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. Continue reading →