Good Dialogue

Dialogue Craft Lesson 

Good dialogue not only sounds pitch-perfect, it performs key functions in your story. 

Characterization: Through his own words, a character comes alive. He defines himself and reveals who he is, whether 

he is trustworthy or deceitful, whether naturally ebullient or chronically depressed. His speech patter will identify him 

as erudite or obtuse, an Okie or a New Englander, a stuffed shirt or a clown. 

Tone and Mood. At the same time that dialogue is delineating character, it can be establishing the tone or mood of a particular scene. The manner in which characters address one another, for example--answering a question with another question; engaging in lighthearted repartee; exchanging caustic, guarded remarks--can draw a reader into the scene by making him "feel" its electricity and excitement, its dynamism. 

A long passage of dialogue, if handled skillfully, can keep the reader enthusiastically flipping the pages, because in his 

mind he smells the burning fuse that signals the inevitable explosion of accumulating tensions.

Plot advancement and pace. Dialogue advances the plot and hones an edge on the tension, thereby bringing the reader more quickly to the story's climax. Narrative gets there faster, but dialogue does it more interestingly. Dialogue allows 

the reader to eavesdrop and observe. Dialogue may slow down the pace, but it also draws the reader closer to the action, intensifying it. It allows him the vicarious pleasure of "being there". 

Ask Yourself: Does each passage of dialogue define or at least contribute to the delineation of character? Does it invigorate the scene with a tangible sense of mood, an enlivening tone of immediacy: Does it provide a change of pace where a change of pace is warranted, and in so doing, continue to advance the plot? 

Material adapted--(read blatantly stolen) from Randall Silvis in Writer magazine