On July 12, 2025, Kasie and Rex finally did an episode dedicated to dialogue. Here are the show notes:

Theme for the day

Dialogue

Agenda

• Quick catch-up
• Dialogue
• Dos and Don’ts
• How to write great dialogue

Segment 1

We have kind of edged around dialogue, talking about its role in implacture (episode 314) and exposition but we haven’t focused on Dialogue since before Rex joined the show. Can you believe that? Our pal and western author Mike Long was here for episode 5 on dialogue and pal and Appalachian writer Sharon May was here for episode 15 on dialect. But otherwise we’ve just let it be a background thing, not a focus.

That ends today! We’re gonna talk about talking.

So I’m reading this book right now that stalls now and then and I have diagnosed it as a novice use of dialogue. Here’s what I mean: sometimes there needs to be action and sometimes they need to be talking. But knowing what needs to happen when is something only experience can provide.

In Powerless, which, granted. is a YA novel so there’s gonna be some stall tactics on the romance, these characters get within a breath of kissing and then talk themselves and each other out of it. I thought this first kiss must then be EPIC since we’ve been diverted from it about a dozen times. But no, when it finally happened, it was procedural.

So other than dialogue ruining good kissing scenes, what are some common dialogue mistakes?

Characters sounding the same or a lack of a unique voice – whether you hear this dude in your hear or not will show up on the page. Writing unique voices can be hard unless you’re basing these people on real people, but give this link a shot and see if the tips help. More tips in segment four, too.

Unnatural or unrealistic speech – my favorite workshop question is, “Would a five year old say that?” Often our adult authors overestimate what young people will articulate. Worse, we use dialogue for some other purpose and end up making our characters sound like marionettes delivering exposition instead of real people.

People don’t usually monologue and they rarely use well-crafted rhetorical devices so ease up there. This link gives five other mistakes writers make with dialogue. I am a believer that book dialogue should not be real dialogue, so there’s a margin of error on the “people don’t talk like that” evaluation. Nevertheless, when the dialogue is bad, you know it.

We’ll talk about the mechanics like tags and punctuation in the fourth segment “how to.”

Segment 2

So what is the purpose of dialogue? How do you know if you’re doing it right? What’s the right balance of dialogue and narration? Does “you’ll know” satisfy?

It really is a sense, a feeling, that comes with a lot of experience. So the first suggestion is to read, A LOT, and make note of what you like and don’t about the author’s use of dialogue. Some other considerations (thank you AI):

• Distinct characters voices – tone, dialect, pace, even when they choose to talk tells you about the character
• Purposeful dialogue – they speak for a reason such as advancing the plot, revealing information, or demonstrating the relationship between characters
• Avoid information dumps – people don’t monologue, so break up the info dump with beats of action and questions; you don’t need to make the characters work for the info, but try to balance it
• Subtext and nuance – people rarely say what they actually mean, so you have an opportunity to be clever with the dialogue, just don’t be so clever that we don’t get it.
• Action beats – break up the dialogue with gestures and blocking, move people around to show rather than just tell how they’re interacting.

Are there any books you can think of with exceptional dialogue?

Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, among the best dialogue writers out there. So what do they all have in common?

Segment 3

What are some big errors novice writers make in dialogue? (link)

• Characters telling one another stuff they should already know
• Characters talking in big chunks (monologuing)
• Dialogue tags – too many, or the wrong kind.
• Characters saying each other’s name too often.
• Characters floating in space – ground them with narration and blocking and gestures.

And from this link:

• Writing dialogue the way people actually speak – ums, ahs, repetition – it’ll sound real but be real boring.
• Dialogue with no purpose – advance the plot, reveal character, show conflict, provide information; also procedural dialogue that back-and-forth that tells us what’s happening instead of summarizing mundane activities
• Not making it clear who’s speaking – you may have been told to cut back on the tags and so you’ve got a stream of dialogue with no tags at all and we’re lost.
• Too much slang, profanity, or dialect – give a hint of it so we get the gist, or select dialect specific words (reckon, heap, fool) to make the point of the vernacular
• Dialogue that reveals the writer’s opinions – characters who pontificate on your behalf

Segment 4

So how do you do it?

Focus on making it realistic, concise, and purposeful. (Thank you, AI.) Vary the sentence structure, incorporate subtext, add gestures and blocking to break up the speaking, use dialogue tags intentionally. Keep it short, people don’t need to monologue for the s