Listening Is a Writer’s Best Dialogue Skill

An emotional teenage girl, a befuddled oldster, a patronizing matron, and an Oxford don all speak differently. The fiction writer’s task is to convey their speech with idioms, syntax,vocabulary, and language. When does a character pause? Why does a character pause? Do they use run-on sentences? Speak in clipped staccato? Or, master the use of conditional phrases and subordinate clauses?

You won’t be searching for the 401 words to replace saidbecause your reader will know who is speaking. You don’t want to use those words anyway; they take the reader out of the story. Get into your character. Think how they think and say what your character would say.