Words shape reality.
This month, we journey into the art and purpose of dialogue in writing—how to make it real, how to capture voice, and how to use it as a powerful tool to reveal character and truth.
With insights from Plato, Mark Twain, and Oscar Wilde, we’ll explore how conversations—both internal and external—define great writing.
July 14-20 Focus: Writing Realistic Dialogue
“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." – Naguib Mahfouz
The Purpose of Dialogue:
Dialogue isn’t just about filling space between actions. It’s a literary tool that reveals character, drives conflict, uncovers truths, and creates emotional resonance. Realistic dialogue mirrors how people talk—but it isn’t a transcription of real-life speech. It’s an illusion of realism, sculpted with precision and care.
Crafting the Illusion of Reality:
Realistic dialogue is intentional. Great writers remove filler, keep the rhythm tight, and allow subtext to shine. While people stammer, trail off, and repeat themselves in real life, readers have little patience for that unless it serves a purpose.
Key tips:
❖ Use contractions ("I can't" instead of "I cannot") to maintain natural speech.
❖ Balance brevity with emotion—people often say more through less.
❖ Avoid over-explaining. Let your characters speak for themselves.
❖ Include beats—small actions that break up dialogue and ground the reader in the scene.
Listening to Real Conversations:
Spend a day listening. How do people interrupt each other? How do tone and mood shift mid-conversation? Notice speech patterns, regional dialects, and how people avoid uncomfortable truths. Then practice mimicking that in dialogue while trimming the excess.
Common Mistakes in Dialogue:
❖ Too formal: Characters sound like essays instead of humans.
❖ Info-dumping: Dialogue used to explain plot instead of sounding authentic.
❖ Uniformity: All characters sound the same.
❖ Lack of conflict: Real conversations often have tension—whether subtle or overt.
Example Analysis:
Let’s look at a simple passage:
“I thought you weren’t coming.”
“I wasn’t. Then I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”
Notice how the tension builds without backstory. The history is implied. This is effective dialogue.
Practice Prompt:
Write a short scene (300-500 words) between a taxi driver and a nervous passenger. Let the dialogue imply the passenger is fleeing something without ever saying it directly. Use silence and incomplete sentences to show emotion.
P.S. If you’re looking to up your writing game and want to start writing faster, more clearly, and with greater depth I have a great writing program just for you! It’s called The Literary Alchemist Writing Program and it is a month long program that helps you become a better writer in just 15-minutes a day!
Thank you for listening and reading today and I look forward to hearing from you soon!
Share this post