Talking, talking

2 suggestions:
a) Read "Writing Dialogue" by Tom Chiarella if you haven't yet. Also, perhaps less relevant but Ann Hood's "Creating Character Emotions" may also help.

b) You can consider sharing some of your scenes on SYW and mark the thread specifically a dialogue workshop.

Other than that, I can only offer what is definitely bad:

"As you know, Blair," Mary Sue says, blowing so-called white widow pot smoke out of her mouth and wearing bright red lip gross on her super ugly lips that makes her look more like a cheap hoe than a straight-A student headed to Harvard. Her pot smoke does indeed smell potent but that is poo-like instead of weed-like. This girl has no shame. "We used to be BFFs but not anymore. Not since you stole my guy. F-star-star-star you. Go to da hell, da hell, hell hell hell hell hell. And don't even think about stealing William Joshua Hamilton The Third from me. He's actually gay so you can totally forget about it.

ellio said:

How does one do it? First there's the issue of swearing and slang-words that are often discussed in threads, but can we talk about all the other aspects of dialogue? How do you go about making it sound realistic ad not on-the-nose? How do you decide how much to include/how much of a conversation is necessary? How do you show a difference in accent?
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I pretend I'm my character and talk. That's it. What would my character say here? Then I re-read it, often aloud, if it doesn't sound natural I change it or delete it. And I never try to force information in to the dialogue. It makes it sound stilted. My characters have their own speech patterns but I only have one type with an accent. I change the spelling and choose different words to get that across.

I love writing dialogue. It's one of the things I feel like (and have been told) I do well. Here's how I go about it:

I listen to people. I'm really introverted, so instead of talking to people, I just listen. Okay, and I eavesdrop on conversations in public. Things like cadence and tone and whether they interrupt someone else or whether they talk too long or too fast. Then when I'm writing I recall what those conversations sounded like and play the voices back through my head.

I also read my dialogue out loud, or say it out loud before I write it to make sure it rolls off the tongue right. Sometimes there are sentences that flow beautifully, but no actual person would ever say them, so they feel stilted in dialogue. Reading aloud helps so much! Especially if you add inflections/read in the voice of your character. You'll feel crazy, but lock yourself in a room alone and give it a try. Or, read it out like a script with a spouse/friend you trust. You'll hear what doesn't sound natural and will be able to tweak. You might also catch yourself saying it differently than you wrote it. Whatever you say is generally more natural than what you wrote, and might be what you intended to write all along. (That's when reading it to a friend helps. They might catch the difference in what you say and what you wrote. Happens all the time in my real life critique group).

The craziest thing I do is imagine the characters are sitting with me, and I'm either talking to them or eavesdropping on them. I close my eyes and try to hear what they are saying and how they're saying it.

That's pretty much all I've got. Listen and emulate real conversations. And I guess be a little bit crazy, haha. The part I struggle with are the actions between dialogue. I need to watch people as well as listen, I suppose.

Not sure if that helped or not!

Short answer - read Elmore Leonard. Read him deeply and take notes on how he constructed his dialogue. His craft is usually so excellent that you won't really mind if his work isn't your thing (it isn't mine, but I still love him). The man was a master of dialogue, and probably the very best example of vernacular and regionalism used correctly.

KateSmash said:

Short answer - read Elmore Leonard. Read him deeply and take notes on how he constructed his dialogue. His craft is usually so excellent that you won't really mind if his work isn't your thing (it isn't mine, but I still love him). The man was a master of dialogue, and probably the very best example of vernacular and regionalism used correctly.

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I second this rec. I think Lajos Egri may have mentioned transition through dialogue, too. I've also transcripted exchanges from movies and real life and compared them to see what's consistently omitted from the fictional conversations, and occasionally do a writing exercise in which I jot down an exchange and then build the story around the dialogue.

Bing Z said:

"As you know, Blair," Mary Sue says, blowing so-called white widow pot smoke out of her mouth and wearing bright red lip gross on her super ugly lips that makes her look more like a cheap hoe than a straight-A student headed to Harvard. Her pot smoke does indeed smell potent but that is poo-like instead of weed-like. This girl has no shame. "We used to be BFFs but not anymore. Not since you stole my guy. F-star-star-star you. Go to da hell, da hell, hell hell hell hell hell. And don't even think about stealing William Joshua Hamilton The Third from me. He's actually gay so you can totally forget about it.

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Add to that pile of pet peeves the Unintentional Infodump Non-Conversation, in which the author has more than one character rapidly disgorge information the readers need in the same scene, resulting in a "conversation" in which none of the lines have anything to do with each other. Intentional non-responses can be brilliant ways of showing the characters aren't listening to each other or are misunderstanding each other, and I love those, but I mean things like this, to continue your example:

"As you know, Blair," Mary Sue says, [...]"We used to be BFFs but not anymore. Not since you stole my guy. F-star-star-star you. Go to da hell, da hell, hell hell hell hell hell. And don't even think about stealing William Joshua Hamilton The Third from me. He's actually gay so you can totally forget about it. "

"Of course, Mary Sue, ever since the academy broke with the uniform tradition," Blair responded, "Some students have embraced it as freedom to display personal style, which has caused rifts between the students who liked the old way better, and I worry this will all come to a head at the prom."

"I got a flat tire last night, so my car is in the shop and will probably still be there at an inconvenient time, causing us much consternation later in the plot," Mary Sue retorted.

"Fortunately, the school day has been extended to give us a longer holiday," Blair replied wistfully.

...okay, that's really exaggerated, but even subtle versions of this bug me. It sounds like a pair of malfunctioning Stepford Wives.

This might sound dumb, but I just try to imagine the conversation actually taking place. What would you think if someone said that to you. I assume you know your characters pretty well. If your character walked out of the novel, could you imagine them saying that to another person? Would you find the conversation odd?

This is true for even non-contemporary novels. We hear all kinds of people speaking every single day. I just ask myself after every conversation "Do people really talk like that?" Its not really about the exact word choice or the slang. I think its more about the rhythm and the details.

If you have any doubts, it probably not working.

All these are great responses. I generally try to get into the head of the character and just let it flow. I know i'm doing it right when I feel the emotion of what my character feels and I have a hard time keeping the pace of typing with the conversation in my mind. I try not to overthink it, but at the same time try to think about what the character is thinking about. For instance, is your character even listening to the other person? Each character has what they feel is importaint in every scene, so we need to sense that in the dialogue.

I'm reading the dialogue out loud. In different voices. Making faces, too, and doing other things along the way. Several years of acting school & drama club should count for something. It also helps me when I'm feeling stuck in a scene--I approach the character like I'm an actor who was told to improvise some of the lines.

I tend to include either the very first bit of the conversation, or the very last bit so as not to drag out the plot.

On a first draft, I focus on writing the dialogue as I'd imagine people would say it. In revisions, I have to cut quite a bit because people do a whole lot more rambling in speech than you want to put in your novel.

rwm4768 said:

On a first draft, I focus on writing the dialogue as I'd imagine people would say it. In revisions, I have to cut quite a bit because people do a whole lot more rambling in speech than you want to put in your novel.

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Seconding this. When I write my first drafts, I just write. When I go back and revise, I cut 99% of the "um"s, "yeah"s, and "no"s. I cut extra clauses and useless words, even more than I would in my narration. For example, if my first draft was like this:

"Hey, um, did you finish that paper for history class?" Natalie murmured.

"Yeah, it took me five hours, but I finally managed to get it done," I answered.

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I'd edit it down to:

"Did you finish that history paper?" Natalie murmured.

"It took five hours," I answered.

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My first draft writing brain is so verbose

Ditto.For the first draft, I write as I imagine it, and my characters love to talk and talk and talk. Some of the dialogues are as much as 50% longer than they should be once I edit them down. Not just too many words, either, but the sheer volume of the talking that goes on - in the most pretentious meta way ever, I find my characters saying stuff that I didn't plan on, or that I was only subconsciously aware of.

For the second/third/fourth/infinity edits, I find that being a plotter really helps me. My synopses are quite detailed, so, even if it's a "character-building" scene, I try to have a goal in mind, i.e. the MC and their love interest show why they should be together, or the MC pisses off her enemy, whatever. I then reread the scene with this goal in mind and try to make sure that everything is as originally driving towards this as possible and, if not, I cut it. With my cut pieces, I then figure if anything is important enough to incorporate at another point - for instance, I always knew the mom of my MC in my currently-querying MS was dead, but I didn't figure out until she and her LI started talking about it that she would have slit her wrists - and if it just came out too early, and then try to put it into another scene. For dialogue, I think that having a goal in mind is really important (even if your book is very character-driven/literary), knowing what you want to get across even in a short scene, so it doesn't just feel like two characters rambling.

I used to write comic books (even got a few graphic novels pubbed) and I found very good advice on writing dialogue in books about how to write screenplays. My favorite bit of advice, which has stuck for all these years, is 'make it as short as possible'.

I don't know how much that helps, but I know that really long chunks of dialogue stick out to me unless something VERY interesting is being discussed.

I also really enjoy the dialogue in good British TV shows, you'll notice that the characters use interesting words that mean ALMOST exactly what they are saying, but have a slightly off meaning which I find fascinating. I'm also not sure I'm explaining that well enough... I just watched Endeavor on Netflix and it was really smartly written.