What To Avoid In Dialogue

Dialogue is an important part of any story. You will rarely find one where the main character isn’t at some point speaking to someone else (themselves, if nobody else is around). There are, however, some things which you might want to avoid in writing dialogues. Here’s a little list.

1. Accents or dialects

If you read older books, you might often find the author using a reproduction of what a specific dialect or accent would look like when written down (Doyle did that now and then, same goes for Stoker or Seabury Quinn). I think it was fashionable for a while, quite some pulp stories (originals or reproductions from today) do it as well.

The problem with that?

It makes the text hard to read for everyone who is not acquainted with the dialect or accent in question. In addition, it serves no real purpose in most cases. You might, of course, produce a crime story in which the victim whispers a word in an obscure dialect spoken far away, leaving the detective struggling hard to interpret that last word. But that is usually not how those passages of dialogue are used. So, instead of writing the dialogue in that accent, simply state a character is speaking it. That will convey the information (where a character is from or, for instance, how high up they are in society, as some accents or dialects will be associate with low-ranking or high-ranking people), but not trouble people who are not familiar with the accent in question.

2. Using foreign languages

Of course your character can meet with people from all over the world (or several others, especially in sci-fi or fantasy settings), but that’s no reason to use several different languages in the text.

The problem with that?

First of all, most people are not able to understand several languages. They will miss whatever information you have in a dialogue line in French, Mandarin, or Russian (or whatever other language you choose). There are, however, also people who will understand several different languages or happen to be natives in that language. To them, a sentence which is anything but logical in the language will be jarring (I personally have that problem with the German fiends in pulp novels speaking German, since it’s my native language), a problem which happens often when you use Google translate. You can use a few words to pepper the dialogue and convey the nationality of a character, but make it words easy to understand (papa, monsieur, etc.) or expressions which clearly aren’t meant to convey any direct information (such as exclamations). If in doubt, just tell the reader that a character is speaking a specific language, but the hero can’t understand it. That will give the reader the necessary information (character X is Russian, for example), but at the same time not waste time and space in the dialogue.

3. Writing speech impediments

Sooner or later, you might be writing a character who is lisping or stuttering or showing other unmistakeable sights in their speech. Perhaps they can’t pronounce a specific letter correctly or say a specific word wrong all the time. Still, don’t try to reproduce any of that in the text, either, unless you’re writing a comic.

The problem with that?

You … could … write a … sentence … like … this … for a character who makes unusual pauses when they speak. O-o-o-or y-y-y-you c-c-c-c-could u-u-use s-s-s-s-something l-l-like t-t-this for a stuttering character. Apart from virtually presenting the problem, however, you will achieve little that way. That is what the descriptions around the actual lines are for. Say your character stuttered two minutes, before he managed to get out “I didn’t see anyone.” Much easier to read and you want your dialogue to flow, so always make it easy to read.

4. Using descriptive texts

You will have to indicate sooner or later who is speaking a specific line of dialogue. If you only have two characters, it’s usually easy. If you mention every now and then who is speaking and you make sure to start a new line whenever someone else starts to speak, that should work. But if more people are part of a conversation, you need to keep the reader updated on who spoke.

How to do that?

Well, the easiest would be ‘X says’ and ‘Y said,’ depending on the tense you’re writing in. That pretty quickly conveys who is speaking, but it also gets old and boring quickly. One way to change that is to use words like ‘shouted,’ ‘whispered,’ ‘growled,’ or ‘hissed.’ All of them also convey more than just ‘said.’ Another way is to add little sentences with what is happening. Usually, people aren’t just standing around stiffly, they move, they perform actions. They show emotion through body language and facial expressions. That also allows you to add information on who is speaking, by describing to the reader what they’re also doing, such as ‘folding their arms in front of their chest’ or ‘glowering at X.’

With those few hints, you can make dialogue much better and easier to read, which your readers will be very grateful for.