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- Sam Lipsyte, “The Dungeon Master,” from The Fun Parts. The Dungeon Master has detention. We wait at his house by the county road. The Dungeon Master’s little brother Marco puts out corn chips and orange soda.
- Danielle Evans, “Virgins,” from Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. “Look what Eddie gave me,” said Cindy, all friendly. She pulled a pink teddy bear out of her purse and squeezed its belly.
- Ottessa Moshfegh, “The Beach Boy,” from Homesick for Another World. The friends wanted to know what the prostitutes had looked like, how they’d dressed, what they’d said.
- Sarah Gerard, “The Killer,” from Guernica. They paid the bill and left, gathering on the sidewalk. Nathan said to them, “We live down the beach.
- Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- Naomi Alderman, The Power
- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
- J R R Tolkien, The Hobbit
- F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- Arthur Conan Doyle,A Study in Scarlet
- Brandon Taylor, Real Life
- Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants
- Madeline Miller, Circe
In the opening of Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered,we meet Willa Knox, a middle-aged and newly unemployed writer who has just inherited a ramshackle house. Alfred Hitchcock once described drama as "life with the boring bits cut out." In this passage, Kingsolver cuts out the boring parts of Willa's conversation with her contractor and brings us righ...
In the first piece of dialogue in Pride and Prejudice, we meet Mr and Mrs Bennet, as Mrs Bennet attempts to draw her husband into a conversation about neighborhood gossip. Austen’s dialogue is always witty, subtle, and packed with character. This extract from Pride and Prejudice is a great example of dialogue being used to develop character relatio...
In The Power, young women around the world suddenly find themselves capable of generating and controlling electricity. In this passage, between two boys and a girl who just used those powers to light her cigarette. Alderman here uses a show, don’t tell approach to expositional dialogue. Within this short exchange, we discover a lot about Allie, her...
Here, friends Tommy and Kathy have a conversation after Tommy has had a meltdown. After being bullied by a group of boys, he has been stomping around in the mud, the precise reaction they were hoping to evoke from him. This episode from Never Let Me Go highlights the power of interspersing action beats within dialogue. These action beats work in se...
The eponymous hobbit Bilbo is engaged in a game of riddles with the strange creature Gollum. Tolkein’s dialogue for Gollum is a masterclass in creating distinct character voices. By using a repeated catchphrase (“my precious”) and unconventional spelling and grammar to reflect his unusual speech pattern, Tolkien creates an idiosyncratic, unique (an...
The narrator, Nick has just done his new neighbour Gatsby a favor by inviting his beloved Daisy over to tea. Perhaps in return, Gatsby then attempts to make a shady business proposition. This dialogue from The Great Gatsby is a great example of how to make dialogue sound natural. Gatsby tripping over his own words (even interrupting himself, as mar...
In this first meeting between the two heroes of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmesstories, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, John is introduced to Sherlock while the latter is hard at work in the lab. This passage uses a number of the key techniques for writing naturalistic and exciting dialogue, including characters speaking over one another and the int...
Here, our protagonist Wallace is questioned by Ramon, a friend-of-a-friend, over the fact that he is considering leaving his PhD program. Brandon Taylor’s Real Life is drawn from the author’s own experiences as a queer Black man, attempting to navigate the unwelcoming world of academia, navigating the world of academia, and so it’s no surprise that...
In this short story, an unnamed man and a young woman discuss whether or not they should terminate a pregnancy while sitting on a train platform. This example of dialogue from Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants moves at quite a clip. The conversation quickly bounces back and forthbetween the speakers, and the call-and-response forma...
In Madeline Miller’s retelling of Greek myth, we witness a conversation between the mythical enchantress Circe and Telemachus (son of Odysseus). This short and punchy exchange hits on a lot of the stylistic points we’ve covered so far. The conversation is a taut tennis match between the two speakers as they volley back and forth with short but impa...
Jun 24, 2022 · This is the dialogue that goes inside quotation marks. How to structure dialogue. Dialogue is a break from a story’s prose narrative. Formatting it properly makes this clear. When you’re writing dialogue, follow these formatting guidelines: In US English, dialogue goes inside double quotation marks (“dialogue”). In UK English, dialogue ...
Example 3: Dialogue that Drives the Plot. Conversations aren’t just about characters sitting around and chatting. Great dialogue should actively push the story forward. It can set up a conflict, reveal key information, or change the course of events. Take a look at this: “I’ve made my decision,” the king declared, the crown heavy on his ...
Oct 9, 2022 · Dialogue is a vital part of a story. It is the vehicle of the characters’ thoughts and emotions. Good dialogue helps show the reader how the characters think and feel. It also helps the reader better understand what is happening in the story. Good dialogue should be interesting, informative and natural. Internal vs External Dialogue
Jan 14, 2021 · Well-written dialogue can take your story to a new level — you just have to unlock it. In this article, I’ll break down the major steps of writing great dialogue, and provide exercises for you to practice your own dialogue on. Here's how to write great dialogue in 9 steps: 1. Use quotation marks to signal speech. 2. Pace dialogue lines by ...
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Nov 12, 2023 · 2. Make your character's wants clear. In a post about how to approach how to write dialogue it may seem contradictory to say this, but a good rule for dialogue writing in a scene is to write the dialogue last. After building out the other elements of your story (your arcs, acts, scenes, and story beats) you will have a better sense of how each ...
