Dialogue  

Nothing kills a book faster than lousy dialogue. There are so many ways to go wrong it is scary. One of the things I always recommend is reading your dialogue out loud to “hear” how it sounds. If it is tinny, forced, flat, boring, preachy, etc. then you know you still have some work to do.

Here are a few of the most common dialogue mistakes people make.

Trying to Write in a Dialect You Don’t Understand       

If you’re a middle-aged white guy living in a rural area who listens to Lawrence Welk’s “Greatest Hits” on your eight track tape player, don’t try to write dialogue for a hip Black teenager in New York City. You’ll just embarrass yourself.

Stick with what you know.

Writing “Our Son” Dialogue

You must resist putting words in your character’s mouth just because your plot needs the information passed on to the reader.  Can you ever imagine a conversation like this between a real husband and wife?

                “Where’s our son, Bobby?” Veronica asked.

                “Oh, you mean that 12-year-old scamp who likes video games and enjoys playing soccer?”

To be natural it should be like this:

                “Where’s Bobby?” Veronica asked.

                Archie shook his head. “He’s probably playing video games. Again.”

                “I checked; he wasn’t upstairs.”

                “Then he has to be playing soccer.”

Here the exact same information is conveyed to the reader without being forced or contrived.

               

The worst culprits for forcing information are the “CSI” shows. When you have two coroners standing over a corpse they are not going to give each other detailed explanations of something they were both taught in their first year of med school. It is highly unlikely a pathologist will need another pathologist to explain the function of a tracheotomy to them. This is lazy and sloppy on the part of the writer. All he needed to do was have a cop come in and ask dumb questions. That would allow the information to be shared with the viewers in a much more natural manner.  

Sidekicks were created for the protagonist to have someone to talk to so the author can share information with the reader. 

"Elementary, Dr. Watson."