"Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people..."
The spoken or written words between characters that reveal personality, advance plot, and create tension or conflict.
Dialogue Basics: This topic includes the definition of dialogue, its purpose, and the rules for writing effective dialogue.
Characterization: The study of characterization involves creating believable and interesting characters. It is critical to have a good understanding of your characters’ motivations, personalities, backgrounds, and more.
Voice: This topic covers the nuances of crafting distinct voices for each character in dialogue. Different characters should have their speech patterns, diction, and tone.
Pacing: Dialogue pacing is critical to keeping readers engaged. This topic includes how to vary the speed of dialogue to keep it interesting.
Subtext: Subtext involves the unsaid meanings underlying a character’s words. Understanding subtext is essential in creating sophisticated, realistic dialogue.
Conflict: A story needs conflict to keep readers invested. This topic involves how to create authentic and compelling conflicts within dialogue.
Tone: Dialogue tone is the speaker’s attitude toward the subject matter, other characters, or the reader. Understanding tone is fundamental to creating a successful scene.
Grammar, Diction, and Syntax: Every aspect of writing is critical, including grammar, diction, and syntax. Knowing how to use these aspects of language effectively in your dialogue is essential.
Showing vs Telling: Dialogue is one of the most powerful tools for showing, rather than telling, readers about important aspects of a story. This topic involves learning how to use dialogue to create a vivid sense of place, character, and action.
Setting: Dialogue is not just about the words characters say—it can also communicate the surrounding setting. Understanding how to weave setting into dialogue is essential.
Sensory Detail: Incorporating sensory details into dialogue creates a multimedia experience for readers, allowing them to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste what is happening in a scene.
Internal Dialogue/Monologue: A character’s internal dialogue refers to the thoughts running through their head. Understanding how to use internal dialogue in storytelling is crucial to creating multi-dimensional characters.
Dialogue Tags: Dialogue tags, also known as dialogue attributions, are the phrases that indicate who is speaking. Knowing when to use them and how is essential for good writing.
Dialogue Format: Proper formatting of dialogue is essential both for aesthetics and ease of reading. This topic includes fundamental punctuation rules, paragraph formatting, and dialogue in screenplay format.
Improvisation and Script Development: This topic includes techniques for improving creativity and helping writers develop a script. It also covers read-throughs and other ways of testing dialogue in context.
Adaptation Techniques: Understanding how to adapt dialogue from one format to another (e.g., novel to screenplay) is a critical skill in creative writing.
Collaboration Techniques: Creative writing can be a solitary endeavor, but sharing work with other writers is a vital part of the process. This topic covers collaboration techniques for sharing and critiquing dialogue.
Direct dialogue: This is the most common type of dialogue and involves characters speaking directly to one another in a conversation.
Indirect dialogue: This type of dialogue is where the narrator summarizes what was said without giving actual dialogue.
Monologue: This is a long speech given by one character, usually to a listener or listener.
Soliloquy: This type of dialogue is where a character speaks their thoughts and feelings aloud, often to themselves.
Interior monologue: This is where a character's thoughts and feelings are revealed to the reader, but not necessarily spoken aloud.
Dialect: This is where a character speaks in a specific dialect, accent, or language to reflect their background or region.
Stream of consciousness: This is where a character's thoughts are shown in a fragmented and nonlinear way, as they would naturally occur.
Narrated dialogue: This type of dialogue occurs when one character tells another character about a conversation they had with a third person.
Epistolary dialogue: This is dialogue that takes the form of letters between characters.
Telephone dialogue: Dialogue that occurs over a phone call.
Multimedia dialogue: Dialogue that includes different forms of media, such as text messages, emails, and social media posts.
Silence: This is where there is no spoken dialogue, but body language, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues are used to convey meaning.
"...a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange."
"...antecedents are also found in other traditions including Indian literature."
"...chiefly associated in the West with the Socratic dialogue as developed by Plato..."
"...sometimes spelled dialog in American English."
"...between two or more people."
"It is a written or spoken conversational exchange..."
"...a philosophical or didactic device..."
"...developed by Plato..."
"...a literary and theatrical form..."
"...chiefly associated in the West..."
"...written or spoken conversational exchange..."
"...chiefly associated in the West with the Socratic dialogue..."
"...chiefly associated in the West with the Socratic dialogue as developed by Plato, but antecedents are also found in other traditions including Indian literature."
"As a philosophical or didactic device..."
"...a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange."
"...a literary and theatrical form..."
"...antecedents are also found in other traditions including Indian literature."
"...antecedents are also found in other traditions including Indian literature."
"...a written or spoken conversational exchange..."