One of my pet peeves is reading meaningless, wooden dialogue. Conversations between characters must sound natural, mimicking real-life dialogue while also moving the plot forward. Once again, you have to make the reader care. When done well, dialogue helps writers create convincing characters. It can reveal a character's backstory, their feelings, what motivates them, what their shortcomings are. Body language is also a necessary part of dialogue, since real people speak volumes in the things they don't verbally say. Facial expressions, posture, nervous ticks, and mannerisms are important in terms of establishing mood and the character's mental state. If the dialogue feels unnatural and unnecessary, the reader will be bored and stop caring about what happens next. I use the following writing exercise in order to force my students to be more conscious of making believable conversations that moves the plot along.
Writing Exercise: Focus on Dialogue
Step One: "Stalking Exercise"
This part of the assignment comes from Dr. Patricia Hamilton, professor of English at Union University. The goal is to capture dialogue from real-life situations and analyze conversational patterns. My students love this assignment, since they get the opportunity to walk around the school and observe snippets of conversations they hear. Students carry pencil and paper with them as we venture into the hallways; each student has to write down interesting phrases they hear people say and write them on their list. When we return to the classroom, students compile all of their phrases. The last time we did this activity, we ended up with a list of thirty-eight phrases.
The video below from TED Ed called "Three Anti-Social Skills to Improve Your Writing" details effective skills for writing dialogue:
Step Two: Dialogue Story
Write a story that is solely driven by dialogue. Use most of the interesting phrases you gathered during step one. Add to them, but you must include at least five of them. The scene should be brief. However, it should also have a clear beginning, middle, and end. One or two characters is enough to work with. Use only dialogue to move the story forward. The dialogue may increase suspense, show readers a trait of the characters, and/or change the situation or conflict the characters are in. This will force you to be conscious about what you're doing when writing dialogue.
I'd love to hear your feedback on this exercise, especially if you try it out! What are some other dialogue tips you've found helpful during your writing journey?