Functions of Dialogue: How to Write Better Dialogue (Part 1 of

I recently led a writers’ group meeting where we discussed Dialogue. I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who came to me afterward and said how helpful the tips were.

Dialogue is tricky. It’s the stalwart workhorse of your novel but rarely recognized as such. Great prose pulls our attention but great dialogue we tend to skip right through, not even realizing it’s greatness until we come upon poorly written dialogue. Like most elements in writing if it’s almost invisible, it’s doing its job.

Dialogue serves so many important functions in story, I’ve highlighted just a few of them below.

1.       Uses of Dialogue

-        Advance the Plot

Perhaps the most obvious way in which a writer may choose to use dialogue is to move the story forward. In showing a reader what happens to your characters (instead of telling) we need dialogue to convey the scene in real time. Be careful however that you don’t have your characters exchanging info they already know. This grievous error is worse than an info dump, as it comes across as condescending.

Looks like this:

“Bertie, my best friend, if you come by the house today at four, I’ll give you the keys to Anna, my sister’s, storage unit. You can then ask her if she’d like help unpacking it.”

“Yes. She’s a fiery one. She’ll likely tell me to shove off, but I’m not one to back down easily. I’ll convince her.”

I’ve really over done it here to blatantly show the exchange of info they both already know as well as telling where I should be showing. See how you feel irritated and “talked-down to” here? Your readers feel it too. Avoid this beginner’s mistake, your readers will thank you for it.

-        Reveal your characters’ character

So many ways to reveal character through dialogue. Your characters’ worldview: their obsessions and preoccupations. What do they keep coming back to? What offends them? What do they dwell on/always want to discuss/or avoid discussing?

Their vocabulary, dialects and accents, can reveal their level of education, what part of the world they originate from, who they hang out with and believe themselves to be.

Looks like this:

“What’d you say?” vs. “Pardon me?”

See that? With no other context but only the above lines of dialogue you are picturing two very different characters. They’ve said the same thing. Either they haven’t heard the other person in the scene, or are incredulous about what that person has said, but either way they are very different people.

-        Establish Context

Tell us about your characters’ peer groups. Are they a doctor or a cowboy? Do they perform surgery or drive cattle and mend fences? Both work with their hands all day but in a very different capacity. Doctors speak in code, as do men and women in many professions. Cowboys too, speak in a way that makes little sense to a surgeon or an FBI agent. Be sure to add these authenticating flavors to your story, but also be sure to “dumb it down” enough to allow your reader to follow. You’ve invited them along on this ride, don’t leave them behind now.

-        Set the tone/mood

Genre has a large effect on many things that new writers sometimes forget to consider. Things like the speed of your story is largely affected by the style in which you write dialogue. Do your characters speak slowly and with extra words or do they use short, clipped sentences almost to the point of being terse with one another?

You’ll set the tone or mood for your story through many elements of your writing; dialogue is an excellent place to show your reader what your character is feeling. Remember characters are not only affected by each other but also by the environment they are in. Weather, location, mental and physical health all can be used to communicate how your character is feeling and how they are being affected by their environment.

-        Reveal theme

If the theme of your story is that Love Conquers All you’ll probably have a character in your novel (not the MC, remember your MC is here to learn the theme, one of their relationships is here to teach it to them. See this blog post on Your MC’s misbelief for more.) who will speak often and eloquently about love, its beauty, its strength, its importance, etc.

Be careful the scenes revealing theme do not come off too preachy. You have not invited them to attend a lecture. You have invited them on a story adventure with you. Show them the theme through character actions.

Next Week Part 2: Dialogue Tags

Week 3 Part 3: Dialogue Mechanics