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Last updated on Sep 21, 2023

How to Write Fabulous Dialogue [9 Tips + Examples]

This post is written by author, editor, and bestselling ghostwriter Tom Bromley. He is the  instructor of Reedsy's 101-day course,  How to Write a Novel .

Good dialogue isn’t about quippy lines and dramatic pauses.

Good dialogue is about propelling the story forward, pulling the reader along, and fleshing out characters and their dynamics in front of readers. Well-written dialogue can take your story to a new level — you just have to unlock it.

In this article, I’ll break down the major steps of writing great dialogue, and provide exercises for you to practice your own dialogue on.

Here's how to write great dialogue in 9 steps:

1. Use quotation marks to signal speech

2. pace dialogue lines by three , 3. use action beats , 4. use ‘said’ as a dialogue tag  , 5. write scene-based dialogue, 6. model any talk on real life , 7. differentiate character voices, 8. "show, don't tell" information in conversation , 9. delete superfluous words, which dialogue tag are you.

Find out in just a minute.

Alfred Hitchcock once said, “Drama is life with all the boring bits cut out.”

Similarly, I could say that good dialogue in a novel is a real conversation without all the fluff — and with quotation marks. 

Imagine, for instance, if every scene with dialogue in your novel started out with:

'Hey, buddy! How are you doing?"

“Great! How are you?""

'Great! Long time no see! Parking was a nightmare, wasn’t it?"

Firstly, from a technical perspective, the quotation marks are inconsistent and incorrectly formatted. To learn about the mechanics of your dialogue and how to format it, we also wrote this full post on the topic that I recommend reading.

Secondly, from a novel perspective, such lines don’t add anything to the story. And finally, from a reading perspective, your readers will not want to sit through this over and over again. Readers are smart: they can infer that all these civilities occur. Which means that you can skip the small talk (unless it’s important to the story) to get to the heart of the dialogue from the get-go.  

For a more tangible example of this technique, check out the dialogue-driven opening to Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Unsheltered .

Screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb once proposed an idea called the “Three-Beat Rule.” What this recommends, essentially, is to introduce a maximum of three dialogue “beats” (the short phrases in speech you can say without pausing for breath) at a time. Only after these three dialogue beats should you insert a dialogue tag, action beat, or another character’s speech.

Here’s an example from Jane Gardam’s short story, “Dangers”, in which the boy Jake is shooting an imaginary gun at his grandmother:

In theory, this sounds simple enough. In practice, however, it’s a bit more complicated than that, simply because dialogue conventions continue to change over time. There’s no way to condense “good dialogue” into a formula of three this, or two that. But if you’re just starting out and need a strict rule to help you along, then the Three-Beat Rule is a good place to begin experimenting.

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Let’s take a look at another kind of “beats” now — action beats.

Action beats are the descriptions of the expressions, movements, or even internal thoughts that accompany the speaker’s words. They’re always included in the same paragraph as the dialogue, so as to indicate that the person acting is also the person speaking.

On a technical level, action beats keep your writing varied, manage the pace of a dialogue-heavy scene, and break up the long list of lines ending in ‘he said’ or ‘she said’.

But on a character level, action beats are even more important because they can go a level deeper than dialogue and illustrate a character’s body language.

When we communicate, dialogue only forms a half of how we get across what we want to say. Body language is that missing half — which is why action beats are so important in visualizing a conversation, and can help you “show” rather than “tell” in writing.

Here’s a quick exercise to practice thinking about body language in the context of dialogue: imagine a short scene, where you are witnessing a conversation between two people from the opposite side of a restaurant or café. Because it’s noisy and you can’t hear what they are saying, describe the conversation through the use of body language only.

Remember, at the end of the day, action beats and spoken dialogue are partners in crime. These beats are a commonly used technique so you can find plenty of examples —  here’s one from  Never Let Me Go  by Kazuo Ishiguro . 

If there’s one golden rule in writing dialogue, it’s this: ‘said’ is your friend.

Yes, ‘said’ is nothing new. Yes, ‘said’ is used by all other authors out there already. But you know what? There’s a reason why ‘said’ is the king of dialogue tags: it works.

Pro-tip: While we cannot stress enough the importance of "said," sometimes you do need another dialogue tag. Download this free cheatsheet of 270+ other words for said to get yourself covered!

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Upgrade your dialogue with our list of 270 alternatives to “said.”

The thinking goes that ‘said’ is so unpretentious, so unassuming that it focuses readers’ attention on what’s most important on the page: the dialogue itself. As writer Elmore Leonard puts it: 

“Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But ‘said’ is far less intrusive than ‘grumbled,’ ‘gasped,’ ‘cautioned,’ ‘lied.’”

It might be tempting at times to turn towards other words for ‘said’ such as ‘exclaimed,’ or ‘declared,’ but my general rule of thumb is that in 90% of scenarios, ‘said’ is going to be the most effective dialogue tag for you to use while writing dialogue.

So now that we have several guidelines in place, this is a good spot to pause, reflect, and say that there’s no wrong or right way to write dialogue. It depends on the demands of the scene, the characters, and the story. Great dialogue isn’t about following this or that rule — but rather learning what technique to use when . 

If you stick to one rule the whole time — i.e. if you only use ‘said,’ or you finish every dialogue line with an action beat — you’ll wear out readers. Let’s see how unnaturally it plays out in the example below with Sophie and Ethan: 

All of which is to say: don’t be afraid to make exceptions to the rule if the scene asks for it. The key is to know when to switch up your dialogue structure or use of dialogue tags or action beats throughout a scene — and by extension, throughout your book.

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Dialogue isn’t always about writing grammatically perfect prose. The way a person speaks reflects the way a person is — and not all people are straight-A honor students who speak in impeccable English. In real life, the way people talk is fragmented, and punctuated by pauses.

That’s something that you should also keep in mind when you’re aiming to write authentic dialogue.

It can be tempting to think to yourself, “ Oh, I’ll try and slip in some exposition into my dialogue here to reveal important background information.” But if that results in an info-dump such as this — “ I’m just going to the well, Mother — the well that my brother, your son, tragically fell down five years ago ” — then you’ll probably want to take a step back and find a more organic, timely, and digestible way to incorporate that into your story.

Kay Adams is Michael’s date at his sister’s wedding in this scene. Her interest in his family is natural enough that the expository conversation doesn’t feel shoehorned in. 

A distinctive voice for each character is perhaps the most important element to get right in dialogue. Just as no one person in the world talks the same as each other, no one person in your book should also talk similarly.

To get this part of writing dialogue down pat, you need to start out by knowing your characters inside out. How does your character talk? Do they come with verbal quirks? Non-verbal quirks?

Jay Gatsby’s “old sport,” for example, gives him a distinctive, recognizable voice. It stands out because no one else has something as memorable about their speech. But more than that, it reveals something valuable about Gatsby’s character: he’s trying to impersonates a gentleman in his speech and lifestyle.

Likewise, think carefully about your character’s voice, and use catchphrases and character quirks when they can say something about your character. 

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“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most oft-repeated rules in writing, and a conversation on the page can be a gold mine for “showing.”

Authors can use action beats and descriptions to provide clues for readers to read between the lines. Let’s revisit Sophie and Ethan in this example:

While Sophie claims she hasn’t been obsessing over this project all night, the actions in between her words indicate there’s nothing on her mind  but  work. The result is that you show , through the action beats vs. the dialogue, Sophie being hardworking—rather than telling it.

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As always when it comes to writing a novel: all roads lead back to The Edit, and the dialogue you’ve written is no exception.

So while you’re editing your novel at the end, you may find that a “less is more” mentality will be helpful. Remember to cut out the unnecessary bits of dialogue, so that you can focus on making sure the dialogue you  do  keep matters. Good writing is intentional and purposeful, always striving to keep the story going and readers engaged. The importance lies in quality rather than quantity. 

One point I haven’t addressed yet is repetition. If used well (i.e. with clear intention), repetition is a  literary device  that can help you build motifs in your writing. But when you find yourself repeating information in your dialogue, it might be a good time to revise your work. 

For instance, here’s a scene with Sophie and Ethan later on in the story: 

As I’ve mentioned before, good dialogue shows character — and dialogue itself is a playground where character dynamics play out. If you write and edit your dialogue with this in mind, then your dialogue will be sharper, cleaner, and more organic. 

I know that writing dialogue can be intimidating, especially if you don’t have much experience with it. But that should never keep you from including it in your work! Just remember that the more you practice — especially with the help of these tips — the better you’ll get.

And once you’re confident with the conversational content you can conjure up, follow along to the next part of our guide to see how you can punctuate and format your dialogue flawlessly .

As an editor and publisher, Tom has worked on several hundred titles, again including many prize-winners and international bestsellers. 

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How to Write Dialogue in a Narrative Paragraph

Hayley Milliman

What is Dialogue?

How to write dialogue, how to punctuate your dialogue, periods and commas, question marks and exclamation points, final thoughts.

Dialogue is the written conversational exchange between two or more characters.

Conventional English grammar rules tell us that you should always start a new paragraph when someone speaks in your writing.

“Let’s get the heck out of here right now,” Mary said, turning away from the mayhem.

John looked around the pub. “Maybe you’re right,” he said and followed her towards the door.

Sometimes, though, in the middle of a narrative paragraph, your main character needs to speak.

Mary ducked away from flying fists. The fight at the pub was getting out of control. One man was grabbing bar stools and throwing them at others, and while she watched, another one who you could tell worked out regularly grabbed men by their shirt collars and tossed them out of the way. Almost hit by one flying person, she turned to John and said, “Let’s get the heck out of here right now.”

In my research, I couldn’t find any hard and fast rules that govern how to use dialogue in the middle of a narrative paragraph. It all depends on what style manual your publisher or editorial staff follow.

For example, in the Chicago Manual of Style , putting dialogue in the middle of paragraphs depends on the context. As in the above example, if the dialogue is a natural continuation of the sentences that come before, it can be included in your paragraph. The major caveat is if someone new speaks after that, you start a new paragraph and indent it.

On the other hand, if the dialogue you’re writing departs from the sentences that come before it, you should start a new paragraph and indent the dialogue.

The fight at the pub was getting out of control. One man was grabbing bar stools and throwing them at others, and another one who you could tell worked out regularly grabbed men by their shirt collars and tossed them out of the way.

Punctuation for dialogue stays consistent whether it’s included in your paragraph or set apart as a separate paragraph. We have a great article on how to punctuate your dialogue here: Where Does Punctuation Go in Dialogue?

It’s often a stylistic choice whether to include your dialogue as part of the paragraph. If you want your dialogue to be part of the scene described in preceding sentences, you can include it.

But if you want your dialogue to stand out from the action, start it in the next paragraph.

Dialogue is a fantastic way to bring your readers into the midst of the action. They can picture the main character talking to someone in their mind’s eye, and it gives them a glimpse into how your character interacts with others.

That said, dialogue is hard to punctuate, especially since there are different rules for different punctuation marks—because nothing in English grammar is ever easy, right?

We’re going to try to make this as easy as possible. So we’ll start with the hardest punctuation marks to understand.

For American English, periods and commas always go inside your quotation marks, and commas are used to separate your dialogue tag from the actual dialogue when it comes at the beginning of a sentence or in the middle. Here are a few examples:

Nancy said, “Let’s go to the park today since the weather is so beautiful.”

“Let’s go to the park today since the weather is so beautiful,” she said.

“Let’s go to the park today,” she said, “since the weather is so beautiful.”

British English puts the periods and commas inside the quotation marks if they’re actually part of the quoted words or sentence. Consider the following example:

• She sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, the theme song from The Wizard of Oz.

In the above example, the comma after “Rainbow” is not part of the quoted material and thus belongs outside the quotation marks.

But for most cases when you’re punctuating dialogue, the commas and periods belong inside the quotation marks.

Where these punctuation marks go depends on the meaning of your sentence. If your main character is asking someone a question or exclaiming about something, the punctuation marks belongs inside the quotation marks.

Nancy asked, “Does anyone want to go to the park today?”

Marija said, “That’s fantastic news!”

“Please say you’re still my friend!” Anna said.

“Can we just leave now?” asked Henry.

But if the question mark or exclamation point is for the sentence as a whole instead of just the words inside the quotation marks, they belong outside of the quotes.

Does your physical therapist always say to his patients, “You just need to try harder”?

Do you agree with the saying, “All’s fair in love and war”?

Single Quotation Marks

Only use single quotation marks for quotes within quotes, such as when a character is repeating something someone else has said. Single quotes are never used for any other purpose.

Avery said, “I saw a sign that read ‘Welcome to America’s Greatest City in the Midwest’ when I entered town this morning.”

“I heard Mona say to her mom, ‘You know nothing whatsoever about me,’ ” said Jennifer.

Some experts put a space after the single quote and before the main quotation mark like in the above example to make it easier for the reader to understand.

Here’s a trickier example of single quotation marks, question marks, and ending punctuation, just to mix things up a little.

• Mark said, “I heard her ask her lawyer, ‘Am I free to go?’ after the verdict was read this morning.”

Perfectly clear, right? Let us know some of your trickiest dialogue punctuation situations in the comments below.

Are you prepared to write your novel? Download this free book now:

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So you are ready to write your novel. excellent. but are you prepared the last thing you want when you sit down to write your first draft is to lose momentum., this guide helps you work out your narrative arc, plan out your key plot points, flesh out your characters, and begin to build your world. .

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Hayley is the Head of Education and Community at ProWritingAid. Prior to joining this team, Hayley spent several years as an elementary school teacher and curriculum developer in Memphis, TN. When Hayley isn't hunched over her keyboard, you can find her figure skating at the ice rink or hiking with her dog.

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How to Write Dialogue: Rules, Examples, and 8 Tips for Engaging Dialogue

by Fija Callaghan

You’ll often hear fiction writers talking about “character-driven stories”—stories where the strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations of the central cast of characters stay with us long after the book is closed. But what drives character, and how do we create characters that leave long-lasting impressions?

The answer lies in dialogue : the device used by our characters to communicate with each other. Powerful dialogue can elevate a story and subtly reveal important information, but poorly written dialogue can send your work straight to the slush bin. Let’s look at what dialogue is in writing, how to properly format dialogue, and how to make your characters’ dialogue the best it can be.

What is dialogue in a story?

Dialogue is the verbal exchange between two or more characters. In most fiction, the exchange is in the form of a spoken conversation. However, conversations in a story can also be things like letters, text messages, telepathy, or even sign language. Any moment where two characters speak or connect with each other through their choice of words, they’re engaging in dialogue.

Why does dialogue matter in a story?

We use dialogue in a story to reveal new information about the plot, characters, and story world. Great dialogue is essential to character development and helps move the plot forward in a story.

Writing good dialogue is a great way to sneak exposition into your story without stating it overtly to the reader; you can also use tools like dialect and diction in your dialogue to communicate more detail about your characters.

Through a character’s dialogue, we can learn about their motivations, relationships, and understanding of the world around them.

A character won’t always say what they mean (more on dialogue subtext below), but everything they say will serve some larger purpose in the story. If your dialogue is well-written, the reader will absorb this information without even realizing it. If your dialogue is clunky, however, it will stand out and pull your reader away from your story.

Rules for writing dialogue

Before we get into how to make your dialogue realistic and engaging, let’s make sure you’ve got the basics down: how to properly format dialogue in a story. We’ll look at how to punctuate dialogue, how to write dialogue correctly when using a question mark or exclamation point, and some helpful dialogue writing examples.

Here are the need-to-know rules for formatting dialogue in writing.

Enclose lines of dialogue in double quotation marks

This is the most essential rule in basic dialogue punctuation. When you write dialogue in North American English, a spoken line will have a set of double quotation marks around it. Here’s a simple dialogue example:

“Were you at the party last night?”

Any punctuation such as periods, question marks, and exclamation marks will also go inside the quotation marks. The quotation marks give a visual clue to the reader that this line is spoken out loud.

In European or British English, however, you’ll often see single quotation marks being used instead of double quotation marks. All the other rules stay the same.

Enclose nested dialogue in single quotation marks

Nested dialogue is when one line of dialogue happens inside another line of dialogue—when someone is verbally quoting someone else. In North American English, you’d use single quotation marks to identify where the new dialogue line starts and stops, like this:

“And then, do you know what he said to me? Right to my face, he said, ‘I stayed home all night.’ As if I didn’t even see him.”

The double and single quotation marks give the reader clues as to who’s speaking. In European or British English, the quotation marks would be reversed; you’d use single quotation marks on the outside, and double quotation marks on the inside.

Every speaker gets a new paragraph

Every time you switch to a new speaker, you end the line where it is and start a new line. Here are some dialogue examples to show you how it looks:

“Were you at the party last night?” “No, I stayed home all night.”

The same is true if the new “speaker” is only in focus because of their action. You can think of the paragraphs like camera angles, each one focusing on a different person:

“Were you at the party last night?” “No, I stayed home all night.” She raised a single, threatening eyebrow. “Yeah, I wasn’t feeling that well, so I just stayed in and watched Netflix instead.”

If you kept the action on the same line as the dialogue, it would get confusing and make it look like she was the one saying it. Giving each character a new paragraph keeps the speakers clear and distinct.

Use em-dashes when dialogue gets cut short

If your character begins to speak but is interrupted, you’ll break off their line of dialogue with an em-dash, like this:

“Yeah, I wasn’t feeling that well, so I just stayed in and—” “Is that really what happened?”

Be careful with this one, because many word processors will treat your em-dash like the beginning of a new sentence and attach your closing quotation marks backwards:

“Yeah, I wasn’t feeling that well, so I just stayed in and—“

You may need to keep an eye out and adjust as you go along.

In this dialogue example, the new speaker doesn’t lead with an em-dash; they just start speaking like normal. The only time you’ll ever open a line of dialogue with an em-dash is if the speaker who’s been cut off continues with what they were saying:

“Yeah, I wasn’t feeling that well, so I just stayed in and—” “Is that really what happened?” “—watched Netflix instead. Yes, that’s what happened.”

This shows the reader that there’s actually only one line of dialogue, but it’s been cut in the middle by another speaker.

Each line of dialogue is indented

Every time you give your speaker a new paragraph, it’s indented from the left-hand side. Many word processors will do this automatically. The only exception is if your dialogue is opening your story or a new section of your story, such as a chapter; these will always start at the far left margin of the page, whether they’re dialogue or narration.

Long speeches don’t use use closing quotation marks until the end

Most writers favor shorter lines of dialogue in their writing, but sometimes you might need to give your character a longer one—for instance, if the character speaking is giving a speech or telling a story. In these cases, you might choose to break up their speech into shorter paragraphs the way you would if you were writing regular narrative.

However, here the punctuation gets a bit weird. You’ll begin the character’s dialogue with a double quotation mark, like normal. But you won’t use a double quotation mark at the end of the paragraph, because they haven’t finished speaking yet. But! You’ll use another opening quotation mark at the beginning of the subsequent paragraph. This means that you may use several opening double quotation marks for your character’s speech, but only ever one closing quotation mark.

If your character is telling a story that involves people talking, remember to use single quotation marks for your dialogue-within-dialogue as we looked at above.

Sometimes these dialogue formatting rules are easier to catch later on, during the editing process. When you’re writing, worry less about using the exact dialogue punctuation and more about writing great dialogue that supports your character development and moves the story forward.

How to use dialogue tags

Dialogue tags help identify the speaker. They’re especially important if you have a group of people all talking together, and it can get pretty confusing for the reader trying to keep everybody straight. If you’re using a speech tag after your line of dialogue—he said, she said, and so forth—you’ll end your sentence with a comma, like this:

“No, I stayed home all night,” he said.

But if you’re using an action to identify the person speaking instead, you’ll punctuate the sentence like normal and start a new sentence to describe the action taking place:

“No, I stayed home all night.” He looked down at his feet.

The dialogue tags and action tags always follow in the same paragraph. When you move your story lens to a new person, you’ll switch to a new paragraph. Each line where a new person speaks propels the story forward.

When to use capitals in dialogue tags

You may have noticed in the two examples above that one dialogue tag begins with a lowercase letter, and one—which is technically called an action tag—begins with a capital letter. Confusing? The rules are simple once you get a little practice.

When you use a dialogue tag like “he said,” “she said,” “he whispered,” or “she shouted,” you’re using these as modifiers to your sentence—dressing it up with a little clarity. They’re an extension of the sentence the person was speaking. That’s why you separate them with a comma and keep going.

With an action tag , you’re ending one sentence and beginning a whole new one. Each sentence represents two distinct moments in the story. That’s why you end the first sentence with a period, and then open the next one with a capital letter.

If you’re not sure, try reading them out loud:

“No, I stayed home all night,” he said. “No, I stayed home all night.” He looked down at his feet.

Since you can’t hear quotation marks out loud, the way you say them will show you if they’re one sentence or two. In the first example, you can hear how the sentence keeps going after the dialogue ends. In the second example, you can hear how one sentence comes to a full stop and another one begins.

But what if your dialogue tag comes before the dialogue, instead of after? In this case, the dialogue is always capitalized because the speaker is beginning a new sentence:

He said, “No, I stayed home all night.” He looked down at his feet. “No, I stayed home all night.”

You’ll still use a comma after the dialogue tag and a period after the action tag, just like if you’d separate them if you were putting your tag at the end.

If you’re not sure, ask yourself if your leading tag sounds like a full sentence or a partial sentence. If it sounds like a partial sentence, it gets a comma. If it reads like a full sentence that stands on its own, it gets a period.

External vs. internal dialogue

All of the dialogue we’ve looked at so far is external dialogue, which is directed from one character to another. The other type of dialogue is internal dialogue, or inner dialogue, where a character is talking to themselves. You’ll use this when you want to show what a character is thinking, but other characters can’t hear.

Usually, internal dialogue will be written in italics to distinguish it from the rest of the text. That shows the reader that the line is happening inside the character’s head. For example:

It’s not a big deal, she thought. It’s just a new school. It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.

Here you can see that the dialogue tag is used in the same way, just as if it was a line of external dialogue. However, “she thought” is written in regular text because it’s not a part of what the character is thinking. This helps keep everything clear for the reader.

In your story, you can play with using contrasting internal and external dialogue to show that what your characters say isn’t always what they mean. You may also choose to use this internal dialogue formatting if you’re writing dialogue between two or more characters that isn’t spoken out loud—for instance, telepathically or by sign language.

8 tips for creating engaging dialogue in a story

Now that you’ve mastered the mechanics of how to write dialogue, let’s look at how to create convincing, compelling dialogue that will elevate your story.

1. Listen to people talk

To write convincingly about people, you’ll first need to know something about them. The work of great writers is often characterized by their insight into humanity; you read them and think, “Yes, this is exactly what people are like.” You can begin accumulating your own insight by listening to what real people say to each other.

You can go to any public place where people are likely to gather and converse: cafés, art galleries, political events, dimly lit pubs, bookshops. Record snippets of conversation, pay attention to how people’s voices change as they move from speaking to one person to another, try to imagine what it is they’re not saying, the words simmering just under the surface.

By listening to stories unfold in real time, you’ll have a better idea of how to recreate them in your writing—and inspiration for some new stories, too.

2. Give each spoken line a purpose

Here is something that actors have drilled into their heads from their first day at drama school, and writers would do well to remember it too: every single line of dialogue has a hidden motivation. Every time your character speaks, they’re trying to achieve something, either overtly or covertly.

Small talk is rare in fiction, because it doesn’t advance the plot or reveal something about your characters. The exception is when your characters are using their small talk for a specific purpose, such as to put off talking about the real issue, to disarm someone, or to pretend they belong somewhere they don’t.

When writing your own dialogue, ask yourself what the line accomplishes in the story. If you come up blank, it probably doesn’t need to be there. Words need to earn their place on the page.

3. Embrace subtext

In real life, we rarely say exactly what we really mean. The reality of polite society is that we’ve evolved to speak in circles around our true intentions, afraid of the consequences of speaking our mind. Your characters will be no different. If your protagonist is trying to tell their best friend they’re in love with them, for instance, they’ll come up with about fifty different ways to say it before speaking the deceptively simple words themselves.

To write better dialogue, try exploring different ways of moving your characters around what’s really being said, layering text and subtext side by side. The reader will love picking apart the conversation between your characters and deducing what’s really happening underneath (incidentally, this is also the place where fan fiction is born).

4. Keep names to a minimum

You may notice that on television, in moments of great upheaval, the characters will communicate exactly how important the moment is by saying each other’s names in dramatic bursts of anger/passion/fear/heartbreak/shock. In real life, we say each other’s names very rarely; saying someone’s name out loud can actually be a surprisingly intimate experience.

Names may be a necessary evil right at the beginning of your story so your reader knows who’s who, but after you’ve established your cast, try to include names in dialogue only when it makes sense to do so. If you’re not sure, try reading the dialogue out loud to see if it sounds like something someone would actually say (we’ll talk more about reading out loud below).

5. Prune unnecessary words

This is one area where reality and story differ. In life, dialogue is full of filler words: “Um, uh, well, so yeah, then I was like, erm, huh?” You may have noticed this when you practiced listening to dialogue, above. We won’t say there’s never a place for these words in fiction, but like all words in storytelling, they need to earn their place. You might find filler words an effective tool for showing something about one particular character, or about one particular moment, but you’ll generally find that you use them a lot less than people really do in everyday speech.

When you’re reviewing your characters’ dialogue, remember the hint above: each line needs a purpose. It’s the same for each word. Keep only the ones that contribute something to the story.

6. Vary word choices and rhythms

The greatest dialogue examples in writing use distinctive character voices; each character sounds a little bit different, because they have their own personality.

This can be tricky to master, but an easy way to get started is to look at the word choice and rhythm for each character. You might have one character use longer words and run-on sentences, while another uses smaller words and simple, single-clause sentences. You might have one lean on colloquial regional dialect, where another sounds more cosmopolitan. Play around with different ways to develop characters and give each one their own voice.

7. Be consistent for each character

When you do find a solid, believable voice for your character, make sure that it stays consistent throughout your entire story. It’s easy to set a story aside for a while, then return to it and forget some of the work you did in distinguishing your characters’ dialogue. You might find it helpful to write down some notes about the way each character speaks so you can refer back to it later.

The exception, of course, is if your character’s speech pattern goes through a transformation over the course of the story, like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady . In this case, you can use your character’s distinctive voice to communicate a major change. But as with all things in writing, make sure that it comes from intention and not from forgetfulness.

8. Read your dialogue out loud

After you’ve written a scene between two or more characters, you can take the dialogue for a trial run by speaking it out loud. Ask yourself, does the dialogue sound realistic? Are there any moments where it drags or feels forced? Does the voice feel natural for each character? You’ll often find there are snags you miss in your writing that only become apparent when read out loud. Bonus: this is great practice for when you become rich and famous and do live readings at bookshops.

3 mistakes to avoid when writing dialogue

Easy, right? But there are also a few pitfalls that new writers often encounter when writing dialogue that can drag down an otherwise compelling story. Here are the things to watch out for when crafting your story dialogue.

1. Too much exposition

Exposition is one of the more demanding literary devices , and one of the ones most likely to trip up new writers. Dialogue is a good place to sneak in some information about your story—but subtlety is essential. This is one place where the adage “show, don’t tell” really shines.

Consider these dialogue examples:

“How is she, Doctor?” “Well Mr. Stuffington, I don’t have to remind you that your daughter, the sole heiress to your estate and currently engaged to the Baron of Flippingshire, has suffered a grievous injury when she fell from her horse last Sunday. We don’t need to discuss right now whether or not you think her jealous maid was responsible; what matters is your daughter’s well being. As to your question, I’m afraid it’s very unlikely that she’ll ever walk again.” Can’t you just feel your arm aching to throw the poor book across the room? There’s a lot of important information here, but you can find subtler ways to work it into your story. Let’s try again: “How is she, Doctor?” “Well Mr. Stuffington, your daughter took quite a blow from that horse—worse than we initially thought. I’m afraid it’s very unlikely that she’ll ever walk again.” “And what am I supposed to say to Flippingshire?” “The Baron? I suppose you’ll have to tell him that his future wife has lost the use of her legs.”

And so forth. To create good dialogue exposition, look for little ways to work in the details of your story, instead of piling it up in one great clump.

2. Too much small talk

We looked at how each line of dialogue needs a specific purpose above. Very often small talk in a story happens because the writer doesn’t know what the scene is about. Small talk doesn’t move the scene along unless it’s there for a reason. If you’re not sure, ask yourself what each character wants in this moment.

For example, imagine you’re in an office, and two characters are talking by the water cooler. How was your weekend, what did you think of the game, how’s your wife doing, are those new shoes, etc etc. Can’t you just feel the reader’s will to live slipping away?

But what about this: your characters are talking by the water cooler—Character A and Character B. Character A knows that his friend is inside Character B’s office looking for evidence of corporate espionage, so A is doing everything he can to stop B from going in. How was your weekend, what did you think of the game, how’s your wife doing, are those new shoes, literally anything just to keep him talking. Suddenly these benign little phrases have a purpose.

If you find your characters slipping into small talk, double check that it’s there for a purpose, and not just a crutch to keep you from moving forward in your scene. When writing dialogue, Make each line of dialogue earn its place.

3. Too much repetition

Variation is the spice of a good story. To keep your readers engaged, avoid using the same sentence structure and the same dialogue tags over and over again. Using “he said” and “she said” is effective and clear cut, but only for about three beats. After that, try switching to an action tag instead or letting the line of dialogue stand on its own.

You can also experiment with varying the length of your sentences or groupings of sentences. By changing up the rhythm of your story regularly, you’ll keep it feeling fresh and present for the reader.

Effective dialogue examples from literature

With all of these tips and tricks in mind, let’s look at how other writers have used good dialogue to elevate their stories.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine , by Gail Honeyman

“I’m going to pick up a carryout and head round to my mate Andy’s. A few of us usually hang out there on Saturday nights, fire up the playstation, have a smoke and a few beers.” “Sounds utterly delightful,” I said. “What about you?” he asked. I was going home, of course, to watch a television program or read a book. What else would I be doing? “I shall return to my flat,” I said. “I think there might be a documentary about komodo dragons on BBC4 later this evening.”

In this dialogue example, the author gives her characters two very distinctive voices. From just a few words we can begin to see these people very clearly in our minds—and with this distinction comes the tension that drives the story. Dialogue is an excellent place to show your character dynamics using speech patterns and word choices.

Pride and Prejudice , by Jane Austen

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?” Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. “But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.” Mr. Bennet made no answer. “Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently. “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.” This was invitation enough. “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

In this famous dialogue example, the author illustrates the relationship between these two characters clearly and succinctly. Their dialogue shows Mr. B’s stalwart, tolerant love for his wife and Mrs. B’s excitement and propensity for gossip. The author shows us everything we need to know about these people in just a few lines.

Dinner in Donnybrook , by Maeve Binchy

“Look, I thought you ought to know, we’ve had a very odd letter from Carmel.” “A what… from Carmel?” “A letter. Yes, I know it’s sort of out of character, I thought maybe something might be wrong and you’d need to know…” “Yes, well, what did she say, what’s the matter with her?” “Nothing, that’s the problem, she’s inviting us to dinner.” “To dinner?” “Yes, it’s sort of funny, isn’t it? As if she wasn’t well or something. I thought you should know in case she got in touch with you.” “Did you really drag me all the way down here, third years are at the top of the house you know, I thought the house had burned down! God, wait till I come home to you. I’ll murder you.” “The dinner’s in a month’s time, and she says she’s invited Ruth O’Donnell.” “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

This dialogue example is a telephone conversation between two people. The lack of dialogue tags or action tags allows the words to come to the forefront and immerses us in their back-and-forth conversation. Even though there are no tags to indicate the speakers, the language is simple and straightforward enough that the reader always knows who’s talking. Through this conversation the author slowly builds the tension from the benign to the catastrophic within a domestic setting.

Compelling dialogue is the key to a good story

A writer has a lot riding on their characters’ dialogue, and learning how to write dialogue is a critical skill for any writer. When done well, it can leaves a lasting impact on the reader. But when dialogue is clumsy and awkward, it can drag your story down and make your reader feel like they’re wasting their time.

But if you keep these tips in mind, listen to dialogue in your everyday life, and practice , you’ll be sure to create realistic dialogue that brings your story to life.

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Guide to Writing a Dialogue in an Essay

Composing a dialogue is one of the most intricate parts of essay writing. Many students instantly realize that crafting a good dialogue within the context of a story takes a lot of time and requires more work that simply describing the events. And that’s not surprising as a dialogue should not simply present the direct quotations from different characters but bring the story to life.

If you are unsure about how to use dialogue in your essay, read on. Let’s figure out the main rules and standards together!

Moving the Story Forward

The main role of a dialogue is to help the story move forward by presenting conversations and thoughts. You can use a dialogue to speed up the pace of your essay if you feel that the narration slows it down or you can use it as a break between the long and overwhelming paragraphs. When writing conversations, you need to remember a few important things:

• Dialogues move the action, set the scene, explain the descriptions and predict the reactions and activities. They can do all these things at once, so don’t use the conversations to just convey the information.
• Remind yourself of the character’s voice to write a dialogue that sounds like a real speech . You may even use some grammatical mistakes to show the realistic conversation but make sure that you keep the balance between the actual talk and readability.
• Always use the speech as a characterization tool. From your words, a reader should understand a lot about the character: morality, background, appearance, etc.

To advance the story, your dialogues should sound natural, not forced, and clear. At the same time, the conversations have to convey the characters’ emotions and show the reader how they interact with each other.

Using Thoughts in Dialogue

Using thoughts and memories in the conversation can also show the important details of your story. This indirect dialogue is another way to change ideas without the quotations. You may also use a combination of direct and indirect dialogue for emphasis. It looks like this:

Billy and I moved on to the next painting. “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” He curled his lip in disgust. Well, I thought he was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, and told him so. “And also, you stink. But most of all, your taste in art stinks.”

To reveal emotions and thoughts, you need to use the sensory details: tasting, smelling, hearing, seeing. Try to show what is going on, don’t tell. Thus, your essay will be more realistic and engaging for your reader.

Formatting Your Dialogue

The right format and style are key to the successful dialogue. Correct punctuation, tags and paragraphs are even more significant than the quotations themselves. Without following the main rules, it would be hopelessly confusing to understand who is speaking. Therefore, make sure that you format your dialogue accordingly.

Rule 1: Punctuation goes inside quotations.

“I’ll call you tomorrow!” Anna screamed.

Make sure to use two quotation marks for speech and one mark for speech within the speech. Even such a small thing as using the quotation marks can poorly reflect on your essay .

Rule 2: A new speaker – a new line.

If you have several characters in your essay, it’s important to know who is speaking. With the line break, your reader won’t be confused.

“I wish I could fly,” John said longingly. “Why don’t you grow wings, then?” Sarah snapped back.

If there is the action connected with a character, describe it in the same paragraph, then start a new line.

Rule 3: Break up dialogue in two parts.

It’s annoying to wait until the end of a speech to put a dialogue tag because it is unclear for a long time who is speaking. That’s why is it better to write the first thought, place a comma and tag, and then continue the dialogue.

“I can’t believe I failed the exam,” said Ben. “I studied and studied, but somehow I choked and left most of it blank.”

As you see, all dialogues follow a simple guideline. Keep the main rules in mind and start writing a dialogue to convey your message!

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A Complete Guide To Writing Dialogue

One of the writer’s most effective tools is dialogue. A story with little or no conversation between characters can sometimes make the eyelids flicker. Too much may leave the reader breathless. Writing dialogue is tough and a skill that takes time to master. 

However, there are plenty of useful tips, tools and methods to help you learn how to write dialogue in a story and how to format it too.

And for your benefit, you can find them all in this comprehensive guide.

Below, you can find the definition of dialogue, tags and formatting guidelines and a discussion on the different ways characters speak and converse.

And you can also find plenty of illuminating dialogue examples to help you gain a clear understanding of the mechanics and how you can apply it to our own writing.

You can jump through this guide by clicking below:

Choose A Chapter

What is dialogue, how to format dialogue.

• Should I Use ‘Said’ And Asked?

How To Write Dialogue Between Two Characters

How to write dialogue readers love, how to write internal dialogue, an exercise on how to write dialogue in a story, good dialogue examples from fiction, technical writing tip – how does dialogue impact the pacing of a story, how do you edit dialogue, more guides on creative writing.

Dialogue is defined as a conversation between two or more characters , particularly in the context of a book, film or play.

Specific to writing, dialogue is the conversation between characters.

A n author may use dialogue to provide the reader with new information about characters or the plot, delivered in a more natural way. They may also utilise it to speed up the pace of the story.

As we’ll see below, there seems to be one pervading guideline when it comes to writing great dialogue and that is clarity reigns supreme.

What Is Internal Dialogue?

Internal dialogue is that which happens within a character’s mind . This can sometimes be reflected in fiction with the use of italics. For example:

I hope they don’t come down here, Mycah thought.

Internal dialogue is a great way of delving deeper into a character’s mind and perspective and is a powerful weapon when it comes to characterization. We explore it in more detail below.

Writers have different stylistic preferences when it comes to dialogue. Below, we’ll take a look at some of the best practices and common literary conventions, such as the use of a dialogue tag and quotation marks. 

Using Quotation Marks

If sticking to the principle of clarity reigns supreme, then for me, using double quotation marks is the most effective way of communicating dialogue.

They’re universally recognised as a means of conveying dialogue, and they stand out more on the page in contrast to single quotation marks. There are more reasons for using them, however, and that involves a criqute of the single quotation mark.

Writing Dialogue With Single Quotation Marks

This does come down to a matter of style.

The best format I’ve found, and by best I mean the approach readers find clearest, is to use speech marks (“) as opposed to a single apostrophe (‘).

If, for instance, a character is speaking and quotes someone else, single quotation marks can be used within the speech marks, therefore avoiding any confusion, for example:

  “I can’t believe she called me ‘an ungrateful cow.’ She’s got some nerve.”

Format Dialogue On A Single Line

Another helpful approach to help maintain clarity is to begin a piece of dialogue on a new line whenever a new character speaks. For instance:

“Who was at the door?” Nick asked. “A couple of Mormons,” Sarah said.

Adding Dialogue Tags

Dialogue tags are simply a piece of prose that follows a piece of speech that identifies who spoke. You can see it in the example above featuring Nick and Sarah.

You can use a dialogue tag in lots of useful ways. For example body language.

If a character reacts to something another character says or does, to maintain clarity, pop the reaction on a new line, followed by dialogue. So for example:

“We’re all sold out,” Dan said. Jim sighed. “Have you not got any in the back?”

Do You Always Need To Use Dialogue Tags?

Something I’ve noticed some of my favourite writers doing—James Barclay and George R.R. Martin, in particular—is, when possible, avoid using an attribution altogether. Less is more, as they say. If just a couple of people are talking, it may already be clear from the voices and language of the characters who exactly is speaking.

Again, to aid clarity, if there are a number of people involved in a conversation, it helps to use an attribution whenever a different character speaks. Nobody wants to waste time re-reading passages to check who’s speaking. I don’t enjoy it and I’m sure others don’t either.

Repetitive use of attribution may grate on a reader. It can suggest a lack of trust in them to follow the story. It helps when editing to look for moments where it’s unclear who’s speaking and if necessary add an attribution.

A brief point on the styles of attribution. If you read a lot, you may notice some writers prefer the order “John said,” and some prefer “said John”. Sanderson is of the view that the character’s name should come first because that’s the most important bit of information to the reader. But the likes of Tolkien adopted the latter version. It’s all personal preference. Why not mix and match?

Should I Use “Said” And “Asked”?

When it comes to the questions I often see asked on how to write dialogue, this is perhaps the most common.

An attribution, also known as an identifier or tag, is the part of the sentence that follows a piece of dialogue. For example: “John said.” In his creative writing lectures, Brandon Sanderson shares a few useful tips.

• Try to place the attribution as early as possible to help make it clear in the reader’s mind who is speaking. This can be done mid-sentence, such as: “I don’t fancy that,” Milo said. “What else do you have?” Breaking away like this works well if a character is going to be speaking for a few lines or paragraphs. You can also use an attribution before the dialogue, though there’s something about this that I find jarring. Used sparingly it works well, but too often just seems annoying and archaic. It’s all personal preference though.
• Try using beats, but not too many. What’s a beat? A beat is a reaction to something said or done. So for example facial expressions like frowning, smiling, narrowing of the eyes, biting of the lip, and hand gestures such as pointing, clenching fists, and fidgeting. And then you’ve got physical movements, like pacing up and down, smashing a glass, punching a wall.
• Don’t worry about using ‘said’ and ‘asked’. To the reader, these words are almost invisible. What they care about is who exactly is speaking.
• When a character first speaks refer to them by name, but after that, it’s fine to refer to them as he or she, provided they’re still the one speaking. It’s even desirable to use the pronoun; repeating a name over and over can irritate a reader.

Remember the overarching principle for when it comes to writing dialogue: clarity reigns supreme. Using ‘said’ and ‘asked’ is often the clearest way of getting your point across.

What To Use Instead Of Said In Dialogue

Remember, there’s no problem with using the word ‘said’ after a piece of dialogue. But if you find when reading your piece aloud that the repeated use jars, especially in a dialogue-rich scene, you may want to mix things up.

Using words other than ‘said’ can help to characterize too—everybody reacts differently to things and those reactions reveal a lot about a person.

So, here’s a list of twenty words that you can use instead of ‘said’ when writing dialogue:

• Pointed out
• Interrupted

So, let’s take a look at how to write dialogue between two characters. If you’d rather have a visual explainer, check out this informative video below.

A useful distinction to make is between everyday dialogue and the dialogue we find in fiction.

The chatter we hear in real life is full of rambling, repetitive sentences, grumbles, grunts, ‘erms’ and ‘ahs’, with answers to questions filled with echoes (repeating a part of the question posed, e.g. “How are you?” asked A. “How am I?” B answered).

When we think of the dialogue we read in books, it contains little of the things we find in these everyday exchanges. According to Sol Stein, there’s a reason for this—it’s boring to read.

If it holds no relevance to the story, we don’t care if a character’s cat prefers to eat at your neighbour’s house instead of your own, or if they think their nail job isn’t worth the money they paid, or if they think the window cleaner isn’t cleaning their windows. There are some snippets we overhear on the street that are interesting—an unusual name, a section of a story we want to know more about. Rare diamonds in a mine miles deep. I’ve fallen into the trap of trying to achieve realistic dialogue and it makes for drawn-out scenes and boring exchanges.

According to Stein, dialogue ought not to be a recording of actual speech, but rather a semblance of it.

What is this semblance of dialogue why should we try and achieve it?

So, how do we write  good  dialogue?

When we scrutinise a person as they’re talking (all the boring stuff aside) we discover a lot about their character: who they are, what they believe in, and sometimes, if they reveal them, their motives. We glean all this from word choice, sentence structure, choice of topic, their behaviour as they say something.

It’s these little details we as writers must dig for, so when it comes to writing our own dialogue, we can use them to help characterise our own characters and, if possible, develop the plot. The key to mastering dialogue , according to Stein, is to factor in both characterisation and plot.

How do we do it? Let’s look at some dialogue writing examples:

Milford:                       How are you? Belle:                            How am I? I’m fine. How are you? Milford:                       Well thanks. And the family? Belle:                            Great

I had to stop myself from stabbing my eyes out with my pen. This example is mundane, riddled with echoes, and gives us no imagery about the characters involved. How about this version?

Milford:                        How are you? Belle:                            Oh, I’m sorry, didn’t see you there. Milford:                        Is this a bad time? Belle:                            No, no. Absolutely not.

See the difference? Milford asks Belle a question, which Belle doesn’t answer. This is an example of oblique dialogue . It’s indirect, evasive, and creates conflict.

It’s a great tool for when it comes to looking at how to write dialogue in a story using different approaches. Our character is not getting answers. Oblique language helps to reveal a bit about the characters and the plot, namely that Belle could be a bit shifty and up to something unsavoury.

Writing Realistic Dialogue

When it comes to knowing how to write natural dialogue, the question to ask yourself is whether or not this style is going to fit your story.

Natural dialogue suits some stories wonderfully. However, it can also work against your story, maybe confusing things for your readers or making it too difficult to read.

When it comes to writing natural dialogue, it’s important to bear in mind the principles discussed here. Give your conversations purpose, make them oblique or intriguing, and don’t give information up cheaply.

You can achieve this in a natural or more casual or informal style.

If you’re looking for more visual tips and advice on writing dialogue, check out this excellent video below:

Say It Aloud

When you’ve written a piece of dialogue, one of the best and simplest techniques to check how it works is to say it out loud.

In doing so you’ll get a sense of how natural it is or whether it jars, or even if it’s cringy or cliche—we’ve all been there.

If you don’t feel comfortable speaking it aloud, you can use a Text to Voice function, like on a website like Natural Readers which allows you to paste in text and then have it read it back to you (it’s free).

Add Slang From Your World

An effective way to write good dialogue that not only characterizes and drives the plot but adds to your world, is to use slang or world-specific references. This can be particularly useful in the fantasy and sci-fi genres .

For example, in my novel  Pariah’s Lament , I refer to the world in place of phrases that refer to our own. So instead of “What in the world was that?” I’d say something like “What in Tervia was that?”

Small Talk And Hellos And Goodbyes

As a general rule, there’s no need to include small talk, hellos and goodbyes. The reader isn’t really too bothered about these niceties. They just want to get to the action, the conflict.

You can brush over things like small talk and hellos with short descriptions in your prose writing . For instance:

Stef and John stepped into the room. A sea of smiling faces welcomed them and before they knew it, they were shaking hands and embracing. “I wasn’t expecting such a warm welcome,” Stef said. “It’s like they have no idea what we’ve done,” John replied. “Maybe they don’t.” “Or maybe they do, and it’s all a ruse.” Stef looked at him a moment, thoughtful. “You’re getting paranoid.”

See here how the hellos were glided by and we’re straight into more interesting dialogue? You can also cut back on the odd superfluous dialogue tag too if it doesn’t add to your story.

Give Your Characters Their Own Voice

A character’s voice is an important factor in dialogue. Nobody speaks in the same way. Some people have lisps, some people say their ‘r’s’ like ‘w’s’, some people don’t enunciate properly, say words differently, speak in accents, and have a nasal twang. There are so many variables.

Introducing these features to some or all of your characters can help to make them more memorable and distinct.

How To Write Dialogue For A Drunk Character

When we’re writing our stories it’s likely that some of our characters may become intoxicated with alcohol or drugs. This creates the question in a writer’s mind, how do you write dialogue for a drunk character?

We can fall into the trap of spelling out the words that they try to say, factoring in the slurs, the missed words and the mispronunciations. The problem this can create is that it can go against our overarching principle of clarity reigns supreme.

Dialogue that’s too difficult to read can cause frustration in the reader. They may get fed up and stop reading altogether—the last thing we want.

The best technique is to provide a description of how the person is talking. Describe how they slur their words, how certain letters sound in their drunken state and so on. Including body language in this will help a great deal too. You can then write dialogue in a more natural and understandable way.

The same applies to the likes of writing stuttering in dialogue. It can be very frustrating for a person to listen to a person with a stutter. To include it in your writing can cause problems too. So again one of the best solutions is to describe the stutter first and then write dialogue naturally.

Hopefully, these tips will help you with how to write dialogue for our intoxicated characters.

An Author May Use Dialogue To Provide The Reader With Information, But Don’t Info Dump

An author may use dialogue to provide the reader with useful information. However, if done incorrectly it can have a negative effect.

In his book The First Five Pages , Noah Lukeman says that one of his biggest reasons for rejecting a manuscript is the use of informative dialogue. In other words, using dialogue as a means for conveying information, or info-dumping . He says it suggests the writer is lazy, too unimaginative to convey the information in a subtler way. If you’d like to learn more about avoiding info dumps, check out my guide on natural worldbuilding .

Sometimes dialogue will give us no information at all. Sometimes snippets. Often if you overhear a conversation between two people you’ll find you understand little of what they discuss. It’s the little details they reveal that are most interesting. Take the example of someone mentioning they went to the hospital. The person they’re with may know why they went, but you don’t. Give the reader pieces of the giant puzzle and leave them wanting more.

Lukeman suggests a few solutions to mend instances of informative dialogue. One is to highlight pieces of dialogue that merely convey information and do not reveal or suggest the character’s personality or wants. Break them apart and find a way to let them trickle into the story.

Understanding how to write internal dialogue can prove a key weapon in your writing arsenal.

This style of dialogue can be employed effectively in scenes or stories focused on lone characters. It can break up the monotony of long paragraphs of exposition, which provides welcome relief to readers. Unlike other forms, you don’t need to use a dialogue tag as such.

There are a couple of common ways that you can employ internal dialogue in writing:

• The first option is to italicise the comments made by your character internally. For example: “A door downstairs slammed shut.  It’s not windy tonight. How the hell could that have happened?” The main idea here is that the italicised words make it clear to the reader that this is internal dialogue.
• Another option is to write internal dialogue as you would normal dialogue, with speech marks. The difference is what follows that passage of conversation. Usually, it’s something like, “I really do need to get that fixed,” Halle thought to herself. Here, you simply identify that the dialogue was spoken in the mind and not aloud.

As for which is best for how to write effective dialogue for internal thoughts, it’s all a matter of style. However, my personal preference is using italics. To me, it’s just clearer to readers, and that’s the main aim. So that is how to write internal dialogue.

As a little exercise, try and think of some oblique responses to the following line. I’ll give you an example to start. Remember to factor in Stein’s key ingredients— characterisation and plot:

            Exercise: “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

            Example: “Did you say the same thing to that blonde girl behind the bar?”

In this example of how to write dialogue, we get a response that avoids answering the statement. She could quite easily turn around and say “Thank you,” but that’s boring. Instead, we’re wondering about this man and what he’s about, and a bit more about the woman too, namely that she’s observant.

Let’s take a look at some good dialogue examples from some of the finest pieces of fiction to grave our bookshelves:

Dialogue Example #1 “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris

“Good morning, Dr. Lecter. How are you feeling?”

“Better than your last visit, Clarice. Shall I have a chair brought in for you?”

“No thank you, I’d rather stand.”

“Please, sit. That’s better. You know, you remind me of someone. A young man I met long ago. He was a student like yourself, with a quick mind and a charming smile. I wonder what became of him.”

“I don’t know, Dr. Lecter. I’m here to ask you about Buffalo Bill.”

Dialogue Example #2 “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger

“You’re lucky. You’re really lucky. You know that, don’t you?” I said.

“Don’t worry about me,” Sally said. “I’ll be all right. I’m serious.”

“I know you will,” I said. “That’s why I’d like to talk to you for just a minute. This is no kidding. You’re going to have to have yourself a grand time this summer. Especially this summer. Have yourself a real need. Because you’re going to go to a lot of parties, and some of them are going to be quite grim, and you’re going to need that need.”

“I know I will,” Sally said. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I know you will,” I said. “But do it anyway. Do it for me. Okay?”

Dialogue Example #3 “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee

“Atticus, are we going to win it?”

“No, honey.”

“Then why-”

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” Atticus said.

One of the most important things to know when it comes to looking at dialogue is the impact it has on pacing.

Dialogue has a knack for increasing the pace and moving the story forward. Readers can find themselves tearing through pages laden with dialogue. As if with all tools of the craft, it pays to know how best to use it. Literary agent Noah Lukeman said a writer must learn how to use restraint when it comes to dialogue, “to sustain suspense and let a scene unfold slowly.”

Again, it’s all a matter of preference.

It’s one thing to know how to write dialogue, it’s another to know how to edit it.

For sound editing advice a good person to turn to is a master editor. In his book on the craft of writing, Sol Stein provides a very helpful checklist when going over passages of conversation:

• What is the purpose of this exchange? Does it begin or heighten an existing conflict, for example?
• Does it stimulate curiosity in the reader?
• Does it create tension?
• What is the outcome of the exchange? Builds to a climax, or a turn of events in the story, or a change in relationship with the speakers?
• Has the correct dialogue tag been used for each character, one that enhances the tale.

One additional step Stein recommends is reading dialogue aloud in a monotone expression. Listen to the meaning of the words in your exchanges.

“What counts is not what is said but the effect of what it means… The reader takes from fiction the meaning of words. And above all, they take the emotion that meaning generates.”

So these are a few things that I’ve found helpful when it comes to writing dialogue. As we’ve seen, an author may use dialogue to provide the reader with interesting information, delivered in a compelling and intriguing way.

Perhaps the most important advice I’ve taken away from them all is to always maintain clarity while using obliqueness to give dialogue that snappy, enticing edge. It’s easier said than done, mind.

Before I leave you, I wanted to point you in the direction of some other guides I think you may find useful.

• Great Examples Of The 5 Senses In Writing
• Men Writing Women
• How To Avoid Duplicate Content Issues – if you need help with plagiarism or making your content unique, head here
• How To Plot A Story
• More Dialogue Writing Examples   from Florida Gulf Coast University, with useful advice on making the best use of a dialogue tag

For more writing tips and guides , head here. Or you can find lots of links on all types of creative writing topics on my home page . Thanks for reading this guide on how to write dialogue that readers will love.

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8 thoughts on “A Complete Guide To Writing Dialogue”

I think crafting one’s own “book on writing” is a great exercise for any writer, regardless of whether or not they want to publish it. The act itself is a great way to organize one’s thoughts and ideas about writing, and compare one’s existing ideas to those one may encounter through others (books, blogs, interviews, etc.). I don’t know if mine will ever be fit for publication, but I find it very helpful to write such things down, instead of worrying about whether or not I’ll remember it.

Definitely! That’s one of the main reasons I’m doing it. We’ve got nothing to lose!

Mmm. And writing it out, organizing it, really helps us retain it afterwards. I feel like I rarely need to consult my notes, but the act of writing them out really helps.

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How to Write Dialogue in an Essay: Perfect Writing Guide

Writing essays is a part of every student’s life. The tool that can be useful for all composition genres with no limitations is dialogue. Typically, article writing at school and college is related to informative or argumentative intentions.

Dialogues can be included in reflective or narrative texts and creative assignments, such as screenplays. Likewise, if your paper is more on the argumentative side, you may include a dialogue when transcribing an extract from an interview to reinforce your thesis.

To get the highest mark for your paper, it is crucial to know how to write a dialogue in an essay. Keep reading this article to find out how to add it to your paper, whether for academic, informative, or creative purposes.

Usage of Dialogues in Essays

Over our educational years at school and university, we are taught to compose argumentative, narrative, informative, creative, and expository essays. Writing becomes a skill we need to develop to be successful when composing a report.

Quote, text line, or dialogue represents two or more characters talking, and can turn a dull paper into an easy-going and fun learning experience.

And just like when watching a movie, dialogues will have us more engaged in discovering the ending of the tale. Moreover, you will have a strong thesis for persuasive essay texts by including dialogues in them. How is this accomplished?

Dialogue serves more than just fiction, as we stated earlier. They transform information into a fluid and rhythmic piece of writing, providing data on an actual scenario portrayed as a conversation. This results in a direct and captivating piece that will teach and entertain the reader. That sounds like a win-win situation, right?

How to Format Dialogue in an Essay?

Here you will encounter some of the essential rules in terms of punctuation and formatting that should be followed when writing effective dialogue in your article so that it is read naturally. If you are unsure of your profile essay writing skills, keep reading this page to get accurate and precise information for composing your best paper.

• How to add dialogue in an essay: you can either use double quotation marks to indicate what someone said, or start in a new line using a Dash followed by the actually spoken phrase every time a new character speaks. This demonstrates that dialogue conversations have started.

“Elisa gave me this purse for my birthday.”

—Elisa gave me this purse for my birthday.

—It looks good on you.

—Thank you, I like it a lot.

• If you are quoting already, use single quotation marks to add another quotation within. This is useful when you depict someone describing a certain circumstance that happened to them.

“He was eating lunch next to me when Tom came by and yelled, ‘let’s go outside,’ so we went.”

• Make sure to use closing quotation marks when the character finishes talking. If dashes are used instead, end that person’s speech with a complete stop, showing that a dialogue has ended.

“I took my cat to the Vet last night to get a shot. He is alright now.”

• When a character is quoted, exclamation and question marks should be placed inside the quotation marks. If the exclamation or quotation marks refer to the greater sentence, not the quotation itself, place them outside the quotation marks.

My niece screamed, “let’s play hide and seek!”. What was your reaction when your niece screamed, “let’s play hide and seek”?.

• Do not add a period if the character pauses in the speech; in this case, write the speech, then use a comma to include a remark and add another comma before the last part of said speech.

“I couldn’t finish the presentation tonight,” he said with a tired voice, “I will tomorrow.”

• If a quote is too long, for example, longer than a paragraph in the essay, you can break it into two sections to make it easier to read. Such a situation is frequent when you write a narrative text. This type of assignment is often given to college and high school students. And it’s one of the most difficult tasks. If you need more confidence in your composition writing skills but still want to get a great mark and impress your teacher, we recommend you to buy narrative essays from professional writers. They will definitely know how to deal with complicated quotes. Here you can see an example of how a big direct quote was shortened to create a new paragraph for the text:

“Christmastime at work is very intense, and we work long shifts. Last year, we launched fifteen new products so that they were sold out during Christmastime. Luckily, it was a success. Our most popular items were: a Christmas cookie-scented candle, a new edition of the traditional elf-pet costume, and a unique knife that cuts the turkey easily and evenly.

I tried the candle immediately and loved the scent; my sister dressed her dog and three cats as elves, poor things, but she looked amused, and my mom tried the turkey knife; she genuinely said it was the best she could use to cut the turkey.”

How to Write Dialogue in an Essay?

Knowing how to put dialogue in your essay will allow you to bring out your creative side while mastering the skill of showing rather than telling. If you want to know particular features of  writing a good process essay , read to master how to write a dialogue and search for relevant sentences. Also, you’ll need to craft coherent paragraphs, use speech tags and be aware of the format and punctuation rules when writing dialogue in your paper.

Common Dialogue Mistakes to Avoid

Mistakes are easy to make when we need to learn the rules of correct essay writing, so pay attention to the most common mistakes to avoid delivering an enjoyable and compelling text.

One of the most frequent mistakes students make when they need to learn how to put dialogue in an essay is confusing dialogue with citations. The latter is adequate when directly referencing, word-by-word, other authors to support statements previously made regarding a particular topic. At the same time, dialogues are supposed to deliver information by being creative and motivating the reader to relate to a life situation described in the dialogue.

Citation: also known as direct quotes, is information written by an author and referenced to support a claim.

Dialogue: a speech between two or more characters, often portrayed to captivate the reader, and what is used is only a part of a greater conversation.

Other mistakes to avoid in your text:

• Providing too many details and unnecessary talk can be counterproductive. Keep it simple.
• Repeating information from one word to another. Describe it in your own words or show it through dialogue formatting. This will make the topic more interesting as the teacher will use their imagination. If you need help with how to do it properly, we recommend asking for help from a specialized platform, such as Edusson.com . Here you will find professional writers who will write your article quickly, plagiarism-free papers with high quality, and at a reasonable price.
• Using more dialogue tags than required can distort the readability of the conversation.
• Mentioning the characters’ names often, which only happens in real talk, decreases credibility.
• Incorrect use of opening quotation marks.

Some types of articles would benefit from dialogues to bring more dynamics into them. Check to avoid the mistakes we presented to you, compose creatively, and most importantly, just as dialogue tells a story. It describes a scenery that will make the reader learn through real-life association, so use dialogue when you think it will add value to the text.

Example of Dialogue in an Essay

Here we will give you examples of how to add dialogue to an essay:

Do thorough research on the topic by looking up reliable sources Use an online plagiarism checker to ensure that your paper is unique Explain the purpose of your study, providing supporting arguments, examples, and close by validating the thesis mentioned at the beginning. If the topic you are writing about is rather technical, define the meaning of its relevant vocabulary Teach the reader, do not assume they know everything. Otherwise, they wouldn’t come to read Verify that your composition is cohesive and informative Finally, read both your text and dialogue out loud to check they are coherent and eloquent.

Knowing these dialogue rules, you are ready to write with confidence! Whether you are writing for college, creating a dialogue for fun, or just eager to learn about this topic, you already know the essentials of how to write a dialogue in your essay with the correct format and punctuation rules. Additionally, if you are ever in need of professional help for your writing, you can always opt to pay to write an essay to ensure that you are submitting a well-written, high-quality paper.

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Tips on Writing Effective Dialogue

Don’t try too hard.

As ornate and complex as your exposition might be, don’t over think the dialogue. Sure, you might have certain characters that speak in riddles, or use scientific terms frequently, whatever it is, it’s a quirk, not the norm. People generally speak very simply, very straight forward. So if all of your characters speak without contractions or only use words longer than eight letters, you might want to rethink things.

Be real but don’t be boring.

Hellos, goodbyes, every day redundancies are implied. Don’t waste your time–or your reader’s–going through all the hellos, goodbyes, and I love yous. This applies to ums, uhs, likes, etc. No one wants to read that. These parts of speech have their place, absolutely, but don’t crowd your dialogue with them because you think it will sound more natural or authentic.

Punctuation is your friend.

It seems like no big deal, but punctuation can change the way a line reads. Its adds and takes away emphasis. First, you should know how to use your punctuation correctly, but once you have a good grasp, play around with it. Here’s an example: “Stop…” versus “Stop!” Moving commas and periods around changes the way a line reads just as much as ending punctuation does.   Here’s another example: “Get. Away. From. Me.” versus “Get away from me!” The use of periods between each word implies a very intentional force. The reader isn’t thinking these observations consciously in their mind, but they will read it differently if you change the punctuation.

Use Interruptions.

Go observe a conversation and take note of how many times someone interrupts someone else. It might seem rude, but that’s just how conversation works, it means all the parties involved are engaged in what’s happening. Characters can interrupt for an array of reasons including: disagreement with the speaker, a sense of urgency, feeling they already know what the character is going to say, excitement. The list goes on. Interruptions also keep your dialogue quick, and the reader will wonder how 50 pages flew by. Interruptions can additionally be useful for a change of subject, scene transition, and giving adequate “page time” to each of your characters. Interruptions can also be used to illustrate power dynamics, gender dynamics, age dynamics, you name it. The more characters you have, the more interruptions there should be.

There is such a thing as saying too much.

This is important both to the exposition and to action. It’s tempting to have your characters tell the audience the whole backstory. But it’s too convenient. Give your readers some credit, if you do it because it’s easy, they will know. Along the same lines, they don’t want to know everything all at once. Mystery is great. Your character might allude to events from their past but not outright state what they’re referring to: “Remember what happened to Dan last month?” “Oh, yes. Poor thing.” Your readers will keep reading to find out what happened to Dan, so down the line when you reveal what it is, they will feel satisfied, and hopefully, come to understand your story better in some way. You may also have your characters refer to a person or a place frequently, like, “The Lake” and every character knows what they’re talking about, but the reader doesn’t. Use that to your advantage. The easy guess is that “The Lake” is a lake, but what if it’s an underground fight club? That draws the reader in. As for action, it’s pretty simple. A character doesn’t need to say, “I’m going to cut the ham and make a sandwich” and then they cut the ham and make a sandwich. Actions speak louder than words.

Sometimes not saying something says it more clearly.

By this, I mean use subtext! Oftentimes people won’t say what they really mean, but they will imply it. A character might want to say “I love you,” but a lot of people are allergic to “I love you”. Instead, they might say, “I made you dinner.” It shows they care. Or maybe, “That song came on the radio today and it made me think of you.” Or, “Don’t leave, please.” The dialogue underneath is way more interesting than what is on the surface. In real life people hardly ever say what they mean, so why should your characters, right? When does, “Fine” ever mean fine? Not saying something can also apply to silence. Sometimes saying the wrong thing is great, but sometimes saying nothing is better.

Say it aloud.

It may sound dumb but do it. Just read your dialogue aloud to yourself (it’s actually beneficial to read all your writing aloud). The best way to tell if something sounds unnatural is to see how it feels in your mouth. Even better, have a friend read it aloud to you (or a tutor in the writing center!). Then you get to hear it and see if there are places where your reader stumbles or where something just isn’t working.

• Tips for Organizing an Argumentative Essay
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• be_ixf; php_sdk; php_sdk_1.4.26
• https://www.valpo.edu/writingcenter/resources-for-students/handouts/writing-effective-dialogue/

How to Format Dialogue: Complete Guide

Dialogue formatting matters. Whether you’re working on an essay, novel, or any other form of creative writing. Perfectly formatted dialogue makes your work more readable and engaging for the audience.

In this article, you’ll learn the dialogue formatting rules. Also, we’ll share examples of dialogue in essays for you to see the details.

What is a Dialogue Format?

Dialogue format is a writing form authors use to present characters' communication. It's common for play scripts, literature works, and other forms of storytelling.

A good format helps the audience understand who is speaking and what they say. It makes the communication clear and enjoyable. In dialogue writing, we follow the basic grammar rules like punctuation and capitalization. They help us illustrate the speaker’s ideas.

General Rules to Follow When Formatting a Dialogue

Dialogue writing is an essential skill for both professionals and scholars . It shows your ability to express the issues and ideas of other people in different setups. The core rules of formatting are about punctuation. So, below is a quick reminder on punctuation marks’ names:

And now, to practice.

Please follow these rules for proper dialogue formatting:

•  Use quotation marks. Enclose the speaker’s words in double quotations. It helps readers distinguish between a character’s speech and a narrator’s comments.
•  Place punctuation inside quotation marks. All punctuation like commas, exclamations, or interrogation marks, go inside the double quotations.
•  Keep dialogue tags behind quotation marks. A dialogue tag is (1) words framing direct speech to convey the context and emotions of a conversation. For example, in (“I can’t believe this is you,” she replied.), the dialogue tag is “she replied.”
•  Use an ellipsis or em-dashes for pauses or interruptions. To show interruptions or pauses, end phrases with ellipses inside quotations. Em-dashes go outside quotations. No other extra marks are necessary here.
•  Remember a character’s voice.  Ensure that each character’s phrases reflect their background and personality.

5 More Rules to Know (+ Examples of Dialogue)

For proper formatting of dialogue in writing, stick to the following rules:

1. Each speaker’s saying comes in a new paragraph

Begin a new paragraph whenever a new character starts speaking. It allows you to differentiate speakers and make their conversation look more organized. (2)

“Has Mr. de Winter been in?” I said.    “Yes, Madam,” said Robert; “he came in just after two, and had a quick lunch, and then went out again. He asked for you and Frith said he thought you must have gone down to see the ship.”    “Did he say when he would be back again?” I asked.    “No, Madam.” — from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

2. Separate dialogue tags with commas

When using dialogue tags ( e.g., “she said,” “he replied,”), separate them with commas. 

For example:

“You’ve got to do something right now , ” Aaron said , “Mom is really hurting. She says you have to drive her to the hospital.” “Actually, Dad , ” said Caleb, sidling in with his catalog , “There’s someplace you can drive me, too.” “No, Caleb.” — from The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

3. When quoting within dialogue, place single quotes

If a character cites somebody or something while speaking, we call it a reported dialogue. In this case, use single quotations within double ones you place for a direct speech. It will help readers see that it’s a quote.

John started to cry. “When you said, ‘I never wanted to meet you again in my life!’ It hurts my feelings.”

4. You can divide a character’s long speech into paragraphs

Dialogue writing is different when a person speaks for a longer time. It’s fine to divide it into shorter paragraphs. Ensure the proper quotation marks placing:

 The first quotation mark goes at the beginning of the dialogue. Each later paragraph also starts with it until that direct speech ends.

 The second quotation mark — the one “closing” the monologue — goes at the dialogue’s end.

Josphat took a deep breath and began. “ Here’s the things about lions. They’re dangerous creatures. They only know how to kill. Have you ever seen a lion in an open area? Probably not. Because if you had you’d be dead now. “ I saw a lion once. I was fetching firewood to cook lunch. All of a sudden I found myself face to face with a lion. My heart stopped. I knew it was my end on earth. If it wasn’t the poachers we wouldn’t be having this talk. ”

Yet, you can keep a long text as a whole by adding some context with dialogue tags. Like here:

As you can see, there’s no quotation mark at the end of the paragraph in red. It’s because the next “Ha! ha!” paragraph continues the character’s speech.

5. Use action beats

Describe actions to provide context and keep readers engaged. Help them “hear” your characters. Punctuation also helps here: exclamation (!) or interrogation with exclamations (?!) demonstrate the corresponding tone of your narrative.

He slammed the door and shouted , “I can’t believe you did that ! “

Mistakes to Avoid When Formatting Dialogue

A good dialogue is a powerful instrument for a writer to show the character’s nature to the audience. Below are the mistakes to avoid in formatting if you want to reach that goal.

 So, please don’t :

• Allow characters to speak for too long. Writing long paragraphs will bore the reader, making them skip through your speech. Short but sweet talk is the best. When writing, aim to be brief, dynamic, and purposeful. If your character speaks too much, generating opinion essays , ensure this speech makes sense and serves a bigger purpose.
• Overburden dialogue with exposition.  Avoid telling the story background or building sophisticated words in your characters’ speeches. Instead, reveal the narrative content in small bursts and blend it around the rest of the prose. Convey it through your character’s actions and thoughts rather than summaries and explanations.
• Create rhetorical flourishes. Make your characters sound natural. Let them speak the way they’d do if they were real people. Consider their age, profession, and cultural background — and choose lexical items that fit them most.
• Use repetitive dialogue tags. Constant “he asked” and “she said” sounds monotonous. Diversify your tags: use power verbs, synonyms, and dialogue beats.

Frequently Asked Questions by Students

How to format dialogue in an essay.

Formatting a dialogue in an essay is tricky for most students. Here’s how to do it: Enclose the speaker’s words with double quotations and start every other character’s line from a new paragraph. Stick to the citation styles like APA or MLA to ensure credibility. 

How to format dialogue in a novel?

 A dialogue in a novel follows all the standard rules for clarity and readability. Ensure to use attributions, quotation marks, and paragraph format. It makes your dialogue flow, grabbing the reader’s attention.

How to format dialogue in a book?

Dialogue formatting in a book is critical for storytelling. It helps the audience distinguish the hero’s words. Follow the general rules we’ve discussed above:

Use double quotations and isolate dialogue tags with commas. Remember to place the discussion in blocks for better readability.

How to format dialogue between two characters?

A two-character dialogue offers the best way to prove successful formatting skills. Ensure you use action beats, quotations, and attribution tags. It allows readers to follow the conversation and understand it better.

What is the purpose of dialogue in a narrative essay?  

Dialogue writing is the exchange of views between two or more people to reach a consensus. It reveals the character’s attitude and argumentation. Last but not least, it helps convey the descriptive nature of your narrative essay.

References:

• https://valenciacollege.edu/students/learning-support/winter-park/communications/documents/WritingDialogueCSSCTipSheet_Revised_.pdf
• https://www.ursinus.edu/live/files/1158-formatting-dialogue
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Writing verbal conversations or dialogue is often one of the trickiest parts of creative writing. Crafting effective dialogue within the context of a narrative requires much more than following one quote with another. With practice, though, you can learn how to write natural-sounding dialogue that is creative and compelling.

The Purpose of Dialogue

Put simply, dialogue is a narrative conveyed through a speech by two or more characters. Effective dialogue should do many things at once, not just convey information. It should set the scene, advance action, give insight into each character, and foreshadow future dramatic action. 01:27

How to Write an Effective Thesis

Dialogue doesn’t have to be grammatically correct; it should read like actual speech. However, there must be a balance between realistic speech and readability. Dialogue is also a tool for character development. Word choice tells a reader a lot about a person: their appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, background, and even morality. It can also tell the reader how the writer feels about a certain character. How to Write Direct Dialogue Speech, also known as direct dialogue, can be an effective means of conveying information quickly. But most real-life conversations are not that interesting to read. An exchange between two friends may go something like this: “Hi, Tony,” said Katy. “Hey,” Tony answered. “What’s wrong?” Katy asked. “Nothing,” Tony said. “Really? You’re not acting like nothing’s wrong.” Pretty tiresome dialogue, right? By including nonverbal details in your dialogue, you can articulate emotion through action. This adds dramatic tension and is more engaging to read.

Consider this revision:

“Hi, Tony.” Tony looked down at his shoe, dug in his toe and pushed around a pile of dust. “Hey,” he replied. Katy could tell something was wrong. Sometimes saying nothing or saying the opposite of what we know a character feels is the best way to create dramatic tension. If a character wants to say “I love you,” but his actions or words say “I don’t care,” the reader will cringe at the missed opportunity. How to Write Indirect Dialogue Indirect dialogue doesn’t rely on speech. Instead, it uses thoughts, memories, or recollections of past conversations to reveal important narrative details. Often, a writer will combine direct and indirect dialogue to increase dramatic tension, as in this example: “Hi, Tony.” Tony looked down at his shoe, dug in his toe and pushed around a pile of dust. “Hey,” he replied. Katy braced herself. Something was wrong.

Formatting and Style

To write effective dialogue, you must also pay attention to formatting and style. Correct use of tags, punctuation, and paragraphs can be as important as the words themselves. Remember that punctuation goes inside quotations. This keeps the dialogue clear and separate from the rest of the narrative. For example: “I can’t believe you just did that!” Start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes. If there is action involved with a speaking character, keep the description of the action within the same paragraph as the character’s dialogue. Dialogue tags other than “said” are best used sparingly, if at all. Often a writer uses them to try to convey a certain emotion. For example: “But I don’t want to go to sleep yet,” he whined. Instead of telling the reader that the boy whined, a good writer will describe the scene in a way that conjures the image of a whining little boy: He stood in the doorway with his hands balled into little fists at his sides. His red, tear-rimmed eyes glared up at his mother. “But I don’t want to go to sleep yet.”

Practice Makes Perfect

Writing dialogue is like any other skill. It requires constant practice if you want to improve as a writer. Here are a few tips to help you prepare to write effective dialogue. Start a dialogue diary. Practice speech patterns and vocabulary that may be foreign to you. This will allow you to get to know your characters. Listen and take notes. Carry a small notebook with you and write down phrases, words, or whole conversations verbatim to help develop your ear. Read. Reading will hone your creative abilities. It will help familiarize you with the form and flow of narration and dialogue until it becomes more natural in your writing.

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Knowing how to insert source materials into an essay is a central theme of academic writing. Sources can be cited to support your argument, expand it or even to be used to dissect a counter-argument and examine its validity.

This skill is so essential the rules of using quotation marks of when quoting texts are pounded into the student’s head. So much so you know when to quote a textual source and the reason to do so.

One of the areas many students struggle with is when or how they should use dialogue in an essay. A high number of essay writers don’t even know the difference between dialogue and quotes, let alone the correct punctuation surrounding it. The main reason it happens is because a large number of academic subjects focus solely on claim-based essays where dialogue is not used. This article will look at why dialogue can be so effective within a narrative essay and why. The topics discussed will be:

What is dialogue?

When do you use dialogue?

Why use dialogue?

How to write dialogue?

And Where you can find more information on this subject.

Dialogue: A definition

Dialogue is defined as a literary technique that writers use to depict a conversation between two or more people. Dialogue is a device that is employed in all kinds of fiction – movie, plays, books and can even be used in essays. It's important not to confuse dialogue with quotations from an outside source. Dialogue is largely made up to create a more visual, dramatic effect. Whereas direct quotes can be verified through citations.

Quotation marks are used with quoting from source as well as to mark dialogue in an essay but the conventions around the two change. As such, it is important to know the difference between the two.

Here is a small table that documents the main differences.

One of the biggest mistakes an essay writer makes is when they use dialogue as a direct quote. This mistake occurs as we are trained to use speech as direct quotes in claim-based essays. As we are trained to do this in the majority of our subjects, we don't know that we can use crafted narration and create dialogue in narrative essays to give them more weight. Due to this, we do not understand the conventions around its use or why to use it.

Dialogue: When to Use it.

Dialogue is a big part of the movies, television, novels, and plays. It is important to keep in mind that when it comes to essay writing, a dialogue only really appears in one type of essay – the narrative essay.

A narrative essay differs from most kinds of essay writing. Other types of essays often aim to make a claim about something. If we look at an argumentative essay , for example, it makes a claim that one point of view is right. And an expository essay will make claims about how a model or idea works. A narrative essay doesn't make claims like this. It is an essay that is used to relate stories and experience to the reader, and as such, it is much more story like in nature. These experiences include conversations the writer has had with other people.

Presenting conversations you had with friends as dialogue in an argumentative essay or expository piece wouldn’t do much to strengthen your argument and would undermine your creditability. It is better to use direct quotes from the source – even if it is spoken material. Direct quotes will be seen as the conventional norm as these types of essay expect the writer to be objective and scientific in their discussion.

Dialogue: Why do you use dialogue

Narrative essays use dialogue as a device – much like written fiction. They add depth, tension and character development to nonfiction writing. It also helps move the story along. As it is reported speech, you would be unlikely to remember all the details; so, you will have to recreate them from memory – remember to use the words, tones, and emotions that report it in the correct flavor. Readers will trust realistic dialogue that captures the situation.

Dialogue: How to format

This section will demonstrate the correct formatting conventions to use when inserting your dialogue into a narrative essay. This section will look at the correct usage of the quotation marks, and where to put other punctuation marks. This will be looking at the U.S rules of grammar – the formations and convention in other variants of English might differ.

Quotations Marks

There are three main rules that surround the usage of quotation marks:

Double quotation marks are used to signify that a person is using speech.

Example: - When I was young, my father warned me, “Look in both direction before you cross the road.”

Single quotation marks are used to mark quotes in quotes.

Example: - “I remember read Oscar Wilde’s quote ‘I can resist everything except temptation’ and feeling so inspired,” the creative writer coach said.

When dialogue extends across several paragraphs, use quotation marks at the start of each paragraph, but only use the closing quotation make when the speech ends.

Example: - Rupert nodded and said, "Yeah I think you're correct. If we lay the carpet before painting the ceiling, we'll need dust sheets.

But if we do the ceiling before laying the new carpet it should be fine.”

If the quote is at the end of a sentence, always put the full stop inside the quotation marks.

Incorrect: - The bus driver said, “This is your stop”.

Correct: - The bus driver said, “This is your stop.”

Question marks and exclamation should be placed inside the quotation mark if they apply to the person's speech.

Incorrect: - The boy screamed, “Watched out the ceiling is falling”!

Correct: - The boy screamed, “Watched out the ceiling is falling!”

When the quote is simply embedded in a larger sentence that is a question or exclamation the punctuation should be placed outside the speech marks.

Incorrect : -How did you feel when the newscaster said, “JFK had been shot?”

Correct: - How did you feel when the newscaster said, “JFK had been shot”?

If a speech tags fall before the quote use a comma before the quotation marks to separate them.

Incorrect: - My brother said “I’m telling mom that you stole the cookies from the jar.”

Correct: - My brother said, “I’m telling mom that you stole the cookies from the jar.”

If the speech tag comes after the quotation marks, then the coma should be placed in the speech marks

Incorrect: - “Just be back in time for tea” My mum warned me before I went to play.

Correct: - “Just be back in time for tea,” My mum warned me before I went to play.

When a sentence is interrupted with a speech tag, a comma should be placed after the first segment of speech and at the end of the speech tag.

Incorrect: - “No” Karen said wrinkling her nose in disgust “That’s just all kinds of wrong.”

Correct: - “No,” Karen said wrinkling her nose in disgust, “That’s just all kinds of wrong.”

It is important to learn how to use quotation marks and punctuation correctly. These rules act as a convention between reader and writer, and as such, using them will make your work easier to read and understand. Without following these rules, your dialogue might be confusing and messy to the reader, which means it will not convey the message you want it to.

Dialogue: Where to find more resources

Here is a collection of some great links that will aid you in crafting the perfect narrative essay , and making sure you get your dialogue quotation spot on. You’ll be writing an amazing narrative essay in no time at all.

• How To Write an Essay Conclusion
• How to Write the Harvard Supplemental Essays
• How to Write a Compelling Newspaper Editorial
• How To Write A Lab Report
• How to Write a Hypothesis

How to Write a Dialogue in English

As an ESL teacher, I’ve had the pleasure of helping many students like you improve their English skills. One of the most effective ways to do that is by writing and practicing dialogues in English. That’s why today, I’m going to guide you through the process of writing a dialogue in English.

Writing dialogues can be fun, and it’s a great way to practice speaking and listening skills as well. In this article, I will share with you some tips and tricks that will make your dialogues more engaging, communicative, and easy to understand. Let’s get started!

To write an engaging and communicative dialogue in English, use appropriate greetings and introductions to start the dialogue, keep the conversation simple and polite, use questions and answers, and include emotion and body language.

You may try Fifty Ways to Practice Writing: Tips for ESL/EFL Students to practice and improve writing with pen and paper and typing. By applying these methods, you will write more, write faster, and write more correct and more interesting papers and letters.

Now, let’s move to the detailed discussion about how to write a dialogue in English. Throughout the post, I’ll give you tips and examples to understand the concept of dialogue.

Table of Contents

Choose a topic, create the characters, use greetings and introductions, keep the conversation simple and to the point, use a casual but polite tone, practice using questions and answers, use appropriate transitions, include some emotion and body language, practice using different verb tenses, revise and practice, a sample dialogue between two friends, in conclusion.

Choosing a topic is the first step in writing a dialogue. It is important to choose a topic that interests you or something that you can relate to. For example, if you are a student, you could write a dialogue about studying for exams. If you enjoy sports, you could write a dialogue about playing a game or watching a match. The topic should be something that you enjoy talking about and that can hold your interest.

Creating characters is the next step in writing a dialogue. You should give your characters names and a little background so that you can imagine them as real people. For example, if you are writing a dialogue about studying for exams, you could create two characters named Mike and Sarah. Mike is a college student who struggles with exams, and Sarah is a friend who helps him study.

When starting a dialogue, it is important to begin with a proper greeting . Depending on the time of day and the relationship between the characters, you can use greetings like “Hello,” “Good morning,” or “Hi.” After that, the characters can introduce themselves if they don’t know each other. For example:

Mike: Hi, Sarah. How are you doing?

Sarah: Hi, Mike. I’m doing well, thanks. How about you?

Mike: I’m good, thanks for asking.

For good communication, it is important to keep your dialogues simple and easy to understand. Use short sentences and common, familiar words. This will make it easier for you to practice your speaking skills and for others to follow the conversation. Also, try to stay focused on the main topic of the dialogue. For example:

Sarah: So, what do you want to study for your next exam?

Mike: I’m thinking of studying history. It’s one of my weak subjects.

In most everyday conversations, people use a casual tone. This means using informal language and speaking in a relaxed manner. However, it’s still important to be polite and show respect to the other person. This can be done by using polite expressions like “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me.” For example:

Mike: Excuse me, Sarah. Can you help me with this problem?

Sarah: Sure, Mike. What do you need help with?

One of the best ways to make your dialogues more engaging is by using questions and answers. This will help you practice your listening and speaking skills and make the conversation more interactive. When writing your dialogue, try to include a mix of open-ended questions (e.g., “What do you think about…?”) and closed-ended questions (e.g., “Do you like…?”). For example:

Sarah: What do you think is the best way to prepare for an exam?

Mike: I think the best way is to review the material and take practice exams.

To keep the conversation flowing smoothly, use appropriate transitions between sentences and ideas. These can include words like “so,” “and,” “but,” and “then.” Using transitions will make your dialogue sound more natural and help your readers follow the conversation more easily. For example:

Mike: I studied for eight hours yesterday, but I still feel like I need more practice.

Sarah: That’s a lot of studying. Why don’t you take a break and go for a walk? It might help clear your mind.

To make your dialogue more engaging and realistic, include some emotion and body language. This can be done by adding descriptions of the characters’ facial expressions, gestures, or tone of voice. For example:

Mike: I don’t think I’m going to pass this exam. I’m really nervous.

Sarah: Don’t worry, Mike. You’ve studied hard, and you’ll do great. Just take some deep breaths and believe in yourself.

When writing dialogues, it’s important to practice using different verb tenses . This will help you become more comfortable with using English in various situations. For example:

Sarah: What did you do yesterday?

Mike: Yesterday, I studied for eight hours and then went to the gym.

Sarah: That sounds like a productive day.

After writing your dialogue, it’s important to revise it and make sure it flows well and makes sense. Check for spelling and grammar errors, and make any necessary changes to improve the dialogue. Once you’re satisfied with it, practice reading it aloud to yourself or with a friend to improve your speaking and listening skills. For example:

Mike: Thanks for your help, Sarah. I feel a lot better now.

Sarah: No problem, Mike. That’s what friends are for. Good luck on your exam.

Amit: Hey, Priya! How are you doing?

Priya: Hi, Amit! I’m doing great. Thanks for asking. How about you?

Amit: I’m doing pretty well, thanks. Hey, do you have any plans for this weekend?

Priya: Not really. Why, do you have something in mind?

Amit: Yeah, I was thinking we could go to the park and have a picnic. The weather is supposed to be nice.

Priya: That sounds like a great idea! What time were you thinking?

Amit: How about we meet at the park at noon? That should give us enough time to prepare the food and find a good spot.

Priya: Okay, that works for me. What should we bring for the picnic?

Amit: How about we each bring something different? I’ll bring some sandwiches and chips, and you can bring some fruit or a salad.

Priya: Sounds good to me. Should we also bring some drinks?

Amit: Yes, I’ll bring some soda, and you can bring some water or juice.

Priya: Alright, I’ll bring some bottled water. Hey, do you want to invite some other friends to join us?

Amit: Sure, that’s a good idea. Let’s invite Ravi and Deepika. I’ll text them to see if they’re free this weekend.

Priya: Sounds great. I’m looking forward to it.

Amit: Me too. It’s going to be a fun day in the park.

Priya: Right. See you then, Amit. Take care.

Writing dialogues is a fun and effective way to improve your English skills. By following these tips and tricks, you can create engaging and communicative dialogues that will help you become more comfortable using English in everyday situations.

Remember to keep it simple, use appropriate transitions, and include some emotion and body language. With practice, you’ll become a master of writing dialogues in English!

Happy learning!

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Niaj A A Khan is an ESL Instructor with over 8 years of experience in teaching & developing resources at different universities and institutes. Mr. Khan is also a passionate writer working on his first book, "Learn English at Ease."

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ELA Common Core Lesson Plans

• Create Characters Lesson Plan
• Creative Writing Lesson Plan: Using Details
• How to Write a Cause and Effect Essay
• How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay Lesson Plan
• How to Write a Persuasive Essay
• How to Write a Reflective Essay
• How to Write an Article Critique and Review
• How to Write an Introduction to an Essay
• How to Write a Problem Solution Essay
• Lesson Plan: Effective Sentence Structure
• Lesson Plan: Improve Writing Style with Improved Sentence Structure
• Logical Fallacies Lesson Plan with Summary & Examples
• Teaching Active and Passive Voice
• Teaching How to Revise a Rough Draft
• Teaching Instructional Articles: How to Write Instructions
• Teaching Word Choice: Using Strong Verbs
• Using Imagery Lesson Plan
• Writing for Audience and Purpose
• Writing Transitions Lesson
• Analyzing Humor in Literature Lesson Plan
• Analyzing Shakespeare Strategies
• Fun Reading Lesson Plan
• How to Write a Literary Analysis.
• How to Annotate and Analyze a Poem
• Lesson Plan for Teaching Annotation
• Literary Terms Lesson Plan
• Literature Exemplars – Grades-9-10
• Teaching Short Story Elements
• Using Short Stories to Teach Elements of Literature
• Bill of Rights Lesson Plan
• Fun Ideas for Teaching Language
• Comma Rules: How to Use Commas
• Difference between Denotation and Connotation
• Effective Word Choice Lesson Plan
• Fun Grammar Review Game or Vocabulary & Language Arts
• Lesson Plans for Substitute Teachers and Busy English Teachers
• Lesson Plan: Creating the Perfect Title
• 4.08 – Lesson Plan: Using Semicolons Correctly
• Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Lesson Plan
• Sentence Combining Made Easy Lesson Plan
• Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary
• Using Tone Effectively Lesson Plan
• 4.12 – Word Choice Lesson Plan: Eliminate and Replace “To Be” Verbs
• Using Voice in Writing Effectively Lesson Plan
• Speaking & Listening
• Teacher Guide Central

Lesson Plan: How to Write Effective Dialogue

How to write effective dialogue.

After 192 dizzying displays of dialogue in student writing, I decided to drop an anvil on my toe to help me forget about the experience. Luckily, inspiration struck before the anvil.

The Problem

After teaching students how to write a reflective and narrative essay , I felt good about myself…until I read their next assignment and realized they didn’t know how to write dialogue. Plagued with inane conversations and useless filler, my students’ writing made me want to scour my tongue with a Brillo pad. Seconds before scouring my taste buds, I thought of a great way of teaching dialogue. I removed the pad, scrubbed some pots and pans in the teachers’ lounge, called my wife, and told her I’d be home late.

I had work to do. I had to find a better way of teaching dialogue. Here’s what I came up with.

ELA Common Core Standards

Teaching how to write dialogue satisfies the following common core standards.

L.9-10.1  Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. L.9-10.2   Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. L.9-10.3 Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening. L.9-10.3a  Write and edit work so that it conforms to the guidelines in a style manual (e.g., MLA Handbook, Turabian’s Manual for Writers) appropriate for the discipline and writing type. W.9-10.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. W.9-10.4  Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in W.9-10.1-3.) W.9-10.5   Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of L.9-10.1-3.)

Dialogue Basics

1.  Discuss the following points on how to write good dialogue:

• Dialogue is a conversation between two or more people.
• Dialogue is essential to fiction writing.
• Dialogue brings characters to life and adds interest.
• Dialogue must do more than just duplicate real speech.
• Writing dialogue consists of the most exciting, most interesting, most emotional, and most dramatic words.

2.  Brainstorm people that might have a conversation and write them on the board and what they might talk about. Some examples:

• Parent – Teacher: How much money might it take for little Billy to get a ‘C’?
• Friend – Friend: Who’s dating whom?
• Teacher Upholding the Integrity of School Rules – Student Cheating on a Test: How much a zero is going to hurt?
• Someone Celebrating Unusual Independence Day Customs – Loyalist to the British Crown: Why it’s OK/Not OK to burn flags?
• Girlfriend Catching Boyfriend With Another Girl – Boyfriend Claiming It Was His Sister: Why boy was making out with his alleged sister?
• Teenager – Parent: What possibly Jose could have been doing out until 3:00 A.M.?

Teaching Dialogue Procedures

1.  Write the following functions for dialogue on the board:

• Provide Information
• Describe a Place or Character
• Create a Sense of Time
• Create Suspense or Conflict
• Move the Story Forward
• Reveal a Character’s Thoughts
• Summarize What Has Happened
• Create a Sense of Place2.

2.  Divide students into pairs.

• Show them a picture of people talking. Pictures involving a literary work they are reading are effective.
• Instruct pairs to invent a situation and write a dialogue of at least 10 lines.
• Encourage students to include explanatory material and to write more than just “he said…she said.”

Revision Lesson Plan Procedures

Use these procedures for helping students revise an essay or story with dialogue.

• Instruct students to read their drafts.
• Look for places dialogue would enhance the quality of their writing.
• Remind them to use the list on the board to help them find passages.
• Explain that the use of a dialogue tag is not always necessary. Readers often know who is speaking without having to be told.
• For writing passages with several lines of dialogue, instruct students to cover up their dialogue one line at a time.
• Read the dialogue without the covered line. If it makes sense then either change or delete the covered line.
• Ask several students to read their added dialogue to the class and explain why they added it.
• Ask several students to read their dialogue before and after removing dialogue tags.
• Organize a paragraph challenge .

* This lesson has been adapted from Mini Lessons for Revision by Susan Geye, 1997, Absey & Co. Spring, TX.

Types of Essays

Step-by-step instructions for writing different types of essays can be accessed by the following links.

• Problem-Solution Essay
• Persuasive Essay
• Narrative Essay
• Instructional Article
• Literary Analysis

Last Updated on August 12, 2014 by Trenton Lorcher

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After a writer expressed sympathy for Israelis in an essay, all hell broke loose at a literary journal

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What are the limits of empathy in war?

That’s the question that Joanna Chen, a liberal writer and translator who is Jewish and lives in Israel, probed in an essay about her struggles since Oct. 7 to connect with Palestinians.

“It is not easy to tread the line of empathy, to feel passion for both sides,” she wrote in the literary journal Guernica , explaining that she briefly stopped her volunteer work driving Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals for lifesaving medical care.

“How could I continue after Hamas had massacred and kidnapped so many civilians,” she asked, noting that the dead included a fellow volunteer, a longtime peace activist named Vivian Silver. “And I admit, I was afraid for my own life.”

The essay, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World,” provoked an uproar in the activist literary world. Over the weekend, more than a dozen of the publication’s staff resigned in protest — and Guernica removed the essay from its website.

“Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it,” the magazine said in a statement . “A more fulsome explanation will follow.”

Among those who quit was the co-publisher, Madhuri Sastry, who wrote on X that the essay was “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”

Sastry also called for the resignation of the editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, a veteran foreign correspondent. Ngarambe did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to The Times on Tuesday, Chen said: “Removing any stories and silencing any voices is the opposite of progress and the opposite of literature.”

“Today, people are afraid to listen to voices that do not perfectly mirror their own,” she said. “But ignorance begets hatred. My essay is an opening to a dialogue that I hope will emerge when the shouting dies down.”

The retraction of the essay comes as a new generation of activists in the literary world frames the conflict in the Middle East as a black-and-white battle between two sides — oppressor and oppressed — and pressures institutions to boycott Israeli or Zionist writers.

World & Nation

U.S. college campuses have embraced the Palestinian cause like never before. The story began decades ago

The Palestinian cause — and hostility toward Israel — has shifted from the sidelines of student activism to a robust political movement at U.S. colleges.

Dec. 7, 2023

In January, protesters from Writers Against the War on Gaza disrupted a PEN America event in Los Angeles featuring actor Mayim Bialik, who supports Israel and opposes a cease-fire. Last month, the Jewish Book Council, a nonprofit that promotes Jewish writers and stories, launched an initiative for authors, publishers, agents and others to report antisemitic incidents in the world of publishing — from “getting review-bombed because their book includes Jewish content” to “threats of intimidation and violence.”

For many activists, giving voice to opposing points of view or conveying empathy for Israeli victims of Hamas amounts to both-sidesism that glosses over power imbalances. Israel says that Hamas killed about 1,200 people on Oct. 7, prompting an invasion that authorities in Gaza say has killed more than 31,000 people.

On X, Guernica’s former fiction editor, Ishita Marwah, slammed Chen’s essay as a “rank piece of genocide apologia” and condemned Guernica as “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness.”

Grace Loh Prasad, a Taiwanese-born writer based in the Bay Area who published an excerpt of her new memoir in Guernica last week, wrote : “I am alarmed & upset that my writing has appeared alongside an essay that attempts to convey empathy for a colonizing, genocidal power.”

Hua Xi, Guernica’s former interviews editor, singled out a passage in which Chen describes a neighbor telling her she tried to calm her children who were frightened by the sound of military planes flying over their house: I tell them these are good booms.

Chen writes: “ She grimaced, and I understood the subtext, that the Israeli army was bombing Gaza.”

For Xi, quoting an Israeli calling bombs “good booms” undermines Guernica’s “premise that they are holding space for Palestinian writers.”

Rather than just disagree, these activists are calling for the silencing of voices they view as harmful.

On social media, an activist accused Chen of “both-sidesing genocide.” Another condemned Chen, who was born in Britain and moved to Israel with her parents when she was 16, as “a settler who has settler genocidal friends and raised settler genocidal children.”

‘This is not a pro-Hamas protest’: Palestinian Americans fight charges of antisemitism

The Palestinian cause has never had so much support. But some Palestinian Americans say the movement has a messaging problem.

Dec. 21, 2023

Established in 2004 amid the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Guernica was founded as an unabashedly antiwar, anti-imperialist publication, according to one of its founders, Josh Jones.

The journal took its name from a Lower East Side bar where two of the founders participated in a reading series, and Picasso’s iconic painting depicting the horror of the 1937 bombing of the Basque town in northern Spain.

Guernica’s leaders did not always agree on what it meant to be antiwar — particularly as a growing wave of pro-Palestinian activists called for not platforming pro-Israeli voices.

Sastry wrote on X that over the last few months she urged Guernica’s leaders to “commit to cultural boycotts” organized by pro-Palestinian activists. They disagreed, she wrote, telling staff in an email that “Guernica’s political projects can be found in what we publish.”

For the record:

8:23 a.m. March 13, 2024 An earlier version of this article said Madhuri Sastry flagged concerns about a Joanna Chen story published in Guernica’s “Voices on Palestine” compilation. The story was published but not included in the collection.

But Sastry did not always like what the magazine published. Even before this week, she said, she raised concerns about a previous story by Chen that was being considered for the magazine’s “Voices on Palestine” compilation. It was ultimately excluded.

At the same time, Guernica’s editors received complaints that their magazine lacked a complexity of voices and was too pro-Palestinian.

Emily Fox Kaplan, an essayist and journalist who is Jewish and has written for Guernica since 2020, wrote on X that “the only mistake Guernica made was not publishing a wide variety of voices” on the Israel-Palestinian issue “from day one.”

“The problem, when it really comes down to it, is that it presents an Israeli as human,” Kaplan wrote of Chen’s essay. “The people who are losing their minds about this want to believe that there are no civilians in Israel. They want a simple good guys/bad guys binary, and this creates cognitive dissonance.”

Other writers accused activists who attacked Chen’s essay of “bareknuckled antisemitism” and Guernica of “ taking its cue from Joe McCarthy and MAGA book burners .”

“God forbid someone might think Israelis are complex human beings, and not just demons,” said Lahav Harkov, a senior political correspondent at Jewish Insider.

The antisemitic cartoon roiling Harvard? It’s not the first time it caused a firestorm

Activists set out to highlight the links between Black and Palestinian liberation. They dredged up a historic dispute over an antisemitic cartoon.

Feb. 23, 2024

Chen said in her statement to The Times that she did not realize the essay was sparking more than usual criticism until Saturday evening when a friend texted to alert her that one of the Guernica editors had resigned. She reached out to the editor in chief that evening and they spoke briefly Sunday morning.

“Since then, nothing,” she said.

“Guernica claims to be ‘a home for singular voices, incisive ideas, and critical questions’ but apparently there is no longer space in this home for a real conversation,” Chen said. “But I do not regard this as a missed opportunity: my words are being read and the door is still, in fact, open.”

Her essay, which is available on the Internet archive , Wayback Machine, offers a personal account of living in Israel before and after Oct. 7.

She wrote that she struggled to assimilate when she moved to Israel. Two years later, at 18, she chose not to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Besides her volunteer work with Road to Recovery, which provides transportation for Palestinian children to hospitals, she describes donating blood to the people of Gaza. She also translated and edited the poems of Palestinian poets, believing their voices were “just as important” as the voices she translated from Hebrew.

After Oct. 7, Chen wrote, “I listened to interviews with survivors; I watched videos of atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel and reports about the rising number of innocent civilians killed in a devastated Gaza.”

She described holding a space in her mind for the victims in both Israel and Gaza: “At night, I lay in bed on my back in the dark, listening to rain against the window. I wondered if the Israeli hostages underground, the children and women, had any way of knowing the weather had turned cold, and I thought of the people of Gaza, the children and women, huddled inside tents supplied by the UN or looking for shelter.”

When a fellow volunteer expressed anger that Palestinians she had helped did not reach out after Oct. 7, Chen did not take sides.

“The Palestinians in the West Bank were struggling with their own problems: closure, the inability to work, the threat of widescale arrests being made by the Israeli army, and harassment by settlers,” she wrote. “No one was safe.”

Two weeks after Oct. 7, Chen writes, she resumed volunteering for Road to Recovery, ignoring her family’s fears for her safety, and drove a Palestinian boy and his father to an Israeli hospital. When they exited her car and the child’s father thanked her, she wrote, she wanted to tell him: “ No, thank you for trusting me with your child. Thank you for reminding me that we can still find empathy and love in this broken world.”

For activists who object to the very existence of Israel, Chen’s liberal framing — and refusal to take a stance — is inherently problematic: They say that the focus on finding empathy and love in a broken world ultimately justifies the status quo.

In her critique of the essay, April Zhu, former senior editor for interviews, wrote the essay starts “from a place that ostensibly acknowledges the ‘shared humanity’ of Palestinians and Israelis, yet fails or refuses to trace the shape of power — in this case, a violent, imperialist, colonial power — that makes the systematic and historic dehumanization of Palestinians ... a non-issue.”

Some argued that Chen’s liberal perspective was more problematic than any conservative voice.

“I find open warmongering less nauseating than this sort of self-pitying faux-bleeding heart claptrap,” wrote an independent filmmaker from L.A. “The fascist propagandist is at least honest. The liberal propagandist never shuts up about how tormented they are by the terrible *complexity* of it all. Get over yourself.”

More to Read

Letters to the Editor: ‘War is hell’ is an awful excuse to keep killing Palestinians

Feb. 29, 2024

Opinion: How the fight against antisemitism is now used to promote an ‘anti-woke’ agenda

Jan. 24, 2024

Israel’s media mostly keep Gaza’s human toll out of sight

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Jenny Jarvie is a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times based in Atlanta.

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The Cowardice of Guernica

The literary magazine Guernica ’s decision to retract an essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals much about how the war is hardening human sentiment.

Listen to this article

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In the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children were frightened by the constant sound of warplanes. “I tell them these are good booms,” the neighbor said to Chen with a grimace. “I understood the subtext,” Chen wrote later in an essay published in Guernica magazine on March 4, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World.” The booms were, of course, the Israeli army bombing Gaza, part of a campaign that has left at least 30,000 civilians and combatants dead so far.

The moment is just one observation in a much longer meditative piece of writing in which Chen weighs her principles—for years she has volunteered at a charity providing transportation for Palestinian children needing medical care, and works on Arabic and Hebrew translations to bridge cultural divides—against the more turbulent feelings of fear, inadequacy, and split allegiances that have cropped up for her after October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in Hamas’s assault on Israel. But the conversation with the neighbor is a sharp, novelistic, and telling moment. The mother, aware of the perversity of recasting bombs killing children mere miles away as “good booms,” does so anyway because she is a mother, and her children are frightened. The act, at once callous and caring, will stay with me.

Not with the readers of Guernica , though. The magazine , once a prominent publication for fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, with a focus on global art and politics, quickly found itself imploding as its all-volunteer staff revolted over the essay. One of the magazine’s nonfiction editors posted on social media that she was leaving over Chen’s publication. “Parts of the essay felt particularly harmful and disorienting to read, such as the line where a person is quoted saying ‘I tell them these are good booms.’” Soon a poetry editor resigned as well, calling Chen’s essay a “horrific settler normalization essay”— settler here seeming to refer to all Israelis, because Chen does not live in the occupied territories. More staff members followed, including the senior nonfiction editor and one of the co-publishers (who criticized the essay as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism”). Amid this flurry of cascading outrage, on March 10 Guernica pulled the essay from its website, with the note: “ Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” As of today, this explanation is still pending, and my request for comment from the editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, has gone unanswered.

Read: Beware the language that erases reality

Blowups at literary journals are not the most pressing news of the day, but the incident at Guernica reveals the extent to which elite American literary outlets may now be beholden to the narrowest polemical and moralistic approaches to literature. After the publication of Chen’s essay, a parade of mutual incomprehension occurred across social media, with pro-Palestine writers announcing what they declared to be the self-evident awfulness of the essay (publishing the essay made Guernica “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness,” wrote one of the now-former editors), while reader after reader who came to it because of the controversy—an archived version can still be accessed—commented that they didn’t understand what was objectionable. One reader seemed to have mistakenly assumed that Guernica had pulled the essay in response to pressure from pro-Israel critics. “Oh buddy you can’t have your civilian population empathizing with the people you’re ethnically cleansing,” he wrote, with obvious sarcasm. When another reader pointed out that he had it backwards, he responded, “This chain of events is bizarre.”

Some people saw anti-Semitism in the decision. James Palmer, a deputy editor of Foreign Policy , noted how absurd it was to suggest that the author approved of the “good bombs” sentiment, and wrote that the outcry was “one step toward trying to exclude Jews from discourse altogether.” And it is hard not to see some anti-Semitism at play. One of the resigning editors claimed that the essay “includes random untrue fantasies about Hamas and centers the suffering of oppressors” (Chen briefly mentions the well-documented atrocities of October 7; caring for an Israeli family that lost a daughter, son-in-law, and nephew; and her worries about the fate of Palestinians she knows who have links to Israel).

Madhuri Sastry, one of the co-publishers, notes in her resignation post that she’d earlier successfully insisted on barring a previous essay of Chen’s from the magazine’s Voices on Palestine compilation. In that same compilation, Guernica chose to include an interview with Alice Walker, the author of a poem that asks “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews,” and who once recommended to readers of The New York Times a book that claims that “a small Jewish clique” helped plan the Russian Revolution, World Wars I and II, and “coldly calculated” the Holocaust. No one at Guernica publicly resigned over the magazine’s association with Walker.

However, to merely dismiss all of the critics out of hand as insane or intolerant or anti-Semitic would ironically run counter to the spirit of Chen’s essay itself. She writes of her desire to reach out to those on the other side of the conflict, people she’s worked with or known and who would be angered or horrified by some of the other experiences she relates in the essay, such as the conversation about the “good booms.” Given the realities of the conflict, she knows this attempt to connect is just a first step, and an often-frustrating one. Writing to a Palestinian she’d once worked with as a reporter, she laments her failure to come up with something meaningful to say: “I also felt stupid—this was war, and whether I liked it or not, Nuha and I were standing at opposite ends of the very bridge I hoped to cross. I had been naive … I was inadequate.” In another scene, she notes how even before October 7, when groups of Palestinians and Israelis joined together to share their stories, their goodwill failed “to straddle the chasm that divided us.”

Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing

After the publication of Chen’s essay, one writer after another pulled their work from the magazine. One wrote, “I will not allow my work to be curated alongside settler angst,” while another, the Texas-based Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah, wrote that Chen’s essay “is humiliating to Palestinians in any time let alone during a genocide. An essay as if a dispatch from a colonial century ago. Oh how good you are to the natives.” I find it hard to read the essay that way, but it would be a mistake, as Chen herself suggests, to ignore such sentiments. For those who more naturally sympathize with the Israeli mother than the Gazan hiding from the bombs, these responses exist across that chasm Chen describes, one that empathy alone is incapable of bridging.

That doesn’t mean empathy isn’t a start, though. Which is why the retraction of the article is more than an act of cowardice and a betrayal of a writer whose work the magazine shepherded to publication. It’s a betrayal of the task of literature, which cannot end wars but can help us see why people wage them, oppose them, or become complicit in them.

Empathy here does not justify or condemn. Empathy is just a tool. The writer needs it to accurately depict their subject; the peacemaker needs it to be able to trace the possibilities for negotiation; even the soldier needs it to understand his adversary. Before we act, we must see war’s human terrain in all its complexity, no matter how disorienting and painful that might be. Which means seeing Israelis as well as Palestinians—and not simply the mother comforting her children as the bombs fall and the essayist reaching out across the divide, but far harsher and more unsettling perspectives. Peace is not made between angels and demons but between human beings, and the real hell of life, as Jean Renoir once noted, is that everybody has their reasons. If your journal can’t publish work that deals with such messy realities, then your editors might as well resign, because you’ve turned your back on literature.