Disclaimer: I don't know my sources anymore. This is a mishmash of dialogue lessons from many different sources, filtered through my leaky brain, and reproduced here. Some of the ideas are mine, most of them are from a hundred different sources. I'd give credit if I knew where credit was due.
Dialogue
People don't usually say what they mean. People don't say, 'I would like to have sexual relations with you,' they say, 'You look pretty today.' The subtext is important. Most people won't say, 'I've had a bad day at the office so I want to go to the bar and get drunk and maybe start a fight,' they say, 'I want to go out and have some fun,' or 'I need to blow off some steam.' When writing the story, say what you mean, but when you get to dialogue you need to hide the point of the words.
Everyone has an agenda. When two characters talk to each other, they don't usually talk to each other. They talk at each other. Decide what point each character is trying to get across and then work from there. Two characters who interact but don't really listen to what the other person is saying provides better dialogue than two people who talk and agree on every point.
Avoid the 'ask and answer' dialogue.
When asked what they would like for supper, very few people instantly reply, 'A steak, potatoes, and a side of boiled baby carrots.'
People are not always ready for the question and they rarely have a great comeback (a good one, yes, but not great – unless that's one of the character's defining characteristics). If someone asks “What do you want for dinner?” the other person might say, “I had Chinese for lunch.”
It doesn't answer the question, but it begins leading the conversation toward lunch or away from the idea of Chinese food.
Agenda
Keep in mind that the point of conversation is usually to convince. What are the agendas of the people having the conversation? What are they trying to get out of the other person? And how far will they go to be right.
When two (or more) people engage in a conversation, they all have a little point they are trying to make. That point often changes during the course of a conversation, but having in mind what each character wants out of conversation at the beginning of the talk will allow the writer to entangle those desires.
Entangling those desires will prevent “ask and answer” dialogue, because each character will always try to twist the last thing said to make his own point.
Everybody lies
There is no reason your characters or the people they are talking to have to tell the truth. Dialogue is the best place in the world for misinformation. It's the one time the reader isn't expecting whole truths filtered through the narrator. People will say anything to be right or to cover something up.
On the flip side, dialogue is a great time to tell the truth. You can have a character come right out and hit the nail on the head and say exactly what is going on. This is doubly true if you put lies around the truth and/or hide the truth in the speaker's agenda. Dialogue can be used very well to manipulate a protagonist into doing something they don't want to by simply putting the truth in the middle of half-truths and suggestions for a course of action.
Setting – The Lesson I Learned from Comic Books
There is always something going on in the background. Breakup long lines of dialogue (especially internal) and long paragraphs of character's actions by showing us the little touches in the background that make a setting unique.
Between lines of dialogue, especially try to find something in the setting that enriches the words spoken by either contrasting it or complimenting it. If someone says “I hate you.” and the next image we see is the roses in her hand, that contrast makes the words more powerful. Likewise, saying, “I love you.” while looking at a car wreck is going to be more powerful.
Thanks for sharing this. I especially like what you have to say about setting. Setting is my weak point, for sure.
Great advice, Howie. I know I fall into the question/answer rut pretty regular. But one of my hallmarks (if a virtually entirely unknown writer can have "hallmarks") is overlapping dialogue—people interrupting each other, talking over one another. Besides adding an element of realism (I find people do this fairly often; it goes back to agenda), this can makes exchanges more fun to read and speed them up somehow. The characters' desires to tell their sides make the reader desire to hear them.
Thanks, Howie.
I'm also not against you starting a thread entitled "Things I learned from Comic Books"
Otis "Saying What He Means" the Bulldog
Here's something I wrote on a review in Ketchum's workshop. It probably could be expanded on, but is based around my theory that if you're not one of the great authors lauded across the literary world by editors, you should probably play with dialogue tags as safely as possible.
Quick & Dirty Tips for Dialogue Attribution
And some quick and dirty tips on dialogue attribution, maybe if we start off with by just tagging every single block of dialogue with [character/pronoun] said/asked. and we will just subtract from those.
• When there is a quick back-and-forth of dialogue between two people with no narration or action in the way, get rid of the dialogue tags other than the first one, if it's a long exchange leave a tag every once in a while to keep us oriented. So:
"I said something," I said.
"Now you said something."
"Now I said something."
"Etcetera."
• Whenever a paragraph of narration/action happens in between two lines of dialogue from the same person, remind us who it is who's talking so we don't think it's the other character responding. So:
"I said something."
A paragraph of narration.
"I said something again," I said.
• If the dialogue is linked to a paragraph of action, take out the dialogue tag and just use the action to signify who is talking. This only really works in paragraphs where all the action is only done by the speaker. If other characters have actions, throw that into a separate paragraph of narration. So:
"I said something." I crossed my fingers and jumped.
He followed. That wasn't a very good idea.
• If a character has a big block of monologue, try to advance the dialogue/action tag as soon as there is a break in there. This keeps the tag as invisible as possible. So:
"I said something," I said. "I kept talking about whatever it is that I've been talking about. I even kept going."
• Whenever a third person enters a conversation, then it gets kind of muddy and you need to try to keep the important tags in there to keep us oriented. Rely more on narration to keep the speakers clear and to break the convo into smaller two-person exchanges. So:
"I said something."
"You said something."
"If he may interject," he said.
"I said something to him now," I said.
A bit of narration, probably something involving the him character to show that he is the focus now.
"He said something," he said.
"I was talking to him now," I said.
"He said something."
"I said something."
"Now you interject," you said.
