I’ve heard of writers plopping down in out-of-the way cafés or hole-in-the-wall dive bars to pick up a little local color. “Sit down and take notes of what real people talk about and how they say it,” the advice went. Should a writer insert this local dialogue and regional slang into a piece, wouldn’t these characters— adrift in the narrative without depth or context— be more like caricatures?

Dialogue gives writers the unique opportunity to reveal character without running afoul of the mantra, “Show, don’t tell.”  Dialogue is, by its very nature, action. Whenever I am writing a scene, I am often in the scene myself, an observer watching the story unfold. Somewhere in my mind’s eye I marry my intent with what I see and this most often shines in dialogue.

My characters don’t say the same things using the same words. One character might have a sardonic spin on his phrasing, the other a cryptic slow release of information. In interacting with each other through dialogue, my characters come most alive for me.

Whenever someone asks me how I learned to write dialogue, I say, “All My Children.” I first knew of Erica Kane when she was only on her third marriage. Though I haven’t watched religiously, there’ve been years when I didn’t watch at all, the long-time characters— Erica Kane, Tad Martin, Adam Chandler— can all express the same sentiment in three unique, true-to-character ways. The way they talk is part of their character, just as real people’s speech is part of their personality.

Real dialogue isn’t overheard, but explored and created by a writer with the nuanced purpose of characterization. If a writer knows his or her characters well enough, then writing the way they talk— their dialogue— will become second nature.

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