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I've been looking through all the unfinished short stories I've made that are collecting dust, and I've come to the realization that I am horrible at writing dialogue, despite watching multiple video essays on how to write it for movie scripts. Because of this, I am wondering if anyone could please give me some tips on how to write dialogue.

A good exercise is listen to people and try to transcribe the dialogue. Ideally pick something off youtube. That way you can play it multiple times. Why not pick something and post a link here and then we can think together how it would be written.

That's a good idea; I'm a tad surprised I didn't think of that earlier, lol. I'll rummage around and see if I can find something I like. Thanks for the help!

For some reason, Hermitcraft is the only thing I seem to watch that has dialogue, and not an endless monologue, lol. It is actually perfect timing, because the next season just started, and the first episodes are full of dialogue due to everyone staying together near the start, and the videos being long.

Link to chosen video: Hermitcraft 11: Episode 1 (Grian)

Everything between 5:25 - 18:25 is chock-full of dialogue. I might pick a specific moment later, but you can choose one if you want.

I feel like the autistic might especially struggle with this one. Might be unfortunate news for you.

I am officially diagnosed with level 1 autism, so that does make some sense. (Only 50 xp until level two!)

Well you may not like to hear then that you can watch all the tutorials and guides you want, there's never going to 1:1 answer to apply to the specific scenarios you're writing though. A lot is just developing an ear for natural sounding conversation.

Luckily in writing though your dialogue being "natural sounding" isn't the only goal or even the main one, dialogue is a tool to convey information or set a scene just like any other part of the story. Keep in mind too that a large part of its purpose can be revealing things about the characters to the reader. As the author you have lots of ways to get across other info, you don't need your characters standing boringly around explaining how your setting's technology works or whatever.

I do understand that experience is the only true teacher. However, I also know that tutorials can help to ensure it isn't total garbage. Looking back on old dialogue I've written, though, I used to not fully understand that I couldn't just disguise an infodump behind a conversation, lol. Thanks for the info though

Short Answer: Watch a bunch of Aaron Sorkin movies. I love the way Sorkin writes dialogue in The Social Network. I guess a downside would be that in real life, people aren't that smooth and quick on their feet sometimes, trading witty zingers back and forth, so I guess that snappy, comeback style wouldn't lend itself to verisimilitude. But I like the way he handles dialogue, it feels cool.

Long Answer.

That's a good question. Honestly, I wish I knew the answer to this one. Dialogue is my kryptonite.

But I can commiserate with you in your miseries, and if you want a few laughs, check out my short stories/storygames for some crappy/horrendous dialogue. I think my swords and sorcery short story was a bit better in terms of dialogue, at least a few of the lines made me laugh, but the serial killer one was kind of bad.

There's a reason why in my Christmas slasher story, the dialogue is "I heard there's a baddie in the woods", only to be responded with "we should go check it out anyway". Like, I'm pretty sure real people would just run the other direction or at least remark on how stupid it is that they're knowingly going into a forest with a known serial killer, but I had to convey the information necessary for the plot somehow. But it's clunky and annoying when I look back on it.

So I guess my advice would be, don't be like me and use dialogue as a mere vehicle, simply for moving the plot from one stage to another. That's a recipe for forgetful and boring characters. I learned this the hard way.

I can't give you advice on what you should do, since this is an area where I'm a bit retarded on, but I guess by knowing what not to do, you can do the reverse of that, and do what you should do.

Ninja is pretty good at dialogue. Check out some of his stories, I like the way he uses dialogue in his stories. Actually, all the great authors here are good with dialogue, but I like Ninja's in particular because of how he pairs this introspective sentence with a line of dialogue, making each line a person says feel intentional and purposeful, while also coming across as clever and witty. That's hard to nail, and Ninja makes it look seamless.

I'll have to check out The Social Network sometime, thanks for the suggestion! And thanks for the advice on what not to do as well.

Check out Terror at Sea by Will11. It has pretty good dialogue in it as well.

I read that the day it came out, lol. It is quite good, and I'll go through to read the dialogue more. Thanks for the suggestion!

Talk to the ground beef sacks walking around outside. Ignore the allure of eating their tasty, tasty meat. Instead communicate!

I would, but there's a problem: I can't just go up to anyone and start a conversation without it being weird and probably having the cops called on me.

Damn that's crazy. You must be bad at dialogue

Hence why I'm asking for tips on writing it. I'm not that bad at it when talking to others (I've been working on that aspect of it for a while now), but there is likely at least some correlation between the two skills.

Being fully clothed when starting these conversations might prevent this.

I'm not that autistic, lol. And my profile picture isn't an accurate representation of me.

(I do wish I had a spyglass, though.)

     That's a spyglass? I thought you were hammering yourself or throwing a bottle or something... it also looks a bit like a carrot because it's orange. Or looks orange.

Yeah, I never truly expected anyone to know what it was, lol. Maybe I'll go back one day and try to make it more obvious.

What's your opener?

"Hi / Hey / Hello there, I'm zdaaLegpvDgL . / ! / what''s your name? / who are you? / etc." (Often accompanied by an extended hand for a handshake)

Or just randomly starting to talk about something interesting about them I noticed, or about something in a conversation they're having, if there's a convenient pause in it.

As you can probably tell, I still have some work to do, lol.

To clarify on the last bit: I personally believe that I could only initiate random conversations with strangers a few times before someone gets suspicious of me and calls the cops.

     Funny, there's actually a thread that's already in the writing workshop asking about character dialogue and you don't have to scroll much to find it. Hardly at all.

That did have some good tips (I even contributed a little), but when revisiting it, there wasn't much there that helped me personally. Although I'm now realizing that I could have been a tad more specific in saying what I wanted help with, lol.

Iris and I wrote an article about this a while back: link. It's pretty long so you might want to ctrl+f 'character interactions' for the most relevant topic. Iris added some good examples of dialogue there, along with the purpose it achieves.

Mizal's advice might be helpful for you too: “Think of yourself and someone else interacting, then make them 50% less awkward and autistic.”

Well, that's not helpful at all! I'm already awkward and autistic!   /hj

Thanks for the link, though! I remember finding and reading it when I first joined, but I couldn't figure out how to find it again.

It might help if you didn't give yourself a handjob just because someone commented in your thread.

half-joking

It's a tone tag that means half-joking

Here's an idea:

Step 1: Write the dialogue out as you normally would and don't worry about whether it sounds good or not.

Step 2: Think about your characters personalities and motivations.

Step 3: Edit the dialogue so that your characters personalities and motivations are better expressed.

For instance, let's say you have a character that's really funny. Is the line you wrote funny? If not, have a think about how you can change the line to make it funnier.

Also, consider what the character is thinking and feeling at the time. If the character is really interested in the topic they are discussing, edit the dialogue to make them sound more excited. If the character has absolutely no interest in the topic they are discussing, edit the dialogue to make them sound more bored.

And, obviously, you can also convey the character's mood and level of interest with the text surrounding the speech.

"OMG, I am soooo excited!" Bettie Hypertits squealed, excitedly.

"Me too." Emo McDroopydick groaned, sarcastically.

It's good to see you again Avery! How have you been?

I am good! Nice to see you too! Had a lot going on recently. Been busy with my new job, plus lots of family stuff. Things are starting to calm down a bit now, so I'm trying to get back into old hobbies, now that I have more time. ^_^

(Psst, UD, here's a good example of a conversation happening right now)

Glad you're starting to have more free time, Avery! Hope your new job continues to go well. It's great to see you back on the site :)

Thank you! New job is going SO well btw. Love it so much! ^_^

(Lol, I think I noticed. Thanks though)

She's alive!

Uh oh though, "lots of family stuff" is never good. Hope things ate still going well at the job though, you had sounded pretty happy about it.

I like it here! I get commended just for existing.

Good and bad. My niece got married, so that's nice. Granddad died. Not so nice. Sister is now in hospital because she decided to play on the railway tracks, which is shitty because... You know... That sucks... But also really good because now she's in hospital, the doctors can hopefully put her on medication that will actually help.

You got a coveted Founder trophy during your six month nap as well!

Glad it wasn't all bad at least, sorry to hear about your grandpa though. And hopefully this ends up a turning point to things improving for your sister.

Oh wow! Shiny new trophy! I feel so proud and special!!! ^_^

I'm sorry about your grandpa. I hope your sister gets better soon!

Thank you. He was a really, really lovely man. He was 92 though, so he had a good, long life. ^_^

You're the second person I've met who knows someone in their 90s not including me and my family. Only the second... that's an impressive age.

I have two living grandparents in the 90s and known several more people in their late 80s to early 90s. Do volunteer work at a veteran's charity, you'll meet tons.

Oh. Guess I just don't know many people in their 90s. Also, aren't veterans' charities deditcated to people of that kinda age area?

Some of them are. There are veteran's of all ages 18+, but working with charities tends to pull in older people both as volunteers and recipients.

18+?!?! I thought veterans were really old people! Lemmy google that real quick...

It just means someone who has served in the military.

Very cool! Is that the escape-room job?

That's the one! Best job ever! Favourite perk is that we get to do loads of escape rooms for free! ^_^

Nice! Which escape room was your favorite?

I did some games in Athens that were on another level. (Those ones weren't free of course, but surprisingly cheap considering the quality of the games.) My favourite was probably The Sculptor. A horror game about a guy who kills his victims and then preserves them in wax. At one point the guy grabs me, drags me across the room and locks me in a cage. Then my friends all had to figure out how to get me out. ^_^

That is a cool escape room. I don't think I've seen one where someone actually physically interacts with a guest.

She's the host.

Not for this game. God, I wish I could work on a game that awesome.

We do have one game in our building where the Game Host is physically in the game with the players, but it's a tavern themed game, so the Game Host serves as the bar tender. It's fun to have a character, but nothing like in Athens where you literally get paid to physically assault people.

Yeah, there were quite a few of those in Athens. There was one called Ghost Writer where a guy grabbed me by the back of the neck, dragged me into another room and then chased me around with a chainsaw. ^_^

"the guy grabs me, drags me across the room and locks me in a cage. Then my friends all had to figure out how to get me out."

Are you sure your six month "job" in escape rooms is not just a metaphor for telling us you've been in prison for a while and just busted out with the help of your friends? :D It does sound amazing though, such a fun job!

A prison is an escape room that you just haven't solved yet! ^_^

That sounds really cool Avery!

Whoa, that's amazing!

Holy cow, hasn't it been a while since you last posted? Thanks for responding to me first

And thanks for the idea; I do tend to scrap dialogue if I don't like it instead of refining it most of the time, lol. I'll try it out sometime soon.

Also, welcome back!

It has! Thank you very much. Nice to be back! ^_^

Some tips I think might help:

1. Don't just use dialogue for exposition. It is more important to use dialogue to develop characters. The way they talk tells so much. Are they terse? Are they flamboyant? Loquacious? What biases do they have the are revealed in what they say?

2. Do arguments of all kinds. Major confrontations, sure, but also minor, passive aggressive conflict. Conflict is always useful.

3. While I wouldn't go too far with specific exposition* if you can help it, you can communicate the tone and feeling of your world. If it's horror, how someone speaks (quietly, perhaps, nervously, etc) can add a lot to it. Overall I would stay away expositional dialogue. If you're using the character to speak to the reader, you're not trusting the intelligence of your reader enough, and it kills immersion. Also, you probably shouldn't put backstory in dialogue, or at least not more than the kind of summarizing that you'd actually do when talking to someone.

*(I made this mistake in Fey Light, but that scene was less about exposition really and more about extending that feeling of the safe fire in the middle of the terrifying darkness; still, had I not made the majority of it optional, it would have been a mistake. But to my credit, the main character had amnesia lol).

4 (Super good tip, I think): Do NOT have ALL your character's thoughts come out in dialogue. In other words, make then sometimes THINK one thing and SAY another. For example in Shadow of a God-King, Azalea is having to just kind of smile-and-nod at her super proud mother because she's marrying a prince, all the while she's thinking about the fact that she's only doing it to spy on him in order to take down the Empire her mother is so proud she's marrying into. It's internal conflict inside my character's head; she's absolutely thinking something entirely different than what she's saying (god this sounds arrogant quoting my own story lol, but it's an easy to find example cause it's on page 2).

To me, that kind of conflict between the character's internal thought and what they actually say is so fun. It adds not only plot-relevant conflict, but it adds immersion too.

Thanks for all the help! I haven't even considered using thoughts somehow, despite one of my top series using them frequently, lol.

One of your top series? You have one story out...

Top series that I've read, sorry. Probably should have clarified that.

Yay, Avery is back :D I like to think she's spent the last six months in a particularly tough escape room and has only just go out :P

With dialogue my advice is this:

1: Think of one or two dominant personality traits for your characters (cheerful, pessimistic, nervous, etc). Try to write how they react to things with those perspectives in mind. For more depth add one or two less dominant traits (well-concealed determination, secretly dishonest, etc)

2: Cut straight to the action. Don't have your characters waste too much time on the pointless chatter that fills our everyday lives - they should be talking about plot events, other characters or big ideas.

3: Cut out all the "he said, she replied" stuff. As long as we know who is talking we don't need to be told they're saying something because we know they are saying something (it's in quotation marks on the page).

4: Consider putting in some jokes, regional accents, shocking confessions etc for variety and to increase readers' interest.

5: Think of a character from a book or TV that has a distinctive talking style. I'm not suggesting you straight-up plagiarize but you could certainly use them as a starting point for the direction you want to take your character in. For example, dumb but funny think Homer Simpson, oblivious but genuine think Michael Scott from The Office, sinister but smart think Hannibal Lector. On this site I think Avery, End, Flux, Mystic and Ninja write particularly good character dialogues so consider reading some of their stories too. Good Luck! :)

     for the first suggestion, I'm not contradicting it but most actual people have more depth and reactions/behaviors that would show than 1-4 traits so being more realistic there's many more complex factors to keep in mind but yeah this is a good start. I also think the fourth thing could be part of this character complexity.

Thank you for the advice Avo, I'll try to write wurds more guud :D It is a bit simplistic but it's a starting point, I have noticed that even on here though there are people who I associate with certain dominant character traits (RK - wholesomeness, Sent - humour, Ogre - Gassiness, etc).

...wurds? Guud? ...

These are some good tips, thanks! Looking back, I realize that I do struggle with numbers 2 and 3.

honestly it also depends a bit on the reader, for example a correction I got in a prooofread was pointed out and critiqued by someone else. And also in the case of 3 some people say you need it more others say less.

That's true; I do know that a lot of it comes down to preference. Still good to keep in mind though

I knew I felt a bit of déjà vu when I saw this title.

In any case, I'll repeat what I said there again. Dialogue is mainly influenced by:
1) A character's motivations.
2) The way they want to present themselves to the world. (A leader of a gang might have a rough and intimidating way of speaking whereas a nobleman would seek to show off their eloquence.)
3) The person they are addressing.