A Guide to Writing Dialogue, With Examples

Lindsay Kramer

“Guess what?” Tanika asked her mother. 

“What?” her mother replied.

“I’m writing a short story,” Tanika said. 

“Make sure you practice writing dialogue!” her mother instructed. “Because dialogue is one of the most effective tools a writer has to bring characters to life.” Give your writing extra polish Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly

What is dialogue, and what is its purpose?

Dialogue is what the characters in your short story , poem , novel, play, screenplay, personal essay —any kind of creative writing where characters speak—say out loud. 

For a lot of writers, writing dialogue is the most fun part of writing. It’s your opportunity to let your characters’ motivations, flaws, knowledge, fears, and personality quirks come to life. By writing dialogue, you’re giving your characters their own voices, fleshing them out from concepts into three-dimensional characters. And it’s your opportunity to break grammatical rules and express things more creatively. Read these lines of dialogue: 

  • “NoOoOoOoO!” Maddie yodeled as her older sister tried to pry her hands from the merry-go-round’s bars.
  • “So I says, ‘You wanna play rough? C’mere, I’ll show you playin’ rough!’”
  • “Get out!” she shouted, playfully swatting at his arm. “You’re kidding me, right? We couldn’t have won . . . ” 

Dialogue has multiple purposes. One of them is to characterize your characters. Read the examples above again, and think about who each of those characters are. You learn a lot about somebody’s mindset, background, comfort in their current situation, emotional state, and level of expertise from how they speak. 

Another purpose dialogue has is exposition, or background information. You can’t give readers all the exposition they need to understand a story’s plot up-front. One effective way to give readers information about the plot and context is to supplement narrative exposition with dialogue. For example, the protagonist might learn about an upcoming music contest by overhearing their coworkers’ conversation about it, or an intrepid adventurer might be told of her destiny during an important meeting with the town mystic. Later on in the story, your music-loving protagonist might express his fears of looking foolish onstage to his girlfriend, and your intrepid adventurer might have a heart-to-heart with the dragon she was sent to slay and find out the truth about her society’s cultural norms. 

Dialogue also makes your writing feel more immersive. It breaks up long prose passages and gives your reader something to “hear” other than your narrator’s voice. Often, writers use dialogue to also show how characters relate to each other, their setting, and the plot they’re moving through. 

It can communicate subtext, like showing class differences between characters through the vocabulary they use or hinting at a shared history between them. Sometimes, a narrator’s description just can’t deliver information the same way that a well-timed quip or a profound observation by a character can. 

In contrast to dialogue, a monologue is a single, usually lengthy passage spoken by one character. Monologues are often part of plays. 

The character may be speaking directly to the reader or viewer, or they could be speaking to one or more other characters. The defining characteristic of a monologue is that it’s one character’s moment in the spotlight to express their thoughts, ideas, and/or perspective. 

Often, a character’s private thoughts are delivered via monologue. If you’re familiar with the term internal monologue , it’s referring to this. An internal monologue is the voice an individual ( though not all individuals ) “hears” in their head as they talk themselves through their daily activities. Your story might include one or more characters’ inner monologues in addition to their dialogue. Just like “hearing” a character’s words through dialogue, hearing their thoughts through a monologue can make a character more relatable, increasing a reader’s emotional investment in their story arc. 

Types of dialogue

There are two broad types of dialogue writers employ in their work: inner and outer dialogue.  

Inner dialogue is the dialogue a character has inside their head. This inner dialogue can be a monologue. In most cases, inner dialogue is not marked by quotation marks . Some authors mark inner dialogue by italicizing it.

Outer dialogue is dialogue that happens externally, often between two or more characters. This is the dialogue that goes inside quotation marks. 

How to structure dialogue

Dialogue is a break from a story’s prose narrative. Formatting it properly makes this clear. When you’re writing dialogue, follow these formatting guidelines: 

  • All punctuation in a piece of dialogue goes inside the quotation marks.
  • Quoted dialogue within a line of dialogue goes inside single quotation marks (“I told my brother, ‘Don’t do my homework for me.’ But he did it anyway!”). In UK English, quoted dialogue within a line of dialogue goes inside double quotation marks.
  • Every time a new character speaks, start a new paragraph. This is true even when a character says only one word. Indent every new paragraph. 
  • When a character’s dialogue extends beyond a paragraph, use quotation marks at the beginning of the second and/or subsequent paragraph. However, there is no need for closing quotation marks at the end of the first paragraph—or any paragraph other than the final one. 
  • Example: “Thank you for—”                                                                                                                        “Is that a giant spider?!”
  • “Every night,” he began, “I heard a rustling in the trees.”
  • “Every day,” he stated. “Every day, I get to work right on time.”

Things to avoid when writing dialogue

When you’re writing dialogue, avoid these common pitfalls: 

  • Using a tag for every piece of dialogue: Dialogue tags are words like said and asked . Once you’ve established that two characters are having a conversation, you don’t need to tag every piece of dialogue. Doing so is redundant and breaks the reader’s flow. Once readers know each character’s voice, many lines of dialogue can stand alone. 
  • Not using enough tags: On the flip side, some writers use too few dialogue tags, which can confuse readers. Readers should always know who’s speaking. When a character’s mannerisms and knowledge don’t make that abundantly obvious, tag the dialogue and use their name. 
  • Dense, unrealistic speech: As we mentioned above, dialogue doesn’t need to be grammatically correct. In fact, when it’s too grammatically correct, it can make characters seem stiff and unrealistic. 
  • Anachronisms: A pirate in 1700s Barbados wouldn’t greet his captain with “what’s up?” Depending on how dedicated you (and your readers) are to historical accuracy, this doesn’t need to be perfect. But it should be believable. 
  • Eye dialect: This is an important one to keep in mind. Eye dialect is the practice of writing out characters’ mispronunciations phonetically, like writing “wuz” for “was.” Eye dialect can be (and has been) used to create offensive caricatures, and even when it’s not used in this manner, it can make dialogue difficult for readers to understand. Certain well-known instances of eye dialect, like “fella” for “fellow” and “‘em” for “them,” are generally deemed acceptable, but beyond these, it’s often best to avoid it. 

How to write dialogue

Write how people actually speak (with some editing).

You want your characters to sound like real people. Real people don’t always speak in complete sentences or use proper grammar. So when you’re writing dialogue, break grammatical rules as you need to. 

That said, your dialogue needs to still be readable. If the grammar is so bad that readers don’t understand what your characters are saying, they’ll probably just stop reading your story. Even if your characters speak in poor grammar, using punctuation marks correctly, even when they’re in the wrong places, will help readers understand the characters.

Here’s a quick example: 

“I. Do. Not. WANT. to go back to boarding school!” Caleb shouted. 

See how the period after each word forces your brain to stop and read each word as if it were its own sentence? The periods are doing what they’re supposed to do; they just aren’t being used to end sentences like periods typically do. Here’s another example of a character using bad grammar but the author using proper punctuation to make the dialogue understandable: 

“Because no,” she said into the phone. “I need a bigger shed to store all my stuff in . . . yeah, no, that’s not gonna work for me, I told you what I need and now you gotta make it happen.”

Less is more

When you’re editing your characters’ dialogue, cut back all the parts that add nothing to the story. Real-life conversations are full of small talk and filler. Next time you read a story, take note of how little small talk and filler is in the dialogue. There’s a reason why TV characters never say “good-bye” when they hang up the phone: the “good-bye” adds nothing to the storyline. Dialogue should characterize people and their relationships, and it should also advance the plot. 

Vary up your tags, but don’t go wild with them

“We love basketball!” he screamed.

“Why are you screaming?” the coach asked.

“Because I’m just so passionate about basketball!” he replied.

Dialogue tags show us a character’s tone. It’s good to have a variety of dialogue tags in your work, but there’s also nothing wrong with using a basic tag like “said” when it’s the most accurate way to describe how a character delivered a line. Generally, it’s best to keep your tags to words that describe actual speech, like:

You’ve probably come across more unconventional tags like “laughed” and “dropped.” If you use these at all, use them sparingly. They can be distracting to readers, and some particularly pedantic readers might be bothered because people don’t actually laugh or drop their words. 

Give each character a unique voice (and keep them consistent)

If there is more than one character with a speaking role in your work, give each a unique voice. You can do this by varying their vocabulary, their speech’s pace and rhythm, and the way they tend to react to dialogue.

Keep each character’s voice consistent throughout the story by continuing to write them in the style you established. When you go back and proofread your work, check to make sure each character’s voice remains consistent—or, if it changed because of a perspective-shifting event in the story, make sure that this change fits into the narrative and makes sense. One way to do this is to read your dialogue aloud and listen to it. If something sounds off, revise it. 

Dialogue examples

Inner dialogue.

As I stepped onto the bus, I had to ask myself: why was I going to the amusement park today, and not my graduation ceremony? 

He thought to himself, this must be what paradise looks like. 

Outer dialogue

“Mom, can I have a quarter so I can buy a gumball?”

Without skipping a beat, she responded, “I’ve dreamed of working here my whole life.”

“Ren, are you planning on stopping by the barbecue?” 

“No, I’m not,” Ren answered. “I’ll catch you next time.”

Here’s a tip: Grammarly’s  Citation Generator  ensures your essays have flawless citations and no plagiarism. Try it for citing dialogue in Chicago , MLA , and APA styles.

Dialogue FAQs

What is dialogue.

Dialogue is the text that represents the spoken word. 

How does dialogue work?

Dialogue expresses exactly what a character is saying. In contrast, a narrator might paraphrase or describe a character’s thoughts or speech. 

What are different kinds of dialogue?

Inner dialogue is the dialogue a character has inside their own head. Often, it’s referred to as an inner monologue. 

Outer dialogue is a conversation between two or more characters. 

How is dialogue formatted?

Inner dialogue simply fits into the narrative prose. 

Outer dialogue is marked by quotation marks and a few other formatting guidelines. These include:

  • A new, indented paragraph every time a new character speaks
  • Punctuation inside the quotation marks
  • Em dashes to communicate interruption

how to write a dialogue in a short story

  • 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 a dialogue in a short 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 a dialogue in a short 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 a dialogue in a short story

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

how to write a dialogue in a short story

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

how to write a dialogue in a short 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 a dialogue in a short story

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

how to write a dialogue in a short 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 a dialogue in a short 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 a dialogue in a short 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 a dialogue in a short story

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

how to write a dialogue in a short story

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

how to write a dialogue in a short 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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Last updated on Sep 21, 2023

How to Write Fabulous Dialogue [9 Tips + Examples]

This post is written by author, editor, and bestselling ghostwriter Tom Bromley. He is the  instructor of Reedsy's 101-day course,  How to Write a Novel .

Good dialogue isn’t about quippy lines and dramatic pauses.

Good dialogue is about propelling the story forward, pulling the reader along, and fleshing out characters and their dynamics in front of readers. Well-written dialogue can take your story to a new level — you just have to unlock it.

In this article, I’ll break down the major steps of writing great dialogue, and provide exercises for you to practice your own dialogue on.

Here's how to write great dialogue in 9 steps:

1. Use quotation marks to signal speech

2. pace dialogue lines by three , 3. use action beats , 4. use ‘said’ as a dialogue tag  , 5. write scene-based dialogue, 6. model any talk on real life , 7. differentiate character voices, 8. "show, don't tell" information in conversation , 9. delete superfluous words, which dialogue tag are you.

Find out in just a minute.

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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! How are you doing?"

“Great! How are you?""

'Great! Long time no see! Parking was a nightmare, wasn’t it?"

Firstly, from a technical perspective, the quotation marks are inconsistent and incorrectly formatted. To learn about the mechanics of your dialogue and how to format it, we also wrote this full post on the topic that I recommend reading.

Secondly, from a novel perspective, such lines don’t add anything to the story. And finally, from a reading perspective, your readers will not want to sit through this over and over again. Readers are smart: they can infer that all these civilities occur. Which means that you can skip the small talk (unless it’s important to the story) to get to the heart of the dialogue from the get-go.  

For a more tangible example of this technique, check out the dialogue-driven opening to Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Unsheltered .

Screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb once proposed an idea called the “Three-Beat Rule.” What this recommends, essentially, is to introduce a maximum of three dialogue “beats” (the short phrases in speech you can say without pausing for breath) at a time. Only after these three dialogue beats should you insert a dialogue tag, action beat, or another character’s speech.

Here’s an example from Jane Gardam’s short story, “Dangers”, in which the boy Jake is shooting an imaginary gun at his grandmother:

How to Write Dialogue | Example from Dangers by Jane Gardam

In theory, this sounds simple enough. In practice, however, it’s a bit more complicated than that, simply because dialogue conventions continue to change over time. There’s no way to condense “good dialogue” into a formula of three this, or two that. But if you’re just starting out and need a strict rule to help you along, then the Three-Beat Rule is a good place to begin experimenting.

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Let’s take a look at another kind of “beats” now — action beats.

Action beats are the descriptions of the expressions, movements, or even internal thoughts that accompany the speaker’s words. They’re always included in the same paragraph as the dialogue, so as to indicate that the person acting is also the person speaking.

On a technical level, action beats keep your writing varied, manage the pace of a dialogue-heavy scene, and break up the long list of lines ending in ‘he said’ or ‘she said’.

But on a character level, action beats are even more important because they can go a level deeper than dialogue and illustrate a character’s body language.

When we communicate, dialogue only forms a half of how we get across what we want to say. Body language is that missing half — which is why action beats are so important in visualizing a conversation, and can help you “show” rather than “tell” in writing.

Here’s a quick exercise to practice thinking about body language in the context of dialogue: imagine a short scene, where you are witnessing a conversation between two people from the opposite side of a restaurant or café. Because it’s noisy and you can’t hear what they are saying, describe the conversation through the use of body language only.

Remember, at the end of the day, action beats and spoken dialogue are partners in crime. These beats are a commonly used technique so you can find plenty of examples —  here’s one from  Never Let Me Go  by Kazuo Ishiguro . 

If there’s one golden rule in writing dialogue, it’s this: ‘said’ is your friend.

Yes, ‘said’ is nothing new. Yes, ‘said’ is used by all other authors out there already. But you know what? There’s a reason why ‘said’ is the king of dialogue tags: it works.

Pro-tip: While we cannot stress enough the importance of "said," sometimes you do need another dialogue tag. Download this free cheatsheet of 270+ other words for said to get yourself covered!

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Upgrade your dialogue with our list of 270 alternatives to “said.”

The thinking goes that ‘said’ is so unpretentious, so unassuming that it focuses readers’ attention on what’s most important on the page: the dialogue itself. As writer Elmore Leonard puts it: 

“Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But ‘said’ is far less intrusive than ‘grumbled,’ ‘gasped,’ ‘cautioned,’ ‘lied.’”

It might be tempting at times to turn towards other words for ‘said’ such as ‘exclaimed,’ or ‘declared,’ but my general rule of thumb is that in 90% of scenarios, ‘said’ is going to be the most effective dialogue tag for you to use while writing dialogue.

So now that we have several guidelines in place, this is a good spot to pause, reflect, and say that there’s no wrong or right way to write dialogue. It depends on the demands of the scene, the characters, and the story. Great dialogue isn’t about following this or that rule — but rather learning what technique to use when . 

If you stick to one rule the whole time — i.e. if you only use ‘said,’ or you finish every dialogue line with an action beat — you’ll wear out readers. Let’s see how unnaturally it plays out in the example below with Sophie and Ethan: 

How to Write Dialogue | Example of Repetitive Dialogue Tags

All of which is to say: don’t be afraid to make exceptions to the rule if the scene asks for it. The key is to know when to switch up your dialogue structure or use of dialogue tags or action beats throughout a scene — and by extension, throughout your book.

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Dialogue isn’t always about writing grammatically perfect prose. The way a person speaks reflects the way a person is — and not all people are straight-A honor students who speak in impeccable English. In real life, the way people talk is fragmented, and punctuated by pauses.

That’s something that you should also keep in mind when you’re aiming to write authentic dialogue.

It can be tempting to think to yourself, “ Oh, I’ll try and slip in some exposition into my dialogue here to reveal important background information.” But if that results in an info-dump such as this — “ I’m just going to the well, Mother — the well that my brother, your son, tragically fell down five years ago ” — then you’ll probably want to take a step back and find a more organic, timely, and digestible way to incorporate that into your story.

How to Write Dialogue | Example from The Godfather

Kay Adams is Michael’s date at his sister’s wedding in this scene. Her interest in his family is natural enough that the expository conversation doesn’t feel shoehorned in. 

A distinctive voice for each character is perhaps the most important element to get right in dialogue. Just as no one person in the world talks the same as each other, no one person in your book should also talk similarly.

To get this part of writing dialogue down pat, you need to start out by knowing your characters inside out. How does your character talk? Do they come with verbal quirks? Non-verbal quirks?

Jay Gatsby’s “old sport,” for example, gives him a distinctive, recognizable voice. It stands out because no one else has something as memorable about their speech. But more than that, it reveals something valuable about Gatsby’s character: he’s trying to impersonates a gentleman in his speech and lifestyle.

Likewise, think carefully about your character’s voice, and use catchphrases and character quirks when they can say something about your character. 

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“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most oft-repeated rules in writing, and a conversation on the page can be a gold mine for “showing.”

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Authors can use action beats and descriptions to provide clues for readers to read between the lines. Let’s revisit Sophie and Ethan in this example:

How to Write Dialogue | Example of Show, Don't Tell

While Sophie claims she hasn’t been obsessing over this project all night, the actions in between her words indicate there’s nothing on her mind  but  work. The result is that you show , through the action beats vs. the dialogue, Sophie being hardworking—rather than telling it.

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As always when it comes to writing a novel: all roads lead back to The Edit, and the dialogue you’ve written is no exception.

So while you’re editing your novel at the end, you may find that a “less is more” mentality will be helpful. Remember to cut out the unnecessary bits of dialogue, so that you can focus on making sure the dialogue you  do  keep matters. Good writing is intentional and purposeful, always striving to keep the story going and readers engaged. The importance lies in quality rather than quantity. 

One point I haven’t addressed yet is repetition. If used well (i.e. with clear intention), repetition is a  literary device  that can help you build motifs in your writing. But when you find yourself repeating information in your dialogue, it might be a good time to revise your work. 

For instance, here’s a scene with Sophie and Ethan later on in the story: 

How to Write Dialogue | Example of Unnecessary Repetition

As I’ve mentioned before, good dialogue shows character — and dialogue itself is a playground where character dynamics play out. If you write and edit your dialogue with this in mind, then your dialogue will be sharper, cleaner, and more organic. 

I know that writing dialogue can be intimidating, especially if you don’t have much experience with it. But that should never keep you from including it in your work! Just remember that the more you practice — especially with the help of these tips — the better you’ll get.

And once you’re confident with the conversational content you can conjure up, follow along to the next part of our guide to see how you can punctuate and format your dialogue flawlessly .

Tom Bromley

As an editor and publisher, Tom has worked on several hundred titles, again including many prize-winners and international bestsellers. 

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How to Write Dialogue: Rules, Examples, and 8 Tips for Engaging Dialogue

how to write a dialogue in a short story

by Fija Callaghan

You’ll often hear fiction writers talking about “character-driven stories”—stories where the strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations of the central cast of characters stay with us long after the book is closed. But what drives character, and how do we create characters that leave long-lasting impressions?

The answer lies in dialogue : the device used by our characters to communicate with each other. Powerful dialogue can elevate a story and subtly reveal important information, but poorly written dialogue can send your work straight to the slush bin. Let’s look at what dialogue is in writing, how to properly format dialogue, and how to make your characters’ dialogue the best it can be.

What is dialogue in a story?

Dialogue is the verbal exchange between two or more characters. In most fiction, the exchange is in the form of a spoken conversation. However, conversations in a story can also be things like letters, text messages, telepathy, or even sign language. Any moment where two characters speak or connect with each other through their choice of words, they’re engaging in dialogue.

Dialogue is the verbal exchange between two or more characters.

Why does dialogue matter in a story?

We use dialogue in a story to reveal new information about the plot, characters, and story world. Great dialogue is essential to character development and helps move the plot forward in a story.

Writing good dialogue is a great way to sneak exposition into your story without stating it overtly to the reader; you can also use tools like dialect and diction in your dialogue to communicate more detail about your characters.

Dialogue helps to create characters that leave long-lasting impressions.

Through a character’s dialogue, we can learn about their motivations, relationships, and understanding of the world around them.

A character won’t always say what they mean (more on dialogue subtext below), but everything they say will serve some larger purpose in the story. If your dialogue is well-written, the reader will absorb this information without even realizing it. If your dialogue is clunky, however, it will stand out and pull your reader away from your story.

Three reasons why dialogue matters in a story.

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.

Here are the need-to-know rules for formatting dialogue in writing.

Enclose lines of dialogue in double quotation marks

This is the most essential rule in basic dialogue punctuation. When you write dialogue in North American English, a spoken line will have a set of double quotation marks around it. Here’s a simple dialogue example:

“Were you at the party last night?”

Any punctuation such as periods, question marks, and exclamation marks will also go inside the quotation marks. The quotation marks give a visual clue to the reader that this line is spoken out loud.

Quotation marks give a visual clue to the reader.

In European or British English, however, you’ll often see single quotation marks being used instead of double quotation marks. All the other rules stay the same.

Enclose nested dialogue in single quotation marks

Nested dialogue is when one line of dialogue happens inside another line of dialogue—when someone is verbally quoting someone else. In North American English, you’d use single quotation marks to identify where the new dialogue line starts and stops, like this:

“And then, do you know what he said to me? Right to my face, he said, ‘I stayed home all night.’ As if I didn’t even see him.”

The double and single quotation marks give the reader clues as to who’s speaking. In European or British English, the quotation marks would be reversed; you’d use single quotation marks on the outside, and double quotation marks on the inside.

Every speaker gets a new paragraph

Every time you switch to a new speaker, you end the line where it is and start a new line. Here are some dialogue examples to show you how it looks:

“Were you at the party last night?” “No, I stayed home all night.”

The same is true if the new “speaker” is only in focus because of their action. You can think of the paragraphs like camera angles, each one focusing on a different person:

“Were you at the party last night?” “No, I stayed home all night.” She raised a single, threatening eyebrow. “Yeah, I wasn’t feeling that well, so I just stayed in and watched Netflix instead.”

If you kept the action on the same line as the dialogue, it would get confusing and make it look like she was the one saying it. Giving each character a new paragraph keeps the speakers clear and distinct.

Use em-dashes when dialogue gets cut short

If your character begins to speak but is interrupted, you’ll break off their line of dialogue with an em-dash, like this:

“Yeah, I wasn’t feeling that well, so I just stayed in and—” “Is that really what happened?”

Be careful with this one, because many word processors will treat your em-dash like the beginning of a new sentence and attach your closing quotation marks backwards:

“Yeah, I wasn’t feeling that well, so I just stayed in and—“

You may need to keep an eye out and adjust as you go along.

In this dialogue example, the new speaker doesn’t lead with an em-dash; they just start speaking like normal. The only time you’ll ever open a line of dialogue with an em-dash is if the speaker who’s been cut off continues with what they were saying:

“Yeah, I wasn’t feeling that well, so I just stayed in and—” “Is that really what happened?” “—watched Netflix instead. Yes, that’s what happened.”

This shows the reader that there’s actually only one line of dialogue, but it’s been cut in the middle by another speaker.

Each line of dialogue is indented

Every time you give your speaker a new paragraph, it’s indented from the left-hand side. Many word processors will do this automatically. The only exception is if your dialogue is opening your story or a new section of your story, such as a chapter; these will always start at the far left margin of the page, whether they’re dialogue or narration.

Each time you change speakers, begin dialogue on a new line.

Long speeches don’t use use closing quotation marks until the end

Most writers favor shorter lines of dialogue in their writing, but sometimes you might need to give your character a longer one—for instance, if the character speaking is giving a speech or telling a story. In these cases, you might choose to break up their speech into shorter paragraphs the way you would if you were writing regular narrative.

However, here the punctuation gets a bit weird. You’ll begin the character’s dialogue with a double quotation mark, like normal. But you won’t use a double quotation mark at the end of the paragraph, because they haven’t finished speaking yet. But! You’ll use another opening quotation mark at the beginning of the subsequent paragraph. This means that you may use several opening double quotation marks for your character’s speech, but only ever one closing quotation mark.

If your character is telling a story that involves people talking, remember to use single quotation marks for your dialogue-within-dialogue as we looked at above.

Sometimes these dialogue formatting rules are easier to catch later on, during the editing process. When you’re writing, worry less about using the exact dialogue punctuation and more about writing great dialogue that supports your character development and moves the story forward.

How to use dialogue tags

Dialogue tags help identify the speaker. They’re especially important if you have a group of people all talking together, and it can get pretty confusing for the reader trying to keep everybody straight. If you’re using a speech tag after your line of dialogue—he said, she said, and so forth—you’ll end your sentence with a comma, like this:

“No, I stayed home all night,” he said.

But if you’re using an action to identify the person speaking instead, you’ll punctuate the sentence like normal and start a new sentence to describe the action taking place:

“No, I stayed home all night.” He looked down at his feet.

The dialogue tags and action tags always follow in the same paragraph. When you move your story lens to a new person, you’ll switch to a new paragraph. Each line where a new person speaks propels the story forward.

When to use capitals in dialogue tags

You may have noticed in the two examples above that one dialogue tag begins with a lowercase letter, and one—which is technically called an action tag—begins with a capital letter. Confusing? The rules are simple once you get a little practice.

When you use a dialogue tag like “he said,” “she said,” “he whispered,” or “she shouted,” you’re using these as modifiers to your sentence—dressing it up with a little clarity. They’re an extension of the sentence the person was speaking. That’s why you separate them with a comma and keep going.

With an action tag , you’re ending one sentence and beginning a whole new one. Each sentence represents two distinct moments in the story. That’s why you end the first sentence with a period, and then open the next one with a capital letter.

If you’re not sure, try reading them out loud:

“No, I stayed home all night,” he said. “No, I stayed home all night.” He looked down at his feet.

Dialogue tags vs. action tags.

Since you can’t hear quotation marks out loud, the way you say them will show you if they’re one sentence or two. In the first example, you can hear how the sentence keeps going after the dialogue ends. In the second example, you can hear how one sentence comes to a full stop and another one begins.

But what if your dialogue tag comes before the dialogue, instead of after? In this case, the dialogue is always capitalized because the speaker is beginning a new sentence:

He said, “No, I stayed home all night.” He looked down at his feet. “No, I stayed home all night.”

You’ll still use a comma after the dialogue tag and a period after the action tag, just like if you’d separate them if you were putting your tag at the end.

If you’re not sure, ask yourself if your leading tag sounds like a full sentence or a partial sentence. If it sounds like a partial sentence, it gets a comma. If it reads like a full sentence that stands on its own, it gets a period.

External vs. internal dialogue

All of the dialogue we’ve looked at so far is external dialogue, which is directed from one character to another. The other type of dialogue is internal dialogue, or inner dialogue, where a character is talking to themselves. You’ll use this when you want to show what a character is thinking, but other characters can’t hear.

Usually, internal dialogue will be written in italics to distinguish it from the rest of the text. That shows the reader that the line is happening inside the character’s head. For example:

It’s not a big deal, she thought. It’s just a new school. It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.

Here you can see that the dialogue tag is used in the same way, just as if it was a line of external dialogue. However, “she thought” is written in regular text because it’s not a part of what the character is thinking. This helps keep everything clear for the reader.

External dialogue vs. internal dialogue.

In your story, you can play with using contrasting internal and external dialogue to show that what your characters say isn’t always what they mean. You may also choose to use this internal dialogue formatting if you’re writing dialogue between two or more characters that isn’t spoken out loud—for instance, telepathically or by sign language.

8 tips for creating engaging dialogue in a story

Now that you’ve mastered the mechanics of how to write dialogue, let’s look at how to create convincing, compelling dialogue that will elevate your story.

1. Listen to people talk

To write convincingly about people, you’ll first need to know something about them. The work of great writers is often characterized by their insight into humanity; you read them and think, “Yes, this is exactly what people are like.” You can begin accumulating your own insight by listening to what real people say to each other.

You can go to any public place where people are likely to gather and converse: cafés, art galleries, political events, dimly lit pubs, bookshops. Record snippets of conversation, pay attention to how people’s voices change as they move from speaking to one person to another, try to imagine what it is they’re not saying, the words simmering just under the surface.

By listening to stories unfold in real time, you’ll have a better idea of how to recreate them in your writing—and inspiration for some new stories, too.

2. Give each spoken line a purpose

Here is something that actors have drilled into their heads from their first day at drama school, and writers would do well to remember it too: every single line of dialogue has a hidden motivation. Every time your character speaks, they’re trying to achieve something, either overtly or covertly.

Small talk is rare in fiction, because it doesn’t advance the plot or reveal something about your characters. The exception is when your characters are using their small talk for a specific purpose, such as to put off talking about the real issue, to disarm someone, or to pretend they belong somewhere they don’t.

When writing your own dialogue, ask yourself what the line accomplishes in the story. If you come up blank, it probably doesn’t need to be there. Words need to earn their place on the page.

Eight tips for creating engaging dialogue.

3. Embrace subtext

In real life, we rarely say exactly what we really mean. The reality of polite society is that we’ve evolved to speak in circles around our true intentions, afraid of the consequences of speaking our mind. Your characters will be no different. If your protagonist is trying to tell their best friend they’re in love with them, for instance, they’ll come up with about fifty different ways to say it before speaking the deceptively simple words themselves.

To write better dialogue, try exploring different ways of moving your characters around what’s really being said, layering text and subtext side by side. The reader will love picking apart the conversation between your characters and deducing what’s really happening underneath (incidentally, this is also the place where fan fiction is born).

4. Keep names to a minimum

You may notice that on television, in moments of great upheaval, the characters will communicate exactly how important the moment is by saying each other’s names in dramatic bursts of anger/passion/fear/heartbreak/shock. In real life, we say each other’s names very rarely; saying someone’s name out loud can actually be a surprisingly intimate experience.

Names may be a necessary evil right at the beginning of your story so your reader knows who’s who, but after you’ve established your cast, try to include names in dialogue only when it makes sense to do so. If you’re not sure, try reading the dialogue out loud to see if it sounds like something someone would actually say (we’ll talk more about reading out loud below).

5. Prune unnecessary words

This is one area where reality and story differ. In life, dialogue is full of filler words: “Um, uh, well, so yeah, then I was like, erm, huh?” You may have noticed this when you practiced listening to dialogue, above. We won’t say there’s never a place for these words in fiction, but like all words in storytelling, they need to earn their place. You might find filler words an effective tool for showing something about one particular character, or about one particular moment, but you’ll generally find that you use them a lot less than people really do in everyday speech.

When you’re reviewing your characters’ dialogue, remember the hint above: each line needs a purpose. It’s the same for each word. Keep only the ones that contribute something to the story.

6. Vary word choices and rhythms

The greatest dialogue examples in writing use distinctive character voices; each character sounds a little bit different, because they have their own personality.

This can be tricky to master, but an easy way to get started is to look at the word choice and rhythm for each character. You might have one character use longer words and run-on sentences, while another uses smaller words and simple, single-clause sentences. You might have one lean on colloquial regional dialect, where another sounds more cosmopolitan. Play around with different ways to develop characters and give each one their own voice.

Effective dialogue is the key to a good story.

7. Be consistent for each character

When you do find a solid, believable voice for your character, make sure that it stays consistent throughout your entire story. It’s easy to set a story aside for a while, then return to it and forget some of the work you did in distinguishing your characters’ dialogue. You might find it helpful to write down some notes about the way each character speaks so you can refer back to it later.

The exception, of course, is if your character’s speech pattern goes through a transformation over the course of the story, like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady . In this case, you can use your character’s distinctive voice to communicate a major change. But as with all things in writing, make sure that it comes from intention and not from forgetfulness.

8. Read your dialogue out loud

After you’ve written a scene between two or more characters, you can take the dialogue for a trial run by speaking it out loud. Ask yourself, does the dialogue sound realistic? Are there any moments where it drags or feels forced? Does the voice feel natural for each character? You’ll often find there are snags you miss in your writing that only become apparent when read out loud. Bonus: this is great practice for when you become rich and famous and do live readings at bookshops.

3 mistakes to avoid when writing dialogue

Easy, right? But there are also a few pitfalls that new writers often encounter when writing dialogue that can drag down an otherwise compelling story. Here are the things to watch out for when crafting your story dialogue.

1. Too much exposition

Exposition is one of the more demanding literary devices , and one of the ones most likely to trip up new writers. Dialogue is a good place to sneak in some information about your story—but subtlety is essential. This is one place where the adage “show, don’t tell” really shines.

Consider these dialogue examples:

“How is she, Doctor?” “Well Mr. Stuffington, I don’t have to remind you that your daughter, the sole heiress to your estate and currently engaged to the Baron of Flippingshire, has suffered a grievous injury when she fell from her horse last Sunday. We don’t need to discuss right now whether or not you think her jealous maid was responsible; what matters is your daughter’s well being. As to your question, I’m afraid it’s very unlikely that she’ll ever walk again.” Can’t you just feel your arm aching to throw the poor book across the room? There’s a lot of important information here, but you can find subtler ways to work it into your story. Let’s try again: “How is she, Doctor?” “Well Mr. Stuffington, your daughter took quite a blow from that horse—worse than we initially thought. I’m afraid it’s very unlikely that she’ll ever walk again.” “And what am I supposed to say to Flippingshire?” “The Baron? I suppose you’ll have to tell him that his future wife has lost the use of her legs.”

And so forth. To create good dialogue exposition, look for little ways to work in the details of your story, instead of piling it up in one great clump.

Three mistakes to avoid when writing dialogue.

2. Too much small talk

We looked at how each line of dialogue needs a specific purpose above. Very often small talk in a story happens because the writer doesn’t know what the scene is about. Small talk doesn’t move the scene along unless it’s there for a reason. If you’re not sure, ask yourself what each character wants in this moment.

For example, imagine you’re in an office, and two characters are talking by the water cooler. How was your weekend, what did you think of the game, how’s your wife doing, are those new shoes, etc etc. Can’t you just feel the reader’s will to live slipping away?

But what about this: your characters are talking by the water cooler—Character A and Character B. Character A knows that his friend is inside Character B’s office looking for evidence of corporate espionage, so A is doing everything he can to stop B from going in. How was your weekend, what did you think of the game, how’s your wife doing, are those new shoes, literally anything just to keep him talking. Suddenly these benign little phrases have a purpose.

If you find your characters slipping into small talk, double check that it’s there for a purpose, and not just a crutch to keep you from moving forward in your scene. When writing dialogue, Make each line of dialogue earn its place.

3. Too much repetition

Variation is the spice of a good story. To keep your readers engaged, avoid using the same sentence structure and the same dialogue tags over and over again. Using “he said” and “she said” is effective and clear cut, but only for about three beats. After that, try switching to an action tag instead or letting the line of dialogue stand on its own.

Powerful dialogue elevates a story.

You can also experiment with varying the length of your sentences or groupings of sentences. By changing up the rhythm of your story regularly, you’ll keep it feeling fresh and present for the reader.

Effective dialogue examples from literature

With all of these tips and tricks in mind, let’s look at how other writers have used good dialogue to elevate their stories.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine , by Gail Honeyman

“I’m going to pick up a carryout and head round to my mate Andy’s. A few of us usually hang out there on Saturday nights, fire up the playstation, have a smoke and a few beers.” “Sounds utterly delightful,” I said. “What about you?” he asked. I was going home, of course, to watch a television program or read a book. What else would I be doing? “I shall return to my flat,” I said. “I think there might be a documentary about komodo dragons on BBC4 later this evening.”

In this dialogue example, the author gives her characters two very distinctive voices. From just a few words we can begin to see these people very clearly in our minds—and with this distinction comes the tension that drives the story. Dialogue is an excellent place to show your character dynamics using speech patterns and word choices.

Pride and Prejudice , by Jane Austen

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?” Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. “But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.” Mr. Bennet made no answer. “Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently. “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.” This was invitation enough. “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

In this famous dialogue example, the author illustrates the relationship between these two characters clearly and succinctly. Their dialogue shows Mr. B’s stalwart, tolerant love for his wife and Mrs. B’s excitement and propensity for gossip. The author shows us everything we need to know about these people in just a few lines.

Dinner in Donnybrook , by Maeve Binchy

“Look, I thought you ought to know, we’ve had a very odd letter from Carmel.” “A what… from Carmel?” “A letter. Yes, I know it’s sort of out of character, I thought maybe something might be wrong and you’d need to know…” “Yes, well, what did she say, what’s the matter with her?” “Nothing, that’s the problem, she’s inviting us to dinner.” “To dinner?” “Yes, it’s sort of funny, isn’t it? As if she wasn’t well or something. I thought you should know in case she got in touch with you.” “Did you really drag me all the way down here, third years are at the top of the house you know, I thought the house had burned down! God, wait till I come home to you. I’ll murder you.” “The dinner’s in a month’s time, and she says she’s invited Ruth O’Donnell.” “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

This dialogue example is a telephone conversation between two people. The lack of dialogue tags or action tags allows the words to come to the forefront and immerses us in their back-and-forth conversation. Even though there are no tags to indicate the speakers, the language is simple and straightforward enough that the reader always knows who’s talking. Through this conversation the author slowly builds the tension from the benign to the catastrophic within a domestic setting.

Compelling dialogue is the key to a good story

A writer has a lot riding on their characters’ dialogue, and learning how to write dialogue is a critical skill for any writer. When done well, it can leaves a lasting impact on the reader. But when dialogue is clumsy and awkward, it can drag your story down and make your reader feel like they’re wasting their time.

But if you keep these tips in mind, listen to dialogue in your everyday life, and practice , you’ll be sure to create realistic dialogue that brings your story to life.

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Writers.com

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!

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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 Structure Dialogue in a Short Story: 13 Top Tips

By Rebecca Parpworth-Reynolds

how to structure dialogue in a short story

Do you need some tips on how to structure dialogue in a short story ? We’ve included 13 top tips for you below!

1. Don’t Always Have Your Characters Talking in Complete Sentences

Although it might be grammatically correct, human dialogue often has a lot of fragmented sentences. Try to check for them the next time you have a conversation: how many did you notice ending up being cut off due to an interruption, or trailing off into something completely different?

Additionally, how many times did someone only have a speak a small fragment in order to get across their meaning? Try creating abrupt statements, or play around with characters cutting in and interrupting each other to increase the humanness and dynamism of your dialogue.

“So, I was thinking we could go to the-”

“Sorry, can’t make it. Car broke down.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. We could always take the bu-”

“Actually, just remembered that I’ve got a doctor’s appointment-”

“Oh. Got it. Say no more.”

In the example above, the shortness, interruptions, and abrupt nature of the second speaker show how much they don’t want to go out. This is then mirrored later on by the first speaker’s interruption at the end as they realize what is going on.

2. Say Your Dialogue Out Loud

It can be hard sometimes to make the dialogue in your story seem realistic. To combat this, try saying the dialogue you have written out loud. This will help you to be able to see whether it feels natural to say, or feels forced or fake.

Does it sound like a real person would say it? Is it easy to say without fumbling your words?

It’s perfectly fine to remember that some dialogue may sound strange simply because of the subject matter.

Often, stories address matters that are more profound than those we might experience in our everyday lives, so they might lean more on the dramatic side. The key is to make sure it doesn’t lean so far that it becomes unrealistic!

Take a look at these two responses to a question a good few of us might know all too well.

“Would you like fries with that?”

“Yes, I would like the fries, and may I also ask for an extra ketchup packet?”

“Yeah, and a packet of ketchup. Thanks.”

From looking at these examples, it’s easy to see which one feels forced, and which is more natural.

how to write dialogue for a short story

3. Cut the Small Talk

We all know how boring small talk can sometimes be in real life, so it’s often not something that we want to be a main part of the stories that we read. Talking about the weather or what a character had for dinner last night isn’t exactly the most riveting of details, so can usually be kept out of your story in favor of dialogue that can help to move a plot forward.

The exception to this might be if the small talk is being used as a literary technique, such as a character stalling for time, or perhaps to show how boring and mundane a situation is that your characters are trying to escape.

Bad Example

“Hey Joe, nice weather today.”

“Yeah, but it looks like rain. Did you watch the game last night?”

“Nah, I recorded it though.”

4. Make Each Character’s Dialogue Unique

No two people on the planet are the same, and the same can be said for the way in which they speak. Make sure to make each character in your story have a unique tone to their speech. This could be affected by things such as their gender, their personality, their level of education, and any other factors that make them stand out from others.

“Well, bless your heart, darlin’. You take care now and make sure to give your mama my thanks, y’hear?”

5. Be Consistent

Once you have mapped out how you want your character to sound, remember to then keep that style of speech consistent to avoid breaking character. That’s not to say they will speak the same all the time though, but only have them break their speech patterns when the moment is right, such as when required by a situation, or perhaps when speaking to a certain character over others.

“Oi Cory, take a look at thi-” Hugh caught the eyes of his boss from over his monitor, “this report I’ve been compiling, and let me know if you can see any irregularities.”

6. Be Mindful of Subtext

Sometimes it’s not about what someone has said, but instead, what they have not said that makes all the difference in a story. We often conceal our true thoughts when we speak to others, perhaps out of politeness, or for bigger reasons.

Keeping your reader guessing as to someone’s true feelings can be a great way to build a narrative. Remember not to leave everything hidden though: throw in a few clues here and there with their actions and body language to avoid an unwelcome surprise for your reader.

She crossed her arms and looked away, “I guess some people really don’t care.”

He raised an eyebrow, leaning back in his chair to study her closely. “Is that what you think of me?”

Her gaze started to soften as she started to unfold her arms. “Well, maybe I am hoping you prove me wrong.”

7. Be Mindful of Long Pieces of Speech

Some people can tend to talk for a long amount of time, but it is unlikely that they will be able to rattle on without some kind of interruption here or there. Long sections of speech, much like when someone has been talking to you for too long, can be yawn-worthy for your reader, so it’s best to either edit down the length or break the piece of dialogue up using things such as the setting or body language.

This rule can be disregarded if a character is retelling an event or a story to another, but be aware not to use this technique too much to stay focused in the “here and now” for your characters.

8. Remove the Supports on Your Dialogue

Many of us were taught in school to use any and all words when writing dialogue other than “said”. While this is great for helping to expand your vocabulary as a child, it doesn’t really translate into the world of story writing.

Instead, using “said” is perfectly fine, although the best way to structure your dialogue is to give it little to no support at all. Writing a piece of standalone speech is absolutely fine, and instead of describing how they have spoken their words, try mentioning their body language. After all, thanks to quotation marks, your reader knows they are talking!

“Y’know, I heard about the breakup. If there is anything I can-”

She turned away, continuing to sift through the drawer for her things. “You can try not mentioning it.”

9. Think About Who is in the Conversation

Always be aware of not just what the conversation is about, but who is taking part. People speak in different ways when with different people, and so the dynamics and relationships between everyone involved in the conversation need to be taken into account.

If this sounds tricky, try mapping out each character on a sheet of paper, and start to connect them together in different ways, such as their social status, opinions of each other, and any other details that may affect how they interact with each other.

10. Consider Slang and Dialect

Nobody really speaks perfect English, and often our speech is peppered with slang or dialect from where we are from. You can use this to spice up the dialogue in your short story , by researching the dialects of where your characters come from, or even considering their age or their hobbies as to what slang words they will add to their sentences.

For those creating alternate or future worlds, this also gives you the freedom to be able to create your own slang or dialect.

A famous example of this in action is the use of the “Nadsat” slang language used by the main character Alex in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange .

11. Keep Exclamation Marks and Italics to a Minimum

Although they might seem tempting to use in order to create emphasis and add to the drama in your story, try to keep exclamation marks and italics to a minimum, in case they end up being just a little too much.

Often, your reader can infer the stresses and whether something is being exclaimed from the tone and context of the conversation, so there’s oftentimes no need to place in extra emphasis.

“Wait just a minute! You can’t just waltz in here and expect everyone to be falling at your feet! You were gone for over a year!”

12. Use Non-Verbal Communication

We don’t just speak with our mouths. Often, our bodies and facial expressions can communicate much more than our words can, or can even seem to contradict what we are saying altogether.

Instead of being tempted to always have your characters respond to each other using dialogue, try out using non-verbal communication or their body language to show their response instead. This could be anything from a simple nod, to a huff and a rolling of eyes.

“But what are we meant to do?” she pondered, which was just met with a shrug as Joel carried on about his business.

13. Focus on the Beat

Much like music, dialogue can have rhythm to it, to help to propel a story along. This is done by ensuring that the emotional beats of the dialogue match what is going on in the narrative at that time so that they merge together.

Try reading back through the dialogue you have written. Can you feel an emotional charge and movement running through it? If not, try to think about ways that you could insert this into the sequence.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to simply let go? To never feel the need to grasp at everything that passes you by and cling to it for dear life?”

“No… I don’t suppose I have.”

“If this elevator were to start to fall, what would you hold on to?”

She didn’t know how to answer him.

“I have a feeling we will find out together.”

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Nathaniel Tower

Juggling writing and life

How to Write Dialogue with Good and Bad Dialogue Examples

Last Updated on January 28, 2023 by Nathaniel Tower

If you want to be a great storyteller, you have to know how to write dialogue.

I’m about to make a shocking confession: sometimes when I’m reading a book, I’ll start skimming. And when I skim, I often will pass quickly through large blocks of narrative in search of dialogue. Thankfully, the dialogue will usually get me back on track.

As a reader, I love reading dialogue. As a writer, I tend to overuse it at times, particularly during a first draft. Nonetheless, I love writing dialogue because it’s where the characters can really shine and help the story become more powerful.

Don’t get me wrong. Narration can be just as powerful. But dialogue is often far more memorable and makes your story more relatable for your readers. And that’s why it’s essential for writers to understand how to write great dialogue.

How to write great dialogue

The two sides of writing dialogue

There are two primary aspects to writing effective and compelling dialogue:

  • The technical side – This is the boring but essential stuff like proper conventions, punctuation, etc.
  • The execution – This is the fun stuff. Here I’m talking about the actual words the characters say. In order to effectively execute, you need to make it real, engaging, compelling, impactful, etc.

The second is much harder to do, but if you don’t get the first point down first, it won’t matter how brilliant the dialogue is.

So let’s get the technical side out of the way. Here’s what you need to know:

Dialogue goes in quotation marks

Feel free to fight me on this one. I know it’s experimental and hip to leave out the quotation marks. But let me tell you this: 9 out of 10 times, this creates a lousy and confusing experience for the reader. There’s a really good reason why we put dialogue in quotation marks: it makes it clear someone is talking.

I’ve yet to hear a good reason why quotation marks should be omitted. If you want to write your story without them, make sure you have a damn good reason beyond, “Hey, I just want to do something different.”

Punctuating dialogue is easy (and proper capitalization isn’t hard either)

It really shouldn’t be that hard, but I see writers screw this up all the time. Of course, the ones who can’t punctuate dialogue properly also tend to write terrible dialogue, but maybe that’s just because they are so confused about the conventions.

Okay, we’re going to have to break this one into some sub-rules, and I’m going to have to use a lot of examples.

Punctuation goes inside the closing quotation mark. This includes commas, periods, exclamation points, and question marks. Yes, there are times when certain punctuation can go outside of a quotation mark, but when you are talking about dialogue, put it inside. Here are some examples:

  • Sally said, “I’m really excited!”
  • Sally said, “You should always put punctuation inside the quotation marks.”
  • Sally asked, “Are you seriously going to omit quotation marks in your dialogue?”
  • “Let’s write some dialogue,” said Sally.
  • “Do you like the dialogue I have written?” asked Sally.

Capitalize the beginning of a quotation. Whenever you are starting a quotation, the first letter is always capitalized regardless of whether or not it’s the start of the sentence. Note the second example below. If the dialogue is interrupted with narration and then continued within the same sentence, you should not capitalize the second string of dialogue. Examples:

  • Sally gazed upon the glistening dew and said, “Properly punctuated dialogue is a beautiful thing.”
  • “Don’t you think,” Sally began, “that writing dialogue can be a beautiful thing?”

Don’t capitalize the first word outside of the quotation unless it’s a proper noun or a new sentence. This is true regardless of the punctuation mark in the quotation. I’ve already shown a couple examples of this above, but let’s look again:

  • “I love writing dialogue!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
  • “Don’t you love the way dialogue looks on paper?” she asked.
  • “This is a beautiful sentence,” said Sally.

That wasn’t too hard, right? If you can remember those three basic rules, then you’ll be in great shape and both your readers and your characters will thank you.

Start a new paragraph when a new speaker is talking

Remember the first rule about using quotation marks? We did that to make it easier on our readers. And that’s why we’re going to start a new paragraph when a new speaker is talking. Once again, it can be cool and experimental to have a really long paragraph with a bunch of speakers confined within, but it pretty much always sucks.

Look, I’m not a prude when it comes to experimentation in writing. There’s just certain things that aren’t worth experimenting with. Omitting quotation marks or jamming multiple speakers into a single paragraph doesn’t make your story more meaningful. It just makes it harder to read.

Here’s an example of this in action:

            “I’m not sure how to write dialogue,” Johnny said to Sally.

            Sally looked Johnny in the eyes and smiled. “It’s really not that hard,” she said as she touched his cheek.

            “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve been doing it for years. You have three published books. I’m a nobody.”

            “We all start as nobodies.”

            Johnny laughed. “You can say that again.”

See how easy it is to tell who is speaking? And see how much more meaning comes out of every bit of dialogue when it’s given the proper room to breathe. Even this relatively meaningless exchange is vastly improved by the pacing created through paragraphing.

So those are the basics from the technical side. Not too hard, right?

Now we have to get into the other, much more complex side of how to write great dialogue. Let’s start simple:

Don’t use a thesaurus to find synonyms for “said”

People say things. They don’t emote, whinny, sigh, or express them. It’s okay to use “said” most of the time. It’s not acceptable to find a different synonym every time someone talks.

At some point, someone started teaching people they shouldn’t use “said” as part of a dialogue tag. Whoever started that trend was wrong. I’d love to blame it on the anti-quotation mark movement, but it’s a separate epidemic led by a different group of people.

When you use different verbs in your dialogue tags, you are taking away the significance of the dialogue and putting it onto the tag instead. Put another way, the words of your characters lose impact and you as the writer become an intrusive narrator who doesn’t trust your characters.

It’s also okay to forego the dialogue tags completely in favor of actions outside of speech.

Example: Sally grabbed her pen. “I love writing dialogue.”

It’s obvious that Sally is speaking even though we didn’t explicitly say she said it. We can also imagine how she’s saying it based on what she is saying as well as the context around it. We don’t need to be told whether she shouted, exclaimed, or whispered it. The fact that she grabbed her pen and said she loves writing dialogue tells us all we need to know.

And don’t even think about using an adverb to tell the read how it was said. If Sally said it boldly, then you better make that clear by her actions and the other characters’ reactions.

Make dialogue real (but not too real)

Dialogue is a great opportunity to make your characters relatable and real. To do so, they need to sound like real people. Here are some helpful tips to accomplish that:

  • People speak in contractions and use slang/informal language when they talk. Your dialogue should reflect this. Don’t make your dialogue sound like an academic essay.
  • People don’t say each other’s names very often when they are addressing each other. Don’t make your characters frequently spit out the other person’s name.
  • People don’t usually speak in huge blocks of text when they are having a conversation. Make your dialogue short and to the point.
  • People don’t describe their actions as they are doing them. That’s what narration is for.
  • People do occasionally use filler words, such as “like,” “umm,” and a few others. Sprinkle these in as appropriate, but don’t overdo them. Think of how insufferable it is to listen to someone who says “like” a lot. Reading it a lot is even worse.

At the same time, you shouldn’t try too hard to emulate speech patterns. This is particularly true when it comes to writing dialects. Unless you are an exceptional writer with a masterful comprehension of a specific dialect, you’re going to butcher it when you try to write it.

Your dialogue doesn’t need to be a perfect representation of speech patterns, accents, and dialects. Just make it seem real and make it easy for your readers to comprehend.

Make dialogue meaningful, but don’t force it

No one wants to read filler. Every word in your story or novel should be important, especially the dialogue.

When I say that, I mean it should be important for the flow and meaning of the story. That certainly doesn’t mean every word and every line of dialogue has to be brilliant and memorable. People say plenty of non-brilliant things. Let your characters be themselves. Don’t stuff your dialogue so full of memorable one-liners that it comes across as inauthentic.

Meaningful dialogue will do the following:

  • Reveal important things about your characters’ personalities and actions
  • Help the plot move forward in a natural way
  • Make your characters feel like real people
  • Hint at subtleties that are deeper than what the characters are actually speaking about in the moment

Although we can think of many famous quotes from literature and movies that are dialogue, remember there are infinitely more character quotes that mean absolutely nothing out of context. Your job as a writer isn’t to make every single line profound. It’s to tell a meaningful, engaging story that will resonate with your audience.

Bad dialogue examples – What to avoid when writing dialogue

Here are four visual and text examples of bad dialogue. Whatever you do, don’t write dialogue like this:

Don’t use dialogue to describe everything

writing bad dialogue descriptions

“Look at that,” he stated.

“What?” he asked.

“The thing I am pointing at,” he replied.

“What are you pointing at?” he asked.

“The glowing orange sunset piercing through those marshmallow clouds in the sky blue sky,” he said while pointing.

“Oh. Why didn’t you say that in the first place rather than just pointing at the sky,” he said.

If you are trying to describe things, use narration. People don’t do this in real life.

Don’t use dialogue to convey actions

writing bad dialogue actions

“I am going to kill you,” he said to the other guy.

“That isn’t a nice thing to say,” the other guy said back.

“No, I mean I am about to take action to kill you for real,” the first guy said.

“No, please don’t. My arms are now raised in fear as my body quivers,” the guy who was being threatened said.

“I am removing a knife from my leather sheath. Now I am plunging it into your face. Oh, look at all the blood coming out of you,” the killing guy said.

“Oh, I am in so much pain. Listing to my cries of agony as I am dying,” the dying guy said.

Once again, actions should be conveyed in the narration, not the dialogue.  No one describes exactly what they are doing as they do it.

Don’t use dialogue that’s too formal or rigid

how too write bad dialogue too formal

“Is it not a beautiful day?” the guy on the stump said.

“Why yes, I am sharing your feelings at this moment,” the other guy said.

“I did not know you were capable of sharing,” the guy who was no longer on the stump said.

“There is much about me which you do not know,” the second guy said.

“Shall we discuss it over a delicious meal?” the first guy said.

“Unfortunately, I do not have the time to make such arrangements. Let us just agree to agree,” the non-stump guy said.

These don’t sound like humans. Make your characters talk like real people.

Don’t use dialogue that tries too hard to sound real

how to write bad dialogue

“‘Sup, man,” the one guy said.

“Nadda whole lot,” guy #2 stated.

“Sweet. Wanna go do somethin’,” first guy said.

“Yeah, that would be like sweet,” said #2.

“Awesome. Lemme grab some stuff and we can bounce,” said #1.

“Ummm, sounds super tight. What we doin’?” replied #2.

“Whatevers,” said #1 non-chalantly.

“That’s chill,” said the other insufferable moron.

These also don’t sound like humans. They sound like insufferable morons. I hope your characters aren’t like this.

Also, make sure your dialogue doesn’t overuse profanity , which can be a turnoff for many readers.

Of course, these are extreme examples of bad dialogue, but they should give you the idea of how bad dialogue can derail your writing.

A special thank you to my good friend and exceptional writer April Bradley for creating the images above.

Further reading on how to write dialogue

It’s impossible to teach someone how to be an expert at writing dialogue in a single blog post. In order to really master this skill, you need to read and practice. Here are some sources for you:

  • The Bartleby Snopes Dialogue Contest – This was a short story contest I hosted for 9 years. The basic premise was that stories could only consist of dialogue. Check out the winners to see how dialogue can effectively drive plot and character.
  • Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” – If you haven’t read this story before, then read it before you ever write another line of dialogue. The way Hemingway moves the story forward and subtly reveals everything about the characters through short, authentic dialogue is essentially a master class on writing dialogue.

There are plenty of other resources out there for writing great dialogue, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. Besides, it’s time for you to go try it yourself.

How to Write Dialogue FAQ

What is dialogue.

When we refer to dialogue in writing, we are referring to the speech of characters. Whether it’s one person talking to him/herself, two people talking back and forth, or a whole group of people chatting, you have dialogue.

How do you write dialogue?

Writing dialogue requires both technical formatting and natural execution. When writing dialogue, make sure you use quotation marks and also make it clear who is speaking. Dialogue should be written in a natural way that feels realistic without being forced. Don’t try too hard to write like people talk, but make sure you the speech isn’t too formal either.

Should dialogue go in quotation marks?

Generally speaking, dialogue should always go in quotation marks. Some experimental writing does not use quotation marks, but this can make it difficult for your reader to follow along. If you are going to write dialogue without quotation marks, make sure you have a good reason for doing so.

Where does punctuation go in dialogue?

When writing dialogue, punctuation should always go inside the quotation marks.

Should you capitalize the beginning of a quotation?

Yes, you should always capitalize the first letter of a quotation, even when the quotation starts in the middle of the sentence.

Should you start a new paragraph for dialogue?

You don’t need to start a new paragraph unless there is a change in speaker. Every time you have a new speaker, you should start a new paragraph to make it clear that someone new is speaking. However, you don't need to start a new paragraph if the speaker's dialogue fits within the context of the current paragraph.

What is a dialogue tag?

A dialogue tag is a form of narration in which you indicate who is speaking. You don’t always need a dialogue tag, but it can be helpful to make speech clear. A dialogue tag can come before or after the quote.

Is it okay to use said in dialogue tags?

It’s perfectly acceptable to use said in your dialogue tags. In fact, many writers and readers prefer said to synonyms for said. It’s also generally frowned upon to use adverbs in dialogue tags. You should be able to convey how someone is saying something through the dialogue itself.

As always, please share your thoughts, comments, and questions about writing dialogue in the comments. And don’t forget to share this post on all your favorite channels.

How to become a master at writing dialogue

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4 thoughts on “ How to Write Dialogue with Good and Bad Dialogue Examples ”

Excellent tips! I’m agree with you about no quote marks. I once read a book that didn’t have them and it was so frustrating. Turned me off wanting to read anything else by that author.

While I agree with using contractions and some slang, it’s possible for writers to overdo it. I’ve seen attempts to portray us “country folk” as Okies from the Great Depression. Shockingly enough, a lot of us speak with decent grammar. It’s important to spend time with people in order to avoid crassly stereotyping the characters.

Very useful tips thanks! But it makes me wonder on the one of the ‘DON’T’s – which says, don’t make it too formal/rigid. Don’t you think it also depends on the character? I know it’s not often but it can happen. I’ve read books or seen movies in which the character is, for example, a stiff, super formal lady with a royal British background. She really spoke so cold, distant and ‘official’ like you’re reading academic report.

This is a great point. Ultimately, the dialogue should fit the character – and it should tell us more about the character. As with any writing rules, there are always exceptions!

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How to Write Dialogue in a Story that’s Natural

how to write dialogue in a story livingwriter

Dialogue is crucial in any novel. It is one of the many ways characters interact with each other. It may seem simple at first glance, but knowing how to write dialogue in a story may be harder than you thought. 

Aside from known conventions and formats in dialogue writing, you also need to understand when to use them so that they sound natural when read. You should also make sure that you’re not abusing them, or else the entire scene might come across as boring or wordy to the reader.

In this piece, we’re presenting you not just guidelines on how to write dialogue in a story, but also tips on how to write dialogue that’s impactful and natural.

Dialogue Formatting

Dialogue may look as simple as adding quotation marks to statements, but there are more guidelines you can follow to give your editor less of a headache when going through your manuscript.

Dialogue tags outside of the quotes

Dialogue tags indicate the owner or speaker of the spoken dialogue. These tags are always outside of the quotes, and they can be placed before and after the statement. Here are some examples:

Todd shouted, “Be careful of the road!” “Be careful of the road!” he shouted.

Notice that when dialogue tags come first, there is always a comma before the statement . The statement still starts with a capital letter despite being in the middle of the sentence since it is the first thing that the character spoke. 

Take note also of the non-capitalized letter after the statement when the dialogue tag is placed at the end of the statement. No matter what the punctuation of the statement is, since the tag is still in the middle of the statement, it will be in small letters.

For neutral statements, commas are usually placed at the end of the statement then the tag.

There’s also a special placement of the dialogue tag, which is in the middle of a statement. Check the example below.

“Don’t sweat it,” he remarked. “It didn’t affect me at all.”

Single quotes

When characters try to quote other characters, you can use single quotes to differentiate the quoted text. For example:

Alex noted, “I remember Mark saying that he ‘would never go back there’.”

Interruptions or actions in between dialogue

There are many ways to express an action happening in the middle of a dialogue. One simple way is to simply introduce the action in a pause.

“If the sun rises in the west,” he gestured to the maid to move forward, “then perhaps I’d think about it.”  “We can decide about it later.” She took her phone up to her ear. “For the meantime, I’ll be calling someone else.”

If there is no place for a pause in the dialogue, you can use em dashes (not to be confused with hyphens), as in the example below.

“I really don’t miss” — she poured herself a new cup of tea — “anything from that wretched place.”

Em dashes can also be used to indicate a dialogue interruption by another character.

Stephen tried to catch up. “I can explain—”  “Don’t even bother,” interrupted Eric.

Long speeches

If your character speaks long enough to warrant two paragraphs, you can place an opening quotation mark but not a closing one on the first paragraph . In the second paragraph, you need to add both the opening and closing quotation marks.

“I remember those bright, sunny days I spent at the villa. I think they’re unforgettable memories that I wouldn’t exchange for the world. “The scent of Grandma’s sweet pancakes, the smell of fresh sunflowers and mud, and the sight of the rising sun over the horizon simply fill my heart with so much happiness, happiness that I only ever had while I was young.”

New speaker

If a new speaker talks, you should place their statement in a new paragraph. This includes their dialogue tag and any other action they did before, during, or after the statement.

If the conversation is only between two people, you can even opt to not place their names anymore, as long as you retain the rule of having a new paragraph per speaker.

Stephen tried to catch up. “I can explain—”  “Don’t even bother,” interrupted Eric. “But you deserve to know everything.” “You think knowing about it now would change anything?”

Dialogue that’s Natural and Effective

Now that you know the basic formatting for dialogues, it’s time to know how to write natural dialogue that progresses the plot or an interaction. Truly great dialogues do not just have great formatting, but are also realistic enough to actually occur between people.

Read it out loud

Writing out a dialogue may turn out different when it is read, so to make sure your dialogues are realistic, read them out loud. It might surprise you how unnatural some statements may be when spoken compared to when it’s written.

Give each character their idiosyncrasies

Part of knowing how to write dialogue in a story is knowing your characters in-depth. Each character is different, and part of what makes them different can be reflected in their speech patterns. Of course, not every character has to have a peculiar way of speaking, but even minor changes can suffice.

how to write dialogue in a story livingwriter story elements

Of course, LivingWriter’s Story Elements shine bright in this aspect. With Story Elements, you can define your character and their idiosyncrasies beforehand. When you’re writing your first draft, you can easily pull up this information and not miss a chance to show how unique your characters are.

Keep it short but meaningful

Dialogue in books is one effective way of progressing the plot, but in order to do so, you need to cut out dialogue that doesn’t do anything meaningful to the scene.

Unless something is absolutely necessary (due to plot or character), cut it out and stick straight to meaningful dialogue. This especially refers to filler greetings and other dialogue you might use to pad content.

Don’t overuse long speeches

No character should ever speak in multiple paragraphs in one go. Although it may be necessary for them to speak for long, your dialogue doesn’t have to be as long.

Interject with body language cues and other actions, so that the scene doesn’t get too boring or long-winded.

Let it reflect your characters’ personalities

Conversations not only progress a plot, but also show a great deal of personality regarding a person. This is a more generalized tip from number 2, where you reflect a character’s prominent traits just by showing how they would talk. 

Just like in real life, we can gather what a person would be by talking with them. Character development can also occur in dialogue, and so you can also show it in the way they talk.

Dialogue Writing Made Easier

Knowing how to write dialogue in a story can be a bit of a challenge, especially knowing how to write dialogue that’s impactful and not just filler. However, as long as you make sure that each dialogue attempts to do something, whether it be progressing the plot or developing a character, writing dialogue becomes a bit easier. 

Of course, with LivingWriter , you don’t even have to worry about missing out chances to show off your characters’ personalities, so you can focus on writing what matters most: your book.

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The Write Practice

20 Dialogue Writing Prompts to Level Up Your Story

by Sue Weems | 0 comments

Dialogue is an essential component for most stories, whether it's for a narrative essay, memoir, or fiction. Even if you're writing nonfiction, you'll likely use stories to illustrate your point, and those stories will include dialogue. Today we have some dialogue writing prompts to help you write better dialogue while you develop some story ideas.  

Dialogue Writing Prompts

We've explored why you need dialogue and how to use dialogue tags correctly in your work. But today, let's get down to how to actually write it with some dialogue prompts to get you started. 

When I work with writers, they usually fall into two camps when it comes to dialogue. Some think they are terrific at capturing everyday conversations and have no problem adding them to their stories, but the problem with everyday conversations? They are mostly boring and full of repetition.

“How was your day?” “Uh, fine.”

(Nothing is happening here, yet. I'd strike this from a story unless something in the rest of the scene makes these two lines essential.)

Other writers understand why they need dialogue, but they feel uncomfortable putting together engaging conversations that move their stories forward, especially when writing memoir. 

Both types of writers often misunderstand the purpose of dialogue for a specific purpose in a story. It's so much more than capturing a casual conversation between two people in a Taco Bell. Those conversations can certainly be terrific IF they are essential and move the story forward. But how do you know?

The 1 question that will improve your dialogue

I use several questions to help me evaluate my dialogue, but one is indispensable. Try it in your dialogue exercises and see if it doesn't tighten your story and character development .

Here's the question: 

1. Why does this dialogue exchange matter?

This question helps me decide which lines of dialogue are necessary. 

The answer needs to be directly related to either character or advancing the plot . 

Let's say that I'm working on a dialogue exercise for a story where a new detective is questioning a suspect with a long list of prior offenses. The scenes leading up to this dialogue exchange have probably already revealed that the detective is a novice and the suspect is a walking crime wave. So what purpose can the conversation serve?

If I'm trying to highlight the detective's inexperience, I'll focus on questions that are ineffective that the suspect easily evades. The suspect's dialogue lines will be smug while the detective's lines will be rattled and ineffective. 

If I'm trying to show that the detective is new, but sharp in unexpected ways, the dialogue exchange will include his confidence and technique throwing the suspect off, maybe even revealing things they never meant to say.

As you write dialogue and later revise dialogue, make sure each exchange is necessary for the story and does not repeat information included elsewhere. That will keep you from having characters stand around talking about the weather when it doesn't matter for the story, relationship, or character arc. 

And if that doesn't come naturally, don't worry! You just need practice. Here are a bunch of dialogue prompts to help you build those dialogue writing skills. 

Creative Dialogue Writing Prompts

I've organized these prompts according to a few of our reasons to use dialogue, from our article on Why Dialogue is Importan t. Choose the one that gets your pen moving!

1. Write a short scene where a character asks the other, “Why are you always so secretive?”

2. Create a conversation about finding a stray dog where it reveals something unexpected about one or both characters.

3. Start a story with the line, “But mother, I've only gotten rid of the last five.”

4. Write a dialogue exchange where someone is confronted after they lost a family member's most prized possession.

5. Create a conversation where one character leans heavily on sarcasm and the other doesn't.

6. Write a scene where a character is caught somewhere they don't want to be in an evening news segment.

7. Create a conversation between an assassin and their would-be target that complicates the mission. 

8. Start a conversation with “I'm not sure this is what I want.”

9. Write a conversation before, during, or after a catastrophic act of nature like a landslide or hurricane.

10. Create a dialogue exchange that includes the phrase, “Except it didn't happen.”

11. Begin a conversation with, “Did you hear that?”

12. Write a conversation that takes place in a small enclosed space.

13. Create an exchange where someone says, “That wasn't me.”

14. Write a character's thoughts as they wait for a big moment that's minutes from happening.

15. Begin a scene with, “Hurry! We don't have much time.”

16. Write a scene where someone delivers bad news that changes the course of the story.

17. Start a conversation between characters with, “But you used to want to…”

18. Create a conversation that changes one character's decision or direction in the story. 

19. Begin a dialogue scene with, “So what's holding you back?”

20. Write a conversation that heightens the stakes in an argument.

Dialogue is essential for your story, so take the time to make it strong. Hopefully one of these prompts has given you ideas for writing today! 

What questions do you ask yourself as you evaluate dialogue? Share with us in the comments .

Choose one of the dialogue prompts above and set your timer for 15 minutes . For the first 8 minutes, write the dialogue exchange, and don't worry about formatting or punctuation for now. Let the words flow.

Then for the last 7 minutes, read back through the dialogue and cut anything that doesn't reveal character or advance the plot, conflict, or suspense.  

When you're finished, share your practice in the Pro Practice Workshop , and leave feedback for a few other writers too.

Not a member? Join us !  

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Sue Weems is a writer, teacher, and traveler with an advanced degree in (mostly fictional) revenge. When she’s not rationalizing her love for parentheses (and dramatic asides), she follows a sailor around the globe with their four children, two dogs, and an impossibly tall stack of books to read. You can read more of her writing tips on her website .

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How to Write Dialogue in a Story: Stephen King’s Tips

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This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "On Writing" by Stephen King. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.

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Do you want to know how to write dialogue in a story? Do famous writers like Stephen King have advice on how to write effective dialogue?

Learning how to write dialogue in a story can be a challenge. Good writing should include dialogue that sounds like real-life conversations and helps get a point across. Stephen King covers how to write dialogue in his book On Writing: A Memoir of The Craft .

Keep reading for tips on how to write dialogue in a story, and why some people might have a better sense of how to write a conversation.

How to Write Dialogue in a Story

According to Stephen King, dialogue is what characters say. It defines who they are and what they’re like.

A common rule of writing is “show, don’t tell.” Instead of narrating what a character is like, show it through their speech. Through dialogue, a reader can tell if a character is witty or dull, transparent or sneaky, empathetic or cold. These are important parts of knowing how to write dialogue in a story.

  • For example, instead of narrating that a character is poorly educated and never went to school, show how he fumbles any word beyond a basic vocabulary, and how other characters react to that.

The best dialogue sounds truthful—a reader believes that real people would talk that way. King includes a conversation from Elmore Leonard’s Be Cool :

  • “You doing okay?”
  • “You want to know if I’m making out?”
  • “I mean in your business. How’s it going? I know you did okay with Get Leo , a terrific picture, terrific. And you know what else? It was good. But the sequel—what was it called?”

The dialogue sounds credible, and without any other description or narration you can picture the people saying these words. Good dialogue sounds like you’re eavesdropping on a real conversation. This is one example of how to write a conversation.

Wooden dialogue sounds forced and grates on the ear. This is what you should remember when thinking about how to write dialogue in a story.

  • King gives a quote from H. P. Lovecraft: “Nothin’… nothin’… the colour… it burns… cold an’ wet… but it burns… it lived in the well… I seen it… a kind o’ smoke… jest like the flowers last spring… the well shone at night.”

Writers vary in their ability to write good dialogue. Part of it depends on how writers interact with people. Writers who write the best dialogue like listening to other people, absorbing their rhythms, accents, and slang. Recluses often don’t know how real people talk and so find it hard to make their characters talk convincingly when they learn how to write dialogue in a story.

People might also just be born with or without an ear for dialogue, the way some musicians have perfect pitch. Some writers are accomplished in all other parts of writing except for dialogue, which makes King think recognizing good dialogue is somewhat inborn. Some people just know how to write a conversation, and others don’t.

When you write truthful dialogue, you might use profanity or otherwise blacklisted words. King grew up in the lower middle class and portrays how colorfully they talk. You might get criticism from pearl-clutchers, but don’t be deterred—you should never violate the promise you make with the reader to tell the truth, no matter how to decide to write a conversation.

For Stephen King, dialogue is essential. It helps show characters as real and helps move the story. These are important things to keep in mind when you learn how to write dialogue in a story.

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  • Stephen King's personal writing habits that led to superstar books like Misery and It
  • How to make a story and characters feel real
  • Why you should never use adverbs
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  • Class Struggle: Key Theory Behind Communism →

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Carrie Cabral

Carrie has been reading and writing for as long as she can remember, and has always been open to reading anything put in front of her. She wrote her first short story at the age of six, about a lost dog who meets animal friends on his journey home. Surprisingly, it was never picked up by any major publishers, but did spark her passion for books. Carrie worked in book publishing for several years before getting an MFA in Creative Writing. She especially loves literary fiction, historical fiction, and social, cultural, and historical nonfiction that gets into the weeds of daily life.

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When You Write

Dialogue In Short Stories: How Much Is Too Much?

Are you one of those writers who loves to fill your short stories with lengthy, detailed conversations between characters? Or do you prefer to keep dialogue to a minimum, focusing instead on descriptive prose and action?

Whichever camp you fall into, the question remains: How much dialogue is too much in a short story?

Dialogue can be a powerful tool for advancing the plot, revealing character, and adding depth to a story. However, too much dialogue can slow down the pacing, overwhelm readers, and distract from the main narrative.

In this article, we’ll explore the role of dialogue in short stories and how to strike the right balance between conversation and action. So whether you’re a dialogue aficionado or a minimalist, read on to discover how to make your short stories sing.

Key Takeaways

  • Dialogue is an important tool in short stories that can reveal character, advance the plot, and create tension and emotion.
  • Finding the right balance between dialogue and description is crucial, as well as paying attention to pacing, punctuation, and tags.
  • Effective dialogue can create three-dimensional characters and drive the plot forward, but too much dialogue can slow down pacing and distract from the main narrative.
  • Editing dialogue involves eliminating unnecessary lines, checking for consistency, and reading it aloud to catch awkward phrasing and unnatural speech patterns.

The Importance of Dialogue in Short Stories

You might be surprised to learn just how crucial dialogue can be in short stories, as it can add depth and dimension to your characters in a way that description alone cannot.

Dialogue can reveal a character’s personality, motivations, and beliefs through the way they speak, their word choice, and the tone they use. It can also create tension and conflict between characters, driving the plot forward and keeping readers engaged.

The role of tone in dialogue is particularly important. By carefully choosing the words and phrasing used by your characters, you can create a specific tone that conveys the emotions and attitudes of the scene.

For example, a character who speaks in short, clipped sentences and uses harsh language may come across as angry or defensive, while a character who speaks in a soft, gentle tone may be seen as kind or compassionate.

Using dialogue to reveal character is an effective way to show rather than tell, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions and creating a more immersive reading experience.

Finding the Right Balance

Striking a balance between dialogue and description in a short story is like walking a tightrope. You want to engage your readers with dialogue that moves the story forward, but you also want to provide enough description to paint a vivid picture of the setting and characters.

Dialogue pacing is crucial; too much dialogue can make the story feel disjointed and rushed, while too little can make it feel stagnant.

In addition, dialogue can also serve as a tool for character development. The way a character speaks and interacts with others can reveal their personality, motivations, and values. However, it’s important not to rely solely on dialogue for character development.

Descriptions of physical appearance, actions, and thoughts can also contribute to a fully realized character. Finding the right balance between dialogue and description can make your short story a compelling and immersive experience for your readers.

Tips for Writing Effective Dialogue

When crafting a narrative, it’s crucial to maintain a balance between the characters’ spoken words and their internal thoughts and actions. Dialogue can bring characters to life, but too much of it can slow down the pacing of a story and make it feel bogged down. To ensure that your dialogue is effective, it’s important to keep a few things in mind:

  • Proper punctuation is key to making dialogue flow naturally and making it easy for readers to follow. Use quotation marks to indicate when a character is speaking, and use commas, periods, and other punctuation marks to indicate pauses, interruptions, and changes in tone.
  • Dialogue tags are used to indicate who is speaking in a conversation. Use a variety of tags, such as ‘said,’ ‘asked,’ and ‘replied,’ to keep your writing varied and engaging. However, be careful not to overuse them, as they can become distracting and repetitive.

When done well, dialogue can add depth and dimension to your characters and bring your story to life. By following these tips, you can craft effective and engaging dialogue that keeps your readers hooked.

Editing Dialogue

When editing dialogue, it’s important to keep in mind three key points:

  • Eliminating unnecessary lines can make your dialogue more effective and impactful.
  • Checking for consistency in the language, tone, and pacing of your dialogue can help keep your story grounded and believable.
  • Reading your dialogue aloud can help you catch any awkward phrasing or unnatural speech patterns that might need tweaking.

Remember to use contractions to make your writing sound more natural and conversational.

Eliminating Unnecessary Lines

You’re probably using too many lines of dialogue if your readers feel like they’re drowning in a sea of never-ending conversations that seem to go on forever, making them want to pull their hair out in frustration.

It’s important to remember that dialogue is a tool to move the story forward and convey emotion, not a place to insert fluff and unnecessary details. When editing your dialogue, take a step back and ask yourself if each line is essential to the plot or character development. If it doesn’t add value, consider cutting it.

Eliminating unnecessary lines can not only improve the flow of your story, but it can also make the remaining dialogue more impactful. When there are fewer lines, each one carries more weight and can convey more emotion. This can create a more intense and engaging experience for your readers.

So don’t be afraid to make bold cuts and only keep the lines that truly matter. Your readers will thank you for it.

Checking for Consistency

Ensuring consistency in your writing style can make for a more enjoyable reading experience, as it helps to create a seamless flow throughout the story. One important aspect of consistency in dialogue is maintaining character. Each character should have their own unique voice, dialect, and mannerisms that are consistent throughout the story. This helps the reader to identify and connect with each character, making them more invested in the story.

Another important aspect of consistency is avoiding info dumps. While it may be tempting to have characters explain everything in detail, this can quickly become tedious and disrupt the flow of the story. Instead, focus on incorporating information in a natural and organic way, through the dialogue and actions of the characters.

This not only maintains consistency in the writing style but also makes the story more engaging and immersive for the reader. By maintaining character and avoiding info dumps, you can create a consistent and enjoyable reading experience for your audience.

Reading Dialogue Aloud

Reading dialogue aloud can bring your characters to life, allowing you to hear their voices and imagine their personalities. As a writer, this can be an incredibly valuable tool for crafting realistic and engaging dialogue in your short stories.

By reading your dialogue out loud, you can get a better sense of how it flows and whether it sounds natural. You can also experiment with pacing control, adjusting the length of pauses and the speed at which characters speak to create different moods and tones.

However, it’s important to remember that reading dialogue aloud is not a substitute for careful editing and revision. While it can help you catch awkward phrasing or unrealistic dialogue, you still need to take the time to analyze your characters and their motivations and ensure that their words are consistent with their personalities.

Additionally, while pacing control can be a useful tool, it’s important not to overdo it and sacrifice clarity for the sake of atmosphere. Ultimately, finding the right balance between reading dialogue aloud and careful revision is key to creating compelling and authentic dialogue in your short stories.

Examples of Effective Dialogue in Short Stories

When delving into the realm of short stories, one can’t help but notice how effective dialogue can bring characters to life and paint vivid pictures in the reader’s mind. Dialogue as characterization is a powerful tool that can help create three-dimensional characters. Through their words and the way they speak, we can learn a lot about their personalities, their backgrounds, and their motivations.

Effective dialogue can also help drive the plot forward, as characters react and respond to each other’s words and actions. It can create tension, build suspense, and add depth to the story.

One example of effective dialogue in short stories can be found in Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’. The dialogue between the narrator and the blind man creates a sense of intimacy and connection between the two characters. Through their conversation, we learn about their past experiences, their fears, and their hopes for the future.

The dialogue also serves to drive the plot forward, as the narrator’s attitudes and perspectives are challenged and changed by the blind man’s insights and observations. Overall, effective dialogue can elevate a short story from a mere collection of events to a rich and engaging narrative that captures the reader’s attention from beginning to end.

You close your eyes and take a deep breath, letting the words of the short story sink in.

The dialogue was just enough to bring the characters to life, but not so much that it overwhelmed the plot. It was a delicate balance, one that the author had managed to achieve with finesse.

As you open your eyes, you realize that the symbolism used in the dialogue has touched a nerve deep within you.

You feel a sense of connection with the characters, as though you were right there with them, experiencing their emotions and struggles. It was as though the author had used the dialogue to create a bridge between the characters and the reader, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the story.

This, you realize, is the power of effective dialogue in short stories – it can transport you to another world, make you feel things you never thought possible, and leave you with a lasting impression.

Recommended Reading...

Why short stories are important for readers and writers alike, why do authors use short stories the advantages of this genre, why are short stories so hard to write understanding the challenges, what is a novelette exploring the short story genre.

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Engaging Short Stories to Use When Teaching Dialogue

engaging short stories to use when teaching dialogue

Writing strong dialogue is challenging for many secondary students, yet it’s an essential component of any narrative writing unit. Luckily, this post is dedicated to showing you how to make the most of your next dialogue lesson by engaging students with short stories.

If you’re anything like me (and my students), you get excited when it’s time to take a break from writing essays and dive into narrative writing instead. While there are plenty of exciting and engaging ways to teach analytical writing, switching it up with something that exercises a little more creativity is refreshing. Whether you’re gearing up to teach personal narratives, creative writing, or anything in between, incorporating a lesson on dialogue is a must. Trust me, nothing ruins a story like forced, meaningless, or downright cringe-worthy dialogue. Students shouldn’t haphazardly throw conversations between characters into a narrative. Instead, they should serve a purpose .

The reality is that many students struggle to write strong, meaningful dialogue simply because they don’t know how . That, my teacher friend, is where short stories come to the rescue. By the end of this post, you’ll understand why short stories are a powerful tool for teaching dialogue, have a list of 5 stories that make for great mentor texts, and learn some quick tips to help you as you plan your next lesson.

For a complete guide on teaching narrative writing, read this!

Short Stories: A Must-Use Tool When Teaching Dialogue

As with teaching any literary element, providing students with an array of examples is imperative when introducing them to dialogue. After all, this conversational exchange can take many forms and is used by authors for various purposes, including:

  • Bringing a story to life
  • Adding or enhancing characterization
  • Engaging readers
  • Moving a plotline forward
  • Building tension and conflict
  • Emphasizing or illustrating a theme
  • Making a scene feel real and relatable

… the list goes on. When used well, dialogue is a powerful asset to any story.

Sure, you can opt to simply explain this to students. You can also decide to show them various standalone examples. However, sharing examples of meaningful dialogue in full context is far more effective. Luckily, short stories are concise enough to allow students to experience and explore dialogue in various cases and contexts.

Questions to Ask When Analyzing Dialogue

As you work through each example, take time to have students reflect on the author’s use of dialogue. Give students the time to analyze the dialogue before engaging in a discussion where you can unpack the purpose of this vital literary element. Consider asking students the following questions to help guide their analysis:

  • Who is involved in the dialogue? What are they saying?
  • What purpose does the dialogue serve?
  • How does the dialogue impact your experience as a reader?
  • What does it reveal about the characters or the situation?
  • How does the dialogue impact the pace and plot?
  • Does it illustrate the story’s theme? If so, how?

5 Engaging Short Stories Perfect for Teaching Dialogue

Now that I’ve convinced you to use short stories as your mentor text, it’s time I reveal 5 of my favorite stories to use when teaching dialogue. The following stories vary in topic and length, ensuring you can find at least one title perfect for sharing with your students. However, when it comes to teaching dialogue, I recommend exposing students to multiple examples before having them incorporate dialogue into their own narrative writing.

1. “Thank You, Ma’am” by Langston Hughes

“Thank You, Ma’am” by Langston Hughes is a quick yet highly effective short story when teaching dialogue, considering at least half of the story is a conversation between the two characters. The story follows a young boy named Roger and his surprising interaction with Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, the woman whose purse he attempts to steal. Instead of turning him into the police after catching Roger in his act of thievery, Mrs. Jones offers kindness, compassion, and care, teaching him a valuable life lesson.

Have students explore how Hughes uses the dialogue to reveal the characterization of both Roger and Mrs. Jones. Furthermore, he skillfully weaves in insightful background information that helps to explain Mrs. Jones’ handling of the situation. By unpacking the conversation, students can develop a stronger understanding of each character, including their motivations throughout the story.

2. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a surprisingly dark and twisted short story set in a small (seemingly) idyllic town where the residents prepare for their annual lottery. Upon closer look, what appears as small talk among people gathering in the town square for the lottery is hiding the sinister truth: someone is about to die. The casual dialogue quickly turns frantic as Tessie, the lottery winner, tries to stop her fate of getting stoned to death by her friends, family, and neighbors.

While students are always shocked upon realizing the fate of the lottery winner, plenty of clues are sprinkled throughout the character’s conversations leading up to the big reveal. Therefore, not only does the dialogue help the plot unfold, but it also helps illustrate the story’s theme of the dangers of blind conformity and mob mentality. Have students go back through the story and look for clues about the twisted tradition, asking them how Jackson “hid” the truth until the story’s climax.

3. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling

Okay, this is technically a screenplay for an episode of The Twilight Zone rather than a short story. However, thanks to the narration and plethora of stage directions noted throughout, it can be read as a short story. It is perfect for helping students understand how dialogue can reveal characterization, move a plot forward, and help build a theme. The story explores the themes of paranoia and fear, and they can take control of people and, ultimately, lead to chaos. Set in an ordinary suburban neighborhood, residents of Maple Street let suspicion take over as they struggle to find a reasonable explanation for a mysterious event on their street. 

As the dialogue reveals, the residents quickly turn against each other, fearing that extraterrestrial monsters are among them. Suddenly, anyone could be a suspect. Ultimately, through their (rather hostile) conversions, the characters show just how easily fear and distrust can wreak havoc on a community. As the narrator reveals at the end, the real monsters on Maple Street are, ironically, the people themselves. Challenge students to back up the narrator’s closing remarks with supporting dialogue. (Trust me, there’s plenty for them to work with.)

4. “Liars Don’t Qualify” by Junius Edwards

Junius Edwards’ work primarily focused on the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, and “Liars Don’t Qualify” is no exception. However, Edwards’ skillful use of dialogue makes this piece stand out. Throughout the story, the conversation between the three characters becomes Edwards’ primary vehicle for his commentary on the racial disparities, discrimination, and dehumanization experienced by black people in the American South. The story follows Will Harris, a black man, as he attempts to register to vote. After an extensive (and glaringly prejudiced) interview process, Harris is ultimately denied his right to vote.

Edwards’ use of dialogue throughout  “Liars Don’t Qualify” serves as a powerful tool to convey the pervasive racial tension in the American South during the late 50s and early 60s. Students never have a problem assigning a race to each character despite the story never once explicitly stating which characters are black versus white. Instead, Edwards lets the characters’ words and actions tell the bigger story here. There is plenty for students to unpack, as the story is told primarily through uninterrupted dialogue, making it both a fast-moving and highly engaging read.

5. “So What Are You, Anyway?” by Lawrence Hill

While this is one of the shorter stories on the list, it is just as effective for teaching dialogue. As with several of the other mentor texts, this short story unfolds primarily through a conversation between characters on a plane. Carole, a young girl, is seated next to Henry and Betty Norton, a white couple who can’t seem to accept or comprehend her biracial status. What first seems like friendly small talk quickly becomes uncomfortable and incessant questioning about the young girl’s race. Ultimately, a frustrated Henry blurts out the question that gives the story its title, “So what are you anyway?” leaving Carole extremely uncomfortable, confused, and upset.

Hill’s use of dialogue is an excellent example of how authors can use dialogue to reveal characterization and build tension throughout a story. While there is some narration here and there, students primarily experience the story through the conversation. As a result, students must rely on making inferences and reading between the lines to decode the story’s themes and, ultimately, Hill’s commentary on the social construction of racial identity.

Lessons in Dialogue: Teaching Tips and Tricks

Having the right texts is only part of it. Of course, you also need to know how to use them for effective teaching. Here are some of the best tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years teaching dialogue in secondary ELA:

  • Expose students to a variety of examples and contexts
  • Want to steal one of my favorites? Challenge students to turn a block of narrative text into a dialogue or have them write a series of dialogue inspired by an image.
  • Review writing conventions and dialogue tags
  • Encourage students to use strong verbs (“said” is boring )
  • Show both good and bad dialogue examples, discussing the differences
  • Challenge students to reflect on how dialogue impacts the reader’s experience
  • Give students space to practice, offering guidance and feedback as needed

Time to Get Teaching!

There you have it, my teacher friend! I hope you found this post helpful as you prepare to teach your students about the importance and power of quality dialogue. Whether you ultimately use my favorite titles to introduce this concept or not, remember this: short stories serve as condensed containers for students to learn, explore, and analyze specific literary elements. Thanks to their focused nature, students can dive into the text, dissecting and understanding dialogue dynamics, character interactions, and essential subtext without getting lost in a longer narrative.

After you use those stories to teach the power of conversations among characters, consider reusing them to teach other elements like plot , setting , character , and point of view . They are also the perfect teaching tool for literary devices such as foreshadowing or irony , among many others.

That’s all for now! As always, if you have any comments, questions, or additional ideas to toss out there about teaching dialogue, leave a comment below!

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how to write a dialogue in a short story

10 Short Stories with Great Dialogue That Aren’t “Hills Like White Elephants”

Do you believe in life after hemingway.

Before you get excited: I have no problem with “Hills Like White Elephants.” In this classic story, Ernest Hemingway demonstrates a masterful, subtle use of dialogue—so much so that it has become, if not a totally clichéd, then at least a ubiquitous text in creative writing classrooms. I myself encountered it at least four times by the time I got to grad school—where I proceeded to teach it to my own Introduction to Creative Writing class. It’s the circle of life. This is only to say that I’m not immune—but I also know there are plenty of other stories with strong dialogue out there, and as another school year (such as it is, in 2021) gets going, they’re probably worth a look too. Just for fun, you know?

So I asked the Literary Hub staff to suggest some of their other favorite short stories that do cool things with dialogue, and I’ve collected a few of them here. Obviously this list is not exhaustive—among other things, we also shied away from some other tried-and-true dialogue-heavy classics, like “The Dead” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” and “Steady Hands at Seattle General”—and of course these stories are mostly not doing the same thing as “Hills Like White Elephants,” but they’re all doing something interesting. Just in case you want to mix it up a little this year.

Sam Lipsyte, “ The Dungeon Master ,” from The Fun Parts

Sample Dialogue:

The Dungeon Master has detention. We wait at his house by the county road. The Dungeon Master’s little brother Marco puts out corn chips and orange soda.

Marco is a paladin. He fights for the glory of Christ. Marco has been many paladins since winter break. They are all named Valentine, and the Dungeon Master makes certain they die with the least possible amount of dignity.

It’s painful enough when he rolls the dice, announces that a drunken orc has unspooled some Valentine’s guts for sport. Worse are the silly accidents. One Valentine tripped on a floor plank and cracked his head on a mead bucket. He died of trauma in the stable.

“Take it!” the Dungeon Master said that time. Spit sprayed over the top of his laminated screen. “Eat your fate,” he said. “Your thread just got the snippo!”

The Dungeon Master has a secret language that we don’t quite understand. They say he’s been treated for it.

Whenever the Dungeon Master kills another Valentine, Marco runs off and cries to their father. Dr. Varelli nudges his son back into the study, sticks his bushy head in the door, says, “Play nice, my beautiful puppies.”

“Father,” the Dungeon Master will say, “stay the fuck out of my mind realm.”

“I honor your wish, my beauty.”

Dr. Varelli says things like that. It’s not a secret language, just an embarrassing one. Maybe that’s why his wife left him, left Marco and the Dungeon Master, too. It’s not a decent reason to leave, but as the Dungeon Master hopes to teach us, the world is not a decent place to live.

Danielle Evans, “ Virgins ,” from  Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

“Look what Eddie gave me,” said Cindy, all friendly. She pulled a pink teddy bear out of her purse and squeezed its belly. It sang “You Are My Sunshine” in a vibrating robot voice.

“That’s nice,” said Jasmine, her voice so high that she sounded almost like the teddy bear. Cindy smiled and walked off with Eddie, swinging her hips back and forth.

“I don’t have a teddy bear neither,” said Eddie’s friend Tre, putting an arm around Jasmine. She pushed him off. Tre was the kind of boy my mother would have said to stay away from, but she said to stay away from all men.

“C’mon, Jasmine,” Tre said. “I lost my teddy bear, can I sleep with you tonight?”

Jasmine looked at Tre like he was stupid. Michael put an arm around each of our shoulders and kissed us both on the cheek, me first, then Jasmine.

“You know these are my girls,” he said to Tre. “Leave ’em alone.”

His friends mostly left me alone anyway, because they knew I wasn’t good for anything but a little kissing. But I was glad he’d included me. Michael nodded good-bye as he and his friends walked toward their movie. Eddie and Cindy stayed there, kissing, like that’s what they had paid admission for. I grabbed Jasmine’s hand and pulled her toward the ticket counter.

“That’s nasty,” I said. “She looks nasty all up on him in public like that.”

“No one ever bought me a singing teddy bear,” said Jasmine. “Probably no one ever will buy me a singing teddy bear.”

“I’ll buy you a singing teddy bear, stupid,” I said.

“Shut up,” she said. She’d been sucking on her bottom lip so hard she’d sucked the lipstick off it, and her lips were two different colors. “Don’t you ever want to matter to somebody?”

“I matter to you. And Michael.”

Jasmine clicked her tongue. “Say Michael had to shoot either you or that Italian chick who’s letting him hit it right now. Who do you think he would save?”

“Why does he have to shoot somebody?” I said.

“He just does.”

“Well, he’d save me then. She’s just a girl who’s fucking him.”

“And you’re just a girl who isn’t,” Jasmine said. “That’s your problem, Erica. You don’t understand adult relationships.”

“Where are there adults?” I asked, turning in circles with my hand to my forehead like a sea captain looking for land.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m tired of these little boys. Next weekend we’re going to the city. We’re gonna find some real niggas who know how to treat us.”

That was not the idea I meant for Jasmine to have.

Ottessa Moshfegh, “ The Beach Boy ,” from Homesick for Another World

The friends wanted to know what the prostitutes had looked like, how they’d dressed, what they’d said. They wanted details.

“They looked like normal people,” Marcia said, shrugging. “You know, just young, poor people, locals. But they were very complimentary. They kept saying, ‘Hello, nice people. Massage? Nice massage for nice people?’ ”

“Little did they know!” John joked, furrowing his eyebrows like a maniac. The friends laughed.

“We’d read about it in the guidebook,” Marcia said. “You’re not supposed to acknowledge them at all. You don’t even look them in the eye. If you do, they’ll never leave you alone. The beach boys. The male prostitutes, I mean. It’s sad,” she added. “Tragic. And, really, one wonders how anybody can starve in a place like that. There was food everywhere. Fruit on every tree. I just don’t understand it. And the city was rife with garbage. Rife! ” she proclaimed. She put down her fork. “Wouldn’t you say, hon?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘rife,’ ” John answered, wiping the corners of his mouth with his cloth napkin. “Fragrant, more like.”

The waiter collected the unfinished plates of pasta, then returned and took their orders of cheesecake and pie and decaffeinated coffee. John was quiet. He scrolled through photos on his cell phone, looking for a picture he’d taken of a monkey seated on the head of a Virgin Mary statue. The statue was painted in bright colors, and its nose was chipped, showing the white, chalky plaster under the paint. The monkey was black and skinny, with wide-spaced, neurotic eyes. Its tail curled under Mary’s chin. John turned the screen of his phone toward the table.

“This little guy,” he said.

“Aw!” the friends cried. They wanted to know, “Were the monkeys feral? Were they smelly? Are the people Catholic? Are they all very religious there?”

“Catholic,” Marcia said, nodding. “And the monkeys were everywhere. Cute but very sneaky. One of them stole John’s pen right out of his pocket.” She rattled off whatever facts she could remember from the nature tour they’d taken. “I think there are laws about eating the monkeys. I’m not so sure. They all spoke English,” she repeated, “but sometimes it was hard to understand them. The guides, I mean, not the monkeys.” She chuckled.

“The monkeys spoke Russian, naturally,” John said, and put away his phone.

Sarah Gerard, “ The Killer ,” from  Guernica

They paid the bill and left, gathering on the sidewalk.

Nathan said to them, “We live down the beach. Come over.”

Amy tried to decline. Benjamin held her by the elbow. She allowed him to lead her, and by the time they reached the sand behind the Pelican, she’d managed to free herself, and catch up with Carol.

They walked the waterline.

“There is another option if you don’t want to kill them yourself,” Carol told her. Then, turning to Nathan: “We can put them in touch with Chance.”

Nathan fell into step with them. He draped an arm around his wife’s waist.

“Is Chance an exterminator?” said Amy.

“I hesitate to tell you more about our relationship,” Nathan joked. “I don’t talk God or politics in mixed company.”

“I’m a registered Democrat,” said Benjamin.

“He comes out and shoots the iguanas, then disposes of the carcasses,” said Carol. “He charges a reasonable fee.”

Nathan smiled.

“He actually became somewhat notorious when he posted some pictures of one of his hunts on Facebook recently,” Carol continued. “He can guarantee up to one hundred iguanas in a single hunt. He had them all laid out in rows with their legs bound, and huge plastic bins of dead lizards, rooms and hallways full of them. Then these happy white men in t-shirts with the sleeves cut off, posing.”

“You can imagine,” said Nathan.

“Thousands of shares. People calling him a murderer.”

“He’s doing our community a service, really.”

They climbed a narrow path worn into the sea grass. It led to the screened-in pool of a stone lanai furnished in rattan. Nathan went behind the bar with his phone to his ear. He fixed their drinks out of earshot. Carol invited them to sit on a loveseat. She offered them each a cigarette. They declined.

“I suppose you know too much about the consequences of smoking.” She lit the cigarette and drew out the motion of removing it from her mouth. A slip of smoke hovered between her lips. “My father was a pack-a-day smoker until he died at ninety-two. I figure I’m immune.”

“I’m not sure that would stand up to peer review,” said Benjamin.

“You’re right. Too emotional.”

Kevin Barry, “ Fjord of Killary ,” from Dark Lies the Island

So I bought an old hotel on the fjord of Killary. It was set hard by the harbor wall, with Mweelrea Mountain across the water, and disgracefully gray skies above. It rained two hundred and eighty-seven days of the year, and the locals were given to magnificent mood swings. On the night in question, the rain was particularly violent—it came down like handfuls of nails flung hard and fast by a seriously riled sky god. I was at this point eight months in the place and about convinced that it would be the death of me.

“It’s end-of-the-fucking-world stuff out there,” I said.

The chorus of locals in the hotel’s lounge bar, as always, ignored me. I was a fretful blow-in, by their mark, and simply not cut out for tough, gnarly, West of Ireland living. They were listening, instead, to John Murphy, our alcoholic funeral director.

“I’ll bury anythin’ that fuckin’ moves,” he said.

“Bastards, suicides, tinkers,” he said.

“I couldn’t give a fuckin’ monkey’s,” he said.

Behind the bar: the Guinness tap, the Smithwicks tap, the lager taps, the line of optics, the neatly stacked rows of glasses, and a high stool that sat by a wee slit of window that had a view across the water toward Mweelrea. The iodine tang of kelp hung in the air always, and put me in mind of embalming fluid. Bill Knott looked vaguely from his Bushmills toward the water.

“Highish, all right,” he said. “But now what’d we be talkin’ about for Belmullet, would you say? Off a slow road?”

The primary interest of these people’s lives, it often seemed, was how far one place was from another, and how long it might take to complete the journey, given the state of the roads. Bill had been in haulage as a young man and considered himself expert.

“I don’t know, Bill,” I said.

“Would we say an hour twenty if you weren’t tailbacked out of Newport?”

“I said I really don’t fucking well know, Bill.”

“There are those’ll say you’d do it in an hour.” He sipped, delicately. “But you’d want to be grease fuckin’ lightnin’ coming up from Westport direction, wouldn’t you?”

“We could be swimming it yet, Bill.”

Toni Cade Bambara, “ The Lesson ,” from  Gorilla, My Love

“Will you look at this sailboat, please,” say Flyboy, cuttin her off and pointin to the thing like it was his. So once again we tumble all over each other to gaze at this magnificent thing in the toy store which is just big enough to maybe sail two kittens across the pond if you strap them to the posts tight. We all start reciting the price tag like we in assembly. “Hand-crafted sailboat of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars.”

“Unbelievable,” I hear myself say and am really stunned. I read it again for myself just in case the group recitation put me in a trance. Same thing. For some reason this pisses me off. We look at Miss Moore and she lookin at us, waiting for I dunno what.

“Who’d pay all that when you can buy a sailboat set for a quarter at Pop’s, a tube of glue for a dime, and a ball of string for eight cents? It must have a motor and a whole lot else besides,” I say. “My sailboat cost me about fifty cents.”

“But will it take water?” say Mercedes with her smart ass.

“Took mine to Alley Pond Park once,” say Flyboy. “String broke. Lost it. Pity.”

“Sailed mine in Central Park and it keeled over and sank. Had to ask my father for another dollar.”

“And you got the strap,” laugh Big Butt. “The jerk didn’t even have a string on it. My old man wailed on his behind.”

Little Q.T. was staring hard at the sailboat and you could see he wanted it bad. But he too little and somebody’d just take it from him. So what the hell.

“This boat for kids, Miss Moore?”

“Parents silly to buy something like that just to get all broke up,” say Rosie Giraffe.

“That much money it should last forever,” I figure.

“My father’d buy it for me if I wanted it.”

“Your father, my ass,” say Rosie Giraffe getting a chance to finally push Mercedes.

“Must be rich people shop here,” say Q.T.

“You are a very bright boy,” say Flyboy. “What was your first clue?” And he rap him on the head with the back of his knuckles, since Q.T. the only one he could get away with. Though Q.T. liable to come up behind you years later and get his licks in when you half expect it.

Ali Smith, “ The Child ,” from The First Person and Other Stories

You’re a really rubbish driver, a voice said from the back of the car. I could do better than that, and I can’t even drive. Are you for instance representative of all women drivers, or is it just you among all women who’s so rubbish at driving?

It was the child speaking. But it spoke with so surprisingly charming a little voice that it made me want to laugh, a voice as young and clear as a series of ringing bells arranged into a pretty melody. It said the complicated words, representative and for instance, with an innocence that sounded ancient, centuries old, and at the same time as if it had only just discovered their meaning and was trying out their usage and I was privileged to be present when it did.

I slewed the car over to the side of the motorway, switched the engine off and leaned over the front seat into the back. The child still lay there helpless, rolled up in the tartan blanket, held in place by it inside the seatbelt. It didn’t look old enough to be able to speak. It looked barely a year old.

It’s terrible. Asylum seekers come here and take all our jobs and all our benefits, it said preternaturally, sweetly. They should all be sent back to where they come from.

There was a slight endearing lisp on the “s” sounds in the words asylum and seekers and jobs and benefits and sent.

What? I said.

Can’t you hear? Cloth in your ears? it said. The real terrorists are people who aren’t properly English. They will sneak into football stadiums and blow up innocent Christian people supporting innocent English teams.

The words slipped out of its ruby-red mouth. I could just see the glint of its little coming-through teeth.

It said: The pound is our rightful heritage. We deserve our heritage. Women shouldn’t work if they’re going to have babies. Women shouldn’t work at all. It’s not the natural order of things. And as for gay weddings. Don’t make me laugh.

Then it laughed, blondly, beautifully, as if only for me. Its big blue eyes were open and looking straight up at me as if I were the most delightful thing it had ever seen.

I was enchanted. I laughed back.

ZZ Packer, “The Ant of the Self,” from Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

My father just got a DUI—again—though that didn’t stop him from asking for the keys. When I didn’t give them up, he sighed and shook his head as though I withheld keys from him daily. “C’mon, Spurge,” he’d said. “The pigs aren’t even looking.”

He’s the only person I know who still calls cops “pigs,” a holdover from what he refers to as his Black Panther days, when “the brothers” raked their globes of hair with black-fisted Afro picks, then left them stuck there like javelins. When, as he tells it, he and Huey P. Newton would meet in basements and wear leather jackets and stick it to whitey. Having given me investment advice, he now watches the world outside the Honda a little too jubilantly. I take the curve around the city, past the backsides of chain restaurants and malls, office parks and the shitty Louisville zoo.

“That’s your future,” he says winding down from his rant. “Sound investments.”

“Maybe you should ask the pigs for your bail money back,” I say. “We could invest that.”

“You keep getting money from debate, we could invest.”

When most people talk about investing, they mean stocks or bonds or mutual funds. What my father means is his friend Splo’s cockfighting arena, or some dude who goes door to door selling exercise equipment that does all the exercise for you. He’d invested in a woman who tried selling African cichlids to pet shops, but all she’d done was dye ordinary goldfish so they looked tropical. “Didn’t you just win some cash?” he asks. “From debate?”

“Bail,” I say. “I used it to pay your bail.”

He’s quiet for a while. I wait for him to stumble out a thanks. I wait for him to promise to pay me back with money he knows he’ll never have. Finally he sighs and says, “Most investors buy low and sell high. Know why they do that?” With my father there are not only trick questions, but trick answers. Before I can respond, I hear his voice, loud and naked. “I axed you, ‘Do you know why they do that?'” He’s shaking my arm as if trying to wake me. “You answer me when I ask you something.”

I twist my arm from his grasp to show I’m not afraid. We swerve out of our lane. Cars behind us swerve as well, then zoom around us and pull ahead as if we are a rock in a stream.

“Do you know who this is ?” he says. “Do you know who you’re talking to ?”

I haven’t been talking to anyone, but I keep this to myself.

Jhumpa Lahiri, “ A Temporary Matter ,” from Interpreter of Maladies

The microwave had just beeped when the lights went out, and the music disappeared.

“Perfect timing,” Shoba said.

“All I could find were birthday candles.” He lit up the ivy, keeping the rest of the candles and a book of matches by his plate.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, running a finger along the stem of her wineglass. “It looks lovely.”

In the dimness, he knew how she sat, a bit forward in her chair, ankles crossed against the lowest rung, left elbow on the table. During his search for the candles, Shukumar had found a bottle of wine in a crate he had thought was empty. He clamped the bottle between his knees while he turned in the corkscrew. He worried about spilling, and so he picked up the glasses and held them close to his lap while he filled them. They served themselves, stirring the rice with their forks, squinting as they extracted bay leaves and cloves from the stew.

Every few minutes Shukumar lit a few more birthday candles and drove them into the soil of the pot.

“It’s like India,” Shoba said, watching him tend his makeshift candelabra. “Sometimes the current disappears for hours at a stretch. I once had to attend an entire rice ceremony in the dark. The baby just cried and cried. It must have been so hot.”

Their baby had never cried, Shukumar considered. Their baby would never have a rice ceremony, even though Shoba had already made the guest list, and decided on which of her three brothers she was going to ask to feed the child its first taste of solid food, at six months if it was a boy, seven if it was a girl.

“Are you hot?” he asked her. He pushed the blazing ivy pot to the other end of the table, closer to the piles of books and mail, making it even more difficult for them to see each other. He was suddenly irritated that he couldn’t go upstairs and sit in front of the computer.

“No. It’s delicious,” she said, tapping her plate with her fork. “It really is.”

He refilled the wine in her glass. She thanked him.

They weren’t like this before. Now he had to struggle to say something that interested her, something that made her look up from her plate, or from her proofreading files. Eventually he gave up trying to amuse her. He learned not to mind the silences.

“I remember during power failures at my grandmother’s house, we all had to say something,” Shoba continued. He could barely see her face, but from her tone he knew her eyes were narrowed, as if trying to focus on a distant object. It was a habit of hers.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A little poem. A joke. A fact about the world. For some reason my relatives always wanted me to tell them the names of my friends in America. I don’t know why the information was so interesting to them. The last time I saw my aunt she asked after four girls I went to elementary school with in Tucson. I barely remember them now.”

Shukumar hadn’t spent as much time in India as Shoba had. His parents, who settled in New Hampshire, used to go back without him. The first time he’d gone as an infant he’d nearly died of amoebic dysentery. His father, a nervous type, was afraid to take him again, in case something were to happen, and left him with his aunt and uncle in Concord. As a teenager he preferred sailing camp or scooping ice cream during the summers to going to Calcutta. It wasn’t until after his father died, in his last year of college, that the country began to interest him, and he studied its history from course books as if it were any other subject. He wished now that he had his own childhood story of India.

“Let’s do that,” she said suddenly.

“Say something to each other in the dark.”

“Like what? I don’t know any jokes.”

“No, no jokes.” She thought for a minute. “How about telling each other something we’ve never told before.”

Grace Paley, “ My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age ,” from  Here and Somewhere Else

My father had decided to teach me how to grow old. I said O.K. My children didn’t think it was such a great idea. If I knew how, they thought, I might do so too easily. No, no, I said, it’s for later, years from now. And, besides, if I get it right it might be helpful to you kids in time to come.

They said, Really?

My father wanted to begin as soon as possible. For God’s sake, he said, you can talk to the kids later. Now, listen to me, send them out to play. You are so distractable.

We should probably begin at the beginning, he said. Change. First there is change, which nobody likes—even men. You’d be surprised. You can do little things—putting cream on the corners of your mouth, also the heels of your feet. But here is the main thing. Oh, I wish your mother was alive—not that she had time—

But Pa, I said, Mama never knew anything about cream. I did not say she was famous for not taking care.

Forget it, he said sadly. But I must mention squinting. don’t squint. Wear your glasses. Look at your aunt, so beautiful once. I know someone has said men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses, but that’s an idea for a foolish person. There are many handsome women who are not exactly twenty-twenty.

Please sit down, he said. Be patient. The main thing is this—when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.

That’s a metaphor, right?

Metaphor? No, no, you can do this. In the morning, do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully. It’s probably easier for a man. Then talk softly, don’t yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up, you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don’t be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.

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Emily Temple

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Readers' Corner

How to Write a Short Story

From idea generation to publication, learn every step of the short story writing process

Table of contents

What is a short story, developing ideas and premises, creating characters, plotting the story, structuring your story, refining your revision process, publishing and promoting your story, examples of classic short stories.

Writing a short story may seem like an easy or simple task, but crafting an engaging and compelling piece of short fiction takes skill and practice. In this guide, we will explore the key elements that go into writing an effective short story, including developing characters, crafting a plot, using narrative techniques, and revising and polishing your work. By the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of the short story writing process and be ready to draft your own tales.

Before diving into the how-tos of writing short fiction, it’s important to understand exactly what constitutes a short story. At its most basic, a short story is a brief work of prose fiction that is shorter in length than a novel. But there are some key distinguishing characteristics of short stories versus longer works of fiction:

  • Length  – Most short stories range from 1,000 to 7,500 words, though some can be shorter or a bit longer. Anything over 15,000 words is generally considered a novella or novel.
  • Single focused plot  – Short stories focus on one core conflict or storythread, without subplots. The narrative is more tightly-woven than a novel.
  • Few main characters  – There are usually only a handful of major characters rather than dozens or more. Background on characters is limited.
  • Swift pacing  – Events move at a brisker clip since there is less time/space. Exposition and backstory are kept to a minimum.
  • Condensed context  – Less emphasis is placed on extensive descriptions of setting or character backgrounds. Context is revealed through events.

Remember that these are guidelines rather than hard rules. Experimental or creative stories may play with conventions. The key point is that short stories aim to packs a narrative punch within a tighter, more focused scope than a novel.

When drafting a short story, one of the first steps is coming up with a core idea or premise to build the narrative around. Here are some effective techniques for generating initial story concepts:

Brainstorming Prompts  – Use writing prompts, either from online lists or ones you generate yourself, as a springboard. Things like “A woman finds $5,000 that isn’t hers” can spark ideas.

Personal Anecdotes  – Draw on interesting real-life experiences , people you know, odd things that happen to you and turn them into fictional tales.

Research Topics  – Browse news stories, history facts, current events for intriguing details or social issues to explore.

Reader Challenges  – Propose a narrative challenge, like “A story told through instant messages” to ignite creativity.

Mindmaps/Freewriting – Jot down any concepts, images, or questions without filtering, as these nonlinear methods stimulate new connections.

The premise should present a central conflict or character decision that neatly sets up the story’s focus and stakes. Keep tweaking ideas until you land on one with potential layers to unpack.

Short stories hinge upon vibrant, multilayered characters. Take time to craft appealing protagonists and supporting cast through character profiles addressing:

  • Basic Details – Describe appearance, mannerisms, and background details.
  • Motivations and Goals  – What drives this character? What do they want deep down?
  • Flaws and Contradictions  – No one is one-dimensional. Give characters nuanced weaknesses or inconsistencies.
  • Perspective and Voice  – How do they view themselves and others? What is their tone/speech patterns like?

Round out profiles by exploring each character’s dynamic with others, life experiences shaping them, and how they change through the story. Even side characters should feel authentic to avoid flat stock figures.

Short stories require tight, elevated storylining with a beginning, middle, and end. Develop the narrative arc by:

Identifying the Central Conflict  – What dramatic question or problem fuels the narrative drive?

Outlining Key Scenes  – Map the rising action, pivotal climax/turning point, and resolution of the central conflict.

Scheduling Reveals  – Parcel out contextual details and backstory judiciously, saving mysteries for climactic moments.

Foreshadowing Effectively  – Drop subtle hints that heighten foreboding, tie into later beats, and optimize surprises without logical leaps.

Crafting Satisfying Closures  – Resolve critical narrative strands while leaving room for interpretation or further questions. Avoid pat or simplistic endings.

Use this scheme to stay grounded, yet leave room for organic discoveries in the first draft. Continually assess if scenes refine character or propel plotting forward efficiently.

While short story structure is adaptable, many classics follow reliable models that help maintain pace and audience engagement. Consider opening with:

  • In Medias Res  – Throw readers directly into the action/conflict without extensive setup.
  • Character in Dilemma  – Pose a thought-provoking choice, want, or obstacle for protagonists up front.

Additional effective structural techniques include:

  • flashbacks  – Punctuate scenes with limited retrospectives that add nuance, not confusion.
  • dual timelines  – Layer two storylines, with climaxes aligning fruitfully versus disjointedly.
  • Frame narratives  – Bookend the central tale with another sequence setting context or posing implications.

The structure should unfold purposefully yet economically, without dragging or wasted space. Maintain suspense and curiosity right up through a resonant closure. Functional plots serve characters and themes over arbitrary story beats.

The initial draft gets the raw content on paper, but the real crafting happens in rewriting and refinement. Hone the story by:

  • Reading aloud  – Hear where language/pacing/tone feels awkward versus fluid and absorbing.
  • Getting feedback  – Consult critique partners to flag ambiguities, weak areas, emotional impacts, and logical gaps
  • Self-editing  – Cut excess flab while tightening prose, trimming redundant lines, sharpening dialogue/action, and finessing flow.
  • Replotting  – Restructure scenes, timelines, reveals, and conclusion as needed based on editorial insights and storytelling impact.
  • Polishing prose  – refine phrasing, vocabulary, sentence variation, vivid descriptions, evocative metaphor upon subsequent drafts.

Leave revisions to simmer, then revisit with fresh eyes later. The goal is a dynamic, cohesive end product where every element elevates the narrative and reader experience.

After polishing your story to a fine sheen, explore options for featuring your work:

  • Submit to literary journals – Research submission guidelines for print and online publications.
  • Self-publish eBooks /paperbacks – Easy-to-use platforms host and distribute your work digitally and in print.
  • Create a blog/website – Post stories and build an audience through promotion on social networking platforms.
  • Enter writing contests – Competitions offer exposure, potential awards, and craft feedback opportunities.
  • Pitch to anthologies/magazines – Inquire about one-off story reprint/syndication opportunities in specific publications or annual collections.

Always maintain professionalism with editors and respect revision/acceptance policies. View initial publications as a learning experience and resume builder toward higher impact placements. Networking widens your supporter base as well.

To help understand the range, depth and mastery possible within the short form, explore acclaimed works like:

  • “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson – A chilling glimpse into blind social conformity and ritual with an unforgettably jarring climax.
  • “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – A feminist examination of postpartum depression and oppressive gender roles through a haunting first-person narrative.
  • “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates – A psychological thriller following the manipulation and downfall of a naive teenage girl.
  • “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs – A cautionary tale imbued with Gothic suspense sparked by a family’s fateful wishes upon a mystical talisman.
  • “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin – A poignant exploration of familial bonds, the ravages of addiction, and the universal language of jazz seen through two troubled brothers.

Studying classics like these spotlights concise yet immersive storytelling , economic character development, mastery of voice , and the heights short fiction can reach when approached with vision and skill.

That covers the essentials for crafting compelling short stories that entertain audiences and advance your writing practice. Keep experimenting and learning with each new story drafted. Above all, believe in your ability to meaningfully distill life’s complexities into vivid glimpses of truth through short fiction.

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How to Have More Meaningful Conversations

Communication heads

T hink, for a moment, about who you would call if you were having a bad day. If you’d screwed up a deal at work, or gotten into an argument with your spouse, or were feeling frustrated and sick of it all: Who would you want to talk to? There’s probably someone you know will make you feel better, who can help you think through a thorny question, or share a moment of heartbreak or joy.

That person, for you, is what I like to call a “supercommunicator” (and odds are, for them, you are a supercommunicator, too.) All of us, at times, achieve moments of supercommunication. But there are some people who are supercommunicators much more consistently—they know how to connect with nearly anyone, to make conversations easier, to make us feel like we’ve really been heard. We all know supercommunicators: They’re the people everyone seems to know, the ones likely to be elected to positions of authority, the folks others turn to when they need to discuss something serious or ask for advice.

Over the past three years, I’ve explored the research behind supercommunication, and encountered important lessons. Most notably, we’re not born knowing how to communicate effectively. Rather, communication is a set of skills that nearly anyone can learn. Supercommunicators aren’t inherently more charismatic or extroverted. Rather, they just think about communication a little bit harder, and have mastered the tools that allow them to connect.

Read More: Charles Duhigg on Changing Your Habits

So what, exactly, are those supercommunicators doing that makes you feel so good?

There’s a number of skills they’ve mastered. Research shows that supercommunicators ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person—but many of those questions ( “What did you think about that?” “What did you say next?” ) hardly register, except to make us feel like someone is listening. Other questions—what are known as “deep questions”—ask people to describe their beliefs, values, and experiences in ways that reveal something about themselves beyond the simple facts of their lives. (“How’d you decide to become a lawyer?” “What was it like growing up in a small town?”)

Supercommunicators are also good at reading the room: When a conversation gets stuck, they make it easy for everyone to take a quick break by bringing up a new topic or interrupting an awkward silence with a small joke.

What’s more, supercommunicators often engage in a process known as looping for understanding , which encourages everyone, including themselves, to listen more closely. Looping has three steps: Ask a question; repeat back what you heard in your own words; and then ask if you got it right. This is powerful because one of the strongest human impulses is social mimicry . If someone starts asking questions and looping their companions, everyone else becomes more likely to ask questions, listen closely, and loop in return.

All these skills have something important in common: they allow supercommunicators to show their companions they want to connect.

Take, for instance, laughter. Studies show that roughly 80% of the time, when we laugh, it is not in reaction to anything funny. Rather, we laugh in response to something banal—“Are we finally going to dinner?” — in order to show that we want to connect with someone. And when they laugh back—the most natural reaction—they are showing us they want to connect with us, as well.

The same thing happens with other forms of non-linguistic communication. When someone frowns, or their voice goes quiet and intimate, we have an instinct to mimic them, to apply what is known within psychology as the Matching Principle of Communication. Supercommunicators listen to those instincts and nurture those urges, because they know that when we match someone, we show them we want to listen—and they, in return, become more willing to listen to, and trust, us.

The truth is, anyone can become a supercommunicator. We can all learn to hear more clearly, to speak so we’re easier to understand, to connect on a deeper level. And, today, learning to have meaningful conversations is, in some ways, more urgent than ever before. It’s no secret the world has become increasingly polarized, that we struggle to hear and be heard. If we know how to sit down together and listen, then, even if we can’t resolve every disagreement, we can find ways to coexist and thrive.

When we show each other that we want to connect—by asking questions, looping for understanding, and matching people when they become emotional, practical, or when the discussion goes in an unexpected direction—we usually find something we have in common, something we can build on to form a real relationship.

Every meaningful conversation is made up of countless small choices. There are fleeting moments when the right deep question, or a vulnerable admission, or a kind word can completely change a dialogue. A silent laugh, a barely audible sigh, a friendly expression during a tense moment: Some people have learned to spot these opportunities, to detect what kind of discussion is occurring, to understand what others really want. They have learned how to hear what’s unsaid and speak so others want to listen. And that’s important, because the right conversation, at the right moment, can change everything.

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IMAGES

  1. How to Write Dialogue in a Story: 7 steps

    how to write a dialogue in a short story

  2. How To Write Dialogue In A Story (With Examples)

    how to write a dialogue in a short story

  3. How to Write Dialogue that Engages Readers in 9 Steps

    how to write a dialogue in a short story

  4. Short story examples with dialogue

    how to write a dialogue in a short story

  5. Writing a Short Story: Scenes and Dialogue

    how to write a dialogue in a short story

  6. How To Write Dialogue In A Story (With Examples)

    how to write a dialogue in a short story

VIDEO

  1. Write your story😁😂 #shorts

  2. How to write dialogue writing in english.#like and subscribe....@shortstudy96

  3. Dialogue writing between two friends about how to improve English

  4. Dialogue about Introducing Someone

  5. How To Write Better Dialogue: Step 1

  6. Kisko yaad hai ye game😜😆 Don't miss end 🤣 #shorts #trending #youtubeshorts

COMMENTS

  1. 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.

  2. A Guide to Writing Dialogue, With Examples

    You can separate a line of dialogue with an action. When you do this, capitalize the dialogue and action the same way you would capitalize any other sentence. Here are two examples: "Every night," he began, "I heard a rustling in the trees.". "Every day," he stated. "Every day, I get to work right on time.".

  3. How To Write Dialogue In A Story (With Examples)

    Internal vs External Dialogue. Direct vs Indirect Dialogue. 20 Tips For Formatting Dialogue in Stories. How to Write Dialogue in 5 Steps. 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.

  4. 15 Examples of Great Dialogue (And Why They Work So Well)

    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.

  5. How to Write Fabulous Dialogue [9 Tips + Examples]

    These beats are a commonly used technique so you can find plenty of examples — here's one from Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro . 4. Use 'said' as a dialogue tag. If there's one golden rule in writing dialogue, it's this: 'said' is your friend. Yes, 'said' is nothing new.

  6. How to Write Dialogue: Rules, Examples, and 8 Tips for ...

    Keep only the ones that contribute something to the story. 6. Vary word choices and rhythms. The greatest dialogue examples in writing use distinctive character voices; each character sounds a little bit different, because they have their own personality.

  7. 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 ...

  8. How to Write Dialogue: Formatting, Examples, & Tips

    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.

  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 ...

  10. How to Write Dialogue in a Story: 7 Rules, 5 Tips & 65 Examples

    3. Every new speaker gets a new paragraph. Every dialogue begins with a new paragraph. Each time a character says something, even if it is only a word, the dialogue should begin on a new paragraph. Here's a dialogue writing example: "Don't worry, the information they have of our whereabouts is misleading.".

  11. How to Structure Dialogue in a Short Story: 13 Top Tips

    2. Say Your Dialogue Out Loud. It can be hard sometimes to make the dialogue in your story seem realistic. To combat this, try saying the dialogue you have written out loud. This will help you to be able to see whether it feels natural to say, or feels forced or fake. Does it sound like a real person would say it?

  12. How to Write Dialogue with Good and Bad Dialogue Examples

    Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" - If you haven't read this story before, then read it before you ever write another line of dialogue. The way Hemingway moves the story forward and subtly reveals everything about the characters through short, authentic dialogue is essentially a master class on writing dialogue.

  13. How to Write Great Dialogue for Short Stories

    Periods and commas go inside the quotation marks: "I'd like a whiskey," he said. If you break up dialogue to indicate sho said what, use commas: "I don't know about you guys," Frank said, "but, I'm off to bed.". If you switch between speakers, always start a new paragraph. For more tips, I recommend this resource.

  14. How To Write A Dialogue

    Whether you are working on a screenplay, novel, or short story, creating authentic and engaging dialogue is essential for bringing your characters to life and moving the plot forward. In this article, we will provide a comprehensive guide on how to write effective dialogue that captivates your readers or audience. 1.

  15. The Art of the Paragraph: How to Write Dialogue

    Paragraphs build a story segment-by-segment. They establish and adjust the pace while adding subtle texture. They convey mood and voice. They help readers visualize the characters and the way they think and act by regulating the flow of their thoughts and actions. In this series, adapted from "The Art of the Paragraph" by Fred D. White in the ...

  16. How to Write Dialogue in a Story that's Natural

    No matter what the punctuation of the statement is, since the tag is still in the middle of the statement, it will be in small letters. For neutral statements, commas are usually placed at the end of the statement then the tag. There's also a special placement of the dialogue tag, which is in the middle of a statement. Check the example below.

  17. 20 Dialogue Writing Prompts to Level Up Your Story

    2. Create a conversation about finding a stray dog where it reveals something unexpected about one or both characters. 3. Start a story with the line, "But mother, I've only gotten rid of the last five.". 4. Write a dialogue exchange where someone is confronted after they lost a family member's most prized possession.

  18. How To Write Dialogue

    Whether you are working on a screenplay, novel, or short story, creating authentic and engaging dialogue is essential for bringing your characters to life and moving the plot forward. In this article, we will provide an in-depth guide on how to write effective dialogue that captivates your readers or audience.

  19. Rules of Writing: How to Write Simple Dialogue

    Jenny said. When dialogue is abruptly interrupted or cut off, use an em-dash inside the quotation mark: "Well, I don't think—". "Because you never think!". For a non-dialogue beat to break up a line of dialogue, use either commas or em-dashes: "And then I realized," Jane said with a sigh, "that he lied to me.".

  20. How to Write Dialogue in a Story: Stephen King's Tips

    According to Stephen King, dialogue is what characters say. It defines who they are and what they're like. A common rule of writing is "show, don't tell.". Instead of narrating what a character is like, show it through their speech. Through dialogue, a reader can tell if a character is witty or dull, transparent or sneaky, empathetic or ...

  21. Dialogue In Short Stories: How Much Is Too Much?

    Dialogue is an important tool in short stories that can reveal character, advance the plot, and create tension and emotion. Finding the right balance between dialogue and description is crucial, as well as paying attention to pacing, punctuation, and tags. Effective dialogue can create three-dimensional characters and drive the plot forward ...

  22. Engaging Short Stories to Use When Teaching Dialogue

    Short Stories: A Must-Use Tool When Teaching Dialogue. As with teaching any literary element, providing students with an array of examples is imperative when introducing them to dialogue. After all, this conversational exchange can take many forms and is used by authors for various purposes, including: Bringing a story to life.

  23. 10 Short Stories with Great Dialogue That Aren't "Hills Like White

    A slip of smoke hovered between her lips. "My father was a pack-a-day smoker until he died at ninety-two. I figure I'm immune.". "I'm not sure that would stand up to peer review," said Benjamin. "You're right. Too emotional.". *. Kevin Barry, " Fjord of Killary ," from Dark Lies the Island. Sample Dialogue:

  24. How to Write a Short Story

    When drafting a short story, one of the first steps is coming up with a core idea or premise to build the narrative around. Here are some effective techniques for generating initial story concepts: Brainstorming Prompts - Use writing prompts, either from online lists or ones you generate yourself, as a springboard.

  25. How to Write Dialogue: 7 Rules, 5 Tips & 65 Examples

    6. Practice with dialogue writing prompts. Finally, the most important advice from anyone who has mastered any art: practice! Observe how your favorite author writes dialogue in their books. Note down all remarkable examples of dialogue writing and study them for why they work. You can also make use of some dialogue writing exercises.

  26. How to Have More Meaningful Conversations

    A silent laugh, a barely audible sigh, a friendly expression during a tense moment: Some people have learned to spot these opportunities, to detect what kind of discussion is occurring, to ...

  27. Dr. Imdad Hussain Society for English on Instagram: "On 19th of

    28 likes, 1 comments - imdadhussainenglishsociety on February 20, 2024: "On 19th of February 2024, the Dr. Imdad Hussain society for English hosted a short story writing ..." Dr. Imdad Hussain Society for English on Instagram: "On 19th of February 2024, the Dr. Imdad Hussain society for English hosted a short story writing workshop with Miss ...

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    Paul Ryan, former House speaker and vice presidential nominee, joins Washington Post Live to discuss Donald Trump's hold on the Republican Party, the...