We talk all the time. But dialog is not quite the same as talk, funnily enough. Look closely at dialog in the writers you love, and you can learn a lot.
A few key points:
1) Dialog is action. It should do more than fill in a scene, and it should do more than one thing: establish character and build tension, for example, or enact conflict and disguise motive. Convince, distract, flirt, seek revenge, lie.
2) Dialog should never be used to fill the reader in. (“Hello, Joan. We’ve been married for twenty-five years now, haven’t we, and we’ve always lived in this house.”)
3a) Dialog is not only spoken words. Dialog includes what is not said (but might be thought), and includes actions and gestures.
3b)Look for contrasts between what is spoken and what is done, thought, or noticed.
4) Repetition and indirection are keys to strong dialog. What words or phrases bounce back and forth between characters? What questions go unanswered as each character pursues his or her own agenda?
Here are several examples of great dialog. It can be tremendously helpful to imitate these, filling in your own content, but using the technique the writer used to create tension–between the characters, between the spoken and the unspoken, between what’s obvious and what’s acceptable, between the grand and minute. Have fun!
1) Action says more than words.
“Don’t be too emotional, Miss Chen. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I am just passing the bureau’s decision on to you.” On the desk a shiny ant was scampering toward the inkstand; he crushed it with his thumb and wiped the dead ant off on his thigh.
From “The Woman from New York” by Ha Jin
Now you try writing an example where you have a line of dialog, followed by an action, and the action says more (and different) than the words do.
2) Line that ignores the obvious.
He peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk–that is, me–standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face.
“What seems to be the trouble?” he said.
From “Emergency” by Denis Johnson
Set up the situation in your first sentence, and then have the line of dialog utterly ignore that situation.
3) Large claims attached to very specific causes: reveals character and creates comic tension.
My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.
That’s possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began. Then we didn’t seem to know them anymore. But you’re right. I should have had them to dinner.
From “Wants” by Grace Paley
Set up a specific setting. Let your characters speak broadly, but note that all of these claims are quite specific–they are just large–they juxtapose grand claims and small details.
4) The shocking admission followed by deeper internal admissions, unspoken.
We sit on the carpeted stairs, holding hands like children. “I never told him that I loved him,” I say. I was too much the well-brought-up woman. I was so well brought up I never felt comfortable calling my husband by his first name.
From “The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukerjee
Ground us in place, one simple gesture. Then drop the simple, shocking admission, and follow it my deeper, unspoken admissions.
5) Tag contradicts dialog.
I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn’t want anything.
Don’t be bitter, I said. It’s never too late.
No, he said with a great deal of bitterness.
From “Wants” by Grace Paley
This one’s pretty direct. Notice the repetition of “bitter” and “bitterness”–first in the dialog, then in the tag. But the dialog denies the bitterness. Do your own with any quality or emotion.