Tutorials Video

Writing Dialogue Which Sounds Like Someone Talking

Intermediate · ~15 min

Overview

Dialogue fails in a predictable way. Everyone is articulate, everyone answers the question asked, everyone says what they mean, and the scene reads like a transcript of a meeting. Real speech is evasive, interrupted and full of people talking past each other. The habits below move written dialogue toward how people behave, which is a different problem from how people sound.

What You Need

A scene already written, since this is a rewriting technique more than a drafting one
A room where you are willing to read aloud without embarrassment
Two coloured pens, or two highlighter colours in your application
A recording of real people talking, such as an unscripted interview

Steps

Give each character something different to want in the scene

Flat dialogue nearly always comes from everyone in the room wanting the same thing, usually to exchange information helpfully. Give the two people opposing objectives and the scene writes itself. One wants to leave, one wants them to stay. One wants the truth, one wants the subject changed. The friction produces the evasions, and the evasions are the dialogue.

Let people answer the question they wish they had been asked

Watch any real conversation under pressure. Direct questions get partial answers, redirections and counter-questions. Written dialogue answers promptly and completely, which is why it feels like an interview rather than a scene. Take three answers in your scene and replace them with a dodge. The information still arrives, later and with more meaning.

Cut the first line and the last line of the scene

Most scenes are written with a warm-up and a wind-down. Greetings, throat clearing, a restatement of what happened. Delete the top and tail and the scene starts in motion and leaves before it sags. Do this mechanically on every scene and put back only the openings genuinely doing work.

Say it out loud, at performance pace

The read-aloud test finds problems no amount of rereading catches. Sentences nobody is able to breathe through. Rhythms repeating across four speeches. Words a person of this age and background would never reach for. Run it at the speed an actor would, not the speed you read at, because the gap between those two is where clunky dialogue hides.

Strip the names and check who is speaking

Cover the character cues and read the speeches. If you cannot tell who is talking, everyone in your script shares one voice, and it is yours. Difference comes from what they notice, how much they say, whether they finish sentences and which subjects they avoid. Vocabulary is the weakest lever and the one people reach for first.

Take out the explaining

The strongest cut in most scenes is the line where somebody says what the scene means. It usually sits near the end and it usually feels like the best line. It is the writer stepping in to make sure everyone understood. Trusting the audience is not a slogan here, it is a specific deletion, and the scene almost always plays better afterwards.

Use silence as a line

A character choosing not to answer is dialogue. So is leaving the room, pouring a drink, or repeating the question back. Scenes built only from speech run out of gears. Give at least one moment in every important scene to a response with no words in it, and the surrounding speech gets sharper by contrast.

Pro Tips

Record yourself performing the scene and listen back the next day. Distance turns your ear back on.
People interrupt far more than scripts allow. One genuine interruption per page changes the feel of a whole script.
Accents and dialect are better carried by word order and rhythm than by phonetic spelling, which slows a reader and often reads as mockery.
Watch what happens if you give one character the shortest lines in the scene. Restraint reads as authority on the page and on screen.
A speech running over five lines needs a reason. Sometimes the reason is good, and it should be a decision rather than an accident.
Read your dialogue against a produced screenplay in the same genre. The difference in density is usually the first thing you notice.

Knowledge Base

What You'll Learn

The table below is the fault-to-fix list. The section after it covers subtext, which is the idea everyone repeats and few explain concretely.

Common faults and their fixes

Fault	Sounds like	Fix
Everyone is helpful	Questions get full answers	Give the two people opposing objectives
One voice	Cover the names and nobody is identifiable	Differ by what they notice and avoid
On the nose	Characters state their feelings	Cut the line, keep the behaviour
Exposition dump	Two people tell each other known facts	Give one of them a reason to withhold
Warm-up	Greetings and small talk at the top	Delete the first line
The summary line	Somebody explains the theme	Delete it, always

Subtext, described concretely

Subtext gets explained as characters not saying what they mean, which is true and unusable. Here is the mechanical version.

A scene has a surface conversation and a real one. The surface conversation is about the thing they are discussing. The real conversation is about the thing between them. Write the surface fully and let the real one show through pressure: what they refuse to discuss, how quickly they change subject, which harmless question makes somebody stand up.

A practical exercise. Take a scene where two people argue about the thing underneath. Rewrite it so they argue about a completely different subject, a broken appliance, a route to the motorway, whose turn it is. Change nothing about who wants what. The scene will get better, because the audience now has to work, and work is attention.

Where This Fits

This sits under Story Structure, the pillar for the story and editing side of the site. Want and Need covers the objectives making dialogue push, and Interview Technique covers getting real speech out of real people, where the same instincts apply in reverse.

FAQ

Q: Why does my dialogue sound stiff?
A: Usually because every character wants the same thing in the scene, which is to be helpful. Give them opposing objectives and the evasions appear on their own.

Q: How do I make characters sound different?
A: Change what they notice, how much they say, and which subjects they steer away from. Vocabulary is the weakest tool and the first one most writers reach for.

Q: What is the read-aloud test?
A: Performing the scene out loud at acting pace rather than reading pace. It exposes unbreathable sentences, repeated rhythms and words the character would never use.

Q: Should I write accents phonetically?
A: Rarely. Phonetic spelling slows a reader and often reads as caricature. Word order, rhythm and idiom carry a voice more reliably.

Q: How long should a speech be?
A: As long as it needs, with the caveat of anything past five lines being a decision. Long speeches work when a character has seized the floor for a reason the scene supports.