Making Dialogue Interesting to Enhance your Story

Purpose Beyond Talking

• Every exchange should do something — reveal character, advance the plot, build tension, or plant information for later. If it doesn’t, cut or rework it.

Conflict or Tension

• Good dialogue almost always has friction. Even allies interrupt, disagree, or withhold information. Small power struggles keep readers hooked.

Subtext Over Text

• Characters rarely say exactly what they feel. Imply motives or emotions beneath their words. This creates depth.

Distinct Voices

• Each character should have their own speech patterns, word choices, and rhythms. Readers should be able to know who’s speaking without tags.

Interruption and Imperfection

• Real conversations are messy. People trail off, change the subject, or misinterpret each other. Use this sparingly for realism.

Making Dialogue Relevant and an Aid to the Plot

Advance or Foreshadow

• Use dialogue to hint at future events, establish stakes, or deliver crucial information—but avoid obvious exposition dumps. Spread the info naturally.

Reinforce Character Goals

• Dialogue should reveal what characters want, what they fear, and how they manipulate others to get it.

Escalate Conflict

• Let arguments worsen, negotiations break down, or secrets slip out at just the wrong time. This propels the story.

Pair with Action

• Layer dialogue with gestures, setting, and movement. Characters doing something while talking grounds the scene and adds meaning.

Examples of Well-Written Dialogue Techniques

Example 1 – Subtext and Tension

Maya: “You’re late again.”
Jonas: “Traffic.”
Maya: “Funny, traffic didn’t stop you from making it to the bar last night.”
(We see Maya knows more than she says, Jonas avoids guilt, tension builds.)

Example 2 – Revealing Character & Advancing Plot

Detective: “Where were you around midnight?”
Suspect: “At home.”
Detective: “Alone?”
Suspect: (shrugs) “My dog can vouch for me.”
(Shows the suspect’s flippancy, hints at a murder investigation, and moves the investigation forward.)

Example 3 – Distinct Voices

Scholar: “If we proceed without calculating the vector, we risk catastrophic collapse.”
Mercenary: “Speak plain. Will it blow up or not?”
(Each character’s vocabulary and tone immediately reveal who they are.)

Example 4 – Layered Dialogue and Action

She sliced the apple cleanly in half, not looking up.
Nora: “You lied to me.”
He gripped the counter. “You weren’t supposed to find out.”
(Physical action reinforces emotional weight.)

Practical Tips

• Read it aloud. If it sounds flat or stilted, rewrite.
• Trim filler. Skip greetings and “Hi, how are you?” unless they’re ironic or plot-relevant.
• Use beats. Break up long speeches with action, reaction, or sensory detail.
• Let characters win and lose. Dialogue is dynamic. One line should shift power or reveal something new.
• Analyze writers you admire. Notice how they use rhythm, subtext, and tension.

Mystery Example Dialogue

Let’s do a short mystery scene where the dialogue does three jobs at once:

• advances the plot (a clue emerges),
• reveals character dynamics (suspect vs. investigator),
• builds tension (subtext + stakes).

Small Mystery Scene – “The Missing Watch”

Detective Rana ducked under the police tape and entered the dimly lit kitchen. Daniel sat at the table, arms crossed, eyes darting between the window and the floor.
Rana: “You called 911 at 10:13 p.m. Said the watch was missing.”
Daniel: “That’s right.”
Rana: “But the front door was locked when we arrived.”
Daniel: “I lock it automatically. Habit.”
He drums his fingers rhythmically.
Rana: “Funny. The security cam shows no one leaving. You’re sure it was stolen?”
Daniel: “Positive.”
Rana: “By who?”
Daniel: “How should I know?”
His voice rises; he leans back in the chair.
Rana: “Because you told dispatch you saw her take it.”
(A beat) Daniel’s jaw tightens.
Daniel: “I— I said maybe she did. My sister’s been desperate for cash.”
Rana: “But your sister’s been dead three months.”
Daniel’s eyes flick to the hallway; a door creaks somewhere unseen.
Daniel: “Then I guess I’m losing my mind.”

What’s Happening Here

Advancing the Plot:

• We learn about the missing watch, a security camera, and a dead sister — each piece pushes the mystery forward.

Revealing Character:

• Rana is calm, methodical, and confrontational.
• Daniel is evasive, nervous, and possibly hiding something.

Tension/Subtext:

• Dialogue hints at supernatural or psychological elements (“sister’s been dead three months”).
• Action beats (drumming fingers, jaw tightening, eyes flicking) reinforce unease.

Distinct Voices:

• Rana asks precise, clipped questions.
• Daniel answers vaguely, with rising panic.

Authors to Review for Good Dialogue

Here are a few great places to study dialogue (all are well known, so you can find copies at the library (paper or Borrowbox ) or online.

Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep (American/British)

Why it’s good: Snappy, hard-boiled exchanges between Philip Marlowe and suspects; lots of subtext, tension, and attitude.
What to look for: Short lines, slang, characters who rarely say exactly what they mean.

Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express (English)

Why it’s good: Dialogue reveals clues and red herrings subtly. Poirot asks pointed questions; suspects dodge or mislead.
What to look for: How exposition is delivered naturally through interrogation scenes.

Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl (American)

Why it’s good: Contemporary psychological tension. Dialogue shows power dynamics shifting between characters.
What to look for: Alternating perspectives, unreliable narration bleeding into spoken exchanges.

Elmore Leonard – Get Shorty or Out of Sight (American)

Why it’s good: Fast, believable dialogue. Leonard famously said, “Leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”
What to look for: How his characters’ speech patterns instantly show who they are.

Tana French – In the Woods (American/Irish)

Why it’s good: Police procedural dialogue that feels real and character-driven.
What to look for: Conversations with emotional undertones; slow reveals of personal stakes.

How to Study Their Dialogue

• Transcribe a Short Scene. Copy out a scene’s dialogue (for your own study) without narrative beats, then mark where tension rises or falls.
• Analyze Subtext. Write down what each character really wants in the scene versus what they say.
• Examine Structure. Count how long the exchanges are, how often tags appear, and how the author breaks up speech with action.
• Imitate. Rewrite one of your own scenes in the style of that author — this helps you internalize rhythm and pacing.

DISTINCTIVE DIALOGUE

Our subject for May in the PYA Writers' Support Group concerned creating distinctive dialogue - identifying characters by the way the speak.

Every individual has their own unique speech pattern. Hence, distinctive speech is
a valuable way of showing characterisation, making characters memorable, and reducing the need for speech tags.
 

For example, Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby peppers his speech with the colloquialism, 'old sport'. Star Wars' Yoda's unusual word ordering sets him apart.
Tolkien's Gollum uses his own word and names The Ring as his 'Precious'.
 

At the extreme is the comedian's catchphrase - deliberately designed as a memorable shortcut to the character.
 

Famous examples include Michelle in 'Allo Allo', with 'Listen very carefully, I shall say ziz only once.' Note the 'zis' to indicate she's French.
 

Dr Who's Daleks express their single minded obsession of Exterminate! While Blackadder's Baldrick introduces his stupidity with 'I have a cunning plan.'
 

But a novel is not a sit-com, and there is a danger of falling into stereotyping and cliche.
 

So, how to create dialogue that genuinely is unique?

Know your character

Speech is born of the whole of a character's life. Age, gender, class, nationality, education, regional accent, era and fashions, upbringing, friends, where they live, what job they do. All these things affect how that person speaks. Knowing these things about your character informs their speech.
 

Try to listen to lots of different people talk: in the street, on TV, internet clips. What does that person's speech tell you about them? What, exactly, conveys those messages?

Vocabulary

Word choice is vital. Every word your character uses must be of THEIR world, and THEIR experience – not the author's. For instance. do they call a toilet a toilet? Or is the lavatory, privy, commode, loo, bog, john, powder room?
 

What idioms does their social group use? Will they 'break a leg', or perform 'the  Scottish play'? Or will they dismiss something's value as 'a dime a dozen', before they 'hit the sack'?
 

Do they use slang or swear words?
 

Do they use jargon? Will they use 'blue sky thinking' to determine that the best course of action is to 'get the low hanging fruit'.

Do their activities involve specialist knowledge? To an outsider, a car is a car. To a
mechanic, it might be a saloon, a hatchback, an SUV, petrol, diesel, electric, turbo, catalytic, a Renault, Toyota, etc. etc. 

Grammar, rhythm and syntax (word order)

Few people truly speak 'standard' English. But writing fictional speech as real people speak doesn't work – it reads like gibberish. The trick is to introduce a few indicators of non-standard speech.

This is especially useful when it comes to foreign/regional accents and/or dialect. To try to faithfully reproduce an accent in phonetic language is difficult, hard to read, and quite likely will not be understood by any reader who is not familiar with that accent. The trick is to introduce just one or two things that indicate the accent to the reader, without altering the whole text. As in the example of Michelle above, the spelling of only one word is amended to indicate the French accent.
Depending on the accent, you might use the odd apostrophe for a missing part of speech, or change word order, or miss a word out. Someone might switch prepositions, misuse a pronoun, or leave out parts of speech such as 'and';. Remember, use sparingly - just as an indication.
 

Here is an example.
Personality is expressed strongly in speech. A hesitant, shy person will use modifiers to hedge what they say. Words like 'might, could, perhaps'. A dogmatic, confident person will claim that listeners 'must' or 'will' do something. Blunt, to the point people use short words and sentences. Pompous people use long words
and long sentences.
 

Audience.

Consider not only your readership, but who your character is addressing in the dialogue you are writing. People speak differently to different people, especially if power dynamics are in play. Is your characters speaking to, say a child, their boss, a friend, officialdom?

Perception

People's language is coloured by their interpretation of their surroundings. Does the girl walking through linear park at dusk perceive it as threatening, or as peaceful?

Exercise

Pick two characters from your current work in progress, and have them discuss the actions of a third.
 

Or, progress this scenario:
Fred and George are up before the judge.
Fred says, ;I were walking down t'road,;
George says, 'We woz ;ere all the time, yer 'onour.'
What happens next?
 

Here's a link to a blog about regional accents to help too.

 

PYA Writers' Support Group 3rd April - Author Biographies - Crib Sheet

The Author Bio is the bit on the back of a book, on your agent’s website, on your social media, that introduces you as an author

Author bios are conventionally written in third person, and are very short – not more than 100 words.

Many author bios are very bland: I read one that said that the authors lives in Norfolk, with cats.  It did nothing to make me want to read her books.

And that is a marketing failure.  An Author Bio is an opportunity to make people think, wow, I’m interested in this person, I want to read what they have to say.

Two examples:

Trust No One by Louisa Clifford: No author bio at all!  Missed opportunity
The Whale Road by Robert Law: Says he was journalist and traveller until ‘common sense and the concerns of his wife prevailed’. ‘To satisfy his craving for action he took up re-enactment, joining ‘The Vikings’.  The story is historical fiction, therefore, this shows the man has lived it – making the book more enticing.

I think author bios are difficult on two fronts: one is the same as the ‘elevator pitch’: what to leave out from this this large, complex subject.

The other is that, at heart, many writers are shy, and don’t want to reveal themselves.

So think about your author bio as writing another character.  Whether for a pen name, or your own name, it’s a constructed character.  It’s not the inner you: it’s your public persona.  What do you want to show?

What to include?   

1 Name and Geographical location. 

These are standards, that must be included.
Geographical location gives readers their first piece of information about you.  So choose carefully how you describe it.  Does your location in the idyllic Yorkshire Dales provide the setting for your cosy crime/romances?  Does your location in Leeds give you inside knowledge of the post-industrial decline that fuels your crime thriller?

2 Authority

If you’re writing non-fiction, the next stage is to declare your authority to write this book?  Is it a diet book, the result of your PhD studies in nutritional and weight loss?

3 But fiction writers have authority, too.

Travel, work experience, life experience, a city or landscape, its wildlife or history?  What was your inspiration for the book?  This is your chance to share that inspiration, and inspire your readers.

4 What life experience is relevant to your knowledge of your book?  

It might be based on your memories of growing up, or triggered by family history research.  You might have overcome a personal crisis or challenge.  Think of something that relates you, your book, and potential readers.

5 And finally, is there anything else that validates your work?

Won any prizes?  A quote from a positive review?  A celebrity endorsement?  Previously published works?

Round off by mentioning your website and social media.

February 2024 Writers' Support Group Topic - Your Character in their World

We were  delighted to have Helen back in charge of the Writers' Support Group for the latter part of the month and pleased that she's on the mend again.

This month's topic was the link between a character and their world - how both influence each other and are inextricably tied together: each shapes the other,  Each having attributes that are probably different to your reader's world.  

But what's important to the story is what is important to the CHARACTER.

To illustrate the point, imagine 3 characters enter a city park on an April lunchtime.   How do they EXPERIENCE the park?

The teenager glances over her shoulder before diving into the shrubbery.  Phew, no-one in sight.  She slows her pace, burrows inside a big old evergreen.  She squats on layers of old, dry leaves.  She feels safe, hidden here.  But she can't stay here forever.  How can she escape the bullies when she has to come out?

The middle aged woman, scurrying to grab something for lunch, shields her eyes, head down.  It's been a long, gruelling morning, grafting at spreadsheets for the afternoon meeting.  Now, she's fearful the bright light will trigger a migraine.  She catches the flicker of aura, and groans.

The grandmother sits on a park bench, relaxing as the sun’s warmth eases her aching bones.  She feasts her eyes on the brilliantly coloured flowers:  winter is over.  She smiles as her friend hands her an ice-cream and joins her on the bench.  "Now, then," she sighs.  "This is nice."

It's the same park, the same day.  To one, it's a route to escape, to another, a problem, to another, a happy interlude.  Each person's experience is different, unique to their own story perceptions.

Our Exercise

Write a micro-scene showing your character, in a setting in their world.  The action can be trivial, it can be major, but let it show us something about that person, and the world in which they live.  There may or may not be, other people in the scene.

Use one of your own characters, or, if you want a bit of fun, take a famous character – real or fictional, alive or dead – and write a mini scene that shows us who they are, WITHOUT naming them.

Listeners can report what they noticed about the character,  with ‘bonus points’ if they can name the famous person.

Here's something that was written for the exercise.

The Train

René was escorted to a branch-line station where a train was waiting. Accompanying him was Rudolf, a fair haired officer who spoke little and showed his discomfort at escorting a Frenchman to meet the important man. Rudolf was formal and polite but his manner was cold and René was pleased when the train pulled out of the station, the noise making conversation impossible. They travelled slowly for a few miles, the rolling stock groaning as it climbed the steep incline. René could hear the locomotive, the rhythmic sound of the pistons and the expulsion of steam at each cycle. The train accelerated as the slope lessened until the driver applied screeching brakes before manoeuvring into sidings parallel with another train. This new train was different – camouflaged but through the windows René could see that the internal accommodation was more an office, the furnishings sumptuous, drapes a luxurious satin. Rudolf stood to address René, telling him it was time for him to leave. A makeshift bridge was lowered between the two trains and Rudolf beckoned for René to cross towards the other train, leaving Rudolf behind. René entered through a door, Rudolf disappearing after the gangplank was withdrawn. A polite young man dressed as an adjutant welcomed him on board and saluted. René returned the salute half heartedly. ‘Please, come with me.’

René’s face was stony as he followed the adjutant. He was shown into a carriage furnished with a table, chairs positioned around it. The aide brought coffee and asked René if he would like milk and sugar. René responded that he would have his coffee black and the adjutant placed it on the table before walking towards the door. Before he left he turned, clicked his heels and saluted. René did not return the gesture, remaining standing, leaving the coffee untouched. Nervous, he knew that the stakes were as high as they could be. It was ten minutes before a second adjutant entered from the opposite end of the carriage. This man was older with a scar across one side of his face, clearly the result of a knife wound. His aura was of a man of experience and René was to learn that Ludovic was a trusted aide, one of a band of the unsung who advised the leader. ‘Come with me, please,’ said Ludovic, ‘You will be seen now.’

René was escorted through a sparsely furnished carriage into a small office occupied by two women – secretaries, he thought. They glanced at René as he passed through but said nothing. These women had seen much and nothing surprised them. Without ceremony, René found himself in the presence of someone portrayed for most of his life as a perpetrator of evil and reviled throughout Europe. The man had his back to René as he entered the room but turned as the adjutant introduced René. The leader thanked him; René was alone with the tyrant who now faced him, hands clasped behind his back. René’s first impression was of how tired and old the leader seemed – the conflict was taking its toll and René remembered that the man had been plagued by poor health. A flag hung from the wall behind the leader, a symbol of menace to the Frenchman. Doubt swept fleetingly though René’s mind – but this was neither the time nor place for incertitude.