‘Yellow Top? Town Taxi? Checker?’įinally I guess I got one right, or maybe she just felt sorry for me.’ Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992), pp. ‘Red Top?’ I said desperately, trying to guess at names, make them up, anything. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but we’re not allowed to-‘ ‘I don’t know the name of a specific taxi service,’ I said thickly.’There’s not a phone book here.’ ‘You have to give me the name of a specific taxi service,’ she said. ‘My voice was slurred and the operator wouldn’t give me the number of a taxi company. We often begin phone calls with pleasantries, for example, such as ‘Hi, how are you?’ Yet effective dialogue skips over the boring bits.įor example, here is a phone conversation from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History: Make your written dialogue cut to the chase. In spoken conversations, we often change subjects, ramble, or use filler words like ‘um’ and ‘like’. Make your written dialogue cut to the chase So how do you write dialogue that carries this purposeful sense of the word? 1.
It solves the story’s problems, sketches in clues, builds anticipation, suspense and more. In storytelling, great dialogue often follows the verbal definition. But it’s useful to remember the definition of dialogue as a verb: To ‘take part in a conversation or discussion to resolve a problem’. ‘Dialogue’ as a noun means ‘a conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play or film’ ( OED). The subtle shades of spoken conversation have to be shaded in using descriptive language. Written dialogue (as opposed to spoken conversation) is challenging in part because the reader does not have auditory clues for understanding tone. Read 7 dialogue examples and the insights they give us into crafting effective character conversations: Defining dialogue Good dialogue intrigues, informs, moves a story along.
Writing dialogue in a novel requires more than knowing how to write a conversation.
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