Writing Dialogue

Tanya and dying fireman Stefan in my play about Chernobyl, Wormwood. 
This was a very hard and harrowing scene to write. 

I don't often write 'how to' posts about writing - mostly because I think there are far too many of them, often contradictory. But early this year, I was asked to give a talk/workshop on writing historical fiction, and it occurred to me yet again how difficult it is to teach people to write credible dialogue. 

I was a playwright before I wrote long fiction, and learning your craft in that medium obviously involves writing dialogue, but I never thought of it in that way. Even when I was in my early teens, I started dramatising extracts from novels, such as my beloved Wuthering Heights, and although those efforts might have been pretty clumsy, I inadvertently learned a great deal about dialogue along the way. 

Soon, you stop thinking about the process. You simply let the characters speak to each other and reveal themselves. Which is what I do now. I never think about rules, never look at lists of things to do and not to do. I just listen to my characters and write down what they tell each other, and what they are doing while they are speaking. Or not speaking. 

If a character is narrating his or her own story - as in my historical novel The Physic Garden - the voice of that person becomes almost uncannily strong. One of my (ex) agents suggested that I rewrite that novel in the third rather than in the first person. I tried it, but it simply wouldn't work. William Lang's voice was much too strong to be denied. He just wasn't having it. Read it and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, in case you're not there yet, here are some hints and tips. Take what seems useful and leave the rest. 

Some writers, especially at the beginning of their careers, struggle with dialogue, because they try to reproduce what they think of as real conversations. In fiction, dialogue is not ordinary speech, although you want it to be realistic. It is an essential part of storytelling. 

Here are some handy bullet points.

1 Dialogue has a purpose.
Think about what the characters want, and why. Good dialogue may contain persuasion, disagreement, concealment, attraction, or conflict.

2 People don’t say exactly what they mean.
In real life, people avoid the truth, soften it, joke about it, or change the subject. Try letting characters hint rather than explain. Readers enjoy understanding what lies beneath the words.

3 Read your dialogue aloud.
Dialogue is meant to be heard. If you read it, you can often hear what is wrong with it.

4 Start late, leave early.
You rarely need greetings or polite endings. Forget ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. Begin and end where something interesting happens.

5 Each character will sound different.
Speech is shaped by age, background, education, confidence, temperament and sometimes by desire. Differences often appear in rhythm, word choice and hesitation, rather than accent.

6 Writing historical dialogue.

Readers need credibility, not linguistic archaeology. 
Authenticity does not mean imitation of old texts. Avoid modern slang and anachronism that breaks the illusion but also avoid exaggerated archaism. Aim instead for a flavour of the period, the cadence of the language, the odd word here and there. But if you're not Scottish and you're writing something set here, for the love of God avoid littering your text with ochs and wees. Or excessive use of lads and lasses. 

7 Dialogue should change something.
After a conversation, information emerges, or a decision is made, or power shifts, or misunderstanding deepens. If nothing changes, the scene and the conversation may not be necessary.

8 Silence matters.
What characters refuse to say can be more powerful than what they do say. Interruptions, evasions, and changed subjects often reveal the truth.

9 Dialogue improves when writers learn to listen to real people.

I overheard a woman having a phone conversation with her elderly mother in the supermarket the other day that was pure dialogue gold. She was shopping for the older lady. I lurked there, looking at the custard tarts and listening. If I were putting some of that in a play or a novel, I would probably write the other side of the conversation (unless I was writing a monologue) and edit it, tightening the whole thing up. Realistic speech, but not real speech, remember. Which means that you should also listen to plays, including radio drama, and good audio books.

Finally!

With practice, many writers discover something surprising: eventually, if you have made them real enough, the characters begin to speak for themselves. And act for themselves too. That's when the trouble really starts ...