As title says, that would be my question. I've started writing book and as much as I am pleased with descriptions, dialogues kill it. When I read the conversation between two characthers it doesnt seem convicing and too realistic in general. Have you got any advice, how do you write dialogues?
Without seeing an example of your dialog, it's difficult to advise. This might seem sarcastic, but my dialog is how my characters communicate with one another. Refrain from using dialog to feed information to the reader. That's a sure-fire method of creating unrealistic dialog. How do you speak to your family and friends? Follow that pattern.
Have you made sure that you aren't having your characters JUST talk? People usually are doing something else as they are talking, like sipping tea, scrolling through social media on their phone, flipping through channels on the TV, etc. Also, is the dialogue moving the plot forward? If it isn't, then it should be minimized or taken out. Maybe also check that both characters don't have the same way of talking. For example, a gangster who dropped out of school at 14 and a Harvard graduate probably wouldn't speak the same way. I hope maybe this helped.
I don't say this often, but TV is your best friend here. Watch shows/movies in your genre, and pay attention to the conversations. Hollywood gets a lot of things wrong, but they are masters at dialogue that is both just what needs to be said while containing everything that is needed. Do not neglect your favorite writers, either.
Understand that written dialog is not a transcript of speech. It's a meticulous illusion. There are certain things you do realistically. Others, you simplify so as not to be annoying. This is because all the visual cues are missing. (Some cues can go back in tags, but not all of them. Please, don't try to fit them all in there.) The grammar for dialog is not the same as the grammar for prose. It's always more loose. People are lazy. Unless they are driving home a point or they have a weird speech quirk, they won't overdo phrasing. Everything implied should be deleted. Don't be banal. You're not a stenographer. When you're revising, ask yourself, "Am I getting to the point?" People seldom call each other by their name, even in large crowds. It just doesn't happen much. Don't always directly answer questions. I was going to type long examples of each, but I stopped myself. I get carried away sometimes. (Have to keep my word count on my pages and not on the forum!)
To add onto what @Seven Crowns has already said, I like to think of dialogue as a conflict. So "don't always directly answer questions" becomes, for me, "almost never answer questions directly." If I write two people having a conversation that is not a conflict in and of itself, I generally have a clue that the scene in question might need to get retooled or removed. Obviously, this is not 100% of the time. Sometimes questions need to be answered directly, but these are always spots that I've learned to tune myself into in my own work.
I think you also need to be sure what the purpose of a dialogue passage is. The speakers don't necessarily need to have a purpose ...they might just be blabbering away to fill in time ...but YOU, the author, need to have a reason for showing us this blabbering. What do you want the dialogue to accomplish? I agree with @Seven Crowns , that dialogue is not a transcript of speech. In other words, you don't include EVERYTHING the characters might say to each other. I see this a lot in new writing, where the writer gets carried away with superficial small talk. Hi, howya doin? Remember me? I sure do. I'm fine, and you? Yeah, I'm okay. Just okay? No, I'm fine, actually. What're you up to just now? Oh, nothin much. Sounds like me. I'm doing nothing much these days either. Well that's us getting older, I guess. I haven't seen you in ages—we should have a chat. You fancy a coffee? Um, yeah, why not? I've got two hours to kill. Okay, where should we go? Oh, I don't know. You pick. Well, there's this new place I heard of... and etc. Eyes cross, fingers grow numb, readers drop off the branch. This might be 'realistic' dialogue, but it's not exactly riveting. See if you can pare down passages like that to the bare minimum, give us a lot of visual clues as to what's actually happening as well as what the speakers are actually thinking .... and keep in mind what you want the reader to learn and remember from the passage.
Don't always write in full sentences Writing dialogue isn't so hard - think like how you might chat on Messenger or Whatsapp, or how you might text, or even write on this forum. Write dialogue kinda like that It's what I do anyway and no one's complained yet
Use small talk, my editor commented on how real my dialog was because of the small talk. He is still wondering, why I'm such a klutz at all the rest.
I do not have access right now as it is on computer. Anyway, I will let you know when I get computer and translate my dialogues so you can check it out! Some words might be lost in translation.
You should post in the Workshop if you want to post work up for critique - and there are requirements you need to fulfill to post there. Namely these: you must have been a member for at least 2 weeks, with 20 posts, and have made 2 constructive critiques on someone else's work. Constructive would basically mean pointing out good and bad points and explaining why they may or may not work etc, perhaps with suggestions for improvements. If you're worried about words being lost in translation, you could just write a fresh piece in English solely for the purposes of critique just a suggestion. Out of interest, what language do you write in then?
Yes, I fulfilled all the requirments for posting in the workshop. Good idea, I could make a piece on Engish only. Some critique sure can't hurt. And I write on Croatian.
Use dialog to advance the story. Make sure your characters aren't saying things the readers already know, but you also don't want dialog to deliver a chunk of information that could have been given to the reader a better way than through dialog. I've never really had much of a problem with dialog and I think it's because I have always liked to read a lot. I'm just used to seeing how the experts do it, I guess. My advice would be to read more and really pay attention to the ways in which different authors use dialog. Good luck.
Yeah, and add to that, don't have characters saying things to each other that they would already know, just to inform the reader.
