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if you are a maintainer of this web content, please refer to the site documentation regarding web services for further assistance. This option may be re enabled by the project by placing a file with the name .htaccess with this line: want to know the most important thing about writing dialogue in fiction? if it sounds like a conversation you'd hear in the real world, you've gone horribly wrong somewhere. The next time you're on a crowded bus or sitting by yourself in a bustling restaurant, just listen to the two people closest to you talking. Speak over each other say um and er a lot jump from one topic to another with no warning. If fiction is like real life with the dull bits taken out, exactly the same thing applies to fictional conversations. The role of the writer is to select what is important and then distil it down to its very essence.

The rules below will help you to write realistic dialogue that keeps your readers gripped ndash and definitely no dull bits! it's obvious, really. Just as a description of two young lovers spending a perfect day out at the zoo doesn't constitute a plot not unless the girl falls in the lion enclosure!. So two people chatting about nothing much at all and not disagreeing with each other, either doesn't constitute dialogue. Even if nothing especially interesting gets said, who doesn't like chewing the fat with a neighbor over the fence or a friend over coffee? listening in on those conversations, as a third party, would be about as exciting as watching laundry dry. So make sure you don't subject your readers to tedious, yawn inducing dialogue in your novel. Give the two characters conflicting goals ndash one of them wants one thing, the other something else.

Even if it doesn't end in a shouting match here and now, the underlying tension will be all you need to keep the readers turning those pages. How does steak sound? what, again? we haven't had steak since last saturday, he said. And the saturday before that and the one before that! don't you ever fancy something different, bill? much more interesting, i'm sure you'll agree. And when characters have conflicting goals, consequences are sure to follow later in the novel. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having some everyday conversation in a novel. Sometimes a simple exchange of information between characters will be exactly what is required.

But for the most part, go for tension and disagreement and conflict between the characters. Besides, writing dialogue is much more fun that way! when characters have different goals and are intent on achieving them, conflict results. If the stakes are high and both sides are unyielding, you have the makings of high drama.

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Frey even if a passage of dialogue in your story is full of juicy conflict, you still may need to delete it if it's not serving any storytelling purpose. if a conversation in a novel has no reason for being there other than adding to the word count, you either need to give it a reason for existing or cut it out, no matter how pretty you think the writing is. When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. Ndash enrique jardiel poncela actually, all writing in a novel should flow effortlessly. Why? because there's nothing more annoying for a reader than having to count back lines to work out who is speaking.

Another trick is to stick to the simple tags ndash like said and asked. Using tags like exclaimed or interjected or screeched makes the dialogue sound amateurish. If you want to demonstrate mary's excitement, describe her fidgeting in her chair or bouncing on the balls of her feet while she speaks. Duh! boring them is likely to have the opposite effect, which is why it's so important to make your passages of dialogue flow beautifully. If character a says something using half a dozen words then character b replies using a sentence of the same length then character a says something back using another short sentence .

So character b says something else, something long again that goes on and on and on. That's not a blueprint, of course ndash just one top of the head example of how to shake up your dialogue. Often, they have conversations while cooking the dinner or trying to fix the radiator.

Even when they are just talking, they're usually doing something ndash drinking coffee, watching the world go by, whatever it may be. To help your dialogue flow and keep it authentic , you simply need to mention these everyday, insignificant actions. Even if two fictional characters are having a conversation while sitting still in a featureless room without windows, they will still cough or scratch or pick threads off their clothes. why is it important to break up the dialogue with little snippets of prose? because having one line of speech, followed by another, then another can sound like ping pong again ndash even if you do vary the length of each line. To overcome this problem, simply freeze a conversation for a few sentences while you.

Describe the sound of the rain hitting the window or a dog barking in the distance. This before/after example demonstrates all of the key points to remember when writing dialogue that flows. Your readers don't want realistic speech, they want talk which spins the story along. Ndash nigel watts to write good dialogue, cut it to the bone ndash and then to the marrow.