4 Important Tips For Writing Realistic Dialogues

Dialogues are usually where most writers struggle. It can be quite challenging to write compelling and authentic dialogues that fit organically into your story. This part is where a lot of authors fail, making their creative and original stories suffer. If you are one of these struggling individuals, here are four important tips to help you write quality and realistic dialogues:

1. Pay attention to structure. One of the biggest mistakes many writers make when writing dialogue is not taking structure into account. If you don’t, then your dialogues can be confusing just to read and understand who's talking. Use quotation marks to indicate who is talking, I know this sounds obvious but you would be surprised with how often people forget them when they’re writing long dialogue scenes. Make sure you also divide speakers into separate paragraphs. Condensing all of your dialogue into the same paragraph is a rookie mistake. It’s also a mistake to have a character give a speech and having all of it written into one long paragraph. When writing a scene like this you can break down the dialogue into separate paragraphs, and simply not close the quotation s until the character finishes talking to indicate it’s the same person.
2. Keep in mind what your objective for this dialogue is. What is this scene meant to accomplish? What purpose will it have for the story? Will it inform? Allow us to get to know the characters more? Add humor? You need to think this through to know what you should and shouldn't say. Avoid having filler dialogue that doesn’t offer the reader or the story anything since this ends up making it seem dense. 
3. Don’t forget who your characters are. If you’re taking the time to flesh out your characters, you need to keep the dialogues consistent to them. To do this you need to take two things into account: Is it something your character would say? And, would they say it like that? If you ‘break character’ when writing dialogue, people will find the story forced and lose interest. You don’t want your reader to think: ‘The author wanted me to know this, so he had his character conveniently say this now.’
4. Make it authentic and true to your audience. Remember who your audience is and try to build dialogues that follow the same tone you’ve been setting for them. Is it a young adult? Is it a murder mystery? Understand what your audience expects from your story and write dialogues that are appropriate for that. For example, swearing might be more natural for murder mysteries but seem harsh in young adult novels. Try to make it as authentic as possible to your characters, the plot, and audience. 

These four tips are the ingredients you need to produce quality dialogues in your stories. However, the best way to learn is to read several books within the genre you’re writing for and see how other authors write their dialogue. We encourage you to browse through our library www.medialeep.com for books you might find interest during your research.