[00:14] Emily: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:19] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:20] Rachel: And today we're going to talk about how to write dialogue that feels natural.
[00:24] Emily: We get this question all of the time from writers. I feel like there's this confusion about how to write dialogue on the page, not only in a way that feels natural, but that is engaging. And I think people it's one of those things that people really overthink. And A, you don't have to overthink it. You certainly can. You can overthink it until the cows come home. But I think we've got some tips for you today for some of the key things to think about for making your dialogue really feel critical and important and like, it's moving the story forward on the page. And I think dialogue can be really fun to write. And it's one of those things where we all know how to talk because we have conversations all the time. But it's like, how do you then take that and put it on the page in a way that's engaging? I think so, because we're humans, we have conversations all the time. We have this idea of what a conversation is that I think doesn't necessarily translate to the page. Like, we can have really long arguments or have really funny conversations with people, and we can conversations sort of they transition in slowly, and then you have a deep conversation, and then it transitions to something else. And I think it can be confusing when you're trying to figure out what to put on the page. Like, where do you start a conversation? Where do you end a conversation? How do you have banter that doesn't get shoved in a different direction than.
[02:02] Rachel: Where your story is going?
[02:03] Emily: And how do you have something be funny or something be intense or have an argument without having to go on for pages and pages and pages?
[02:12] Rachel: That's how I used to write. I used to write dialogue that went on for pages and pages and pages. Because we've talked about this on the podcast before, but I'm definitely like a panther. So I'm exploring what is this conversation about as I'm writing it? But then I also felt like you have to have every piece of this on the page, including the part where they say, like, bye at one point.
[02:35] Emily: Exactly.
[02:36] Rachel: I would include that people meet, they say, hi. They say, how are you? They have small talk and then they talk about what's important, and then they make small talk and then they leave. Those are my conversations. Now, is that natural? Yeah, but is that page worthy? No, he does not.
[02:56] Emily: I love it. All right, well, let's dive into our tips. So the first tip is that dialogue should always be intentional and relevant to the story. So if you are familiar with scene structure or scene structure beats you always want your dialogue to be hitting those purposeful beats in your story that are moving the story forward. And so you want to give it a purpose. When you think about the conversation that you're putting on the page, you want to ask yourself, how can I use this conversation to show what my character is motivated by what they want? How can I use it to show what they fear? How can I use it to reveal obstacles in the plot or critical plot information that's going to change decisions that they make or show the reader, like, what's at stake, or up the stakes? And by doing that, by asking yourself those questions and giving the dialogue as much purpose as you possibly can, it's not going to feel like you're veering off in some random direction or that we've lost the thread of the story.
[04:02] Rachel: Yeah, like, exactly what I was just saying. You don't need the filler, you don't need the pleasantries, you don't need the highs and goodbyes and the slowly tapering off. Unless that's specifically relevant to this part of the story or this character, I'm going to guess it's not. But you don't need that. So you can just cut out that filler stuff and stick with the stuff that has a story purpose. Yeah.
[04:32] Emily: And I think one of my favorite tricks to do when folks are struggling with this is to say whatever scene structure you use, like, map your conversation to that.
[04:42] Rachel: Right.
[04:42] Emily: How does your character, what goal did they have them into the conversation? How does the conversation take a turn that pushes them away from that goal? How does the conflict gets worse, and what is it building to, and how does the tension snap? And then what decisions do they make in their conversation with one another? And how is all of that relevant to the larger story as a whole?
[05:01] Rachel: Yeah. And if it's not relevant, if it doesn't move that plot forward, if it's not showing the reader more about your characters, creating conflict, expressing that motivation or fears, if it's not doing any of these purposeful things, does it need to be there? You can probably cut it out.
[05:24] Emily: Absolutely.
[05:26] Rachel: All right, second tip number two. Okay, so our second tip is to use dialogue to show what's going on under the conversation, which is the subtext. So this is true of daily conversations of any type of interaction, but people rarely say what we actually mean. We go into conversations with our own individual goals. Everybody does. Rarely do you start a conversation without a purpose, even if that purpose is.
[05:56] Emily: To just fill space because you feel awkward.
[05:58] Rachel: Right, exactly. But we go into conversations with goals of seeking information, wanting to convince somebody of something, trying to figure out what someone else wants, trying to communicate something that we feel, but we rarely say, like, what it is we exactly mean. So when you're planning your conversations or when you're writing this dialogue, ask yourself, what does each person in the conversation actually want and why? What are they trying to do here? What are they trying to get? Ask yourself what emotions are fueling their words? What's going on inside them? What are they not saying? What do they wish they could say? All of these things are really helpful to help create the mood of this conversation and to create the subtext, the thing that is really going on that your characters aren't coming straight out and.
[06:56] Emily: Saying, I feel like this is one of the most important tips, and I think it's one of the ones that people miss completely all of the time. Because we have a tendency when we're writing conversations down, to write exactly what the characters are thinking and feeling and have them say exactly what they want to say and exactly what they mean. And I think once you start to think about it in this way of what do they actually want, how are they going to go about getting that? How does that change the way that they approach someone and the things that they say? And it just adds so much depth and complexity to the conversations that I think is like the key to making them feel natural.
[07:34] Rachel: Yeah, it absolutely is. Because the next time you go and think, okay, I'm going to go have this conversation with my partner, there are unlimited amount of things that you might want. And then you're going to dictate the way you approach that conversation to how you think that other person might react, what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what you want and what you're trying not to say. And it influences every part of the way that we communicate, whether or not we realize it basically the character.
[08:03] Emily: Oh, go ahead.
[08:04] Rachel: I was just going to say you might not think that you're doing that, but you absolutely are. And your characters should do the same. For some reason, our characters tend to come out way more honest than we actually are as people. 100% true. Normally how it works.
[08:21] Emily: Yeah, it's a great way to characterize characters like add characterization too, because every character is going to approach it in a different way.
[08:29] Rachel: Right.
[08:30] Emily: You might have a character who's really blunt and really aggressive and does tend to say the things that they are thinking and feeling because that's part of their character. And then you might have characters who are really nervous and really bad at lying, and so their body language gives away that they're not telling the truth. And so all of that can add to who your characters are and how they go about getting what they want based on what they believe is effective in their personality and stuff. And so I think it can be really fun to start to think in these ways.
[09:03] Rachel: I agree. So what's our next tip?
[09:07] Emily: Okay, so this one I'm going to kind of transition from the previous one to this one because they're kind of tied because we're talking about right. People don't always say what they mean. And so when we're talking about the characters who were not in their head, right, we have to show what they're actually thinking and feeling, or hint at it. Your main character might not understand what they're really feeling and thinking, but as the writer, you want to know what they're feeling and thinking so that you can add in little clues through their body language, through their expressions, to affirm or contradict what they're saying and give us a hint as to what's really going on under the surface in their minds. And so the third tip is when you're in your point of view characters head, you have more freedom to do that. And so the tip is to show your point of view characters true desires in the dissonance between what they're thinking, what they're feeling, and what they're actually saying out loud.
[10:08] Rachel: Yeah.
[10:10] Emily: Because you have an opportunity here to really show us all of that subtext for that character and to show how they're interpreting what other people are thinking and feeling. How do they interpret the subtext of what other people want in a conversation. And so you can think about what are they thinking but not saying. Can you put those thoughts on the page and show us that they're not saying them out loud?
[10:38] Rachel: Yeah.
[10:40] Emily: Show us through their thoughts how they're interpreting what the other speakers are saying and doing with their body language and really give us that subtext through their perspective.
[10:54] Rachel: Yeah. You're so right that these are tied because so often we do things that we don't mean and that we think things and we say something different. And part of this tip is to use that to reveal what your character is actually thinking. That show? Part of show? Don't tell. So if your character is we use one of these examples, and I'm going to paraphrase it, but in our guide called the Show Don't tell formula, which talks about something called a reaction progression, we can do an episode on that later. But one of the examples that we have in there is of a character who underneath the surface is very unhappy with their job and they don't love it and they want to find a different job. They have a very overbearing boss, but on the surface, they're like a peoplepleaser and they're going to do what their boss says. So in this dialogue piece, their boss tells them to do something and they think, I hate you. I don't want to do it. But what they say is, I'll be happy to, I'll be right there. And there's a complete change there that's not exactly but that's showing us what the character really thinks. They're saying something completely different than what they're feeling.
[12:18] Emily: Yeah. You're not saying, I am a people, pleaser. The character is showing us between the dissonance between what they're feeling and thinking versus what they're actually saying out loud, that they're the kind of person who's a miserable in this job and be a people pleaser. So I'm not going to do anything about it.
[12:35] Rachel: Right?
[12:36] Emily: Love it. Cool.
[12:38] Rachel: So on to our next one.
[12:40] Emily: Sounds good.
[12:41] Rachel: All right, so our fourth tip is to weave conflict and action throughout a conversation. Readers rarely want to read pages and pages of just dialogue. That may be my favorite thing, to just write pages and pages of just dialogue, but it is not a reader's favorite thing to read forever. So when we're talking about weaving conflict in action throughout the conversation, we want you to present the scene like, what is going on in this scene? Rarely do you have a conversation where one person and another person are standing face to face and just talking and doing nothing else. Unless you're getting at the mailbox.
[13:21] Emily: And I'm just kidding. That's a boring scene in your story. I don't know, someone somewhere could make that riveting.
[13:29] Rachel: Those characters are probably not just like, super close face to face, doing nothing else but staring into each other's eyes.
[13:35] Emily: They're getting the mail walking their dog.
[13:37] Rachel: They're doing something. They're pacing around a room. They're angry. They're running their hands through their hair. They're feeling their heart pumping like there's action going on, both for your POV character and for the person, the people that they're interacting with. So you can work in these conflicts, these activities, into your conversations. As the character is moving around the scene, there is movement going on nine times out of ten. So put that movement on the page and it'll help break up this conversation and it will feel a lot more natural.
[14:14] Emily: It's also the key, I think, to showing that subtext, because you need to give characters actions to do and running their hands to their hair or bringing their hands together or wiping their hands and lots of hands, lots of hands, lots of hands movements. Like, what else are you going to do if you're not interacting with something else? Whereas you could have somebody doing the dishes and drop a dish because they're shocked or angry, or you can put them in I was going to say conversation with my son. Right? You could put them in movement with their surroundings as a way to show some of that subtext via their behaviors in addition to their expressions. Some questions that you can think about to get to this is as you're exploring whatever conversation it is that you're working on, have your characters use the action of the scene to do something while they're talking. So can you have them actively pursuing another goal outside of the conversation? Can you have them talking on the way to implementing a goal together? Can you have them waiting for something to happen and sort of acting in a way where they're impatient or waiting or pacing around a room. Like, you can do a lot with that. You could have them debriefing something that just happened and kind of cleaning up from it. You can have them prepping for something that's about to happen. But adding action to a conversation will just bring it alive and make it feel natural.
[15:47] Rachel: Yeah. And do your best to tie that action toward maybe what that character is feeling. If they're going to be washing dishes, why are they washing dishes? We don't just put them in a dishwashing scene just because they're maybe washing dishes. Because they can't look this other person in the eye. And so they're avoiding this confrontation by keeping their hands busy. There's a scene that I love in Name of the Wind, where the main character, he's telling the story of his life, but he never stops moving. He never sits down, and he's, like, constantly cleaning a bar or he's, like, shoveling ashes. He's, like, doing something, putting dishes away. And it's everywhere throughout every interaction that you have with him. Very rarely does he just sit because it's giving this sense of he's anxious, and if he sits down, he has to confront the horrible things that happen to him. So he's constantly moving as an understated way of avoiding his problems. Yeah. So as you're doing this action, creating this conflict, setting the movement of this scene, this tip is not saying, like, create something out of nothing. It's saying, what is this character doing in the scene? Why are they doing it? And how can you make that present on the page to clue us into what this character is thinking and feeling? And how can this action that's going on between this character and another character break up the pieces of this dialogue in a purposeful way?
[17:26] Emily: I love that. I love the dishes example because I think it's a really simple way of, like, there are a million reasons why we could be washing dishes. We could be washing dishes because a party is about to happen and we're cleaning the house, or we can be washing dishes because we can't stand to look at another person in the eye or washing dishes because we're waiting for a really important phone call and we can't sit still. Right? And so there's a lot of think about the actions that they're doing. And I love that question, why are they doing that right now in this moment? And then, what can you show through that action about what they're feeling and thinking? Awesome. So The Last Tip is one of my favorites, which is read your dialogue aloud. Simple might sound crazy, but if you haven't tried this before, you might be surprised at what it can do. Because and when I say this, I mean it in two different ways. You can read those scenes as it's written, with all of the subtext in the middle, with everything else that's going on, or you can just literally read the dialogue lines because I think there's something about feeling out the actual pace of the conversation by just reading what said aloud and imagining the subtext in between. That can help you kind of sense, does this feel natural? And if not, where is it feeling a little forced? Or where is it feeling like characters are a little too honest? Or where does it just kind of feel off? And you can address sort of why that feels that way.
[19:02] Rachel: Yeah. It can also help you catch editing things. That's not necessarily what this tip is about. But I was reading a book a couple of days ago where the dialogue started with this character asking a question and then they started going through the responses to that question and then a couple paragraphs later, a different character asked the same question and the conversation just continued on. And I was like, wait a second, what which has happened? That question was already asked. That's an editing thing. But that also is like that flow. That conversation probably went a couple of different ways as it was edited. And if you speak that aloud, you can see, oh, why is this person now saying this thing that was already covered? It feels more real to speak aloud and then that can help you decide where you're going to pivot and which characters are going to say which things so that you don't have that repetitiveness and then later on potentially not catch it.
[20:02] Emily: Yeah. And if you're super into like, I don't know, getting into it, you can.
[20:07] Rachel: Use it role play, but to speak.
[20:11] Emily: With the attitude that they have or the intonation that you imagine. And that can help you not only figure out the shape of the sentence right. The way that they say the thing, but also how it comes across to the main character or the point of view character and how they interpret it and how that push and pull of somebody says something with a certain attitude or a certain feeling and somebody else responds with a certain attitude and a certain feeling which informs how the other person responds back. And you can get a feel for that flow because readers will feel that on the page with all that subtext woven through.
[20:47] Rachel: Yeah. I want to add one last attachment tip and this goes back to what we were saying at the beginning of the episode. These things we've been talking about are fairly natural to us in regular conversation. So a homework assignment that you can do is the next time you are having a conversation with someone, try to catch all of these things in real time. So like going back to, okay, what are you actually saying versus what you actually mean? What are you doing throughout this conversation? What's that other person doing? And just like bring awareness to the dialogue that you are having and you'll start to see how these are present without you even knowing it. And once you see that, it kind of opens your eyes to, oh, okay, well, I can bring that into my writing. So pay attention to your own conversations and see what you can draw from those conversations to bring into the page.
[21:46] Emily: Love it. Awesome.
[21:48] Rachel: Okay, so as we wrap up here, we want to go ahead and invite you again. If you have any type of writing craft question, Mindset question, Community question feel free to email them into us at [email protected] and you can put in the subject line Podcast Question because we are going to do periodically episodes where we answer listener questions, give some advice, give some coaching, and we would love to hear from you and see what you're struggling with and see how we can help unblock you from that. Help free you to get back to the page.
[22:24] Emily: Let us know what you want to hear. Yes. Awesome. So if you want to build a successful, filling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[22:35] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[22:44] Emily: Links in the show notes will see you there.
[22:47] Rachel: Thank you. Bye bye, guys.