I was digging through my East Hill Writing Workshop materials the other day when I chanced up this little lesson on dialogue. I’m pretty sure that one of my partners wrote this up, but I can’t remember which.  I thought I’d break it out for you today because I think it’s super useful.

First of all, remember that dialogue is the stuff that usually shows up in between the quotation marks.  It’s the stuff that people say out loud. 

Dialogue, whether in fiction or nonfiction, accomplishes important dramatic goals:

1. Reveals personality
2. Creates tension
3. Moves the story along from one point to another
4. Relieves the monotony of the narrator’s voice
5. Adds texture to a story
6. Provides white space on the page
7. Gives accurate information.

Even though it would be impossible to remember the exact words of an exchange that happened in the past, the nonfiction writer is expected and trusted to present the“truth” of the exchange.

Honesty is crucial to nonfiction. This means that the writer does his or her best to approximate the conversation, to capture the flavor and essence of the actual exchange. The writer can’t simply make it up to add dramatic interest. Trust plays a significant part in a nonfiction writer’s reputation.

When you are in doubt about a scene, there are ways to signal to the reader whether you are presenting a literal truth, an emotional truth, or an approximate truth.

To achieve the sound and rhythm of a character’s voice, Anne Lamott makes the following suggestions:

1. Sound words out loud as you write, or at least mouth them.
2. Collect actual conversations. Eavesdropping at a coffee shop will provide a gold mine of ideas. Pay attention to the voices you hear around you; take notes on your friends’ habits of speech, gestures, facial expressions. Use visual tags to help readers see the characters’ exchange as well as hear it.
3. Remember that readers should be able to identify each character by what he or she says. Characters need to sound different from each other.
4. Good dialogue encompasses what is not said as well as what is said. Mannerisms can help communicate this as well as pauses, throat clearing, unfinished sentences, and the inclusion of inner thoughts.
5. Be careful about using dialect. It can turn the reader off. When a character needs to speak in dialect, better to sprinkle it like salt to perk up the flavor of an exchange.