hello!

be comfortable and get a snack

is often considered either the easiest thing to put on the page or the greatest challenge. ultimately, whether you're an old pro or an eager beginner, writing exercises can help you to better your craft. having these exercises exist outside of your on-going projects more often allow you to focus solely on craft and getting the dialogue right instead of conveying the information you want said in this scene.

HERE ARE A FEW THINGS TO TRY:

1.. this may be the creepiest piece of advice i'll ever recommend, but it's a pretty popular one. (and for good reason - it works!) when you're just writing down exactly what is said, as it's said, then you're paying attention not so much to the content of the conversation, but how that information is being shared. what can you gather about the people based on this conversation and the words they're using? what phrases and figures of speech stick out?

2. . this piece of advice was first given to me by a friend and while I've seen it help a lot of writers i know, i know it isn't necessarily for everyone. when you're first learning who your characters are, you don't necessarily know their voice. get to know their voice through "interviews." imagine you are meeting your character for an interview. where is the interview? if the place serves food, what do they order? ask them questions, and see how they answer. just keep on trying to learn what you need to know. you'll struggle less later when writing their dialogue.

3.. one way to directly help dialogue in your existing projects is to read a scene you have already written and read only the dialogue. no dialogue tags, descriptions, anything. how does that conversation sound? while editing a whole scene can be overwhelming, if you want only to focus on dialogue, don't look at the rest. if it helps, you may want to even write out only the dialogue. see if the scene still makes sense. this is a good way to just pay attention to how the characters are speaking and edit or fix the tone to best fit the character and how they are conveying information.

TUMBLR

lizard-is-writing

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THIS IS NOT MINE BTW, but this was so helpful like dialogues are so hard to make sometimes i don't understand