Dialogue

One way to write speech is to write exactly what the speaker said.

One way to write speech is with dialogue, which means writing out exactly what the speaker said.

"Let’s go into the center of it," said Gregory.

"That would be a really bad idea," Kalgrash warned.

Gregory’s voice was dead, somehow pallid. He said, "It would be great to go in there. Just to see."

"No," said Kalgrash. "It would be kind of awful and you wouldn't live. You’d be pulled apart or something and you’d come out the other end all scissored up."

The Suburb Beyond the Stars(2010)

Not as realistic as you might think.

If you voice-memo’d what your friends say and then typed it up and compared it to dialogue in books or TV, you’d see normal speech is actually much harder to understand as a reader.

Writers usually work to make their dialogue sound natural without being confusing or boring.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said.

The leader lion laughed, rough and mocking. “If you were me you’d be a big scary lion. Not a tasty little boy,” he said.

“And if I were you I wouldn’t be Clever Gobgap, who knows many things,” I said.

“Well?” Carmen asked, eyes laughing.

“Well what?” I replied.

“What did you think?”

I smiled and looked away, not entirely sure what to say.

I meekly muttered, “It was… fun, I guess.”

“You guess!?” Carmen exclaimed, and wheeled to face me. “Come on, Eliza! Live a life!”

Write your own short exchange between two characters.

Dialogue Basics Activity 10: Writing dialogue