Alright Wattpad, let's talk Banter. I already dedicated an entire chapter to helping you understand "how" to write dialogue from the technical standpoint. You need your commas, your quotations, your tags, and your spacing, all in the name of making it clear and easy to read. However, let's assume you've got all that down. Now becomes the time to figure out "what" your characters say.

This can come into two questions. The first is how do you make them sound natural? The second is how do you make what sounds natural come off grammatically correct?

Up until now, I've thrown a bunch of ideas and rules at you. Adverbs ought to be kept to a minimum. When you use special things like em dashes and parenthesis, you ought to have a good reason for using them. Always know why your writing has something a certain way, especially when you it can be detrimental to your writing.

So now you're going to write dialogue. You might be thinking that you can toss all of that away now. If you want a character talking in a drawl, you want to type it like it sounds. If they talk using a crap ton of adverbs, then you need to use your adverbs. It really doesn't matter, right? Whatever sounds natural...

And that's the kicker. Even if you do break grammar rules in the name of "realistic" sounding dialogue, you better be sure to make that dialogue sound realistic. Furthermore, and I can't stress this enough, it actually needs to have a legitimate reason for being there. I think that's the thing a lot of people forget when they start writing dialogue. If you're going to choose to write dialogue and break grammatical rules, there should be an obvious reason for doing it.

Let's put this into perspective for you. Let's say I wrote a book. It takes place on an alien world, involves an alien society, and my main character is an alien. Quick question... Is all my dialogue written in the language of the lizard people? Don't be confused, they ARE speaking the language of the lizard people. In fact, the last sentence I wrote was actually written in the language of the lizard people.

If you see someone reading this and they didn't look at you in confusion during that last sentence, they are probably a lizard person. Just relax, don't look at them. If you do, they'll eat your face. Now very carefully, turn up the air conditioning, they're vulnerable to cold. When they start to complain about it, grab a bat and hit them with it before they can react. The cold should have slowed them down enough that you had time. Congratulations, you are now part of the resistance (Editor's Note: Elementalcobalt and Wattpad are not responsible for any bat related injuries sustain while reading this book)

Sorry, where was I? That's right, lizard people. Only lizard people speak lizardeze, but the books are written in English. We accept that even though they are lizard people speaking lizardeze, that we are reading it in English because English is what we understand. It's called a suspension of disbelief. Unlike the actual lizard people, which are very much real.

The same can be applied to anything. Write a book in France, China, or Russia, and if you're English, your characters are probably speaking in English. However, do you give them an obnoxious accent? Say they talk, like, how you say, you imagine a foreigner talking? Unless, in the story, they are legitimately speaking in English with a foreign accent, the answer is NO.

It goes like this... the only point of giving someone an accent is to make that accent noticeable. If they're in a situation where that accent wouldn't be noticeable, then there is little reason to make your reader notice it! For example, if I base a book in Canada, I shouldn't need to rewrite to emulate an accent, eh? While people laugh at their own accents, in normal day to day life, they don't necessarily notice it, and just like advice I've given before, if your PoV character isn't noticing it, then it is not something that should be described.

This can even go for people who have noticeable accents, but you've talked with them for so long that you're used to it. If I have this friend who has a deep Russian accent, but after 5 years of being close friends, I understand everything he says and I never think "Wow, this guys accent is thick!', then why change your dialogue to be accented?

Don't get me wrong, you can say "This guy has a deep Russian accent". When you describe him, but don't change the words to emulate the sounds of a deep Russian accent unless that's the issue your protagonist is having! Also, when I talk about accents, I'm including things such as "drunk talk", "mental handicap talk", "someone who bit their tongue" and "demihumans with limited vocabularies". So I don't mean just languages, mais oui.

So to sum it up, don't use an accent in your dialogue, unless the fact that the person speaking has an accent is somehow indicative to the plot. Let's say this person is really hard to understand and you can barely understand their words. Then you can use an accent. It means something then. Don't just have a character that speaks French and decide they'll suddenly give them an accent to give them flare.

And on a side note, also don't do that Spanglish half English, half Spanish unless the person is actually speaking half English, half Spanish. If you have someone speaking Spanish, but write the words in English, keeping every forth word in Spanish does not really make it "feel more Spanish". I will concede a little bit here though, if they have a few words, like, I don't know, calling a woman Chica... and you think it's important to the plot, then use it.

However, up until now, all I've done is talk about accents. Obviously, changing a voice can go in a lot more directions than creating some kind of blunted engrisch in order to make a character sound unique. There will be people who always end a sentence with ya know, ya know? There are also those who talk in chipped off sentences, and people whose minds wonder and jump around from subject to subject.

However, the answer to writing good dialogue really comes down to one thing. Develop your character appropriately, and have them act appropriately within that character. It seems like such an easy thing, and you're probably cursing me for wasting the last 5 minutes only to tell you something you probably already knew. It's kind of like say "write good dialogue" by "writing good dialogue".

However, the trick comes down to the acting. That's right. You have a character with a personality. Now they need to act out the part. We lose sight of that sometimes. We get so focused on writing a character that fits the words and actions we want them to say. However, the trick to writing good dialogue is to let your characters talk normally. Don't try to force them to say what you need them to say.

This might mean you need to rearrange some of the things that happen in your story. This might mean events take longer than you originally expected. This might mean you need to rewrite your characters personality, so it actually fits in with the events you want to happen in the story.

I advise you to avoid changing your character to fit the lines. Don't have sudden personality changes either. A scene should occur realistically and lethargically. Don't make him go through a quick change of mind, less you end up with a FIS character or something worse.

So in the end, think about how a character should respond to hearing something. Put yourself in their situation. Then act out the part accordingly. Think about what they are thinking. Rationalize the responses. These aren't wooden set pieces, they are dynamic, thinking, breathing creatures.

And of course, that leads you to banter... Even if you have things you HAVE to have your character say, and there is absolutely no way you can make it fit into the context of the story and sound believable, you can sometimes sneak it in there by surrounding it in banter.

I think, for new authors, one of the most unappreciated things they miss out on is putting banter into a story. Banter allows you to flesh out your characters, give them personality, add humor, and fill out the word count to boot. Here's one more thing you can add to the marvels of banter. You can use it to hide the painful things that need to be said to get the plot going. You know what I'm talking about... the exposition, the plot relevant words, and the backstory. Keep the banter interesting, and you can spoon feed people any amount of plot and they'll eat it up. Do it wrong, and it becomes a painful chore, causing everyone to wince every time a character opens their mouth.

In the end, good banter is about being able to put yourself in another person's shoes, and act out a part, so when you speak, those words make sense and come out like you'd expect someone to say them. There is a little leeway, of course. We can suspend a bit of disbelief, some things that sound awful to the ear might sound really good on the page. Plus, since everything is through the eyes of your protagonist, just because someone talks like they have marbles in their mouth doesn't mean your protagonist need to hear what they say like they have marbles in their mouth. And if dialogue proves too daunting, there is always expositional dialogue to get you through it.

"Then he told me about the sharks. He explained how they were genetic mutants with an insatiable appetite. I gasped in horror!"

That kind of thing. But if there is any real lesson I want you to take away from this chapter, it's the lizard people thing. Oh, god, he's getting back up! Hit him with the bat again!