Let’s Talk about Talking

Five Ways to Make Your Dialogue More Engaging

Feeling inspired by a recent revision I’ve done for my in-progress novel, To Chase a Prophecy, today’s blog discusses the most immediate way we get to interact with the characters, both as a reader and a writer, and one of the best ways we see characters interact with each other: dialogue.

Dialogue does a lot for readers: It breaks up the page so it’s more appealing to the eye, makes the overall reading experience feel faster, provides spaces for humor or professions of love . . . For writers, though, we tend to overthink dialogue, arguing if said is dead or if “whispers” is an appropriate dialogue tag (which, I vote, is.) We tend to underthink it, too, by getting sucked into our narration, creating endless paragraphs that can look like a brick wall of text, turning readers off.  

Engaging dialogue will make or break your reader’s interest, especially in fiction, where characters are critical. So, with that in mind, let’s talk about talking. In this blog, I’m going to give five ways to make your dialogue more engaging, beyond the way it’s typically used. To demonstrate these tips, I’m pulling snippets from my own WIP book, To Chase a Prophecy. I hope you enjoy!

1.      Break Up Your Dialogue with Inner Thoughts

Rarely have I seen this done in other books, mostly because if you are writing a first-person POV book, inner thoughts are not as often needed. I write in third person, which gives me more room for inner thought, as that’s been a writing element I’ve always enjoyed as a reader. You get inside the characters mind and then see how they compose themselves on the outside.

What characters say and what they think are not always in alignment. This is true in life, because with certain people, we present one version of ourselves to them while feeling differently on the inside.

In short, we lie.

In chapter 1, Astra spirals about her position in Mission Esuvn, which she has served in since she was a child. When her trainer confronts her, her reaction gets a bit tangled.

 “No.” Maybe. “I wasn’t.” Just for a second. *

This balance between internal and external dialogue is fun, allows me to show more of Astra’s mindset without using long narration, and gives the reader a look inside Astra’s mind, only available to them. Not even the other characters know what she’s thinking (except if they know her very well). While this may be a style for me, I understand it can’t be a style for others and may not work well for an audiobook . . . unless your narrator and production department are very good at developing ways to tell the listeners what’s dialogue and what’s is inner thought.

2.     Interrupt Your Dialogue with Action

You may have seen this in other books. From combat to a tense conversation, you can employ this structure to add a new level of drama. This beats describing, yet again, what they’re eyes look like, how their voice sounds, or how they’re standing. (Writers, even me, can default to using the same descriptions for physical movement)

The basic structure for this is: “Dialogue”—action—“dialogue.”

Here’s an example from my work-in-progress. Astra has her enemy in a locked position as she tries to get information out of him. (For some context, the character she is interrogating is Black-Paw, a half-demon, half-man who comes back to life after he’s been unalived every time. A.k.a., the constant thorn in Astra’s side.)

Astra digs her callused thumb into his eye pocket, wedging it between soft flesh and hard bone. “You’ll tell me where he is”—she pushes in more, and Black-Paw’s eye starts to position itself like a bolder in a trebuchet—“or every soldier in this base will watch me kill you again. And this time, it’ll be in less than a minute.”*

Used well, this structure is a great way to show readers what is going on in the scene, what a character is doing while talking, or remind them of the stakes.

3.     Allow for Multiple Meanings or Ambiguous Lines  

While I appreciate a straight-shooting person in my personal life, willing to share their thoughts and feelings with me when I’m in need of it, our characters don’t have to be. They don’t have to say exactly what they mean. They can say things that can be misinterpreted, not give the full story, trip over their own words, not answer questions, etc. However they may react to get what they want, whether it works for or against the main character, should be first and foremost, true to who they are, not what would make your MC’s life easier or be easier for the reader to understand. Laying things out plainly all the time leaves little room for mystery.

 I’d love to provide you an example of this from my book, but alas, I can only predict showing them out of context would make your suspect-detection sensor work overtime, should you read my book.

Times to have more ambiguous lines that can be misinterpreted, misspoken, or just come out wrong can be when characters: are expressing wants, fears, or hopes; are in a fight where they can’t put cohesive thoughts together; or don’t want to tip their hand to the other person. This also means you can load them with foreshadowed elements, so the signs were there, but not enough to make it obvious. While letting some miscommunications happen are fine (sometimes even helpful to the plot), don’t let it drag your pacing, be too confusing, or lead to stagnant characters and interactions. This will frustrate your readers and can get them mad, not at the characters, but at you, the writer, knowing you could’ve handled it better.

4.     Let Your Characters Monologue

This is definitely a when-and-if-called-for tactic. Not every character needs a monologue whenever they’re given the “floor” to speak. Not even people talk for very long without engaging in some type of back and forth, unless they are telling a story. So use your monologues wisely, because the more you have a character monologuing, the more readers will be skimming.

A monologue is a great tactic to use if you need to change your character’s attitude quickly for a scene or outlook. It allows you to do it without involving the other characters in the scene too much, making a more immediate shift. They can also be utilized to give a snippet of backstory about a character.

To make an affective monologue, certain beats need to be hit. What those beats are depends on your story. My best advice is something I picked up from Joyce Carol Oates’s MasterClass. (I believe this is also talked about online by others as well, but I personally heard it from her first.) The monologue should start in one place and end in another. Three emotions are generally hit in an effective monologue.

Here’s a snip from chapter 2 of my book. To set the stage, Ethan and Astra are fighting over Astra’s loyalty to Siren (the base commander).

“So what you feel doesn’t matter, and now what you think doesn’t matter?” Ethan laughs. “Want to know what I think? I think it’s odd that you believe, as the chosen soldier, your opinion and thoughts don’t matter. I think that your loyalty to Siren is fading, and you’re trying to pin this on me because you’re comfortable talking to me like this. You’re not comfortable talking to anyone else like this, are you, Astra?”

“And you have no perspective to judge my secrets against Siren’s, but you want to. That’s why you asked me if I believed in the war. That’s why you’ve ignored your own doubt since you got the summons, and that’s why you’re angry, because you want to make a fucking decision for yourself but you don’t know what decision that is because it goes against every damn piece of information Siren shoved into those small-minded war books.” Astra heads for the door, but he grabs her by the shoulder, spinning her around. When she faces him, it’s not anger he sees in his face, but fear, and regret. He sighs. “I wish you had told me you were doubting her a long time ago.”*

Here, I have Ethan going from bewildered to angry to disappointed and regretful. It shows a range of emotions he has for the situation Astra’s in, the one he’s been sent into, to protect her.

While this could use some tweaking, I’m sure, it embraces the Monologue Mountain trek: take your character from one emotion to another. Whatever you use it for—an attitude adjustment, a info-dump sesh—know that not all monologues land well on their first go-around (I might even tweak this some), so having another set of eyes, like a beta reader, is key to letting you know if you’ve handled it well.  

 

5.     Don’t Bog Down Your Dialogue with Description

Unlike Tip 2, there’s a magic to uninterrupted dialogue. Between two people, a conversation gains a more natural flow as well as a sense of urgency and intimacy. Once the reader knows: (1) who is in the scene, (2) what the setting is, (3) and stakes going into the conversation, you can generally get away with less description between dialogue. In a conversation with more than two characters, you will probably have a bit more description naturally, as there more people to identify, but in a conversation with two, I use the standard of less is more.  

Pulled from my own novel, here’s a scene I have between Ethan and Rem, two undercover correspondents, in a secret meeting with only minutes to spare.

Rem folds his arms across his chest. “Your update or mine?”

“Yours.”

“We’re using lonzé metal again. Siren must have Meastilos gathering it ’cause there’s no way someone’s giving it to her in these large of quantities. Not even the Vismunds get hold of this much.”

“Do you know why?”

“No, but any items working well for her are getting shipped straight back to Kai.”

“Good,” Ethan sighs. “Good.”

“Good. Course its good, but everything else is bad, isn’t it?” 

Ethan stiffens. “Siren asked why Astra turned on her.”

“And you gave her the truth?”

“Part of it. Any damn fool could see that Astra’s allegiance is on the fence.”*

If I had interrupted this area with prose of any nature—backstory, setting, rumination—the interaction would’ve lost its tension, and the idea that the two soldiers only have minutes would be an ironic detail at best, a plot hole at worse. Now, if this was a relaxing meeting where they have all the time in the world, weaving in description and narration would feel appropriate, since it would slow down the encounter.

I’ve given you five fun, different ways to have dialogue exist in your manuscript, but the best advice I can offer you is: read writing you admire, and write your characters truly. You will only figure out how you handle dialogue by writing, and you will only learn how to handle dialogue well by reading. Read screenplays, too, where dialogue is what the writer must be good at; otherwise, the whole movie fails. Embrace the ways your characters behave, let it influence your fingers. Channel your characters, let them speak through your fingers, because if they’re anything like mine, they’re screaming to get out.

Write on,

Sterling M.Z.

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* Indicates original work from Sterling M.Z. and is not to be duplicated, replicated, or used in materials beyond this blog post. Though To Chase a Prophecy is in progress and language may change upon publication, this is the original art of Sterling M.Z. (the author). Copyright remains with the author.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.