Dialogue can really bring your fiction writing to life.
For ideas of what to include alongside your dialogue, watch people on the street or anywhere where you have the opportunity to study people surreptitiously. I often suggest a café but, wherever you choose to conduct your observations, watch people closely. What are they doing while they are talking? Watch their body language, eye contact, facial expression etc.
Listen to the pitch and tone of their voices, the cadence, rhythm and flow of their words. Incorporating these elements into a fictional scene will help you to avoid having to tag your writing as a result of not having conveyed action or mood sufficiently.
If you’re focussing on your own conversation for inspiration, then be very aware of what you’re doing and what other speaker(s) are doing during the conversation. Are you having any thoughts that are pertinent to your conversation? How might you include these in your writing to further add to the dialogue and to character or setting?
Afterwards, try to recall the conversation and everything that you thought, the things that distracted you etc. What can you recall of the body language of the person you were talking to? What impressions were you left with about their mood? How did that come across? How much of your impression was conveyed by what was said and how much by body language and by the tone of what was contributed to the conversation? You may find that your initial thoughts about the conversation change as a result of this dissection!
By reading facial expression you can often add detail that hasn’t been conveyed through words. Is someone gazing into space, distracted and unfocussed or opening their eyes wide in disbelief at something that has been said? Facial expression and body language can be as telling as the words we use and can contrast – adding new and different meaning and developing character.
What too of what we don’t say? Those thoughts that run through our character’s heads as they are having conversations or during narration. They can also be added to dialogue and will help to develop a reader’s idea of character. Authors often struggle with the conventions of how to produce dialogue and inner dialogue on the page, I’ve found these notes which will help you to decide how you want to approach inner dialogue, my preference is for italics and to incorporate inner dialogue within narrative: https://writersrelief.com/2008/07/03/characters-thoughts-punctuating-and-formatting/
Dialogue vacuum is also something authors often struggle with and essentially this refers to dialogue without any setting details or character development to offset it. So, for example, if you’ve got two characters batting conversation back and forth without anything but dialogue tags then you’ve got a dialogue vacuum. Here’s an example of dialogue vacuum for a scene set in a cafe:
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Alison said. ‘What will you have? My treat, I shouldn’t have been late.’
‘Are you sure? I think you bought the first drink last time?’ Emma replied.
It is never the case that dialogue happens on its own unless you have two characters on the phone to each other, and even in this instance you would be able to see and narrate one side of the conversation to including description of what the speaker is doing while they are on the phone and their facial expressions.
To ensure your dialogue doesn’t fall into a vacuum, you need to think about what’s going on when you have conversations with people. For example a bus might rumble past, you might mentally wonder what you’re going to have for dinner that evening, you might scratch your nose, put the TV on mute, go and get yourself a cup of coffee or a snack from the fridge etc. But what you won’t be doing is simply having this conversation. Even if you feel you are just focussed on the conversation itself then your mind will distantly be aware of various elements of life going on around you.
When you are engaged in a conversation your body language and facial expression add to the listener’s understanding of your words and of your character. Essentially, each time you have a conversation with someone you are adding to their knowledge of you.
Alongside this they will also build an image of the surroundings and how you react within these. Again, this develops that impression of character. Bearing setting details in mind and thinking of ways in which you might add personality traits to your characters alongside and within dialogue is useful and enriches dialogue and character.
Next time you’re in conversation with someone, focus on every element of it: was your attention distracted by something going on around you? What else was going on around you that might have been pertinent to the conversation? How were you standing or sitting? Did you get uncomfortable in one position or have to move for another reason? All of these actions – no matter how small – add to the conversation and bring your scene to life.
Here’s an example of how you might incorporate these elements into your dialogue:
Ahh, there she was. Emma looked at her watch, only two minutes late this time, she moved her hand into a wave and hoped Alison hadn’t seen her gaze at her watch.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ Alison said as they air-kissed. Mwah-ing loudly into each other’s ears. ‘What will you have? My treat, I shouldn’t have been late.’
You always are, Emma’s mouth tightened slightly, and she widened it into a smile, ‘Are you sure? I think you bought the first drink last time?’
You’ll notice that we only get Emma’s thoughts, this is an example of third person limited. The story is told from Emma’s perspective – she’s the only one at the table when Alison arrives – so we know she’s our main protagonist, for this scene at least. Ensure you stick to the detail your lead character can both see and have awareness of to avoid head hopping.
Other important points to remember:
- Don’t include so much detail that it detracts from the dialogue or scene.
- Don’t include any details that don’t add to the dialogue or scene and give them additional meaning – these are called fidgets and again they will detract from dialogue.
- Remember that everything you write and include should drive your story forwards in some way.