My dialogue sounds wooden. How do you fix that?

@draft_zero OP

3mo ago

I just read my draft aloud and the dialogue made me wince. Everyone explains things to each other in full, grammatical sentences, nobody interrupts, and it all sounds like the same person talking. What are the actual mechanical fixes for wooden dialogue?

11 comments

@comma_kira2mo ago

Reading aloud was step one, so you're already ahead. Next: people rarely answer the question they're asked. 'Did you talk to your mother?' 'It's complicated.' Real dialogue is oblique, evasive, full of subtext. If everyone responds directly and completely, it reads like an interview transcript.

@the_proofreader2mo ago

The big one: characters know things, so they don't say them out loud to each other. Cut every line where someone tells another person information they both already have ('As you know, your brother died in the war...'). That's the maid-and-butler problem and it's the number one cause of wooden, expository dialogue.

@draft_zeroOP2mo ago

The maid-and-butler thing is exactly what I'm doing, half my scenes are people updating each other. So where does the necessary info go if not into the dialogue? Genuinely asking, I don't know where else to put it.

@the_proofreader2mo ago

Three places: into narration/action, into conflict (let it come out because someone's angry or defensive, not because they're being helpful), or cut it because the reader doesn't actually need it. Best trick: deliver info while two people argue about something else. The fact slips out as ammunition. Now it's character AND exposition.

@draft_zeroOP1mo ago

The 'deliver info as ammunition during an argument' note just rearranged my brain. Rewrote one scene that way and it's twice as short and ten times more alive. Thank you.

@foggy_chapters2mo ago

Try this exercise: take a flat scene and give one character a goal the other doesn't share, even a tiny one (wants to leave, wants a confession, wants to not talk about it). Suddenly the lines have friction. Wooden dialogue is almost always dialogue where nobody wants anything from the other person.

@verse_and_vice2mo ago

Give each character a different rhythm. One speaks in clipped fragments, one over-explains, one answers questions with questions. Cover the dialogue tags and see if you can still tell who's talking. If you can't, they all share your voice, which is the 'everyone sounds the same' problem you flagged.

@cold_open_cora1mo ago

Practical pass for the 'everyone sounds the same' issue: give two or three characters a verbal tic or vocabulary that's theirs alone. The educated one never contracts words. The nervous one apologizes mid-sentence. Small, consistent, and the reader subconsciously hears different voices.

@lowercase_luca2mo ago

On the mechanical side: trim the greetings and goodbyes. 'Hi, how are you' 'Fine, you' is real but it's dead on the page. Start scenes late, leave early, drop into the conversation at the moment it gets interesting. Also kill most of the 'he said angrily' adverbs and let the words carry the tone.

@kafka_lite1mo ago

Eavesdrop and transcribe. Sit in a cafe and write down a real exchange verbatim, then notice how much is fragments, overlaps, trailing off, non-sequiturs. You're not copying it onto the page (real speech is too messy) but it recalibrates your ear for what natural actually sounds like versus what we imagine it sounds like.

@manuscript_mona1mo ago

Robert McKee's Dialogue is worth the read specifically for the idea that all good dialogue is built on the gap between what's said (text) and what's meant (subtext). Once you start writing the said-thing and the meant-thing as two separate layers, the woodenness tends to dissolve.