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One Simple Writing Exercise for Better Dialogue
Before you can sharpen dialogue on the page, you have to know what’s at stake
Dialogue can be a great way to reveal information without the dreaded info dump. Yet if you think that’s all dialogue can do, you’re missing the opportunity to deepen your stories.
One thing I’ve been exploring lately is the power dynamics at play in conversations, and how leveraging these can give needed heat to an otherwise flat conversation.
You know, when the argument about who forgot to fold the laundry is really about a woman who is too damn tired to give a crap, and how much of her silent resentment rises to the surface.
When these necessary-but-boring conversations fall flat on the page, it’s because they’re not complex enough. They’re not doing enough of the work of character development or of pushing the plot forward.
Your readers might argue about the laundry, but they don’t want to hear your characters do it.
How switching perspectives improves dialogue
Before you can get more on the page, you have to know more as a writer, and one effective trick is to spend a few minutes in your non-POV character’s head before you write a big scene.
