I don’t claim to be a writer or even an expert on books in general, but I know what I like as a reader and what other people like to read in general.  That’s why I’m writing this 10 part series to help writers, especially self-published writers, improve their writing.

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I can’t tell you guys how many times I’ve wanted to throw my Kindle or my book at the wall because of bad dialogue.  You could say I’m exaggerating but I’m being completely honest when I say that if your book has awesome characters, a fast-paced plot and solid world-building but has bad dialogue I will not be able to finish it.  I have had to give up on more books than I care to admit because of wretched dialogue.

All of the mistakes with dialogue basically boil down to three main categories, which I’ll go into detail below.

Pitfall #1: Stiff dialogue.

Example: “Why hello Gerard!  What a lovely day it is outside, is it not?  I believe the chief meteorologist Jonathon Ziegelgansberger predicted a temperature of 90 degrees, which is 15 degrees above the seasonal average.  In our little town of Cosmo our main industry is tourism, therefore I expect all of the businesses will see a 100% increase in sales this financial quarter.”

How to fix it:

I swear the example above is not an exaggeration of some of the dialogue I’ve read in books, both self-published and traditional.  Dialogue is a tricky thing but the main problem I seem to see is that authors don’t read their dialogue aloud to themselves.  They don’t consider whether the way they write is the way a person would actually speak in the real world.  Authors: you need to make your dialogue flow naturally.  I have two very simple tips below to help you:

1.  Read it aloud to yourself.  If you stumble over words or it sounds ridiculous to your ears, that’s a good hint that your dialogue is stiff.

2.  Ask yourself if a person with the character’s socioeconomic status, upbringing, education level, etc. would speak that way in the real world.

These are some pretty simple steps to fixing stiff dialogue but very, very few authors even bother to do them and editors don’t seem to catch it.

Pitfall #2: Phonetic spelling.

Example: “I’m gunna head te Trona this weeken’ te go sightseein’.  You comin?”

How to fix it:

This is a legitimate example of how many people in my corner of northern Saskatchewan speak.  (If you need a translation the person is saying they’re going to head to Toronto this weekend to go sightseeing.)  This is actually quite a mild example compared to some of the stuff I’ve seen in books.  Of course it’s important to give characters some verbal quirks (i.e. they always say ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use’ or something similar) but if you spell all of their dialogue phonetically you’re going to annoy readers.

I can’t offer specific advice on this aspect, but if you’re going to convey verbal quirks you should have at least 5 beta readers paying attention to your dialogue.  If two of these 5 people found the phonetic spelling too annoying or incomprehensible you’ll have to do a rewrite.  As I said, it’s important for each character to have a unique way of speaking but your readers will hate you if they can’t understand what the heck your characters are saying.

Pitfall #3: Bland dialogue that all sounds the same.

Example: “I’m going shopping this weekend.”

How to fix it:

One thing I’ve noticed that many authors fail to take into account with dialogue is a person’s upbringing, language and culture.  For example, I attended a public school with mediocre academics therefore my language is not nearly as polished as it would have been had I attended, say, an elite private school.  I’m not going to speak the same way a lawyer or politician is.  At the same time, I grew up around the Filipino language, am learning Italian and live in a community with a strong German heritage.  That means that much to my embarrassment sometimes instead of ‘yeah’ or ‘yes’ I use the German word ‘ja‘, which makes me sound like an idiot to people who speak only English.  Sometimes when I’m with my family or friends I’ll accidentally use an Italian or Filipino word because I’m constantly surrounded by those languages.

Upbringing, language and culture are a very important factor in the way people speak.  A person who speaks German as a first language and English as their second language is going to have an odd way of structuring sentences because the languages are so different in terms of grammar.  A person who grew up in an isolated community with a mediocre school like I did is not going to have the same polished accent/manner of speech that someone who went to an elite private school in a major city does.  Authors should listen to the way a variety of different people speak and should try to capture those patterns and quirks in their writing.

Dialogue is not an easy thing to master and even experienced writers sometimes write bad dialogue.  Writing it well takes time, effort and lots of practice but getting it right can be the difference between a 4 or 5 star review versus a 1 or 2 star review.  Dialogue conveys character and sets the pace of the plot, so bad dialogue can and has affected my opinion of entire novels.  Not everyone is so picky as I am about dialogue, but it can’t hurt for authors to go back to the basics and polish up their dialogue skills.