How to write dialogue: 7 techniques with examples
To write dialogue, start each conversation late and leave it early, let every speaker want something different, tag lines with a plain “said” or a small action, and let people talk around what matters instead of naming it. Punctuate it so the reader always knows who is speaking. Then read it aloud and cut every line a real person wouldn’t bother to say.
Below, each of those gets a before and after, all drawn from one scene: Lisa meets her brother Tom outside Café Mercer on a wet October night. He was supposed to be there at nine. He wasn’t.
Why does my dialogue sound fake?
Usually because it’s doing the writer’s job instead of the characters’. Here is the scene as it often comes out in a first draft:
“Hi Tom,” said Lisa. “You’re late. I’ve been waiting since nine o’clock and I was worried about you.”
“Hi Lisa,” said Tom. “Sorry. I was held up at the depot because my shift ran over.”
“That’s okay,” said Lisa. “I’m glad you’re here now.”
Nobody talks like this. They greet each other by name, explain what both already know, and settle the problem in three lines. No friction, no scene.
Keep the draft anyway. It tells you what the conversation is about: Tom is late, Lisa was worried, Tom has an excuse. Everything below works by making those facts harder to say out loud.
How do I start and end a conversation in a scene?
Cut the hellos and the goodbyes. Readers assume people greet each other; showing it spends their attention on nothing. Start at the first line that has tension in it, and stop as soon as something has shifted.
Before: “Hi Tom,” said Lisa. “You’re late.”
After: “Twenty past,” Lisa said.
Two words, and the reader knows she has been counting. The conversation can end the same way, on a line that leaves something open rather than one that wraps it up: a question nobody answers, or an answer that isn’t one.
How do I punctuate dialogue?
The rules are few and worth knowing cold, because a reader who has to work out who is speaking stops listening:
- Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. “It’s shut,” she said.
- A tag after a line takes a comma, not a full stop, and the tag starts lower case: “It’s shut,” she said. not “It’s shut.” She said.
- A question or exclamation keeps its mark, and the tag still starts lower case: “Where were you?” she asked.
- An action is its own sentence, with a full stop: “It’s shut.” Lisa tried the door anyway. An action doesn’t “say” anything, so it can’t take the comma.
- New speaker, new paragraph. Always, even for one word. It’s how the reader keeps track without tags.
- A line split by a tag continues with a comma and lower case if it’s one sentence: “If you’d texted,” she said, “I’d have gone home.”
American usage uses double quotation marks, with single ones for a quote inside a quote; British usage often reverses them. Pick one and keep it.
What are dialogue tags, and should I just use “said”?
A dialogue tag is the “she said” that tells the reader who spoke. Mostly, yes, use “said”. It’s nearly invisible, so the reader’s eye slides past it to the line. Fancy tags (exclaimed, retorted, hissed) pull attention to the writing and usually tell the reader a feeling the line should already carry.
Before: “You could have texted,” Lisa snapped angrily.
After: “You could have texted,” Lisa said.
If the line needs “angrily” to read as angry, the line is the problem, not the tag. And once two people are talking, you can drop tags for several lines at a time: alternating paragraphs keep the speakers straight. Add a tag back every few lines, or whenever a third person joins.
What is an action beat in dialogue?
An action beat is a short piece of business in place of a tag: what someone does while they talk. It identifies the speaker and shows something the words don’t.
Before: “I’m fine,” Tom said.
After: Tom shook the rain off his jacket. “I’m fine.”
Now he’s busy with his jacket instead of looking at his sister, and the reader notices. “I’m fine” means less, and the action says what the line won’t. Use beats sparingly, one every few lines; a beat on every line turns the conversation into choreography. For choosing which detail earns its place, the same test applies as in how to describe a scene: would this person notice it, and does it change the moment?
How do I write realistic dialogue?
Transcribed speech, full of “um” and repetition, is unreadable. Realistic dialogue is an impression of speech, and three habits give it:
- People don’t answer the question they’re asked. They answer the one they wish they’d been asked, or ask another.
- People interrupt and trail off. An em dash for a cut-off line, an ellipsis for one that fades.
- People use fewer words than you’d expect. Especially people who know each other. Siblings don’t explain their shared history to each other.
Before:
“Where were you?” Lisa asked.
“I was at the depot. My shift ran over,” Tom said.
After:
“Where were you?”
“Did you eat? We could still get something —”
“Tom.”
Tom dodges, Lisa won’t let him, and her saying his name does more than a paragraph of explanation. No tags at all, and the reader never loses track.
How do I write subtext in dialogue?
Subtext is what a conversation is really about, under what it says. The trick is to give each speaker something they want and something they won’t say, and let them talk about something nearby instead.
Here, Lisa wants to know where Tom was. Tom wants her not to ask. Neither says so:
“The café shut at nine,” Lisa said. “The sign says ten.”
“Everything shuts early in October.” Tom looked down the street, toward the depot end. “You should have gone in somewhere.”
“I was waiting for you.”
“Well.” He pulled his collar up. “I’m here now.”
On the surface they’re talking about opening hours. Underneath, she’s telling him she waited and he’s telling her not to push. “Well” is the most honest word he says. If a line states the feeling outright (“I’m hurt that you lied to me”), ask what this person would say instead, and write that.
How do I make each character sound different?
Give each speaker a few habits and keep them. Tom is never late, which means he is someone who is careful and doesn’t like explaining himself: short sentences, deflections, practical questions. Lisa is a translator, so she’s precise; she corrects small facts (“the sign says ten”) and notices exact words.
A quick test: cover the tags and beats. Can you still tell who says each line? If not, one of them is speaking in your voice rather than theirs. Writing a character’s habits down, once, makes them easier to keep straight across a long book; there is more on that in how to keep track of characters in a novel.
What does a revised dialogue scene look like?
Here is the fake version from the top, rewritten with everything above:
“Twenty past,” Lisa said.
Tom shook the rain off his jacket. “Did you eat? We could still get something —”
“The café shut at nine. The sign says ten.”
“Everything shuts early in October.” He looked down the street, toward the depot end.
“You were never late in your life.”
“Well.” He pulled his collar up. “There’s a first time.”
The facts haven’t changed: Tom is late, Lisa was worried, Tom has a reason. But nobody explains anything, and the reader leaves knowing something is wrong and that Tom isn’t going to say what.
Then hold your own conversation up to five questions:
- Does it start after the hellos and stop before the goodbyes?
- Does each speaker want something?
- Is anything said outright that could stay under the surface?
- Are the tags mostly “said”, or gone?
- With the tags covered, can you tell who’s speaking?
Can a writing tool help with dialogue without taking over?
It can, if it adds lines and leaves the rest of your page alone. In ProseSpun, a fiction writing app for people with more story than sentences, you select a passage you wrote and choose Dialogue. It proposes what the people in that moment say next: spoken lines in double quotes, each tagged lightly or given one short action, and each from someone the scene already has present. Nobody walks in or out. When two or more people are there, it proposes at least four lines, turn by turn, and no more than ten.
It reads your character cards, so Tom’s lines are meant to sound like Tom’s, and your Setting, so the people talk like they belong in that place. (How it keeps those straight in a long book is in A novel is bigger than any model’s memory.) If the conversation already goes on after your selection, the new lines pick up where that exchange ends rather than in the middle of it. Dialogue only adds: none of your sentences change. The proposal shows how many words it adds, and you accept it, discard it, or try again.
Whatever comes back, read it against the same five questions; you decide which lines Tom would actually say.
Related reading: First person vs third person and How to improve your sentences.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common mistake in writing dialogue?
Characters telling each other things they both already know, so the reader can hear it. It makes conversations sound staged. Find another way in for the information, such as an action, a detail, or a line where one character gets it slightly wrong and the other corrects them.
Should every line of dialogue have a tag?
No. In a conversation between two people, alternating paragraphs show who is speaking, so you can leave tags off for several lines. Add a “said” or an action beat every few lines, at the start of an exchange, and whenever a third speaker joins.
How do I show emotion in dialogue without saying it?
Let the character avoid the subject, answer a different question, or say less than the moment calls for, and add one small action that doesn’t match the words. “I’m fine,” said while gripping a cup too tightly, says more than “I’m upset.”
If you’d like to try this on a conversation of your own, you can start writing.