books on writing dialog

Stephen King: "On Writing" and "Danse Macabre"

Heath's Brief Handbook of Usage

SFWA Writers of America Handbook

And there is a very nice non -fiction book written by Orson Scott Card, but I cannot remember the name.

Oh, yes. Go to your local college bookstore, the used books section and buy the first creative writing book that jumps into your hand.

Then go back to the first line I typed.

Then, Keep writing sweetie!!!!

Dialogue

I think the best way to learn how to write good dialogue is to read good dialogue. Start with Elmore Leonard. He's one of the very best.

And, simplest of all, listen to people. (I have been known to follow people around to eavesdrop on a good conversation - though, thankfully, I haven't been arrested yet.)

Jamesaritchie said:

I think the best way to learn how to write good dialogue is to read good dialogue. Start with Elmore Leonard. He's one of the very best.

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I second this. I've copied out large chunks of several books by him, and it's helped me a great deal. Also, if you're an SFF reader, have a look at Gene Wolf. I'm working my way though the Long Sun at the moment, and the characters all have distinctive voices (sometimes irritating, but certainly distinctive).

1. Read a lot

2. Listen to people talk. Observe.

3. Understand the power of "silence" and subtexts (what's being said by not saying anything)


Personally, I learned a lot about effective dialogue from the book "Writing Dialogue" by Tom Chiarella.

I got in the habit of mentally writing other people's dialogue. I don't just listen to conversations, I imagine exactly how they look on the page, complete with fillers and crazy punctuation marks. Now it's become second nature...which is good because it helps with the writing, but bad, because I do find it distracting. Sometimes I concentrate so hard on how I'd write somebody else's words, I don't actually listen to what they're telling me...

My favorite quote regarding dialogue comes from Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern.

"Dialogue can be persuasion, invasion, evasion, and explosion. Dialogue can be silence."

Listen

Listen to people, but be careful. Narrative is best, I think, when it reads like speech, but speech is best when it doesn't. Most often, the best thing to pick up from real people isn't dialogue, but patterns and rhythms. You have to condense real speech into dialogue.


I suspect the biggest problem new writers have with dialogue isn't really with dialogue at all. It's knowing when a character should say somethinh, and when he should be quiet. You can't force words into a character's mouth just because you haven't written any dialogue for three or four or five pages. Much bad dialogue is written because the writer forces the character to say something when the character has nothing to say.

A character needs to speak only when he has something worth saying, and that somethng should relate to story, to furthering characterization, or to add verisimilitude.

dialogue book

Writer's Digest put out a good one that I think was simply called DIALOGUE. It was w/a series of technique books.
Scout

I liked a lot a little booklet by Jean Saunders (you can still find it at someplaces if you look hard):

How to Write Realistic Dialogue by Jean Saunders

or
Writing Dialogue by by Tom Chiarella

or more recent:
Dialogue: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Effective Dialogue (Write Great Fiction) by Gloria Kempton (I also liked the one about plot in the same series)

I think Scene & Structure (How to construct fiction with scene-by-scene flow, logic and readability) by Jack M Bickham contains a lot of helpful information on the use of dialogue. ISBN 0-89879-551-6