Dialogue

A few of weeks ago I posted a list of 8 creative writing rules I tend to follow. Rule 6 was ‘the best dialogue doesn’t state exactly what characters mean or want to say’.

This was the way I explained it at the time: ‘people find it hard to express what they really mean. Our characters are no different. Dialogue doesn’t sound very realistic if characters come right out and say exactly what they’re thinking. They need emotional depth and complexity in their conversations.’

While that is true, I didn’t have the space to really expand on this rule as much as I would have liked to at the time. So I thought I’d return to it this week and really go into it in detail.

The diagram below demonstrates how this rule was explained to me. The diagram represents an entire conversation that starts where the blue and red lines begin and finishes where the lines stop. The orange line in the middle, as you can see, represents what the characters actually mean or want to say. The red and blue lines represent what the characters are actually saying.

The closer the lines are to the central orange line, the closer the characters are to what they really want to say. And the further away they are from the line, the less likely it is that they are actually saying what’s on their mind or what they should be saying. 

The points in the dialogue when both characters are close to that line (point 1) are the parts of the conversation that are the most emotional. The parts of the dialogue in which the two characters are the furthest away from what they should be saying (point 2) are the more dramatic parts of the dialogue. And obviously there will be parts of the conversation where one character is closer to the central line than the other.

The point of this diagram is that dialogue in fiction should fluctuate between the 3 different scenarios I just described. But never should a conversation consist of two characters saying exactly what they want to say at all times. That would be unrealistic and also quite boring.

Introducing this kind of fluctuation into your dialogue introduces drama and emotion into the scene.

It’s a simple rule but quite complicated to explain. I hope I’ve explained it clearly enough for you to understand it and benefit from it.

Thanks for reading!