7 Tips for Writing Dialogue in Fiction

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• Place ‘said’ after speaker’s name 
Does placing said before or after attribution – as in Thales said or said Thales – matter? The answer in large part depends upon how it sounds in particular sentence.

• How to make dialogue sound realistic 
Since dialogue in fiction is contrived, a challenge facing authors is to find ways to make it sound realistic. Try these techniques.

• Tighten writing by deleting unneeded attribution 
If introducing a character through some action, there’s no need to add that they “said” something and then provide their line of dialogue.

• How to handle foreign accents and regional dialects in dialogue 
Sometimes, characters who don’t speak English as their first language will appear in your story. A challenge you’ll likely face is how to portray them. 

• How to properly punctuate dialogue 
Dialogue is vital in most fiction as it conveys characters’ motivations and provides information the reader must know to move along the story. Getting the punctuation of dialogue right then is of the utmost importance. After all, a misplaced or forgotten quotation mark can confuse readers about what is said and who said it.

• Avoid mime conversations in dialogue 
Dialogue in fiction ought to be tight and punchy, but sometimes when penning or editing it, writers go overboard. The result is a choppy flow to the narration as well as text that is robbed of its emotive powers. This problem is known as mime conversation.

• Eight tips for writing interesting dialogue
Among the most difficult elements to write in any story is dialogue. There’s a fine art to ensuring that it doesn’t slow the narrative and come off as dull. Good dialogue generally contains eight features.

• BONUS: Five Great Quotations about Dialogue

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional book editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of 80 books including the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

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