design-dialogue-craft

Design Dialogue Craft

Write dialogue that sounds like real speech, carries subtext, reveals character, and advances plot — while avoiding the expository flatness of "on-the-nose" writing.

Why This Is Best Practice

Adopted by: Iowa Writers' Workshop, Juilliard Dramatic Writing program, and taught by master practitioners including Elmore Leonard, Cormac McCarthy, and Harold Pinter. Impact: McKee (1997) identifies dialogue as the primary vehicle for revealing character-in-conflict; Leonard's 10 rules (2001), built on decades of bestselling crime fiction, identify "said-bookisms" and explanatory tags as the top markers of amateur dialogue; Lukeman (2000) reports that dialogue problems are among the five most common reasons manuscripts are rejected by agents. Why best: Authentic dialogue is not transcribed speech — it is compressed, purposeful, and always in service of story. The design approach (purpose-first, subtext-second, rhythm-third) produces dialogue that readers "hear" rather than read, creating immersion that discursive description cannot match.

Sources: Lukeman, Noah — "The Art of Fiction" (2000); McKee, Robert — "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting" (1997); Leonard, Elmore — "10 Rules of Writing" (2001); Noble, William — "Conflict, Action & Suspense" (1994).

Steps

1. Establish the purpose before writing a single line — Every dialogue scene must accomplish at least one of: (a) reveal character, (b) advance plot, (c) establish or shift relationship dynamic, (d) deliver necessary information. Write the purpose as a sentence before drafting the exchange. If you cannot articulate the purpose, the scene should not exist.

2. Identify the subtext — What does each character actually want from this exchange, and what are they unwilling to say directly? Subtext is the gap between the spoken words and the real agenda. A character asking "Are you hungry?" may be asking "Do you still love me?" Subtext makes dialogue multi-layered; its absence produces on-the-nose writing where characters say exactly what they mean and feel.

3. Write a first draft with no dialogue tags — Draft the entire exchange using only the spoken lines. Read it aloud. If you cannot tell who is speaking from the voice, word choice, and rhythm alone, the characters do not sound distinct enough. Fix voice before adding tags.

4. Differentiate character voices — Each character must have a distinct vocabulary range, sentence length pattern, and rhetorical habit. A working-class mechanic and a Harvard professor do not reach for the same words. Voice is the sum of: education, region, emotional state, relationship to the listener, and status in the scene. Write character voice profiles before drafting dialogue-heavy scenes.

5. Use "said" almost exclusively — "Said" is invisible to the reader; it disappears into the prose. "Barked," "growled," "exclaimed," "retorted" pull the reader out of the scene to notice the author's word choice. Use action beats instead of said-bookisms: "She set the glass down. 'No.'" The action + the line does the work the adverb tried to do.

6. Cut the first and last lines of every exchange — The first line is usually setup; the last line is usually over-explanation. The sharpest dialogue starts mid-thought and ends before the conclusion. This creates the sensation of entering a room mid-conversation and leaving before the air clears — which is how real conversations feel to an observer.

7. Build in interruption, deflection, and non-answer — Real people do not take turns speaking in complete sentences. They interrupt, they talk past each other, they answer a different question than the one asked. These techniques reveal relationship dynamics (who holds power, who is afraid) more efficiently than any description.

8. Write in beats, not blocks — Long uninterrupted monologues kill pace unless the monologue itself is dramatically charged (a confession, a threat, a revelation). Break dialogue into exchanges of 1–3 sentences maximum. Each beat should shift the scene's power dynamic slightly. Track who has the upper hand at each exchange — the scene's arc is the shift from one character's control to another's.

9. Read the completed scene aloud — Prose that reads smoothly on the page often sounds unnatural when spoken. Actors use this technique to find problems. Listen for: sentences too long to say in one breath, rhythms that all sound the same, words no one would actually use in that character's mouth. Rewrite anything that makes you stumble.

10. Test the scene's necessity — After revision, ask: does this scene change something? A relationship, a plan, a character's internal state, the reader's understanding of plot? If nothing changes, the scene is inert regardless of how well-crafted the individual lines are. Cut it or merge it with a scene that earns its place.

Rules

• Never use dialect spelling to indicate accent (writin' this way is condescendin'); use rhythm and word choice instead.
• Each character must want something different from the same conversation — conflict is not argument, it is competing agendas.
• Avoid information dumps disguised as dialogue: "As you know, Bob, our company was founded in 1987..." Characters do not explain to each other things they both already know.

Common Mistakes

• On-the-nose dialogue — Characters say exactly what they feel: "I'm angry at you because you forgot our anniversary and it makes me feel unloved." No real person speaks this way. Real people say: "Fine. Forget it." The unexpressed emotion creates tension; the expressed emotion releases it too early.
• All characters sound the same — When you can swap speakers without changing the meaning, the dialogue has no voice differentiation. This is the most common manuscript-level dialogue problem.
• Explaining the dialogue with the tag — "I hate you," she said hatefully. The adverb or said-bookism that restates what the dialogue already communicates is redundant and patronizes the reader.
• Functional but purposeless dialogue — The scene passes without conflict, revelation, or change. Characters are pleasant to each other, information is exchanged, and nothing matters. This is filler regardless of technical quality.

Examples

On-the-nose (before): "I'm nervous about the presentation," Mark said anxiously. "Don't worry, you'll do great," Lisa said reassuringly.

Subtext-driven (after): Mark checked his tie for the third time. "You checked your tie," Lisa said. "I know." "It's fine." He checked it again. She looked away.

Voice differentiation: Hemingway's characters speak in monosyllables under pressure. Faulkner's characters speak in sentences that double back on themselves. Neither approach is wrong — the voice must match the character's internal landscape.

When NOT to Use

• Screenwriting — screenplay dialogue follows different conventions (action lines carry much of the subtext burden that prose dialogue must carry alone).
• Dialogue in instructional or business writing — functional clarity matters more than subtext or voice differentiation.