Dialogue isn't always easy, and for someone just starting out, dialogue can be a giant drag. Every time I've mentioned dialogue in Wattpad 101, I usually mention things like "don't overuse tags" and "don't create a smorgasbord of text". However, I realize I've never written a chapter explaining how you do that. If you want to learn how to write dialogue "grammatically correct", you can check out my chapter on writing Dialogue (although it's dated and suffers from a few pieces of information I ought to fix, it was one of the first chapters I ever wrote for Wattpad 101). However, if you want to write dialogue good (I meant to do that, shut up word, you're not the boss of me), then you're in the right place. Here are 5 pieces of advice on how to improve your dialogue.

There is some strange aversion to the word "said". Now, you can argue that quotation marks already do the equivalent of "saying" something, so adding "he said" or "she said" becomes redundant in all but the sense that you're distinguishing a subject. However, I don't think said is bad. To most people who read, the word said is quickly forgotten. That is... assuming the content of the story is interesting.

That's the trick, I think. It doesn't really matter how much you use said... as long as it's sandwiched between a lot of action and you find yourself more engaged with the story. We want to ignore said since we see it all the time, so if our brains are occupied, then we won't start to get annoyed by it's overuse. However, if the story is boring, then the word said will become a repetitive thing you just can't stand.

It's the difference between listening to a professor who constantly keeps clearing his throat or listening to a hot celebrity actor giving an interview while constantly clearing their throat. One is going to drive you crazy, the other is only going to be noticed by that one guy who then makes an internet video about all the times the guy cleared his throat, and you'll go, oh yeah, I guess he does, while not really caring because you love it so much.

Sorry... I got a bit sidetracked there. The point is, said is okay to use, and your writing does NOT need to become a smorgasbord of words to otherwise be accessible to your audience.

However, here is the important thing about said. It doesn't fit in every situation.

Here are the cases in which said should NOT be used:

1) If your dialogue has clearly indicated who is talking, you should not be using said.

2) If your dialogue has an exclamation point, you should not use said.

3) If your dialogue has a question mark, you should not use said.

4) If your person is not speaking in a normal indoor voice as you would normally talk to someone, you should not use said.

5) If your dialogue involves 2 people, said can only be used 2 times in a row.

6) If your dialogue involves 3 or more people, said should only me used 3 times in a row.

In a row means consecutive paragraphs of dialogue. But that doesn't give you a lot of room, so what else do you do?

Just because you can differentiate who spoke, doesn't mean you need to. It's actually quite easy to add no modifier to your dialogue. It really isn't needed. If the speaker is self-evident, there is no point to it.

That's the kicker though. The only point of a tag is to tag who is speaking. There might be some bonus points for adding some emotion into the dialogue. After all, "What do you want?" She screamed, and "What do you want?" She asked, can give some incredibly different visuals.

But, during a standard conversation in normal circumstances, you don't need to put anything. If you're describing a situation where someone is alone, and they're talking to themselves, you don't need to signal it's them. It should be obvious. If a mysterious man in a hat shows up and says something, then sure, that would be the place a tag should be placed.

Some of you might understand this, then go, Yeah? So, what? Not having a tag is all good, but the best you can do is a dialogue or two. You couldn't possibly have a longer dialogue without tags, it's just not possible, you sniveling weasel. Well, random voice in my head who sounds like Severus Snape (I really need to get that checked), I have to disagree with you.

You see, if you got two people talking together, then you can have a pretty long conversation. You can even pull off more than two. The trick is to give your characters a distinct "voice". People don't talk alike, and if you have a situation where no one can tell your character talking from your other character talking without tags, the problem is that you aren't writing characters that have their own voice.

It's surprisingly boring when everyone is interchangeable, so when you write characters and think "well anyone could say that", then you might have some story telling problems right there. Also, this individuality doesn't have to be a quirk. Japanese web novels are notorious for having the person who talks like a Ninja, the person who talks with a Kanji dialect, the person who talks with cat noises... these are easy and simple ways to give each character a bit of personality, true, but you don't need to go so far is to have this character talk like a walking cliché.

It can be someone who talks a tad abrupt, someone who talks fast, someone who enunciates, someone who's a little bitchy, someone who is always polite, someone who is a bit rude... deciding how your character talks... not just how they sound, but the way they form sentences... does this person pause a lot? Say Um a lot? Speak in half sentences?

And then, of course, on a less overall and more immediate change, what are their emotional state? The girl who is afraid isn't going to talk in the same way as the boy who's trying to be brave for her. The man who is angry isn't going to talk the same way as the one who is sad. If one of two characters is in a different emotional state than the other, then how they talk can fill the job of tags.

It isn't too hard to do, and once you get the trick, you can write a lot of text without confusing people. Without any background knowledge on the characters, any description, or any identifiers, here is a conversation. You can let me know if you ever got confused as to who said what.

"Hey, how are you?"

"Me? Hmph, I'm just fine."

"Huh? Are you sure? You sound kind of..."

"I said I'm fine, stop pestering me!"

"Oh... okay. Well, I did have a question for you though."

"Ugh... what is it already?"

"Um. Right. Do you know when the party is going to be tonight?"

"You don't even know that much? God... fine, I'll tell you, it's XXXX."

"Oh, thank you so much!"

"Yeah, whatever."

Not a single tag, but because one character's personality was so out there, you already can imagine them without a single description, a single tag, or even a story.

How a person is feeling matters, but the more time you dedicate to giving your character a personality, the less time you dedicate to actually having the story you want to tell happen. So at every point during your story, you should always think about pushing your story forward. Characterization scenes just for the sack of characterization can quickly bog down a story and make people who want the action feel bored and unsatisfied.

Don't get me wrong, a well-defined character who is interesting to be in the mind of can drive a story forward, or keep a story interesting even in the complete absence of, well, a story. Take the new popularity of Deadpool, for example, or Ironman. Give someone an interesting character, and even if the story sucks, the story can still succeed based on charisma.

However, there we're talking about graphic novels and movies. In writing, a lot of dialogue can really bog down a work. That's why descriptive beats are a great alternative to dialogue tags. If you've never read my chapter on dialogue or never heard of descriptive beats, they're the things you write after a dialogue tag that does NOT describe what they are saying.

In reality, a descriptive beat can be anything, as long as that thing is being done in tandem with the dialogue.

"Well, that was interesting." Sara stretched her arms out.

You're denoting that the dialogue was said by "Sara" while not saying "Sara said". Instead, you have Sara doing something while talking, thus providing the descriptive beat. Descriptive beats are great, and the best part of them is that they make your story feel dynamic. Rarely do two people stand there, motionless, staring at each other, saying words, without moving their arms, shaking their heads, twerking their rumps... okay, maybe not the last one, but the point is that talking in real life is dynamic, and thus when people talk in your story, that can be dynamic.

However, the risk with descriptive beats comes when you use them way too frequently. Yes, you want your scene to be dynamic. However, if every line of dialogue it fitted with a descriptive beat, not only will it slog down the story with sometimes useless information (how did this girl adjusting her hair really contribute to this story?), but it can also make your characters seem like they're flailing about, their hands always going everywhere. Just as you'd never see two people motionlessly talking to each other, you'd probably never see two people's arms flailing about as they discuss things, every sentence truncated with one of them touching something or moving something or tilting or bobbing.

There is a trick to make descriptive beats seem natural that is to...

Typically, for a story to progress, things need to happen. There is absolutely no reason that your discussions can't happen while those things happen. Are they running from a murderer? Have them barricading the door as they deliver their speech. Obviously, you want the talk to be in the appropriate context with the scene they are in, but there is no reason dialogue needs to be mutually exclusive.

In fact, in some of the best stories, they usually are. If you can deliver dialogue that adds characterization right in the thick of the action, you're dealing a double whammy. That story is going to be really good, without long boring parts that bog it down, since you come to love the characters through their actions, not through the lull periods you designed for characterization.

At the end of it, the descriptive beats will feel more natural, because they are there to progress the story. If two people are chatting while building a plot-necessary device, you're telling their story while building on the characters and possibly adding some exposition in a way that doesn't feel exposition heavy.

Of course, the big word there is natural. Because at the end of the day, the only good dialogue is a dialogue that reflects real people.

Good grammar in dialogue is fine. I'm not saying that your character needs to talk with an accent and be virtually nonsensical because the uncle you're referencing him by talks that way. However, how your characters talk matters, and the biggest thing that matters in dialogue is that your character's sound like their conversation is something that could happen.

This doesn't get done in many cases. Even in some of the well-published books out there, this little rule gets thrown away. You'll have people speaking exposition in a way no normal human would ever speak. People will tell stories, give responses, make noises, and act in ways downright inhuman to the most of us. And... they tend to get away with it. Good dialogue is something that often gets overlooked in the path of a good story.

If you tell a good story, then simply mediocre dialogue might do. However, if you go that extra mile to make your characters sound genuine and real, some are bound to notice. It will give people a better feeling of your characters, and when people are attached to the characters, they become attached to the story.

Good dialogue and interesting characters are one of those things that set the difference between a dime novel you read, enjoy, and never return to, and that story you remember for years to come. No matter how epic the story is, without the characters to back it up, it often becomes quite forgettable.

So how do you achieve this seemingly impossible task of writing like a person would talk? Have your dialogue read to you? You can use those text to speech programs, or you can find a reliable friend or even two, and simply have them read the stories dialogue portions back to you. As an added bonus, you can have them read the whole chapter, as advice I once mentioned before, you can find awkwardly phrased sentences a lot better when you hear someone (or a computer) trying to read your sentence back to you.

Once you'll hear it, you'll know what sounds wooden or fake, because you'd know what sounds weird if someone were to start talking to you using lines from a book. Other than that, I'd say you need to just practice. If you're really struggling, try writing the dialogue independent of actions and tags, write it like a script for a play, and then splice it in. I wouldn't recommend that entirely as that might cause some things to get lost in the transfer. At the very least, it could help you decide where you want the conversation to go, and once you have it mapped out, you could paraphrase it into your actual story.

The important thing is variability. You're not going to use a ton of tags, a ton of descriptive beats, or a ton of nothing. You're going to use a mixture of the three and make it sound natural, both to your ear and to your reading sense. And in the end, that will simply take more reading experience and more practice, so get writing. I hope this helped!