don’t want to waste their time reading dialogue that they hear every day.

In addition, try not to write dialogue with too many trigger phrases, which are questions that trigger the next line of dialogue, such as:

  • “And then what?”
  • “What do you mean?”

It’s tempting to slip these in when you’re writing dialogue because they keep the conversation flowing. I still catch myself doing this from time to time.

Remember that you don’t need three lines of dialogue when one line could accomplish the same thing.

Let’s look at some dialogue examples from successful novels that follow each of our seven tips.

Dialogue Example #1: How to Create Character Voice

Let’s start with an example of a character with a distinct voice from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.

“What happened, Harry? What happened? Is he ill? But you can cure him, can’t you?” Colin had run down from his seat and was now dancing alongside them as they left the field. Ron gave a huge heave and more slugs dribbled down his front. “Oooh,” said Colin, fascinated and raising his camera. “Can you hold him still, Harry?”

Most readers could figure out that this was Colin Creevey speaking, even if his name hadn’t been mentioned in the passage.

This is because Colin Creevey is the only character who speaks with such extreme enthusiasm, even at a time when Ron is belching slugs.

This snippet of written dialogue does a great job of showing us Colin’s personality and how much he worships his hero Harry.

Dialogue Example #2: How to Write Realistic Dialogue

Here’s an example of how to write dialogue that feels realistic from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

“As much as I love this land, some days I think about leaving it,” Babi said. “Where to?” “Anyplace where it’s easy to forget. Pakistan first, I suppose. For a year, maybe two. Wait for our paperwork to get processed.” “And then?” “And then, well, it is a big world. Maybe America. Somewhere near the sea. Like California.”

Notice the punctuation and grammar that these two characters use when they speak.

There are many sentence fragments in this conversation like, “Anyplace where it’s easy to forget.” and “Somewhere near the sea.”

Babi often omits the verbs from his sentences, just like people do in real life. He speaks in short fragments instead of long, flowing paragraphs.

This dialogue shows who Babi is and feels similar to the way a real person would talk, while still remaining concise.

how to write realistic dialogue

Dialogue Example #3: How to Simplify Your Dialogue Tags

Here’s an example of effective dialogue tags in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

In this passage, the narrator’s been caught exploring the forbidden west wing of her new husband’s house, and she’s trying to make excuses for being there.

“I lost my way,” I said, “I was trying to find my room.” “You have come to the opposite side of the house,” she said; “this is the west wing.” “Yes, I know,” I said. “Did you go into any of the rooms?” she asked me. “No,” I said. “No, I just opened a door, I did not go in. Everything was dark, covered up in dust sheets. I’m sorry. I did not mean to disturb anything. I expect you like to keep all this shut up.” “If you wish to open up the rooms I will have it done,” she said; “you have only to tell me. The rooms are all furnished, and can be used.” “Oh, no,” I said. “No. I did not mean you to think that.”

In this passage, the only dialogue tags Du Maurier uses are “I said,” “she said,” and “she asked.”

Even so, you can feel the narrator’s dread and nervousness. Her emotions are conveyed through what she actually says, rather than through the dialogue tags.

This is a splendid example of evocative speech that doesn’t need fancy dialogue tags to make it come to life.

Dialogue Example #4: How to Balance Speech with Action

Let’s look at a passage from The Princess Bride by William Goldman, where dialogue is melded with physical action.

With a smile the hunchback pushed the knife harder against Buttercup’s throat. It was about to bring blood. “If you wish her dead, by all means keep moving," Vizzini said. The man in black froze. “Better,” Vizzini nodded. No sound now beneath the moonlight. “I understand completely what you are trying to do,” the Sicilian said finally, “and I want it quite clear that I resent your behavior. You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen, and I think it quite ungentlemanly.” “Let me explain,” the man in black began, starting to edge forward. “You’re killing her!” the Sicilian screamed, shoving harder with the knife. A drop of blood appeared now at Buttercup’s throat, red against white.

In this passage, William Goldman brings our attention seamlessly from the action to the dialogue and back again.

This makes the scene twice as interesting, because we’re paying attention not just to what Vizzini and the man in black are saying, but also to what they’re doing.

This is a great way to keep tension high and move the plot forward.

Dialogue Example #5: How to Write Conversations with Subtext

This example from Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card shows how to write dialogue with subtext.

Here is the scene when Ender and his sister Valentine are reunited for the first time, after Ender’s spent most of his childhood away from home training to be a soldier.

Ender didn’t wave when she walked down the hill toward him, didn’t smile when she stepped onto the floating boat slip. But she knew that he was glad to see her, knew it because of the way his eyes never left her face. “You’re bigger than I remembered,” she said stupidly. “You too,” he said. “I also remembered that you were beautiful.” “Memory does play tricks on us.” “No. Your face is the same, but I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore. Come on. Let’s go out into the lake.”

In this scene, we can tell that Valentine missed her brother terribly, and that Ender went through a lot of trauma at Battle School, without either of them saying it outright.

The conversation could have started with Valentine saying “I missed you,” but instead, she goes for a subtler opening: “You’re bigger than I remembered.”

Similarly, Ender could say “You have no idea what I’ve been through,” but instead he says, “I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore.”

We can deduce what each of these characters is thinking and feeling from what they say and from what they leave unsaid.

Dialogue Example #6: How to Show, Not Tell

Let’s look at an example from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. This scene is the story’s first introduction of the ancient creatures called the Chandrian.

“I didn’t know the Chandrian were demons,” the boy said. “I’d heard—” “They ain’t demons,” Jake said firmly. “They were the first six people to refuse Tehlu’s choice of the path, and he cursed them to wander the corners—” “Are you telling this story, Jacob Walker?” Cob said sharply. “Cause if you are, I’ll just let you get on with it.” The two men glared at each other for a long moment. Eventually Jake looked away, muttering something that could, conceivably, have been an apology. Cob turned back to the boy. “That’s the mystery of the Chandrian,” he explained. “Where do they come from? Where do they go after they’ve done their bloody deeds? Are they men who sold their souls? Demons? Spirits? No one knows.” Cob shot Jake a profoundly disdainful look. “Though every half-wit claims he knows...”

The three characters taking part in this conversation all know what the Chandrian are.

Imagine if Cob had said “As we all know, the Chandrian are mysterious demon-spirits.” We would feel like he was talking to us, not to the two other characters.

Instead, Rothfuss has all three characters try to explain their own understanding of what the Chandrian are, and then shoot each other’s explanations down.

When Cob reprimands Jake for interrupting him and then calls him a half-wit for claiming to know what he’s talking about, it feels like a realistic interaction.

This is a clever way for Rothfuss to introduce the Chandrian in a believable way.

how to show not tell

Dialogue Example #7: How to Keep Your Dialogue Concise

Here’s an example of concise dialogue from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

“Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?” he said. “No, sir! I certainly don’t,” I said. I wished to hell he’d stop calling me “boy” all the time. He tried chucking my exam paper on the bed when he was through with it. Only, he missed again, naturally. I had to get up again and pick it up and put it on top of the Atlantic Monthly. It’s boring to do that every two minutes. “What would you have done in my place?” he said. “Tell the truth, boy.” Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would’ve done exactly the same thing if I’d been in his place, and how most people didn’t appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull.

Here, the last paragraph diverges from the prior ones. After the teacher says “Tell the truth, boy,” the rest of the conversation is summarized, rather than shown.

The summary of what the narrator says in the last paragraph—“I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff”—serves to hammer home that this is the type of “old bull” that the narrator has fed to his teachers over and over before.

It doesn’t need to be shown because it’s not important to the narrator—it’s just “all that stuff.”

Salinger could have written out the entire conversation in dialogue, but instead he kept the dialogue concise.

Final Words

Now you know how to write clear, effective dialogue! Start with the basic rules for dialogue and try implementing the more advanced tips as you go.

What are your favorite dialogue tips? Let us know in the comments below.

Do you know how to craft memorable, compelling characters? Download this free book now:

Creating Legends: How to Craft Characters Readers Adore… or Despise!

Creating Legends: How to Craft Characters Readers Adore… or Despise!

This guide is for all the writers out there who want to create compelling, engaging, relatable characters that readers will adore… or despise., learn how to invent characters based on actions, motives, and their past..

how to write dialogue in a first person story

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Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction writer who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, The Dark, and elsewhere, and two of her stories have been finalists for the Locus Award. Her favorite hobbies include watercolor painting, playing guitar, and rock climbing. You can follow her work on hannahyang.com, or subscribe to her newsletter for publication updates.

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Jason Bougger's blog for new and aspiring writers

First Person Mistakes in Dialogue and Thoughts

November 15, 2016 By: Jason Bougger

When you're writing in the first person, there are two things you should avoid doing when it comes to the character's thoughts and dialogue.

But in this post, I’m looking at a different type of problem I see in first person narratives, both in my own fiction and at Theme of Absence . This problem is in the dialogue, or more specifically, the way the dialogue and thoughts are presented .

Dialogue Tags

When a story is told from the first person, you can’t write the dialogue the same way you’d write it if it is told from the third person. For example, the phrase “I said” should be used sparingly in a first person narrative. In a third person narrative, the common phrases “he said” and “she said” are fine to help with the pacing of the story or to clarify who is speaking, but not in a first person story.

Well, think of it this way: In a first person story, the narrator is telling you the story . If someone is telling you a story, he’s not going to use dialogue tags after he says something. “ ‘Close the door,’ I said, ” is something you’ll never hear the guy sitting next to you in the bar say.

Thought Bubbles

Perhaps even worse than said is the “thought tag.” You should never, ever write something like this: “ Why did that happen? I thought.” Ugly, ugly, ugly. In a first person narrative, the entire story is showing what the narrator thinks. No observation or question from the narrator should end with “I thought”, as it’s totally unnecessary, completely redundant, and quite frankly, is just unrealistic prose.

There is light at the end of this short editing tunnel, at least. And that is that these two mistakes are easy to fix; just delete most instances of “I said”, or replace them with an action or description or whatever. Then hit ctrl-f and find every instance of “I thought” in your manuscript. Delete every one of them.

And that’s it. Writing in the first person can be fun and challenging at the same time. Just follow those two quick steps and keep your dialogue and narrative crisp, clean, and convincing .

What other problems have you seen in first person narratives? What do you do to fix it? Leave a comment and let us know!

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WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING AT ME!!!

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About Jason Bougger

Jason Bougger is a writer and blogger who lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his ever-growing family. His YA novel, Holy Fudgesicles, was published this year by Wings ePress and he has had over twenty short stories published in various print and online markets. In addition to his own writing, he is the owner and editor of Theme of Absence, an online magazine of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

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November 25, 2016 at 9:02 pm

This was very helpful, thank you.

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November 25, 2016 at 9:32 pm

You’re very welcome 🙂 Best of luck with your writing.

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December 9, 2016 at 5:19 am

I am writing a new story in first person, and I acknowledge making some of the mistakes above. But I now know hat to do. I should like to share this with my readers be very soon too.

December 9, 2016 at 7:40 am

The first draft of my novel was full of this stuff and when reading though, I started to see the mistake. In a casual first person story, the narrative needs to be conversational and in a conversation, you’re not saying things like “I thought,” or “I said with a smile,” or whatever.

Happy this post can help you out and thanks for reading!

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January 9, 2017 at 1:24 pm

I understand where you are coming from with the dialogue tag comment. However, I as an editor and fiction instructor myself, I would have appreciated it more had you shared what to do INSTEAD. Novice writers are inundated with pithy blogs and memes about what NOT to do, but rarely are they provided with examples of what to do instead. That results in the mad deletion of taboo words and phrases–as opposed to an understanding of how to improve a sentence or bit of dialogue. So how about a note about dialogue beats or some alternative phrasing with examples? 🙂

Hope you don’t mind the suggestions…

Peace and good writing.

January 9, 2017 at 6:21 pm

Hey, thanks for the feedback. I couldn’t agree more. I’d love to entertain a guest post on the topic if you’d be interested. Here’s a link to the submissions form: https://www.writegoodbooks.com/guests-posts/

Either way, I appreciate the feedback. Best of luck with your writing as well.

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January 27, 2017 at 4:19 pm

This isn’t my stumbling block. I am able to write dialogue in 3rd person. However, I do understand the whole no writing, I said. What about when they other people talk? Okay, I’m narrator and I am giving my perspective but when I go on to say what others are saying it feel awkward.

I walked up to the small house, knocked on the small purplish door, arms filled with groceries. I yelled out a greeting, something silly like hello. The door swung open with a squeak and the old lady told me to leave with such anger I could feel the ground fall out from under me. The old lady looked as though she had just woken and suddenly she smiled brightly and said, “I’m so sorry I thought you were someone else”. I stepped back for a moment before replying,”Oh, that’s quite alright.” ——————

Okay, is that okay? The hello part is me telling you the reader what I said. Later I need to still include quotations. Right?

I started a story in 3rd but quickly realized I wasn’t able into the head of the main character very well. So, now I’m rewriting in 1st. I feel like dialogue is getting at me…..

January 27, 2017 at 9:48 pm

I think what you’ve done in your sample is fine. “I said something silly like hello” wouldn’t need quotes for the reason you said. Your narrator is just telling the reader that he/she gave a generic greeting. Later, “Oh that’s quite all right” should be in quotes since it is a direct quote of what your narrator said. Hope that helps!

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December 31, 2017 at 1:05 am

this was really helpful, and I have made a lots of these mistakes when i wrote for the first time. I am trying to rewrite my first novel and can’t move forward. I am even considering changing to 3rd person POV, as I have started finding it easier to narrate. Can you also help me about how to use actions & beats in first person narration? For instance, if the narrator is confused or something, can we say something like

I tilted my head to the side, “What do you mean?”

Or if they are amused,

I chuckled, shaking with mirth, “You are adorable.”. She gaped at me, floundering like a fish out of water, making me laugh harder.

Personally, I think the first one is kind of awkward that the second one, and it’s very frustrating.

it sounds awkward to me

January 7, 2018 at 9:23 pm

I does sound like using third person POV would work better for you. It is a lot easier to convey the thoughts of the narrator that way.

From your example, “I titled my head to the side…” You are correct. That’s not something you should do with a first person narrator, because in “real life” that’s not how you would describe the actions you make to yourself. But “Bill tilted his head and asked ‘What do you mean?'” is perfectly acceptable.

I think your second example sounds a lot better, but maybe leave out that “shaking with mirth” part. “I chuckled. ‘You are adorable.'” don’t sound bad, and still conveys the emotions you are shooting for.

Hope that helps a little. Best of luck with your writing, and thanks for stopping by!

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April 7, 2018 at 9:53 am

if you use first person, for example… mike invited me to a party, he said… after he said do i have to quote?? what do i put? its first person right???

April 12, 2018 at 9:42 pm

Good question. If your narrator is literally quoting how Mike invited her to the party, then yes. You would put what he said in quotes. For example:

Mike said “would you like to come to the party?”

But if you weren’t directly quoting him, you would not use quotes. For example:

Mike invited me to the party.

Hope that helps. Thanks for stopping by.

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  • Is Grammar Necessary? What Words Go Where, and Why!
  • Why Syntax Is Important
  • Similarities Between Adjectives & Adverbs – Examples & Uses
  • Why Is It Important To Use Good Grammar In Writing?
  • How To Write Dialogue Between Two Characters In A Story
  • How To Write Dialogue For A Deaf Character
  • Terms and Conditions

How To Write Dialogue In First Person

  • by Derek Bruce
  • December 4, 2021 July 14, 2022

How To Write Dialogue In First Person_featured image

Table of Contents

What does 1st person mean in writing?

1st person means the person narrating the story is telling it to you, or speaking directly to you. This is a very common technique in fiction, such as novels and short stories.

The protagonist is usually telling their own story, and what they do and experience affects how you view that person.

What are some examples of writing in first person?

  • “I scratch my head,” “I take a step back,”
  • “The woman brings me closer. I look at her. There’s something about her face that’s familiar. I stop, feeling my heart beating in my ears,”
  • “I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself,”
  • “It didn’t seem to bother her much, the fact that she would be getting married in less than two months.”

Video – Writing dialogue in first person

How can switching from 1st person to 3rd person affect your writing?

3rd person is the most common narrative style. The narrator is someone other than the protagonist (or any other character).

A 3rd person narrative is often viewed as objective, which refers to the fact that the author writes from a point of view without taking sides. 1st person POV is very personal and can be intimate, placing the reader in the shoes of the writer and main character.

Is it ok to switch between first-person and third-person narration?

Can you use dialogue in 1st person?

Yes, of course you can use dialogue in 1st person. It can create a great effect, but it can also be tricky, if the reader isn’t going to get bored.

One of the challenges is to have the main character speak form the 1st person point of view without saying things like ‘I said’ all the time. You can get over this by preceding 1st person speech with an obvious action, for example, so that it’s obvious who is speaking .

Example of 1st person dialogue:

I turned the corner to find my way blocked by a giant of a man.

“What the hell!”

“Surprised to see me, Nick? Been a while.”

A garbage container blocked my retreat.

“Yeah, I was just on my way to see you.”

“Sure you were,” he smiled.

How do you write in first person point of view?

Follow the basic rules of using I, Me, My and Mine, and you won’t go far wrong. The 1st person POV in question can either be the main character himself or an off-stage narrator, possible a secondary character re-telling the story of what he witnessed.

What Is First Person Point of View in Writing

What is an example of 1st person point of view?

The 3 main POVs used in fiction are:

  • 1st person – “ I picked up my hat and brushed down my coat, trying to protect everything that was mine .”
  • 2nd person – “ You picked up your hat and brushed down your coat, trying to protect everything that was yours. “
  • 3rd person – “ He picked up his hat and brushed down his coat, trying to protect everything that was his. “

Should I write in first person?

There are certain advantages to using 1st person, but it tends to need a little writing experience under the belt before it can be done effectively.

It can be intimate and get the reader inside the main character’s head, but the technique is difficult to maintain, specially for a beginner.

The main problem is that the reader can only see and know what the main character knows, so the bigger aspects of the plot are invisible to the reader. On the plus side, this means that you get to be surprised by a turn of events, just like your main character.

At the end of the day, it’s a personal choice based on the effect the writer wants to create.

6 Tips to Choosing the Right Point of View

Is first person dialogue hard to do - examples

How do you write in first person example?

When a writer use the first-person point of view in a novel, they use the words I, Me, My and Mine, indicfating that the narrator is the main character in the book.

An author could also use the first person in the plural form: we, us, our and ours. The peson telling the story could be the hero, the villain or a or a secondary character who isn’t really involved in the action.

The best way to get a feel for this is to read some of the best examples on novels that use 1st person narration and dialogue.

  • Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
  • The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  • Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
  • Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
  • Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
  • The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
  • The Martian by Andy Weir
  • The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
  • I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Courtesy Goodreads

Is first person writing bad?

No POV is particularly bad. 1st person wriitng is all the rage at the moment, at least for the past 10 years or so. It seems that everyone, even beginners, us 1st person all the time for their novels and some people think it’s getting a bit tiresome.

In the great heydey of novel writing, authors like John Grisham and John LeCarre tended to write in a variety of Points of View, simply because different stories and plots needed a different POV for best effect.

Victorian novels were almost always 3rd person omniscient , while 2nd person POV has always been an outlier. 2nd person is bad (IMHO). It’s hard to do. It’s intended to palce the reader right in the middle of the action.

When it works, it’s great, but when 2nd person is mis-handled, it sucks big-time!

Is first person really that bad for a first novel?

Is it easier to write in first person?

At first it seems as though it’s easier to write in first person, but it’s hard to maintain it without writing a lot of I’s, and My’s!

Beginners use it because they want the readers to get in the chaacter’s head and really feel all the stress and conflict that arise from plot twists and turns.

It’s a favorite of beginners beacuse whenever we recount something to another person we automatically form oour experiences in the first person – it’s inevitable:

“I was walking across the street and you’ll never guess who I saw coming out of Sainsbury’s …”

If first person is how we tell a story in real-life then it makes perfect sense to use it in the written form when writing fiction.

Debunking Myths: “First Person POV is the easiest to write.”

What POV is Harry Potter?

The books about Harry Potter are written in 3rd person limited and 3rd person omniscient. This is a great combination because the narrator can zoom in and out of situation involving or not involving Harry.

3rd person omniscient is like being a God. You can see and are aware of everything, while 1st person is closed and intimate. In general, the reader is aware of what the narrator (who is the main character) sees, hears and feels.

2nd person POV couldn’t work at all in the Harry Potter series, as it places you, the reader, in the story and you are not Harry Potter!

Resources relating to writing dialogue in 1st person:

How would you write dialogue in a 1st person story, first person mistakes in dialogue and thoughts, first person narrative: 7 tips for writing great narrators, writing in first person: 4 tricks and 6 pitfalls, what is a good example of narration transitioning to dialogue, how to format dialogue in your novel or short story.

how to write dialogue in a first person story

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how to write dialogue in a first person story

How to Write Dialogue

How to Write Dialogue That Captivates Your Reader

If your writing bores you, it’ll put your reader to sleep. 

And unfortunately, your first reader will be an agent or an editor. 

Your job is to make every word count—the only way to keep your reader riveted until the end, which is no small task.

Riveting dialogue is your friend because it can accomplish so many things:

  • It breaks up narrative summary.
  • It differentiates characters (through dialect and word choice ).
  • It moves the story, showing without telling.

But writing dialogue well is not easy. If your dialogue is bloated or obvious or telling, readers won’t stay with you long.

  • How to Write Effective Dialogue in 6 Steps
  • Cut to the Bone
  • Reveal Backstory
  • Reveal Character
  • Read Your Dialogue Out Loud
  • Create a “Make My Day” Moment

How to Write Dialogue: Step 1. Cut to the Bone

Unless you’re including them to reveal a character as a brainiac or a blowhard, omit needless words from dialogue.

Obviously, you wouldn’t render a conversation the way a court transcript includes repetition and even um, ah, uh, etc.

See how much you can chop while virtually communicating the same point. It’s more the way real people talk anyway.

“What do you want to do this Sunday? I thought w We could go to the amusement park.”

“I was thinking about renting a rowboat,” Vladimir said. “On one of the lakes.”

“Oh, Vladimir, that sounds wonderful! I’ve never gone rowing before.”

That doesn’t mean all your dialogue has to be choppy—just cut the dead wood.

You’ll be surprised by how much power it adds.

How to Write Dialogue Step 2. Reveal Backstory

How to write dialogue with backstory

Layering in backstory via dialogue helps keep your reader engaged.

Hinting at some incident introduces a setup that demands a payoff.

As they headed toward the house, Janet whispered, “Can we not bring up Cincinnati?”

Maggie shot her a double take. “Believe me, I don’t want that any more than you do.”

“Good,” Janet said. “I mean—”

“Can we not talk about it, please?”

What normal reader wouldn’t assume they will talk about it and stay with the story until they do?

As the story progresses , reveal more and more about your protagonist’s past.

This offers setups that should engage your reader, and it allows you to avoid relying on cliched flashbacks .

How to Write Dialogue Step 3. Reveal Character

Your reader learns a lot about your characters through dialogue.

You don’t have to TELL us they’re sarcastic, witty, narcissistic, kind, or anything else.

You can SHOW us by how they interact and by what they say.

How to Write Dialogue Step 4. Be Subtle

Dialogue offers a number of ways to powerfully understate things.

Here are three:

1. Subtext: Where people say other than what they mean.

Cindy falls in love with the slightly older boy next door, who sees her as just a little sister type.

When she gets to high school, Tommy is already captain of the football team, dating the head cheerleader, and largely ignoring Cindy. 

Tommy leaves for college and word soon gets back to Cindy during her senior year of high school that he and his girlfriend have broken up.

So when he comes home after his freshman year of college and is changing a tire on his car, Cindy just happens to walk outside. She strikes up a conversation with Tommy, and he looks up, stunned. Who is this beauty—little Cindy from next door?

She says, “Making a change, are you?”

Tommy looks at the tire and back at her and says, “Yeah, I actually am making a change.”

Cindy says, “Well, I’ve heard that rotating can be a good thing.”

And he says, “Yeah, I’ve heard that too.”

That’s subtext . They’re not saying what they really mean. They’re not really talking about changing the tire, are they?

2. Sidestepping: When a character responds to a question by ignoring it.

Instead, he offers a whole new perspective.

In the movie Patch Adams , the late Robin Williams played a brilliant young doctor who believes the Old Testament adage that “laughter is the best medicine.”

In the children’s cancer ward he wears an inflated surgical glove on his head, making him look like a rooster. He wears bedpans for shoes and stomps about, flapping his arms and squawking.

The children find it hilarious, but hospital directors consider it undignified and demand he stop.

Patch is trying to make one girl in particular—a hospital volunteer—laugh. But while everyone else thinks he’s funny, she never cracks a smile.

Finally, Patch leaves the hospital to open a clinic in the country. Imagine his surprise when that humorless young lady appears to help him set up.

At one point, she goes outside to rest, so Patch follows and sits opposite her. He says, “I’ve got to ask. Everybody thinks I’m hysterical, but you. I’ve tried everything. Why don’t you ever think anything I say is funny?”

After several seconds, she says, “Men have liked me all my life…all my life…” And we realize by the way she says it, she was abused as a child.

Suddenly, we understand what this girl is all about. She doesn’t trust men, and she doesn’t laugh, because life isn’t funny.

She had not really answered his question. Her problem had nothing to do with him or his humor.

Finally, Patch realizes that some things aren’t funny. Some things you just don’t make fun of. 

It’s a great turnaround in the story. And an example of sidestep dialogue.

Silence truly can be golden.

Many, including Abraham Lincoln, have been credited with the line: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

One of the toughest things to learn as a writer is to avoid filling silent gaps.

Just like we shouldn’t tell what’s not happening in a story, neither do we need to write that someone didn’t respond or didn’t answer.

If you don’t say they did, the reader will know they didn’t.

“Well, John,” Linda said, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

John set his jaw and stared out the window.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

He lit a cigarette.

Linda shook her head. “I swear, John, honestly.”

Too many writers feel the need to write here, “But he refused to say anything,” or “But he never responded.”

Don’t! We know, we get it—and it’s loud, effective, silent dialogue.

Saying nothing, John is actually saying everything.

How to Write Dialogue Step 5. Read Your Dialogue Out Loud

Reading Your Dialogue Out Loud

One way to be certain your dialogue flows is to read it aloud or even act it out.

Anything that doesn’t sound right won’t read right either, so rewrite it until it does.

How to Write Dialogue Step 6. Create a “Make My Day” Moment

Certain iconic lines of dialogue have become as legendary as the films and books they originate from:

  • “Frankly my dear…”
  • “There’s no place like home.”
  • “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
  • “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”
  • “What we have here is failure to communicate.”
  • “Go ahead, make my day.”
  • “May the force be with you.”
  • “Houston, we have a problem.”
  • “Run, Forrest, run!”
  • “You had me at hello.”

Most writers—even bestselling novelists—never create such an unforgettable line of dialogue. But striving to create one is worth the effort.

Ironically, iconic dialogue should fit so seamlessly it doesn’t draw attention to itself until fans begin quoting it.

  • How to Format Dialogue

1. Use Dialogue Tags

Attribution tags— he said, she said, etc.—are usually all you need to indicate who’s speaking, so resist the urge to get creative.

Teachers who urge you to find alternatives are usually unpublished and believe agents and editors will be impressed.

Trust me, they won’t be.

Avoid mannerisms of attribution. People say things. They don’t wheeze, gasp, sigh, laugh, grunt, or snort them.

They might do any of those things while saying them, which might be worth mentioning, but the emphasis should be on what is said, and readers just need to know who is saying it.

Keep it simple. All those other descriptors turn the spotlight on an intrusive writer.

Sometimes people whisper or shout or mumble , but let their choice of words indicate they’re grumbling, etc.

If it’s important that they sigh or laugh, separate that action from the dialogue.

Jim sighed. “I can’t take this anymore.”

Not: Jim sighed, “I can’t take this anymore.”

Though you read them in school readers and classic fiction, attribution tags such as replied , retorted , exclaimed, and declared have become clichéd and archaic.

You’ll still see them occasionally, but I suggest avoiding them.

Often no attribution is needed.

Use dialogue tags only when the reader wouldn’t otherwise know who’s speaking.

I once wrote an entire novel , The Last Operative , without attributing a single line of dialogue. 

Not a said , an asked , anything.

I made clear through action who was speaking, and not one reader, even my editor, noticed.

Jordan shook his head and sighed. “I’ve had it.”

Another common error is having characters address each other by name too often.

Real people rarely do this, and it often seems planted only to avoid a dialogue tag. Fictional dialogue should sound real.

Don’t start your dialogue attribution tag with said. 

…said Joe or … said Mary reads like a children’s book. Substitute he and she for the names and that will make it obvious: …said he or said she just doesn’t sound right.

Rather, end with said for the most natural sound: …Joe said or …Mary said.

Resist the urge to explain, and give the reader credit.

The amateur writer often writes something like this:

“I’m beat,” exclaimed John tiredly.

Besides telling and not showing—violating a cardinal rule of writing—it uses the archaic exclaimed for said , misplaces that before the name rather than after, and adds the redundant tiredly (explaining something that needs no explanation) .

The pro would write:

John dropped onto the couch. “I’m beat.”

That shows rather than tells, and the action ( dropped onto the couch ) tells who’s speaking.

2. How to Punctuate Dialogue

Few things expose a beginner like incorrect punctuation, especially in dialogue.

Agents and editors justifiably wonder if you read dialogue, let alone whether you can write it, if you write something like: “I don’t know.” she said. Or, “What do you think?” He said.

To avoid common mistakes:

  • When dialogue ends with a question or exclamation mark, the dialogue tag following the quotation marks should be lowercase:  “I’m glad you’re here!” she said.
  • When one character’s dialogue extends to more than one paragraph, start each subsequent paragraph with a double quotation mark, and place your closing double quotation mark only at the end of the final paragraph.
  • Place punctuation inside the quotation marks, the dialogue tag outside: “John was just here asking about you,” Bill said.
  • Put the attribution after the first clause of a compound sentence: “Not tonight,” he said, “not in this weather.”
  • Action before dialogue requires a separate sentence: Anna shook her head. “I can’t believe she’s gone!”
  • Quoting within a quote requires single quotation marks: “Lucy, Mom specifically said, ‘Do not cut your bangs,’ and you did it anyway!”
  • When action or attribution interrupts dialogue, use lowercase as dialogue resumes: “That,” she said, “hurt bad.”

3.  Every New Speaker Requires a New Paragraph

Here’s how I handled a conversation between Brady, one of my lead characters, and his attorney, in my novel Riven :

Ravinia sat shaking her head and telling him all the reasons it would never fly. Rules, regulations, protocol, procedure, no exceptions, and the list went on and on. “I’m not going to pursue this for you, Brady.”

“Yes, you are. I can tell.”

“You can’t tell it by me. Have you been listening? It’s impossible…”

“But you’ll try.”

Ravinia rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” 

“Sure you would. You know everything, and you’ve been working inside the system a long time.”

“I’d be laughed out of here,” she said.

“Just tell me you’ll try.”

“Brady, really, be serious. Think this through. Can you imagine the warden going for this? Huh-uh. No way.”

“I like your idea of starting with the warden,” he said.

“I said no such thing.”

“Start at the top; go right to the man.” …

“Brady, don’t ask me to do this.”

“I’m asking.”

  • Additional Dialogue Examples

Example #1  

If you’re old enough to remember the original Twilight Zone (hosted by Rod Serling) or Dragnet (starring and narrated by Jack Webb), you know how dialogue set the tone for their shows.

Serling was sometimes whimsical, sometimes mysterious, but always provocative. “Consider one middle-aged adult, lost in space and time…”

Jack Webb, as L.A. police detective Sergeant Joe Friday, was always deadly serious and monotone. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Contrast those with the dialogue between Tom and his Aunt Polly in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

“There! I mighta thought of that closet. What you been doing in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What IS that truck?”

“I don’t know, aunt.”

“Well, I know. It’s jam—that’s what it is. Forty times I’ve said if you didn’t let that jam alone I’d skin you. Hand me that switch.”

The switch hovered in the air—the peril was desperate—

“My! Look behind you, aunt!”

The old lady whirled round and snatched her skirts out of danger. The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the highboard fence, and disappeared over it.

Such dialogue sets the tone for the entire story and clearly differentiates characters.

Example #3 

In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain delineates between the Southern white boy and Jim, the runaway slave, by hinting at their respective accents.

Twain doesn’t need to tell who’s speaking, yet the reader never confuses the two.

“Jim, did y’all ever see a king?”

Y’all is the only word in that sentence that implies a Southern accent, but it’s enough.

“I sho enough did.”

“You liar, Jim. You never seen no king.”

“I seen foh kings in a deck of cards.”

Huck’s grammar and Jim’s sho and foh are the only hints of their dialects.

Too much phonetic spelling would have slowed the reading.

Good dialogue can condense a character’s backstory:

A woman in a restaurant whispers to her lunchmate, “You know who that is over there, don’t you?” 

The other says, “No, who?” 

“That’s just it. She’s had so much work done, you don’t recognize her. That’s Betty Lou Herman.” 

“No.” 

“Yeah, she’s had her nose done, her cheeks lifted, and a hair transplant.” 

“Why?” 

“She’s going into politics.” 

“Seriously, that’s really her?” 

In that brief exchange, backstory is layered in, showing where there would otherwise have been too much narrative summary in the form of telling. 

Example #5  

Allow readers to experience the enjoyment of having a story naturally emerge rather than spelling out every detail. 

Instead of writing clunky dialogue like this: 

“Just because you’re in this hospital because you were nearly killed in that wreck when Bill was driving, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t forgive him.”

“What are you going to do about Bill? He feels terrible.” 

“He ought to.” 

“Well, has he visited?” 

“He wouldn’t dare.” 

What actually happened, and why, can emerge in further realistic dialogue as the story progresses. If you were walking past a hospital room and heard this conversation, they wouldn’t be spelling the whole thing out like the first example did. In a normal conversation between two characters — not there only to dump information on the reader — you’d have to deduce what’s going on. 

That’s part of the fun of being a reader — participating in the experience.

In real life, we repeat ourselves for emphasis, but that should be trimmed from written dialogue. 

Instead of a wordy exchange like this:

“Well, this may be one of my craziest mistakes ever.”

“Why is that, Pa?”

“This may be my craziest mistake ever.”

“Why, Pa?”

The words are virtually the same, in the same order, but there are fewer of them, rendering the sentences more powerful.

  • The Cardinal Sin of Dialogue

No shortcuts will turn you into a bestselling author, but writers often ask me for that Yoda-esque bit of wisdom “you’d give me if you could tell me only one thing…”

So here it is: avoid on-the-nose dialogue .

It’s not magic, but if you can get a handle on this amateur writing pitfall, you’ll instantly have a leg up on your competition.

On-the-nose may sound like a positive thing — which it would be if related to marksmanship or  academics, but for our purposes it’s a term coined by Hollywood producers and scriptwriters for prose that mirrors real life without advancing the story. It’s one of the most common mistakes I see in otherwise good writing. Even the pros often fall into it.

An example:  

Paige’s phone chirped, telling her she had a call. She slid her bag off her shoulder, opened it, pulled out her cell, hit the Accept Call button, and put it to her ear.

“This is Paige,” she said.

“Hey, Paige.”

She recognized her fiancé’s voice. “Jim, darling! Hello!”

“Where are you, Babe?”

“Just got to the parking garage.”

“No more problems with the car then?”

“Oh, the guy at the gas station said he thinks it needs a wheel alignment.”

“Good. We still on for tonight?”

“Looking forward to it, Sweetie.”

“Did you hear about Alyson?”

“No, what about her?”

  • How to Write More Believable Dialogue

Here’s the way that scene should be rendered:

Paige’s phone chirped. It was her fiancé, Jim, and he told her something about one of their best friends that made her forget where she was.

“Cancer?” she whispered, barely able to speak. “I didn’t even know Alyson was sick. Did you?”

Trust me, not a single reader will wonder how she knew the caller was Jim. Does anyone need to be told that:

  • the chirp told her she had a call? 
  • her phone is in her purse?
  • her purse is over her shoulder?
  • she has to open it to get her phone?
  • she has to push a button to take a call?
  • one needs to put the phone to her ear to hear and to speak? 
  • she identifies herself to the caller?

Those who love you might also love that kind of writing, praising you for describing every real life detail of answering a cell phone.

It shows you can exactly mirror real life. Good for you. Don’t beat yourself up over it; we’ve all done it. Just quit it. :) Leave it to the amateurs. 

Separate yourself from your competition by recognizing and deleting minutiae like that.

Dig deep. Go past the surface. Mine your emotions, your mind and heart and soul.

Remember what it felt like when you got news like that about someone you deeply cared about, and take the reader with you on the journey you promised them when they picked up your story. Let them hear Paige’s response: “Jim, let me give you a raincheck on tonight. I need to see her.” 

Apply to your own dialogue the principles and tools I’ve outlined here, and I believe you’ll immediately see a compelling difference in your own prose. 

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Last updated on Nov 14, 2022

First Person Point of View: Character-Driven Narration

First person point of view is when a story is told from a character’s own perspective using the pronoun ‘I,’ or more unusually, from a collective perspective using the plural pronoun “we.” The narrator interprets events in their own voice, giving the reader direct access to their thoughts, feelings, and opinions. This POV is common in fiction as it involves the reader directly in the story and allows authors to accomplish powerful characterization. 

An example of first person POV could look something like this: “ I feared what might greet me as I entered the kitchen.”

First person has remained a popular POV since the novel was invented, and it’s something all authors should try to master. That’s why we’ve created this guide to reveal the power of first person point of view.

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First person creates an immersive experience

One of the main benefits of first person POV is that it creates intimacy. For Tracy Gold , Reedsy editor and Adjunct Professor of Composition at the University of Baltimore, writing in first person brings the reader closer to the narrator:

“With first person, the writer or reader becomes the character as they get deeper into the story, and that's the kind of immersive experience that makes me love a book.”

First person narration can create a sense of trust with the reader, pulling them into the story by evoking empathy. It feels like the story is being told to you by a confidant, which makes you care more about the protagonist and their struggles. 

A great example of the immersiveness of first person POV can be found in Dickens’ classic Great Expectations, famously about a young boy born into poverty. Since Dickens was writing for a primarily middle class audience, using the first person viewpoint was his way of getting the readers to relate more to his protagonist. 

I give Pirrip as my father’s name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, – Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. 

— Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

This passage, told in Pip’s voice, immediately puts the reader into his shoes. They must process the casual tragedy of Pip’s short life through his eyes and feel the same loss he does. The readers of Dickens’s time would now more likely empathize with the main character even though they likely haven’t met a blacksmith before, let alone been a close relation to one. 

The intimacy of first person is why it’s such a popular viewpoint and some of that feeling is fostered by the story being told in the POV character’s unique voice.

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Character voices are at the forefront

The plot of a novel may fade from our memories over time, but we’ll always remember the characters and how they made us feel. This is even more true of first person perspective, where the protagonist tells us their story in their own words. Every line is filtered through their motivations , vices, and worldviews while in other POVs the only opportunity you get for this kind of filtering is through dialogue. The main character can come to life on the page as we are in their head through every moment of the journey. 

A particularly illuminating example of how first person POV can establish character voice is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn — a novel in which a young boy recounts his adventures on the Mississippi River, together with a runaway slave. 

Tom’s most well now, and got his bullet around his neck as a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I’m rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it, and ain’t a going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I’ve been there before.

— The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

From this excerpt, we can clearly hear the childlike spirit that is characteristic of Huck. His voice also echoes the time and place the story takes place in, giving us further insight into the kind of world he inhabits. This is ultimately what makes him such a memorable character and the driving force behind this beloved novel. 

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Though a character’s unique voice isn’t always so benign. Sometimes, when a story is filtered entirely through one person, we might not get an unbiased version of events. 

Unreliable narrators create intrigue

First person narratives often excel at establishing intrigue by posing questions about the true nature of the narrator — are they representing an objective truth or are they pulling the wool over our overly trusting eyes?

As mentioned before, first person narrators are limited by their own personal understanding, biases, and motivations. They can easily become unreliable narrators , turning the concept of honesty and trust on its head. An unreliable narrator will make you wonder if they’re telling you the full story or leaving out details that completely alter what we’re seeing. This can be extra exciting if you only find out they’re unreliable partway through. 

For example, in Kazuo Ishiguro’s subtly dystopian novel, Never Let Me Go , we follow a group of students at Hailsham, a fictional English boarding school. Ishiguro uses the first person point of view to play with the concept of reliable and unreliable narration through an exploration of memory.

My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That’ll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn’t necessarily because they think I’m fantastic at what I do. 

— Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

In this passage, Kathy reveals that she’s become privy to new knowledge that has changed her perception of the past. But she’s not telling us what that knowledge entails. By slowly letting more doubt creep into the story, Ishiguro explores the fickle nature of memory, creating a creeping sense that there’s more to Hailsham than meets the eye. Readers will start to question not only the picture that Kathy paints, but their own ability to separate truth from reality.

An unreliable narrator not only creates an intriguing reading experience that challenges the reader to put the puzzle together themselves, but also highlights a first person narrator’s inherent subjectivity, though there are ways to bypass that even with first person narration.

Non-protagonist narrators can offer a different perspective

While unreliable narrators can lead to some juicy plot twists , in some cases a story can be made clearer from an outside perspective, which is where first person omniscient and outsider narrators come in. 

First person omniscient is when a first-person narrator is privy to the thoughts, actions, and motivations of other characters. Much like a journalist, they’re simply our eyes on the ground and can recount the events of the story with the benefit of hindsight. While they might not know exactly what the protagonist was thinking at the time, they have access to information that an observer wouldn’t. 

Most outsider narrators use the regular first person POV. Since they’re not personally part of the main conflict, they may be free from some of the biases first person narrators are subject to. We’re still getting the intimate character experience while getting an outside view of important characters and events. Some would call that the best of both worlds. 

A classic example of the outsider narrator is To Kill a Mockingbird, which takes place in the American South in the 1930s and recounts the trial of a Black man accused of raping a white woman. The story is narrated by a woman called Scout, looking back on the experiences of her 6-year-old self during the time of the trial. 

I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t? We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right.

— To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Young Scout is central to the novel: any impressions the readers have are filtered through her eyes. However, the real drama unfolds in the courtroom and the world of the adults — a world she will only understand when she herself is grown up. Here we see how much Scout respects and values the opinion of her father, Atticus, which hints at how he will serve as the story’s moral compass, even when others in the town turn against him.

First person offers a straightforward way to introduce important characters and information, but this ease can be a double-edged sword. 

Exposition in first person is tough to get right

When a character is directly relating a story, it becomes far too easy to fall into the trap of “telling” rather than “showing,” especially when it comes to exposition. This poses a challenge to the writer who chooses the first person POV, the classic example being how to introduce your narrator. 

Sure, the POV character could just say what color their eyes are and some key personality traits they believe they have, but that will come across as unrealistic and shoehorned into the rest of the narrative. There are a few different ways to seamlessly include exposition in your story and avoid the dreaded infodump. 

Using dialogue to drip feed the reader important information is common — as is using the narrator's voice to get across personality. Self-description can also be sprinkled throughout instead of being listed in a paragraph.

James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues”, provides us with a great example of how descriptions of other characters can also reveal a lot about the narrator. It follows the reunion between the unnamed narrator and his estranged brother, Sonny, as they try to rekindle their relationship after Sonny’s addiction lands him in prison. 

When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he’d had wonderfully direct brown eyes, and a great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now. He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling and using heroin.

— "Sonny's Blues', James Baldwin

In this passage, we sense the affection our narrator feels for Sonny. The way he describes him as a younger man is full of love. However, the fact that he doesn’t know what he currently looks like reveals the conflict between them, though he never outright states that they haven’t spoken in years.

There you have it — the power of first person point of view. If you’re looking for something completely different, check out our next post about the controversial (but always intriguing) second person viewpoint!

3 responses

Sasha Anderson says:

31/05/2020 – 11:21

Isn't there a bit in The Great Gatsby where Nick tells us all about Gatsby's past? (It's a while since I read it so may be misremembering). Would that count as omniscient, or something else?

↪️ Franzie replied:

31/08/2020 – 01:39

Nevermind. I realized it's Second Person POV. Looking forward to know more from it on the succeeding lessons. :)

Franzie says:

31/08/2020 – 01:35

What do you call the POV wherein the person is talking to one of the characters. Is there such? For example: [ I felt nervous the moment our eyes met. "Hey, how are you?" you asked and I froze upon hearing your voice.] Something like that. Is this recommended? I plan my story to have a two POVs: FIRST PERSON and this kind of POV. Basically it's like a story within a story so there's a shifting of approach, thus I think it's okay to use as long as I know how to control it and it's not too much. But I will definitely not use this kind of POV for a whole novel. I am just curious on its purpose in a holistic view.

Comments are currently closed.

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how to write dialogue in a first person story

First person narrative: 7 tips for writing great narrators

Telling a story using mainly first person narrative has both pros and cons. Here are 7 steps to creating a great ‘I’ narrator, but first:

  • Post author By Jordan
  • 57 Comments on First person narrative: 7 tips for writing great narrators

First person narrative - how to write great narrators

The pros and cons of writing a novel in first person

The benefit of telling a story in first person, from a single character’s perspective at a time, is that readers discover the voice and psychology of a character as expressed directly by the character. This gives immediacy, the sense of ‘being there’. There is also lots of opportunity to focus on the internal dialogue of one viewpoint character in these types of stories. The pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’ in the third person make the reader more conscious of the narrating voice. It stands a little more apart from the characters whose stories are told.

Unlike third-person point of view, the reader is drawn right into the story through this device. There is no ‘distancing’ through the use of third-person pronouns in omniscient perspective. This type of narration is extremely popular, from literary fiction to genre, to memoirs and so on. Famous authors have been doing this for years, examples include Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and  Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

On the minus side, first-person perspective can restrict your readers’ access to the inner worlds of your other characters, it’s a a limited perspective. The entire story is narrated from a single character’s perspective, with all the limitations that fixed perspective involves. A first person limited POV means that they cannot be everywhere all at once (as with the third-person omniscient narrator). They are telling their story not the story.

There are ways to get around this however (you can use multiple first person narrators to tell your story, for example). If your narrating ‘I’ character is an anti-hero, keep in mind that some readers may also balk at being asked to see through the eyes of an unpleasant or unethical person. This is why it’s often wise to give anti-hero’s some likeable qualities (just as it is wise to give likeable protagonists flaws ).

An example of this is that of narrator Holden Caulfield in JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. He’s a fun, amusing and interesting narrator. Holden’s cynicism, rebellion against societal norms, and moral ambiguity fit the mold of an anti-hero. Another example is that of Randle McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. McMurphy’s rebellious nature and defiance against authority, while admirable in some respects, also lead to destructive consequences.

The other minus is that a first-person narrator can be an unreliable narrator. You can tell a narrator is unreliable if they tell contradicting stories or there’s no or little logic in their stories, or omits to provide all the facts, for example. The purpose of one in a story may be to subvert readers’ expectations or mystify the reader, or force the reader to solve the puzzle of the story. 

Examples of unreliable narration can be found in Gone, Girl by Gillian Flynn which has two unreliable narrators, the husband and wife Nick and Amy Dunne, each telling their version of events. Humbert Humbert in Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is another one. He portrays himself as a sympathetic man, while, at heart, he is a paedophile, and yet he justifies his experiences.  Another example of an unreliable narrator is in Paul Bowles’ controversial story ‘Pages from Cold Point’ where a father seduces his son.

An interesting point is that the central character, the protagonist, in a story is not necessarily the main narrator. This is called first person peripheral. This can be found in Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, where a contemporary writer recalls his early days in New York City.

Note too that point of view is sometimes called narrative mode or narrative perspective.

Regardless of the strengths and drawbacks of first person narrators, it’s crucial to write compelling, effective ones. Here are 7 ways to do this:

1. Evoke the senses, not only the narrator’s inner world

Writing a novel or story in the first person makes it tempting to let your narrator dwell on their thoughts and feelings extensively. Often characters can feel lacking if all the focus is on their mental and emotional processes, though. Have your character describe not only thoughts but also sights, sounds, smells and tastes where appropriate. When you use a first person narrator, ask:

  • What senses are strongest in this particular character and what does that say about them?
  • How can I give the reader a greater sense of an embodied narrator and not just a disembodied, storytelling ‘I’?

Remember to ground your narrator’s observations in the material world. Because this will add colour and depth to your story.

Focusing on all aspects of your narrating ‘I’ character’s experience, physical and otherwise, is one way to write a great narrator. It is also important to let readers see through your narrator’s eyes actively:

2. Avoid overusing words that place distance between the narrator and your reader

a house for a story setting

Because the narrator uses the first person pronoun(s) ‘I’ (and sometimes the plural ‘we’) to tell the bulk of the story in first person narration, you may be tempted to begin sentences with ‘I’ a lot. Take this sentence for example:

‘I saw that the door was closed and I heard a faint scratching noise coming from within the house. I thought it sounded like someone trying to dig a tunnel out.’

The words ‘I saw’, ‘I heard’ and ‘I thought’ all place the reader at one remove to the unfolding events. The reader isn’t seeing, hearing or thinking these things through the narrator. The reader is being told about the narrator’s experiences. The scene could be more vivid if the narrator didn’t ‘report’ her or his experience. The snippet could be rewritten as follows:

‘The door was closed and a faint scratching noise came from within the house. It sounded like someone trying to dig a tunnel out, I thought.’

The reader is placed at the scene, seeing the door and hearing the scratching. The intrusive ‘I’ can come later in the sentence or only in a subsequent paragraph. Ruthanne Reid, writing for The Write Practice , discusses these ‘filter words’ that can place distance between readers and the experiences of the first person narrator. It should be said that in some cases you might want this distance for creative reasons. You might want the reader to not see the scene so vividly in their mind’s eye. Yet become conscious, at least, of how you use filter words (such as ‘I saw that x was so’) and remember to be sparing with them, particularly if you want readers to experience a scene through your narrator’s eyes.

One way to make your narrator great and to let the reader see what they see:

3. Avoid merely reporting in first person narrative

A first person narrator gets to share their lived experience and take the reader along with them through every surprise, challenge or victory. Describing things that happen to your narrator in passive voice is a common mistake. You may want to emphasize your character’s passive response to a specific situation, so there are exceptions. However, compare:

‘As I was trying the door to the house, a sudden voice behind me told me it was locked.’

As a reader, you’re not placed in the scene, trying the handle and hearing the voice.

A stronger alternative:

‘The handle turned but the door would not budge. ‘It’s locked.’ I spun round, surprised by this sudden voice.’

This is stronger because speaking voices appearing in the text give readers a sense of immediacy, of the present moment in which the action unfolds.

Need help getting POV right?

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The Editor’s Blog describes the difference between the first kind of first person narration and the second as the difference between ‘exposition’ (setting the story up and telling the reader the sequence of events) and ‘scene’ (the actual unfolding action as experienced by characters).

Now that we have some clarity about the things to avoid when writing first person narrative, here are four ways to ensure you use first person narrative well:

4. Use either expository or scene narration for the right reasons

The truth is that sometimes you will need to put the reader in a scene with your ‘I’ narrator, and at other times you will need your narrator to simply retell events as a report back. Use the impersonal, ‘I did this and then that happened’ narration for:

  • Narrating transitions between scenes (e.g. ‘After I found the mysterious house I was a little spooked. I returned home and…’)
  • Catching the reader up on important backstory that doesn’t require its own scenes (e.g. ‘I was born on a smallholding just south of the border. We moved around a lot ’til I was 14.’)

Remember that your narrator should express themself with all the variety of language that real people use:

5. Vary the way your narrator expresses feelings, thoughts and experiences

This might seem obvious, but many beginning writers in particular make this mistake. If your character is a sensitive or emotional type, they might describe feelings often throughout your story. But avoid repetitive descriptions:

‘I felt perturbed by the scratching sound that came from within the house. I felt more anxious still when I tried the door and it was locked’.

Instead of repeating ‘I felt’, vary descriptions with words such as ‘my’, articles (‘a’ or ‘the’) and other alternatives. The previous example could be rewritten as:

‘My sense of foreboding grew as I noticed a scratching sound coming from within the house. Fear surged when I tried the door and found it locked.’

Maintaining variety in your first person narrator’s self-expression is important because it increases the sense that the character is real. It also helps to prevent repetitive word choice from distracting the reader and rather lets the reader stay immersed in your unfolding story.

To write a great first person narrator, also make sure that the narrator’s voice is consistent with what the reader knows or learns about the narrator:

6. Make the narrating voice consistent with the narrator’s backstory

first person narrative - where is the narrator from

One common trap with writing first person stories is that the narrator sounds a lot like the voice of the author, pegged onto a series of events. To give your narrator real personality, make sure that their voice is consistent with what you tell the reader about their backstory and ongoing development.

Pay attention to:

  • Background: Where is your character from? Think about things like accent, regional slang or idioms that they would likely use
  • Class: What is your narrator’s level of education and economic privilege? How might this impact on elements such as vocabulary and whether they use formal vs. informal speech predominantly?
  • Personality: Is your narrating ‘I’ a character who is brash and coarse? Or elegant and refined?

Make sure that your ‘I’ narrator uses language in way that is fitting with her background, class and personality. If you’re writing about a poor 14-year-old girl who runs away from home, these details of her life story should feel compatible with the words she uses to tell her story.

To really hone your skill at writing first person narration:

7. Learn from how the greats use first person narrative:

As with any aspect of craft you want to develop, it’s always a good idea to take notes from the writing of your favourite authors. Many novels widely taught as classics use the intimacy of first person narration. From Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (‘Call me Ishmael’, says the narrator at the start) to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird , examples of the above suggestions can be found.

Harper Lee’s first person narrator doesn’t open Mockingbird with ‘I thought’, ‘I felt’ or ‘I saw’. The novel begins:

‘When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football again were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.’

Some thoughts on this opening and why it is an example of effective first person narration:

  • The opening fits the character of the narrator, Scout (her compassion towards and focus on others emerges as well as the importance of family in her life)
  • The POV character asserts a strong voice but does so without over-relying on ‘I’
  • The narrator’s process of remembering is set up from the start, continuing throughout the novel as she recalls social inclusions and exclusions in her hometown

Similarly, when reading a new novel written in first person make notes on how the narrator expresses herself and why this is (or isn’t) fitting for her characterization and story. Conscious observation will continuously improve your own narration skills .

Come read how Now Novel’s members use first person narrative and share your own writing for constructive feedback from others .

Related Posts:

  • Strong first person narrative: Engaging narrators
  • Writing third person limited POV: Tips and examples
  • What is narrative? 5 narrative types and examples
  • Tags first person , narration , POV

how to write dialogue in a first person story

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

57 replies on “First person narrative: 7 tips for writing great narrators”

Excellent! My WIP is written in the first person, and keeping a consistent voice has been a struggle. These tips will definitely help. Thank you as always! 🙂

It’s a pleasure, Adrian. I’m glad you found some value in the suggestions. Great posts on your writing blog, keep them coming.

Great points, which I’ll share with my creative writing class. I prefer first person, reading it as well as writing it.

Thank you for the kind words. I hope your creative writing class enjoys reading it. First person does have an engaging immediacy.

This was a great Blog! Thank you for sharing.

But to add to anyone interested, the filter you should look at in your draft are like these: I see/look/hear/think/feel/seem/touch/watch/wonder/can/decide/sound/realize And like Miss Bridget said, you don’t have to delete them all the time.

this may be a really stupid question but I have yet to find someone who can explain and illustrate the diff between active and passive voice…help

Hi MC – it is a tricky one. Think of it this way: In active voice, the subject of the sentence ‘acts’ on the verb. So ‘The boy kicks the ball’ is in the active voice because the boy is acting on the ball. The same sentence in passive voice would be ‘The ball is kicked by the boy.’ Here, the ball is the subject and the action of kicking is something that passively happens to the ball. Hope that helps!

great blog! thanks for sharing

Thanks, FP! It’s a pleasure, thanks for reading.

thanks for the tips. I’m a beginner writer and was definitely wondering about the expository vs. scene dilemma.

It’s a pleasure, I’m glad you found this helpful.

Writing in the 1st person: Question; the 1st person character dialogue in a novel [telling of the story; separated by chapter topic and purpose] … Chapters that do not have the 1st person’s character in the storyline [i.e. a different time and/or a location]… is that permitted? If so, how should it be formatted? [Italics?] I was told it was not allowed! It would seem strange not to be able to describe 3rd person characters in conversations in other locations, time periods, and time zones without the 1st person being involved..Any, guidance on the rules would be much appreciated…

I don’t see why you can’t have a multi-character novel with other secondary characters’ parts in alternating chapters. Let clarity and cohesion be your guides. If, for example, the story shifts to a different time and place, preface that specific chapter with a title or subtitle identifying the time and place (e.g. ‘Paris, 1972’). That way the reader will know they’ve entered a different time frame or arc. Provided you don’t get the reader completely lost and signpost major shifts enough, there are no set-in-stone rules.

Thanks Bridget… Randy Ingermanson wrote back. and offered …”There are no rules. Fiction is about giving the reader a powerful emotional experience. You do whatever it takes to make that happen. That’s not a rule, that’s a meta-rule.”

That seems to be the general consensus out there… My 1st book was in written the 1st person and I used a WEB Griffin technique of sub-headings defining the changes in the people, places, and time… comments were very positive.

Thanks again for the feedback… much appreciated. Bill http://billfortin.com

OK, so I knew it had to be done – removing all the excess ‘I’ from my yarn. Nothing prepared me for the task. Nothing prepared me for the shame of the ‘I’ excess that needed to be excised.And it all came about almost accidentally. Dissatisfied with the start of my story, I – pardon me – revised the first three pages, reduced them to two. Then I sat back and wondered why those two pages were so much better than the three they were tested against. 90% of the ‘I’s’ had been removed. [Blame / credit Stephen King] From 11, the text now contains only two ‘I’s’ – one belonging to the narrator, one to the antagonist. 90% of ‘I’s’ removed – so much more reader friendly 🙂

i wish you could help me write my novel and i would split whatever earnings that comes with it. That would be so clutch.

Hi Cambrielle! You can get free feedback and help from other members in our online writing groups. You can join here: https://www.nownovel.com/users/sign_up . Good luck with your novel 🙂

I could help you. I’m a freelance writer

What would you suggest for a story where the narrator isn’t the main character? I’m working on a story that is a hybrid of first and third person. I took inspiration for the writing style from World War Z. Do you have any suggestions on stories similar to this? Thank you!

Thank you for asking. Third person may work best in this instance, as the narrator’s ‘I’ wouldn’t be there to make them seem more involved in the narrative. Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides is interesting from this perspective as the story is narrated by the boys who live opposite from the sisters who are the main characters in the story.

I just have to say that the first-person narrative (and its sense of immediacy) probably works better in present tense. I write everything in present tense now. First-person is something else again. The biggest danger is blathering on and on like you’re writing a letter home to Mom. Being self-indulgent in first person is the biggest curse. If a lot of other stuff is going on, first person doesn’t work well. If your story is about someone in grave peril who’s running for one’s life, then first person should be great.

Great comment, Adam. I agree with you re: self-indulgent first person being a pain (then again, it can have certain dramatic effects, e.g. Humbert Humbert’s narcissistic pomposity that comes across in Lolita precisely due to this in part). Thank you for sharing your perspective!

I’ll have to check out Lolita (the book, not the movie) again. It’s been a while.

It’s a disturbing read but an excellent use of unreliable narrator.

These tips did help a decent amount, but I am still unsure about something. Since I’m not that strong at writing stories in present tense, I usually write them in past tense. With my story, the protagonist describes in past tense instead of present, sort of like the protagonist had already lived through it and is now telling the story again. Since I am still early on, would it be wise to go back and edit the first few chapters to present tense, or keep it the same?

Hi LusciousBerri, thank you for your question. If it’s a first-person narrator using past tense, that should be fine (there’s no reason why they have to use present tense that I can discern from your question. Please feel free to ask anything else!

I wrote a story about five hundred pages. I submitted it to a writers contest and was told it stunk and they couldn’t get past the first twenty pages. But this was good because they were right. I started out in the present, went to the past and back to the present. This confused the reader. So now it begins leaving out the first part in the present. However, my concern is I used first person based on my own experience and it worked but I would have chapters where I was not present. My fellow writers said this was some form of cheating because the first person would not know this. It just worked for me, but if there is something wrong with this I would like advice so I can re write it in a total narrative voice. What is your viewpoint. Thanks

Hi James, Happy New Year! Thank you for sharing this.

I can see why some readers may struggle with a narrative which centres the first person POV first and then abandons this viewpoint to share another POV, however only if the chapters you described (‘chapters where I was not present’) were supposed to still be about your main character’s experiences.

As the reader pointed out, the first-person narrator preceding this section would not have a detailed understanding of events or scenes they were not present for, unless they had some sort of record (video/audio/another person’s account), omnisciet powers, etc.

However, if you simply shifted to another first-person narrator’s POV (and made this shift clear), it shouldn’t be an issue.

Many authors mix multiple first-person narrators effectively. To understand how effective multiple first-person narrators can be, I often recommend reading Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying which has more than 10 different narrators despite being novella-length (and it’s always clear who’s narrating).

It’s very difficult to advise on this properly without reading the story in question, as viewpoint is easier to talk about with full reading of the narration being discussed, to see where and why it becomes confusing. I’d recommend a manuscript evaluation as this would provide actionable feedback (you can find out more about our editing services here) .

Otherwise, I’d recommend writing the entire story in your single first-person narrator’s POV for simplicity’s sake. However you proceed, make sure any shifts to or away from a narrator are indicated clearly so the reader isn’t left wondering who’s telling the story. I hope this helps!

I have never written in first person narrative but am interested to give it a try. My question is how do you introduce events crucial to the plot if your character doesn’t witness them? For example, your protagonist leaves a shop and then the shop keeper makes a call about his visit. Thanks!

Hi Mrs Clare, thank you for sharing that. It’s great you’re willing and curious to try new things.

I would suggest either a POV switch to the shop keeper (with a clear scene break and signal in narration that the viewpoint has changed), or else to show the effects of said call (for example, if the shop keeper were to tip someone off about the visit, and your protagonist is alarmed when that person knows about their visit – i.e. exploit your first-person narrator’s ignorance of certain events and have them happen ‘out of frame’ or ‘offscreen’ to add mystery/suspense).

In this scenario, you may want to weigh using first person against the greater ease of moving between viewpoints in third person limited. In this case, the narrator is already a little more removed from the action, so it would not be as jarring as a sudden switch from one POV in first person to another.

I hope this helps!

Thanks for this article. I’m starting my first novel and have decided to go with a very familiar form of first person, almost conversational, similar to a journal. I’m curious if this is a mistake? Secondly, are there any good tips for not becoming too self-indulgent when writing in this style? Just how much confidence can an audience take before it becomes arrogance? Thanks in advance.

Hi Ari, a conversational first-person voice is lovely and accessible in most cases, so it’s unlikely it’s a mistake. If your narrator is supremely confident, I’d suggest perhaps giving them a struggle or flaw or two that are relatable. For example you could gradually reveal a tough situation which made them have to develop said confidence (so that the reader then understands the narrator’s confidence and its genesis). Ultimately empathy on the reader’s part grows out of understanding, out of seeing the cause and effect underneath behaviours. I hope this helps!

Hi Jodan, thanks for the article

I am writing something in first person perspective. same issues, how do I write something that I wasn’t not present. a third person’s feeling, accident. as such.

thanks Hong

Hi Hong, thank you for your question. It’s a little difficult to parse what you’re asking due to the double negative (wasn’t not) and the phrasing. If you’re asking how you present a third person’s experiences within first person there are a few options:

  • The third party in question could tell your 1st person narrator what happened in dialogue or your main narrator could share what they heard about the events via narration
  • Your 1st person narrator could guess/surmise what happened based on their limited knowledge of events
  • If it requires a detail description of the scene, you could have multiple first person narrators and have the situation described (an accident or other event through a new viewpoint, switching back to the first viewpoint when necessary

I hope this answers your question! Feel free to mail us at help at now novel dot com should you have further questions.

Thank you very much

[…] 7 Narrative Tips for First Person Narrators […]

In First person present tense, is it correct to italicise a character’s thoughts, or to use I think after an italicised thought.

Hi Michael, thank you for asking. I had to think about this. I would say you don’t need to use italics at all since a thought in first person present tense would be occurring in the same time as narration and in the same pronouns. Compare:

He was running late for court. This isn’t going to help my appeal , he thought.

I’m running late for court. This isn’t going to help my appeal …

If you’re still having trouble, feel free to email us your example paragraph at help at now novel dot com for feedback. You can also get feedback from our member community in our critique groups .

Hey Jordan, thanks for your article! It was great to read ? I wrote and published some Italian novels (my native language) using the first person POV (multiple POVs), and now I’m trying to write my first novel in English. Of course, the first step to writing something in any languages is to read, and I’m trying to adapt my writing style to the English language (for example, in Italian, the subject is very often not explicit).

I hope you don’t mind answering some questions:

1. In the novel I’m writing, I have two different POVs, the same person with two different personalities. In Italian, the style is completely different (one personality is a psychopath, the other is an actor), I’m trying to do the same in English. I’m using different tones (the psychopath says something like: “I wear my special gloves carefully, and she is so beautiful. *It must be her!* Where is my thin rope? Right, it’s in the back pocket of my jeans. *It’s not her.* I tight vigorously the ends of the noose around her neck, enjoying the sight of her life slipping away like a dewdrop upon a leaf under the burst of a morning breeze”, while the actor is more relaxed: “ There are few things in my life worse than this empty house during the night. Rooms are too big, ceils too high, and floors smell of loneliness”. English is not my first language, and I know it’s hard to judge from a few sentences, but, as a reader, is it clear that those two sentences are from different characters?

2. The psychopath style is more “here and now”, and I know this may be a silly question, but is it ok to use a progressive tense?

3. I’m critically reading a lot in this period, but I’m struggling a bit to find some thriller written in first person POV in the present tense. Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you for your feedback, I’m glad you found this helpful. Thank you for your interesting questions, too.

For 1), I would say the first voice does have an indulgent, flowery quality that would perhaps fit a psychopathic POV (it brings to mind the flowery language of Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita , another sociopathic character). You are right that it is difficult to advise well based on short extracts, but the simpler, descriptive language of the actor that is less flowery and ‘insincere’ -sounding does create a different voice.

2) I would say the element that makes his voice read more unstable is more so the scattered quality and the personification of his rope. It is fine to use the progressive tense provided events in the same timeline use the same tense. Tecnically ‘I wear…’ is simple present, ‘I am wearing…’ would be progressive.

3) I am drawing a blank for a good example I can recommend, but One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus has a respectable 4/5 rating on Goodreads and is a YA Mystery/Thriller written in first-person.

I hope this helps! Good luck with your book further. Please feel free to chat to us in the Now Novel writing groups and get feedback on your tense usage there, too. You can read more about how our feedback system works here .

[…] don’t worry! We know the essential strategies that will help you write a credible first-person narrator who also happens to be a great storyteller […]

Thanks, i hope too be the youngest novelist ever

That’s great that you’re pursuing writing already, Rachel. Good luck with fulfilling your ambitions 🙂

‘The door was closed and a faint scratching noise came from within the house. It sounded like someone trying to dig a tunnel out, I thought.’

This would be better as:

‘The door was closed and a faint scratching noise came from within the house, like someone trying to dig a tunnel out.’

Hi Tom, this would be splitting hairs but you could argue that. Or, ‘The door was closed and a faint scratching noise came from within the house, as though someone was trying to dig a tunnel out.’ Technically ‘it sounded like someone’ is good because one is comparing a noun to a noun or noun phrase, which is when one would ordinarily use ‘like’. ‘As though’ is preferred when the comparison is followed by a clause, e.g. ‘It rained all day, as though the ark was being hauled out of storage.’ Hope this helps!

[…] “The benefit of telling a story in first person is that readers discover the voice and psychology of a character as expressed directly by the character. This gives immediacy, the sense of ‘being there’. … On the minus side, first person narration can restrict your readers’ access to the inner worlds of your other characters.” Now Novel […]

[…] “The benefit of telling a story in first person is that readers discover the voice and psychology of a character as expressed directly by the character. This gives immediacy, the sense of ‘being there’. … On the minus side, first person narration can restrict your readers’ access to the inner worlds of your other characters.” Now Novel […]

Okay i must admit this was good ( if not great ) and really helpfull. I’m 13 years old and i wan’t to write a novel. But i’m just afraid! maybe when i try to self publish my novel ‘to many rhymes,’ they may say i’m too young. Or should i just continue with the idea writing the first draft?

Hi Liam, thank you for your feedback. What would make it great? I’m curious what you’d have liked it to include as these articles can always be improved. It’s great that you want to write a novel at 13 already. Carry on with your idea and don’t worry what people say about your age. Many first novels aren’t published, it’s true, but the process itself is excellent practice – each project a stepping stone to greater knowledge and understanding of how to tell a story. Go for it.

“Thankyou for the encouraging me.”

but i was wondering, can i start my novel with the first person point of view, and switch it into the third person point of view once i reach the first chapter?

That is my biggest problem right now. Do you maybe have something that can show me how i can switch from point of view to point of view?

Hi Liam, to be honest that could be quite confusing for the reader if it’s the same viewpoint narrator. What is the reason you want to have that switch? Generally it’s best to switch person type over a scene break or chapter break, provided that there’s a reason to mix persons. It’s much more common in a multi-viewpoint work for each viewpoint character to be in the same person (multiple first-person or multiple third-person narrators). Provided it’s clear who’s narrating at any given point, you could be more experimental. But it’s important to know the rules before you break them.

I didn’t create a clear sentence up there but to move on. The novel i’m working on ‘too many rhymes’ is a big deal to me ’cause it’s my first. Do you think this is a great opening scene to go with? It was raining in the middle of the night. A horrific scene was set before me back when i was six years old. i was crying, standing by the stairs staring at them. She was in pain, she was helplessly lying on the floor, blood coming out of her mouth as well as her stomatch, she was crying. “what do you want from me,” she cried out. His wore a black mask that covered his face, a long black coat and a pair of black boots.He was standing in front of her, smacking, a sword clutched in his right hand. “oh you know what i want darling. Infact you are what i wan’t,” he answerd her. He then turned his head at me. My heart hamered. “Oh you have a son?” he asked, smiling at me. He then stalked towards me and gazed at my mom. I couldn’t run i was completely frozen. He pointed his sword at me. “d… Don’t hurt my son,” she stumered, begging the man. The man stretched his sword up in the sky… I killed him! I told my best friend the story, she wants to know how i did it, how i killed him. Well i can’t tell her. It would be safe if it stays a mystrey. me and my mother are the only ones who know how i did it. Or maybe how it happened.

Hi Liam, no problem. This has some good elements, such as mystery and a good sense of tone and mood. I’d start with a few questions: – The man says ‘you are what I want’ but he’s also described as ‘smacking’ the woman. Maybe his statement of what he wants could reflect this violence. What is his motivation, why is he hurting the woman? – Does the scene need to be this visceral and violent (e.g. ‘blood coming out of her mouth as well as her stomach’)? If you start at 100 in intensity, it doesn’t give much higher of a peak to reach. If the mother figure wasn’t already injured, or the man’s wishes/desires were more mysterious, would this maybe make the story opening more teasing/intrigue-building?

I like the revelation that the narrator killed the man (and that he doesn’t reveal exactly how he did it) – this creates mystery. At the same time, I think you could end this segment before that revelation and possibly reveal it later, so that some of the dramatic content is deferred until the reader has gotten to know your characters more.

There are some minor spag issues (such as ‘stumered’ for ‘stammered’). I’d recommend joining our critique groups where you can get further feedback to develop what you have so far. Hope this was helpful!

Helpful! I think you’re good at the novel writing business! I understand what you said. And I’m not going to start with 100 % of intensity, and I think it would be better if the woman wasn’t injured. Thank you for your feedback. And do you think the narrator killing the man can create a story? Or do I have to find another element that could support the story?

I’m glad I could help, Liam. I think that is an intriguing plot point, definitely. Yet also brainstorm (or discover in drafting) the consequences of that act as therein lies the story, too. Where does it go from there?

Jordan ! I was wondering if you could help me out by giving a few tips, I’m currently writing a story in first person and I would like your opinion on a certain section.

Hi Jackson, if you join our free writing community you can get constructive feedback on story segments from other members (and weekly editorial feedback is included with our The Process membership ). Why not join up and get trading crits? If you have any first-person POV questions I’d be happy to try and answer them 🙂

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Writers in the Storm

A blog about writing.

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5 Techniques for Amazing Internal Dialogue

Marcy Kennedy

photo credit: Captain Gordon Wiebe via photopin (license)

photo credit: Captain Gordon Wiebe via photopin (license)

If I took a survey asking writers what the most important elements of fiction were, I’d probably end up with a few consistent answers—plot, characters, dialogue, showing rather than telling.

We might not automatically think of including internal dialogue on the list, but we should.

Internal dialogue is the heartbeat of fiction. It serves practical purposes, like helping us control our pacing, but it serves deeper, more subtle roles as well. Without enough internal dialogue or without strong internal dialogue, our fiction can end up confusing and emotionless. We have people randomly acting, like we’re watching a TV show without any sound.

Unfortunately, too much internal dialogue or poor internal dialogue can make our fiction feel immature, slow, or claustrophobic.

So to help you develop the right kind of internal dialogue, I wanted to share a few of my favorite ways to make sure my internal dialogue is enhancing my story rather than detracting from it.

Technique #1 – Alternate between paragraphs focused on the POV character and paragraphs focused elsewhere.

This topic could be a whole post in itself, but basically paragraphs in fiction should focus on one of two different areas. Either you have a paragraph focusing away from your point-of-view character and onto dialogue spoken by others, action in the environment around them, or description. Or you have a paragraph focusing on the point-of-view character. A paragraph focusing on your point-of-view character includes your POV character acting, thinking (a.k.a. internal dialogue), feeling, or speaking.

We should try to alternate evenly between the two. Alternating evenly makes sure that we keep the reader grounded in the external environment, while also keeping them emotionally connected to the character. The added bonus is that if you’re working on alternating, you’ll be less likely to create the “floating head” syndrome where your POV character thinks to themselves for paragraphs (or pages!) at a time and puts your reader to sleep.

Technique #2 – Use thoughts that sound like dialogue.

All the techniques that we can use for making dialogue sound more natural—like sentence fragments, dropped words, and contractions—should also be used in internal dialogue. A quick way to check for this is to imagine quotation marks around your internalization. If your character said this out loud, would it sound natural or would it sound strange and awkward? (For the really personal items, imagine they’re speaking to their therapist.)

If you’re not sure, speak them aloud yourself. You can change the tense to first person from third person if you need to. If it sounds fine in first person, it’s also fine the way you’ve written it in third person.

Technique #3 – Make sure you’re using your character’s voice and not your own.

This is true no matter what narrative distance you’re using (i.e., omniscient, distant third person, or deep POV). Internal dialogue is your point-of-view character thinking to themselves, so it needs to sound as much like them as their spoken dialogue. What words would your character (rather than you) use in this situation?

I’ll give you an example. If someone cut me off in traffic and nearly caused an accident, I’d call them an idiot. My husband would call them a douchebag. If your character wouldn’t use a word like prudent (maybe they’d say wise instead) then you shouldn’t make them think prudent , even if that’s how you want to say it.

Whatever your character’s personality, it should come through in their internalization just as much—or more—than it does in their spoken dialogue and actions.

Technique #4 – Save direct internal dialogue for the most important thoughts.

Direct internal dialogue is dialogue that’s written in first person, present tense. I’ll show you an example to make sure it’s clear what I mean.

Emily pasted a smile on her face. I still hate you. I’ll never stop hating you. “Long time no see. How have you been?”

Because direct internal dialogue is in first person, present tense—even when we’re writing in a third person, past tense story—we need to italicize it. But the italics draw a lot of attention to it.

Most internal dialogue can be written as indirect internal dialogue (where we stay in the same person and tense as the story). I’ll give you another quick example so you can see the difference.

Emily pasted a smile on her face. She still hated him. She’d never stop hating him. “Long time no see. How have you been?”

That’s indirect internal dialogue, and staying in the same tense helps it flow naturally with what’s around it.

Emphasizing a thought through direct internal dialogue should be done sparingly, when we really need to draw attention to an important thought. It’s like exclamation marks. They lose their oomph if you pepper your pages with them.

Technique #5 – Make sure you don’t repeat the same thing in internal dialogue that you’re also showing through spoken dialogue or action.

You might occasionally hear someone complain about internal dialogue—there’s too much of it or it isn’t advancing the story. What they’re usually complaining about is actually repetitious internal dialogue. Repetitious internal dialogue makes for boring, flabby reading.

So, for example, if we use internal dialogue to show a character thinking about how she wants to cry or how she wants to slap the person who stole her job, and then we show her crying or show her slapping, our internal dialogue and action overlap.

What we want to do instead is to use one or the other (not both) or to add some variety to either the internal dialogue or action. Continuing with our example above, perhaps our character wants to cry, but she’s been told her whole life that crying is weak. We could have her express her deep sadness externally in a different way, like running until her body collapses.

Or we could add variety by showing that the way our character imagined something happening is very different from the way it actually happens. Perhaps, in her internal dialogue, she thinks about how good it will feel to slap him, but when she does, both her hand and her heart end up hurting.

It might seem obvious, but we also shouldn’t double up on what’s said in internal dialogue and in spoken dialogue. You’d be surprised how often I see something like this…

Who did he think she was, Houdini? She didn’t know how to pick a lock. “I don’t know how to pick a lock.”

The fix for this involves us deciding where that dialogue actually needs to be—inside or outside.

What do you struggle with most when it comes to internal dialogue?

InternalDialogue

ABOUT MARCY

Marcy Kennedy is a science fiction, fantasy, and suspense author, freelance fiction editor, and writing instructor who believes there’s always hope. Sometimes you just have to dig a little harder to find it. She’s the author of the bestselling Busy Writer’s Guides series, which focuses on giving authors deep teaching while still respecting their time. You can find her blogging about writing and about the place where real life meets science fiction, fantasy, and myth on her website . To subscribe to her free newsletter, go to http://eepurl.com/Bk2Or . New subscribers receive a copy of her mini-book Strong Female Characters as a thank-you gift!

32 comments on “5 Techniques for Amazing Internal Dialogue”

Love number 5, Marcy - it makes me crazy to find that in others' work - but even more, in mine!!!!

I notice that in direct internal dialogue, you use italics, and in indirect, you don't. Is that a rule? I've always just used it when it felt right, but never have seen it explained before. I'd love to hear your take on that.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!

I'm really hesitant to call things "rules," but I would call it a highly recommended guideline 🙂 It's the generally accepted way of handling it. You never need italics in indirect internal dialogue, and the most common practice is to use them for direct internal dialogue because it's less jarring for the reader when you're switching person and tense.

And thank you for having me here! I love WITS and so it's always an honor to visit.

Really good article! I struggle with too much internal dialogue, this has really helped me see how I can use it more effectively. Thanks!

I wrote a different post on my site with some clues you're overusing internal dialogue. You mist also find that helpful in your self-editing: http://marcykennedy.com/2015/07/6-clues-youre-overusing-internal-dialogue-in-your-fiction/

Terrific article, Marcy. I've been trying to master this whole internal dialogue thing, and I really love tip #4. I love the indirect internal dialogue technique--you can speed up a story and really bring the character's conflicts alive this way.

Hi Marcy. Great post, but I beg to differ with you on the italics for direct internal thought. I know it's been the "rule" traditionally, but with internal dialogue becoming more and more prevalent in fiction, I follow Suzanne Brockmann's thinking: NO italics.

In her "Deep POV" seminars/articles, she explains why she doesn't use italics (distracting, speed bumps), and how every time she gets a new editor, she has a fight on her hands to convince them she doesn't want italics. Instead, she sets direct internal dialogue off on a new line. She reserves italics for emphasis.

I agree, and utilize that style in my own work. My first publisher rejected it as "against house policy," but the second publisher is leaving it as is. Try picking up a Brockmann book and see how the technique draws you right into the character's head. It's really quite effective.

All your other points are spot on. Thanks so much for this post!

Hi Frances 🙂 Thanks for sharing! I like to call things guidelines rather than rules because guidelines are best practices for what works 99% of the time. That allows room for exceptions..

That said, even in deep POV (maybe especially in deep POV), it's much too jarring to have a switch to first person present tense when the rest of the story is in a different person and tense. I've seen it done, and I stumble over it every time. It's less immersive. It can also be less than ideal to always set your internal dialogue off in its own paragraph.

Setting internal dialogue off in its own paragraph every time (rather than simply making sure it's in a paragraph with other internals) can give your writing a choppy feel. It does so for the same reason that too many italics can become speed bumps--it emphasizes the internal dialogue to always set it apart. It also forces you to create a short paragraph, changing the pace and rhythm, where it might not otherwise be ideal to do so. In deep POV especially that makes it feel different, and therefore, more shallow.

I actually advise writers to use direct internal dialogue sparingly because indirect, in most cases, flows better and more smoothly. Indirect also, most of the time, feels deeper because it doesn't call attention to itself.

By mostly using indirect internal dialogue, you can save direct internal dialogue, with italics, for those moments of great emphasis.

I love internal dialogue. I've followed Browne & King's examples of moving to second person, which is (at least for me) how people might talk to themselves. Also, those thoughts go into italics, while the general 'thinking' thoughts are left in my normal 3rd person past writing and not italicized (or tagged with 'he thought)! And since I never remember whether or not there are terms for these (much less what they are), here's an example of what I mean (and of course italics don't show up in formatting here, so I've resorted to using **):

No response. Derek cupped his free hand against the window and peered inside. Empty except for a small backpack on the passenger seat and two cardboard cartons on the rear. A slight rocking of the car set his senses on alert. Could someone be trapped in the trunk?

**It's late, you're tired, and expecting the worst. Check it out, dimwit.**

I love internal dialogue too. It adds such richness to a story.

Many times we do talk to ourselves using the second person (e.g., Why did you do that? Now you're definitely getting fired.) And you're right, we'd want to put those in italics. (And use it sparingly.)

Not all internal dialogue works in second person though. For example, when we're saying something in our head in response to spoken dialogue that we can't say out loud. (I've used to indicate italics)

"Now," he said in the same tone she'd use with a three-year-old child. "Don't touch this red button that says Detonate." I'm not an idiot. She slapped on her best compliant smile. "I'll make sure to avoid that one."

And apparently by doing so, I've figured out that you can add html to these comments and accidentally italicized my whole example. I'll fix it.

“Now,” he said in the same tone she’d use with a three-year-old child. “Don’t touch this red button that says Detonate.” I’m not an idiot. She slapped on her best compliant smile. “I’ll make sure to avoid that one.”

I agree, Marcy - and the sample I snipped from my WIP has the 'non-italics' internal dialogue (Could someone be trapped in the trunk?) AND then the 'talking to myself' in italics' kind. And yes, by reserving the italics for those 'talking to myself' lines automatically makes for more sparing usage. I also like Suzanne Brockmann's approach, but I still do the second person thing when appropriate.

My editor was an "all thoughts in italics" person, but I convinced her to let my system stand.

Oh, this is great! Thanks so much, Marcy. I'm Tweeting and emailing this one to lots of people. I especially like Technique #1, which applies to both internal and external dialogue...and this also looks like a very useful road map out of the endless, angsty ruminations that can suck the life out of an otherwise great story.

[…] 5-techniques-for-amazing-internal-dialogue/ […]

Great blog!! I gathered some invaluable tips. Re-blogging!

Thanks for the second tip on having internal thoughts sound like dialogue!

Very helpful post. Thank you, Marcy. I especially love tip #1. I struggle with that one and this will make it easier to go in and clean up my first draft full of talking heads. 🙂

Excellent post. Number one is something I haven't thought about. I'm starting the 2nd draft of my WIP - a perfect opportunity to see what I did and apply the rule. Great timing!

Marcy, I use deep POV and, consequently, internal dialogue in my WIP precisely to capture the emotional impact of my 3 MCs. I use indirect discourse but have 2 issues to raise with the points you've made.

The first is using the voice of character. I'm writing historical fiction and one of the characters is an illiterate African American. I am dead set against dialect in my prose but do alter speech patterns and use word selection to reflect the style of speaking of each character. Some readers have problems with the internal dialogue of the illiterate character. I try to be careful with transitions of narrative distance, etc. but eventually modified some of his internal thoughts to be a little less like his dialogue. Maybe you have thoughts about that?

The second is the POV character remembering something someone said to him. I always put that in italics, feeling a need to distinguish it from other thoughts.

Great post and very good discussion thus far.

Dialect. *shudder* Dialect almost never benefits a story. I think you went the right path by playing with speech patterns. The best example of this done well is Kathryn Stockett's The Help . Because it's written in first person, each chapter is in the voice of the character it belongs to and so Abileen's chapters sound extremely different from Skeeter's chapters. Stockett doesn't have to use dialect because she plays with syntax and word selection instead. You can reflect a character's voice without having to rely on dialect and without making it impossible for the reader to comfortably read.

You could also choose a more distant POV which allows you to tone down the voice of your character if that voice would make reading awkward. If you're using a more distant POV, then the internal dialogue will still reflect the voice of your character more strongly but the rest of the writing will sound more like you. Selecting the right narrative distance is important to making our story as good as it can possibly be.

Putting remembered dialogue in italics is also a good choice.

Sounds like you're on the right track with everything!

What do I struggle with the most? Well, once upon a time, my manuscript was peppered with italicize. I was very proud of it, actually. I told myself I was writing from the inner character out. I ignore authors who told me pointed out that there was too much italicizes. They don't get it, I told myself. It wasn't until very recently that there was a better way. Your article is an excellent reminder, Marcy. In fact, I've taken detailed notes. I'm sure they will help strengthen my writing.

Such excellent tips! Thank you for sharing, Marcy.

Thank you for the excellent post, Marcy. Have to remember it. and re-posted it.

The tips you've given us are invaluable. Taking notes.

[…] How to Write Internal Dialogue | Writers In The Storm. […]

Did you write this for me? lol. Bookmarking! A most excellent post Marcy. Thank you. 🙂

I like to write about what I see a lot of writers struggle with 🙂 You're in good company.

[…] If you’d like to read the rest of this post, please swing by Writers in the Storm where I’m guest posting about internal dialogue! […]

I loved this post and I'm really looking forward to the webinar. So many useful tips that I went away and bought "The Busy Writer's Guide: Showing and Telling". Also packed with helpful tips.

I would love to see a full blog post on technique #1. I think I must've always intuited it - that stories work when I do this and suffer when I don't. I just didn't know why. I suspect that is why. You've made me see what's wrong in a current story I'm working on. HUGE lightbulb moment. Will you write more on it? With examples??

Just edited my w I p and tried to discern whether to use italics or not. This post is very helpful. Thank you.

[…] https://writersinthestormblog.com/2015/08/5-techniques-for-amazing-internal-dialogue/ […]

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How to Write in First Person

Last Updated: October 17, 2022 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Stephanie Wong Ken, MFA . Stephanie Wong Ken is a writer based in Canada. Stephanie's writing has appeared in Joyland, Catapult, Pithead Chapel, Cosmonaut's Avenue, and other publications. She holds an MFA in Fiction and Creative Writing from Portland State University. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 110,886 times.

Writing in the first person can be a fun challenge, allowing you to explore a first person point of view on the page. You may write in the first person in a short story, novel, or opinion piece. Creating an effective first person narrative requires skill and consistency as well as a thorough revision of the writing once it is done.

Choosing a Tense for the First Person Narrative

Step 1 Use present tense to move the story forward.

  • For example, a first person present tense narrator would be, “I open the window and yell at him to leave me alone. I close the window and try to focus on the latest soap opera on television.”

Step 2 Try past tense to explore a character’s past.

  • For example, a first person past tense narrator would be, “I opened the window and yelled at him to leave me alone. I closed the window and tried to focus on the latest soap opera on television.”

Step 3 Go for present tense when discussing the work.

  • If you are using APA style, you can use the first person point of view to discuss your research steps in a research paper. For example, you may write, “I studied sample A” or “I interviewed subject B.” In general, you should avoid the first person point of view and only use it sparingly in your research paper.

Using the First Person to Build Character

Step 1 Give the narrator a distinct voice.

  • For example, if your narrator is a Latino teenager who lives in the Bronx, they will have a distinct narrative voice that may use Spanish phrases and teenage slang as well as standard English.

Step 2 Filter the actions of the story through the narrator.

  • For example, rather than say, “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A killer spider skittered towards me and I thought, I’m dead,” focus on describing the action straight from the viewpoint of the narrator. You may write, “This couldn’t be what I was seeing. A killer spider skittered towards me. I’m dead.”

Step 3 Use the “I” to keep the pace and action moving forward.

  • For example, rather than write, “I tried to talk to Sara about how I felt but she didn’t want to listen to what I had to say,” you may put this content in a scene with dialogue and action. You may write instead, “‘Sara, why won’t you talk to me?’ I was determined to get her to listen to what I had to say.”

Step 4 Read examples of first person narratives.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
  • "Shooting an Elephant," an essay by George Orwell
  • "The Death of the Moth," an essay by Virginia Woolf

Avoiding the Pitfalls of First Person

Step 1 Avoid starting every sentence with “I.”

  • For example, rather than have two sentences like, “I ran down the stairs, my heart pounding. I could hear the killer spider skittering on the wall behind me,” you can write, “I ran down the stairs, my heart pounding. Behind me, the killer spider skittered on the wall.”

Step 2 Do not report on the action using the “I.”

  • For example, rather than write, “I bumped into Marsha and she told me she left her homework at home. I felt sorry for her and told her not to get so upset,” you may place the reader right in a scene.
  • You may write, “As I turned the corner of the gym, I bumped into Marsha. ‘I forgot my homework at home,’ she complained. I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to comfort her. ‘Don’t be too upset,’ I said to her.”

Step 3 Try not to place distance between the reader and the “I.”

  • For example, rather than write, “I felt sad about losing her as a friend,” you may write, “Sadness filled my body as I realized I was losing her as a friend.”
  • You can also often simply remove “I thought” or “I saw” in a sentence to make the first person point of view stronger. For example, rather than write, “I passed her in the hall and almost stopped to talk to her. Then, I thought, why bother, she’s just going to reject you anyway,” remove "I thought" and tighten up the action in the sentence.
  • You may write, “I passed her in the hall and almost stopped to talk to her. But I kept walking. Why bother, she’s just going to reject me anyway.”

Polishing the First Person Narrative

Step 1 Read the piece out loud.

  • You should also pay attention to the tense in the story. Make sure the story does not shift from present to past tense or vice versa. It should stay in the same tense the entire time.

Step 2 Tighten up the word choice and language.

  • You may also show the story to a writing group to get their criticisms and critiques. Be open to the feedback of others and use it to improve the first person narrator in your story.

Community Q&A

Donagan

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Abbreviate Years

  • ↑ https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/verbtenses
  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/verb_tenses/verb_tense_consistency.html
  • ↑ https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/grammar/writing/is-character-voice-different-from-author-voice.html
  • ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/first-second-and-third-person/
  • ↑ http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-writing-in-first-person.html
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/

About This Article

Stephanie Wong Ken, MFA

Writing in the first person means writing from the perspective of one person or character. When writing, you’ll want to use words like “I,” “we,” or “me” to demonstrate it’s the first-person perspective. For instance, if you’re writing a narrative, you might say, “I called Marissa on the phone.” Avoid starting every sentence with “I” since this can get repetitive. You can also pepper in dialogue, descriptions of the scene, and action sentences to keep things interesting. If you're writing a first-person narrative, you'll want to make sure everything is told from the perspective of 1 character. This means that everything your character says and does should be consistent with their worldview.  To learn how to polish your first person narrative, read more from our Writing co-author! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Writing FAQ

Dialogue in first person fiction (detective mystery) .

May 24, 2022

Asked by: Christina Adams

How do you write dialogue in a first person story.

How do you write in first person example? When a writer use the first-person point of view in a novel, they use the words I, Me, My and Mine, indicfating that the narrator is the main character in the book . An author could also use the first person in the plural form: we, us, our and ours.

Are mystery novels written in first person?

The majority of cozy mysteries are written in first person point of view and use a single narrator, usually a female. She is the amateur-detective protagonist and readers are in her mind, and her mind only, as she tries to solve a mystery. She’s essentially talking to the reader, telling us what happened to her.

How do you introduce a detective in a story?

The primary concept for introducing your character is to show them in action . Reveal how they act and respond to the world they are in right now at the beginning. Remember this is the set-up for the rest of your mystery. Meeting your detective is the primary goal.

How do you write a mystery detective story?

Here are a few tips for creating an unforgettable mystery story:

  • Read other mysteries often. …
  • Know every detail of the crime. …
  • Open with intrigue. …
  • Construct convincing characters. …
  • Make a list of suspects. …
  • Lean into your locations. …
  • Let the reader play along. …
  • Misdirect your reader.

How do you write dialogue in fiction?

How to Format Dialogue in a Story

  • Use Quotation Marks to Indicate Spoken Word. …
  • Dialogue Tags Stay Outside the Quotation Marks. …
  • Use a Separate Sentence for Actions That Happen Before or After the Dialogue. …
  • Use Single Quotes When Quoting Something Within the Dialogue. …
  • Use a New Paragraph to Indicate a New Speaker.

What are some examples of dialogue?

Here are some examples of writing questions in dialogue:

  • “Will you ever stop being a child?” she asked.
  • “What about that man over there?” he whispered, pointing in a old gentleman’s direction. “Doesn’t he look odd too?”
  • “What’s the big deal, anyway?” she huffed.

What point of view are mystery stories?

In a mystery novel, point of view (POV) can be handled in a variety of ways. A writer may choose to tell the story from the perspective of one character only—using first, second or third person .

Are thrillers written in first or third person?

The first person is all about seeing through your character’s eyes and feeling what they feel, so it makes sense that thriller writers would gravitate towards this perspective since thrillers are usually from the protagonist’s POV anyway!

How do you begin a story?

Starting Stories: 5 Great Beginning Strategies

  • Strategy 1: Begin with action or dialogue. …
  • Strategy 2: Ask a question. …
  • Strategy 3: Describe the setting. …
  • Strategy 4: Begin with background information. …
  • Strategy 5: Have the main character introduce himself or herself.

How do I write like Raymond Chandler?

To write a Chandler-style short story, create a few vivid scenes that are connected by the constant forward motion of the protagonist as he seeks to unravel a very basic whodunit . If you’re gunning to write a full novel, write a few short stories and combine them into a classic Chandler fix-up.

How do you write a fantasy mystery novel?

10 Tips for Writing Fantasy Fiction

  • Read and re-read. You can only write as well as you read. …
  • Know your market. For first-time fantasy writers, it’s especially important to consider your audience. …
  • Start small. …
  • Next, go big. …
  • Choose a point of view. …
  • Meet your characters. …
  • Outline your story. …
  • Make, and keep, rules.

How do you write the first chapter of a fantasy novel?

An ideal first chapter should do the following things:

  • 1) Introduce the main character. …
  • 2) Make us care enough to go on a journey with that character. …
  • 3) Set tone. …
  • 4) Let us know the theme. …
  • 5) Let us know where we are. …
  • 6) Introduce the antagonist. …
  • 7) Ignite conflict.

How many suspects should you have in a mystery novel?

When was he introduced? Whenever you stop a reader in your story you run the risk of them being unsatisfied or putting down your book and not returning. For an average length mystery (65,000 to 80,000 words) choose between five and eight suspects.

How do you write suspects in a mystery novel?

How many suspects are in a cozy mystery?

Cozy mystery series can be rife with characters: you have 5(ish) suspects in each book , a sleuth, a sidekick, plus recurring series characters (sleuth’s family, co-workers, etc.) . Cozies are all about the quirky characters, and quirky characters have a way of multiplying.

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The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger

I never thought i was the kind of person to fall for a scam..

Portrait of Charlotte Cowles

On a Tuesday evening this past October, I put $50,000 in cash in a shoe box, taped it shut as instructed, and carried it to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, my phone clasped to my ear. “Don’t let anyone hurt me,” I told the man on the line, feeling pathetic.

“You won’t be hurt,” he answered. “Just keep doing exactly as I say.”

Three minutes later, a white Mercedes SUV pulled up to the curb. “The back window will open,” said the man on the phone. “Do not look at the driver or talk to him. Put the box through the window, say ‘thank you,’ and go back inside.”

The man on the phone knew my home address, my Social Security number, the names of my family members, and that my 2-year-old son was playing in our living room. He told me my home was being watched, my laptop had been hacked, and we were in imminent danger. “I can help you, but only if you cooperate,” he said. His first orders: I could not tell anyone about our conversation, not even my spouse, or talk to the police or a lawyer.

Now I know this was all a scam — a cruel and violating one but painfully obvious in retrospect. Here’s what I can’t figure out: Why didn’t I just hang up and call 911? Why didn’t I text my husband, or my brother (a lawyer), or my best friend (also a lawyer), or my parents, or one of the many other people who would have helped me? Why did I hand over all that money — the contents of my savings account, strictly for emergencies — without a bigger fight?

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When I’ve told people this story, most of them say the same thing: You don’t seem like the type of person this would happen to. What they mean is that I’m not senile, or hysterical, or a rube. But these stereotypes are actually false. Younger adults — Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X — are 34 percent more likely to report losing money to fraud compared with those over 60, according to a recent report from the Federal Trade Commission. Another study found that well-educated people or those with good jobs were just as vulnerable to scams as everyone else.

Still, how could I have been such easy prey? Scam victims tend to be single, lonely, and economically insecure with low financial literacy. I am none of those things. I’m closer to the opposite. I’m a journalist who had a weekly column in the “Business” section of the New York Times. I’ve written a personal-finance column for this magazine for the past seven years. I interview money experts all the time and take their advice seriously. I’m married and talk to my friends, family, and colleagues every day.

And while this is harder to quantify — how do I even put it? — I’m not someone who loses her head. My mother-in-law has described me as even-keeled; my own mom has called me “maddeningly rational.” I am listed as an emergency contact for several friends — and their kids. I vote, floss, cook, and exercise. In other words, I’m not a person who panics under pressure and falls for a conspiracy involving drug smuggling, money laundering, and CIA officers at my door. Until, suddenly, I was.

That morning — it was October 31 — I dressed my toddler in a pizza costume for Halloween and kissed him good-bye before school. I wrote some work emails. At about 12:30 p.m., my phone buzzed. The caller ID said it was Amazon. I answered. A polite woman with a vague accent told me she was calling from Amazon customer service to check some unusual activity on my account. The call was being recorded for quality assurance. Had I recently spent $8,000 on MacBooks and iPads?

I had not. I checked my Amazon account. My order history showed diapers and groceries, no iPads. The woman, who said her name was Krista, told me the purchases had been made under my business account. “I don’t have a business account,” I said. “Hmm,” she said. “Our system shows that you have two.”

Krista and I concurred that I was the victim of identity theft, and she said she would flag the fraudulent accounts and freeze their activity. She provided me with a case-ID number for future reference and recommended that I check my credit cards. I did, and everything looked normal. I thanked her for her help.

Then Krista explained that Amazon had been having a lot of problems with identity theft and false accounts lately. It had become so pervasive that the company was working with a liaison at the Federal Trade Commission and was referring defrauded customers to him. Could she connect me?

“Um, sure?” I said.

Krista transferred the call to a man who identified himself as Calvin Mitchell. He said he was an investigator with the FTC, gave me his badge number, and had me write down his direct phone line in case I needed to contact him again. He also told me our call was being recorded. He asked me to verify the spelling of my name. Then he read me the last four digits of my Social Security number, my home address, and my date of birth to confirm that they were correct. The fact that he had my Social Security number threw me. I was getting nervous.

“I’m glad we’re speaking,” said Calvin. “Your personal information is linked to a case that we’ve been working on for a while now, and it’s quite serious.”

He told me that 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles, and four properties were registered to my name. The bank accounts had wired more than $3 million overseas, mostly to Jamaica and Iraq. Did I know anything about this? “No,” I said. Did I know someone named Stella Suk-Yee Kwong? “I don’t think so,” I said. He texted me a photo of her ID, which he claimed had been found in a car rented under my name that was abandoned on the southern border of Texas with blood and drugs in the trunk. A home in New Mexico affiliated with the car rental had subsequently been raided, he added, and authorities found more drugs, cash, and bank statements registered to my name and Social Security number. He texted me a drug-bust photo of bags of pills and money stacked on a table. He told me that there were warrants out for my arrest in Maryland and Texas and that I was being charged with cybercrimes, money laundering, and drug trafficking.

My head swam. I Googled my name along with “warrant” and “money laundering,” but nothing came up. Were arrest warrants public? I wasn’t sure. Google led me to truthfinder.com, which asked for my credit-card information — nope. “I’m in deep shit,” I texted my husband. “My identity was stolen and it seems really bad.”

Calvin wanted to know if I knew anyone who might be the culprit or if I had any connections to Iraq or Jamaica. “No,” I said. “This is the first I’m hearing about any of this, and it’s a lot to take in.” He asked if I had ever used public or unsecured Wi-Fi. “I don’t know. Maybe?” I said. “I used the airport Wi-Fi recently.”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s unfortunate. It’s how many of these breaches start.” I was embarrassed, like I’d left my fly unzipped. How could I have been so thoughtless? But also — didn’t everyone use the airport Wi-Fi?

Calvin told me to listen carefully. “The first thing you must do is not tell anyone what is going on. Everyone around you is a suspect.”

I almost laughed. I told him I was quite sure that my husband, who works for an affordable-housing nonprofit and makes meticulous spreadsheets for our child-care expenses, was not a secret drug smuggler. “I believe you, but even so, your communications are probably under surveillance,” Calvin said. “You cannot talk to him about this.” I quickly deleted the text messages I had sent my husband a few minutes earlier. “These are sophisticated criminals with a lot of money at stake,” he continued. “You should assume you are in danger and being watched. You cannot take any chances.”

I felt suspended between two worlds — the one I knew and the one this man was describing. If I had nothing to do with any of these allegations, how much could they truly affect me? I thought of an old This American Life episode about a woman whose Social Security card was stolen. No matter how many times she closed her bank accounts and opened new ones, her identity thief kept draining them, destroying her credit and her sanity. (It turned out to be her boyfriend.) I remembered another story about a man who got stuck on a no-fly list after his personal information was used by a terrorist group. It dawned on me that being connected to major federal offenses, even falsely, could really fuck up my life.

Calvin wanted to know how much money I currently had in my bank accounts. I told him that I had two — checking and savings — with a combined balance of a little over $80,000. As a freelancer in a volatile industry, I keep a sizable emergency fund, and I also set aside cash to pay my taxes at the end of the year, since they aren’t withheld from my paychecks.

His voice took on a more urgent tone. “You must have worked very hard to save all that money,” he said. “Do not share your bank-account information with anyone. I am going to help you keep your money safe.” He said that he would transfer me to his colleague at the CIA who was the lead investigator on my case and gave me a nine-digit case number for my records. (I Googled the number. Nothing.) He said the CIA agent would tell me what to do next, and he wished me luck.

how to write dialogue in a first person story

If it was a scam , I couldn’t see the angle. It had occurred to me that the whole story might be made up or an elaborate mistake. But no one had asked me for money or told me to buy crypto; they’d only encouraged me not to share my banking information. They hadn’t asked for my personal details; they already knew them. I hadn’t been told to click on anything.

Still, I had not seen a shred of evidence. I checked my bank accounts, credit cards, and credit score; nothing looked out of the ordinary. I knew I should probably talk to a lawyer or maybe call the police, though I was doubtful that they would help. What was I going to say — “My identity was stolen, and I think I’m somehow in danger”? I had no proof. I was also annoyed that my workday had been hijacked. It was 2 p.m., and I had already pushed back one deadline and postponed two work calls. I had to get myself out of this.

The next man who got on the line had a deeper voice and a slight British accent flecked with something I couldn’t identify. He told me his name was Michael Sarano and that he worked for the CIA on cases involving the FTC. He gave me his badge number. “I’m going to need more than that,” I said. “I have no reason to believe that any of what you’re saying is real.”

“I completely understand,” he said calmly. He told me to go to the FTC home page and look up the main phone number. “Now hang up the phone, and I will call you from that number right now.” I did as he said. The FTC number flashed on my screen, and I picked up. “How do I know you’re not just spoofing this?” I asked.

“It’s a government number,” he said, almost indignant. “It cannot be spoofed.” I wasn’t sure if this was true and tried Googling it, but Michael was already onto his next point. He told me the call was being recorded, so I put him on speaker and began recording on my end, too. He wanted to know if I had told anyone what was going on.

I admitted that I had texted my husband. “You must reassure him that everything is fine,” Michael said. “In many cases like this, we have to investigate the spouse as well, and the less he knows, the less he is implicated. From now on, you have to follow protocol if you want us to help you.”

“I don’t think I should lie to my husband,” I said, feeling stupid.

“You are being investigated for major federal crimes,” he said. “By keeping your husband out of this, you are protecting him.” He then repeated the point Calvin had made about my phone and computer being hacked and monitored by the criminals who had stolen my identity.

By that point, my husband had sent me a series of concerned texts. “Don’t worry. It will be okay,” I wrote back. It felt gross to imagine a third party reading along.

Michael snowed me with the same stories Calvin had. They were consistent: the car on the Texas border, the property in New Mexico, the drugs, the bank accounts. He asked if I shared my residence with anyone besides my husband and son. Then he asked more questions about my family members, including my parents, my brother, and my sister-in-law. He knew their names and where they lived. I told him they had nothing to do with this. In fact, I was now sure I wanted to consult a lawyer.

“If you talk to an attorney, I cannot help you anymore,” Michael said sternly. “You will be considered noncooperative. Your home will be raided, and your assets will be seized. You may be arrested. It’s your choice.” This seemed ludicrous. I pictured officers tramping in, taking my laptop, going through our bookshelves, questioning our neighbors, scaring my son. It was a nonstarter.

“Can I just come to your office and sort this out in person?” I said. “It’s getting late, and I need to take my son trick-or-treating soon.”

“My office is in Langley,” he said. “We don’t have enough time. We need to act immediately. I’m going to talk you through the process. It’s going to sound crazy, but we must follow protocol if we’re going to catch the people behind this.”

He explained that the CIA would need to freeze all the assets in my name, including my actual bank accounts. In the eyes of the law, there was no difference between the “real” and the fraudulent ones, he said. They would also deactivate my compromised Social Security number and get me a new one. Then, by monitoring any activity under my old Social Security number and accounts, they would catch the criminals who were using my identity and I would get my life back. But until then, I would need to use only cash for my day-to-day expenses.

It was far-fetched. Ridiculous. But also not completely out of the realm of possibility. “Do I have any other options?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” he said. “You must follow my directions very carefully. We do not have much time.”

He asked me how much cash I thought I would need to support myself for a year if necessary. My assets could be frozen for up to two years if the investigation dragged on, he added. There could be a trial; I might need to testify. These things take time. “I don’t know, $50,000?” I said. I wondered how I would receive paychecks without a bank account. Would I have to take time off from work? I did some mental calculations of how much my husband could float us and for how long.

“Okay,” he said. “You need to go to the bank and get that cash out now. You cannot tell them what it is for. In one of my last cases, the identity thief was someone who worked at the bank.”

Michael told me to keep the phone on speaker so we would remain in contact. “It’s important that I monitor where this money goes from now on. Remember, all of your assets are part of this investigation,” he said. Then he told me that one of his colleagues would meet me at my apartment at 5 p.m. to guide me through the next steps.

“You can’t send a complete stranger to my home,” I said, my voice rising. “My 2-year-old son will be here.”

“Let me worry about that,” he said. “It’s my job. But if you don’t cooperate, I cannot keep you safe. It is your choice.”

It’s impossible to explain why I accepted this logic. But I had been given marching orders and a deadline. My son would be home soon, and I had to fix this mess. I put on sneakers in case I needed to run. I brought a backpack for the cash. I felt both terrified and absurd.

It was jarring to see trick-or-treaters in my Brooklyn neighborhood, people going about their lives. The air was crisp, and dead leaves swirled on the ground. I was on high alert for anyone who might be following me. At one point, a man in sunglasses and a hoodie trailed me for a few blocks. At Michael’s suggestion, I ducked into a parking garage until he passed.

When I reached the bank, I told the guard I needed to make a large cash withdrawal and she sent me upstairs. Michael was on speakerphone in my pocket. I asked the teller for $50,000. The woman behind the thick glass window raised her eyebrows, disappeared into a back room, came back with a large metal box of $100 bills, and counted them out with a machine. Then she pushed the stacks of bills through the slot along with a sheet of paper warning me against scams. I thanked her and left.

Michael was bursting with praise. “You did a great job,” he said. “I have to go for a moment to see about the details of your case; I’m going to have you speak to my colleague if you have any questions.” He put a woman on the line. She was younger, with an accent I couldn’t identify. She told me to go home and await further instructions.

As I walked back to my apartment, something jolted me out of my trance, and I became furious. No government agency would establish this as “protocol.” It was preposterous. “I need to speak with Michael,” I told the woman on the phone. He got on right away. “I don’t even believe that you’re a CIA agent,” I said. “What you’re asking me to do is completely unreasonable.”

He sighed. “I’m sending you a photo of my badge right now,” he said. “I don’t know what else to tell you. You can trust me, and I will help you. Or you can hang up and put yourself and your family in danger. Do you really want to take that risk with a young child?”

My Two Cents

How to protect yourself against scams, what charlotte cowles wishes she’d known..

I waited for a stoplight at a busy intersection. I could see my apartment window from where I stood. My son was playing inside with a neighbor’s daughter and their nanny. A picture of Michael’s badge appeared on my phone. I had no way of verifying it; it could easily have been Photoshopped. “I don’t trust you at all,” I said to Michael. “But it doesn’t seem like I have any other choice.”

When I got home, Michael told me to get a box, put the cash in it, take a picture of it, then tape it shut. I found a floral-printed shoe box that had once contained a pair of slippers I’d bought for myself — a frivolous purchase that now seemed mortifying. Michael told me to label it with my name, my case number, my address, a locker number he read to me, and my signature. Then he directed me to take another picture of the labeled box and text it to him.

“My colleague will be there soon. He is an undercover CIA agent, and he will secure the money for you,” he said. What exactly would that entail? I asked. “Tonight, we will close down your Social Security number, and you will lose access to your bank accounts,” he explained. “Tomorrow, you’ll need to go to the Social Security office and get a new Social Security number. We’ll secure this money for you in a government locker and hand-deliver a Treasury check for the same amount. You can cash the check and use it for your expenses until the investigation is over.”

“Why can’t I just use this cash?” I asked. “Why do you have to take it and give me a check?”

“Because all of your assets under your current identity are part of the investigation,” he said. “You are being charged with money laundering. If we secure this cash and then issue you a government check under your new Social Security number, that will be considered clean money.”

“I’ll need to see your colleague’s badge,” I said. “I’m not just going to give $50,000 of my money to someone I don’t know.”

“Undercover agents don’t carry badges,” he said, as if I’d asked the CIA to bring me a Happy Meal. “They’re undercover. Remember, you are probably being watched. The criminals cannot know that a CIA agent is there.”

In a twisted way, this made some amount of sense to me. Or maybe I had lost my grip on reality so completely that I was willing to resign myself to this new version of it. Most important, I didn’t know what else to do. Even if Michael wasn’t working for the CIA (which struck me as more and more likely), he was sending a man to our address. I felt a sickening dread that he might ask to come inside. If giving him this money would make him go away, I was ready to do it. I’d been on the phone for nearly five hours. I wanted to take my son trick-or-treating. I was exhausted.

Michael seemed to sense that I was flagging and asked if I’d had lunch. I hadn’t. He told me to eat something but keep him on the line; his agent was on the way to my address but running late. “You can meet him outside if that would make you more comfortable,” Michael said, and I felt relieved. While I gnawed on a granola bar at my desk, he got chatty and asked about my job. I told him I was going to Washington, D.C., later that week. “Oh, great. You could come to my office in Langley,” he said. “Where are you staying?”

A little after 6 p.m., Michael told me to go downstairs. His colleague was arriving. My husband had just come home from work and was reading to our son. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?” he asked as I put my coat on. I motioned to the phone and shushed him. Then I whispered, “I have to go downstairs and meet a guy who’s helping with the identity-theft case. I’ll explain more later.” He frowned and silently mouthed, “What?” I told him I had to go.

I met the SUV at the curb and put the money in the back seat. It was 6:06 p.m. Even if I’d tried to see who was driving, the windows were tinted and it was dusk. He maybe wore a baseball cap. When I turned around, I could see the backlit faces of my husband and son watching from our apartment nine stories above.

As I walked back inside, Michael texted me a photo of a Treasury check made out to me for $50,000 and told me a hard copy would be hand-delivered to me in the morning. He was working on setting up my appointment with the Social Security office. “You will receive a confirmation text shortly,” he said. “Stay on the line until you do.” I felt oddly comforted by this. An appointment would give me something legitimate, an actual connection to a government agency.

I took my son trick-or-treating, my phone on speaker in my pocket. I felt numb, almost in a fugue state, smiling and chatting with my neighbors and their kids. At one point, I checked to see if Michael was still there; his female colleague answered and said he’d be back soon. Then, when we got home and I checked again, the line was dead. I panicked and called back. The woman answered. “Michael is busy,” she said. “He’ll call you in the morning.”

I was confused. Did this mean I didn’t have a Social Security number at all anymore? I pictured myself floating, identity-less. “Do I have an appointment at the Social Security office?” I asked.

“Michael will call you tomorrow,” she repeated. “He hasn’t been able to secure your appointment yet. The Social Security office is closed now.”

I went into my bedroom and shut the door, feeling my face grow hot. I had a physical sensation of scales falling from my eyes; the room shimmered around me, spots raining from the ceiling. I saw the whole day peel away, like the layers of an onion — Michael, the FTC officer, the Amazon call — revealing my real life, raw and exposed, at the center. “Oh my God,” I said, my hands tingling. “You are lying to me. Michael was lying. You just took my money and I’m never getting it back.” That wasn’t true, the woman said. She understood that I was upset. She was sorry. Everything would be fine. “You’re a fucking liar,” I hissed, and hung up.

Through choking sobs, I told my husband what had happened. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, incredulous. “I would have stopped you.” That I’d been trying to protect him suddenly seemed so idiotic I couldn’t even say it out loud. Our son looked on, confused. “Mama’s sad,” he announced, clinging to my leg. We put him to bed and then I called my parents and my brother. At their urging, I called 911. Around 10:30 p.m., three police officers came over and took my statement. I struggled to recount what I’d done; it seemed like a bad dream. I felt like a fool.

“No government agency will ever ask you for money,” one cop informed me, as if I’d never heard it before. I wanted to scream, “I know. ” Instead, I said, “It didn’t really feel like he was asking.”

The police told me not to worry; the scammers wouldn’t be back. “They got what they wanted,” another officer said, as though it would reassure me. I gave them the photos and recordings I had. They promised to check traffic cameras for the car that had taken the money.

When I woke up the next morning, a few seconds passed before I remembered the previous day. I was my old self, in my old bed, milky dawn light on the walls. Then it all came crashing back, a fresh humiliation, and I curled into the fetal position. I felt violated, unreliable; I couldn’t trust myself. Were my tendencies toward people-pleasing, rule following, and conflict aversion far worse than I’d ever thought, even pathological? I imagined other people’s reactions. She’s always been a little careless. She seems unhinged. I considered keeping the whole thing a secret. I worried it would harm my professional reputation. I still do.

In the days that followed, I kept revisiting the fake world of that afternoon, slipping through a portal into an alternate life. I would get paranoid that someone was reading my texts, watching me as I took my son to school, or using my Social Security number to wire money and rent cars. It was a relief that I wasn’t actually in trouble with the law, but then again — I’d lost $50,000 and I wasn’t getting it back. I checked my accounts and credit cards obsessively. I called my bank. They gave me instructions to freeze my credit, file reports with the FBI and FTC, and run anti-virus software on my laptop to check for malware, which I did. I cried a lot. My husband felt helpless; he still doesn’t like to talk about it. Instead, he researched new locks for our doors and looked into security cameras. One night I shook him awake, convinced that someone was trying to break in. “It’s only the wind,” he said. “We’re safe.”

Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money. It took me years to save, stashing away a few thousand every time I got paid for a big project. Part of it was money I had received from my grandfather, an inheritance he took great pains to set up for his grandchildren before his death. Sometimes I imagine how I would have spent it if I had to get rid of it in a day. I could have paid for over a year’s worth of child care up front. I could have put it toward the master’s degree I’ve always wanted. I could have housed multiple families for months. Perhaps, inadvertently, I am; I occasionally wonder what the scammers did with it.

Because I had set it aside for emergencies and taxes, it was money I tried to pretend I didn’t have — it wasn’t for spending. Initially, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to afford my taxes this year, but then my accountant told me I could write off losses due to theft. So from a financial standpoint, I’ll survive, as long as I don’t have another emergency — a real one — anytime soon.

When I did tell friends what had happened, it seemed like everyone had a horror story. One friend’s dad, a criminal-defense attorney, had been scammed out of $1.2 million. Another person I know, a real-estate developer, was duped into wiring $450,000 to someone posing as one of his contractors. Someone else knew a Wall Street executive who had been conned into draining her 401(k) by some guy she met at a bar.

I felt a guilty sense of consolation whenever I heard about a scam involving someone I respected. If this could happen to them, maybe I wasn’t such a moron. As a journalist, it’s my instinct to research and talk to experts, so I dove into books and podcasts about scams, desperate to make sense of my own. I had known that fraud was on the rise but was shocked to learn the numbers — financial losses ballooned by more than 30 percent in 2022. I read that self-laceration is typical; half of victims blame themselves for being gullible, and most experience serious anxiety, depression, or other stress-related health problems afterward. I heard about victim support groups. I went to therapy.

When I discovered that Katie Gatti Tassin, a personal-finance expert who writes the popular Money With Katie newsletter, lost $8,000 five years ago to a grandmotherly-sounding woman pretending to call from Tassin’s credit union, I called her to ask how she’d coped. “Everyone was so patronizing,” she told me. “The response was basically ‘It’s your fault that this happened.’”

If I had to pinpoint a moment that made me think my scammers were legitimate, it was probably when they read me my Social Security number. Now I know that all kinds of personal information — your email address, your kids’ names and birthdays, even your pets’ names — are commonly sold on the dark web. Of course, the scammers could also have learned about my son from a 30-second perusal of my Instagram feed.

It was my brother, the lawyer, who pointed out that what I had experienced sounded a lot like a coerced confession. “I read enough transcripts of bad interrogations in law school to understand that anyone can be convinced that they have a very narrow set of terrible options,” he said. When I posed this theory to Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies coerced confessions, he agreed. “If someone is trying to get you to be compliant, they do it incrementally, in a series of small steps that take you farther and farther from what you know to be true,” he said. “It’s not about breaking the will. They were altering the sense of reality.” And when you haven’t done anything wrong, the risk of cooperating feels minimal, he added. An innocent person thinks everything will get sorted out. It also mattered that I was kept on the phone for so long. People start to break down cognitively after a few hours of interrogation. “At that point, they’re not thinking straight. They feel the need to put an end to the situation at all costs,” Kassin said.

I wondered how often scammers are caught and about the guy who’d driven the car to my apartment. But when I asked experts, they doubted he’d be a meaningful lead. One pointed out that he might have been a courier who was told to come pick up a box.

I still don’t believe that what happened to me could happen to anyone, but I’m starting to realize that I’m not uniquely fallible. Several friends felt strongly that if the scammers hadn’t mentioned my son, I would never have fallen for this. They’re right that I’d be willing to do — or pay — anything to protect him. Either way, I have to accept that someone waged psychological warfare on me, and I lost. For now, I just don’t answer my phone.

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  1. dialogue

    How would you write dialog in a 1st person story? Ask Question Asked 4 years, 9 months ago Modified 4 years, 8 months ago Viewed 11k times 1 I'm a novice writer working on my first book. I've made the story 1st person from the perspective of the main character. The way I've been writing dialog goes as such: C1: "So, where are you guys eating today?

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    The "I" is Sally. This means that in first person, the reader is locked inside the POV (point of view) character's mind. They see what the main character sees, and they don't see what the main character misses. The POV character is narrating the story to us as they experience it, basically, which can create a very personal and relatable experience.

  3. A Guide to Writing Dialogue, With Examples

    Learn the purpose, types, and formatting of dialogue in a first person story. Find out how to use inner and outer dialogue, monologues, and em dashes to create realistic and engaging characters and scenes. See examples of dialogue from different genres and styles.

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    Step 1: Use a Dialogue Outline Step 2: Write down a script Step 3: Edit & review your script Step 4: Sprinkle in some narrative Step 5: Format your dialogue What is dialogue? Dialogue is the spoken words that are spoken between the characters of a story. It is also known as the conversation between the characters.

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    1. Use quotation marks to signal speech Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Drama is life with all the boring bits cut out." Similarly, I could say that good dialogue in a novel is a real conversation without all the fluff — and with quotation marks. Imagine, for instance, if every scene with dialogue in your novel started out with: 'Hey, buddy!

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    Format & Punctuation Examples Tips for Dialogue Say the dialogue out loud Cut small talk when writing dialogue Keep your dialogue brief and impactful Give each character a unique voice Add world-appropriate slang Be consistent with the characters' voices Remember who they're speaking to Avoid long dialogue paragraphs Cut out greetings

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    Rules for writing dialogue Before we get into how to make your dialogue realistic and engaging, let's make sure you've got the basics down: how to properly format dialogue in a story. We'll look at how to punctuate dialogue, how to write dialogue correctly when using a question mark or exclamation point, and some helpful dialogue writing examples.

  8. How to Write Dialogue in a Story

    Writing dialogue in a story requires us to step into the minds of our characters. When our characters speak, they should speak as fully developed human beings, complete with their own linguistic quirks and unique pronunciations. Indeed, dialogue writing is essential to the art of storytelling. In real life, we learn about other people through ...

  9. How to Write Dialogue

    How to Write a Good Dialogue. 2. Make your character's wants clear. In a post about how to approach how to write dialogue it may seem contradictory to say this, but a good rule for dialogue writing in a scene is to write the dialogue last. After building out the other elements of your story (your arcs, acts, scenes, and story beats) you will ...

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    Tip #1: Create Character Voices. Dialogue is a great way to reveal your characters. What your characters say, and how they say it, can tell us so much about what kind of people they are. Some characters are witty and gregarious. Others are timid and unobtrusive. Speech patterns vary drastically from person to person.

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    Dialogue in writing is conversation between two or more people/animated voices (animated voices because it could be speech between a person and an inanimate object they personify, for example, an imaginary or supernatural voice, and so forth). Dialogue can be compared to:

  13. How to Format Dialogue in Your Novel or Short Story

    1. Use Quotation Marks to Indicate Spoken Word Whenever someone is speaking, their words should be enclosed in double quotation marks. Example: "Let's go to the beach." 2. Dialogue Tags Stay Outside the Quotation Marks Dialogue tags attribute a line of dialogue to one of the characters so that the reader knows who is speaking.

  14. Writing Dialogue in First Person

    When a story is told from the first person, you can't write the dialogue the same way you'd write it if it is told from the third person. For example, the phrase "I said" should be used sparingly in a first person narrative.

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    Master the golden rule of writing in 10 five-minute lessons. 4. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Here, friends Tommy and Kathy have a conversation after Tommy has had a meltdown. After being bullied by a group of boys, he has been stomping around in the mud, the precise reaction they were hoping to evoke from him.

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    1. Decide if first person is right for your story Before you start writing, consider carefully whether first-person narration is the best style of narration for the story you want to tell. First-person narration is a great tool for many reasons.

  17. How To Write Dialogue In First Person

    Table of Contents What does 1st person mean in writing? 1st person means the person narrating the story is telling it to you, or speaking directly to you. This is a very common technique in fiction, such as novels and short stories. The protagonist is usually telling their own story, and what they do and experience affects how you view that person.

  18. How to Write Dialogue in 6 Steps

    How to Write Dialogue: Step 1. Cut to the Bone. Unless you're including them to reveal a character as a brainiac or a blowhard, omit needless words from dialogue. Obviously, you wouldn't render a conversation the way a court transcript includes repetition and even um, ah, uh, etc.

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    How to Write in First-Person Point of View: Dos and Don'ts Written by MasterClass Last updated: Sep 3, 2021 • 4 min read Point of view is the eye through which you tell a story. First-person point of view gives readers an intimate view of a character's experience.

  20. First Person Point of View: Character-Driven Narration

    First person creates an immersive experience. One of the main benefits of first person POV is that it creates intimacy. For Tracy Gold, Reedsy editor and Adjunct Professor of Composition at the University of Baltimore, writing in first person brings the reader closer to the narrator: "With first person, the writer or reader becomes the character as they get deeper into the story, and that's ...

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  22. How to Write Internal Dialogue

    Technique #4 - Save direct internal dialogue for the most important thoughts. Direct internal dialogue is dialogue that's written in first person, present tense. I'll show you an example to make sure it's clear what I mean. Emily pasted a smile on her face. I still hate you.

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    Method 1 Choosing a Tense for the First Person Narrative Download Article 1 Use present tense to move the story forward. The first person point of view has two different tenses, present tense and past tense. Present tense "I" focuses on the actions and thoughts of the narrator as they unfold in the present.

  24. Dialogue in First Person Fiction (Detective Mystery)

    The majority of cozy mysteries are written in first person point of view and use a single narrator, usually a female. She is the amateur-detective protagonist and readers are in her mind, and her mind only, as she tries to solve a mystery. She's essentially talking to the reader, telling us what happened to her.

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    When I did tell friends what had happened, it seemed like everyone had a horror story. One friend's dad, a criminal-defense attorney, had been scammed out of $1.2 million. Another person I know, a real-estate developer, was duped into wiring $450,000 to someone posing as one of his contractors.