Writing great dialogue is like playing a sport. It’s easier to do if you practice. When I first started writing fiction, I practiced a lot with short stories. For the first four months, I tried to write a 2000 word story every night. Because I loved writing dialogue, I focused on working out that muscle with these short pieces. The more I worked my muscles, the easier dialogue became to write. In this paper I will go over three exercises that helped me learn to write dialogue.
One of the first short stories I wrote was based on the comedian, podcaster, and actor Mark Maron . I was listening to his podcast a lot and was really taken by his internal structure with his own rage and addiction. The story I wrote in his voice is still one of my favorites. I loved it so much, I wrote five more stories to go with it and turned it into the novella, Mark and All the Magical Things. Steps for Doing the “Write in a Famous Voice”
Exercise • • • Pick a character you love to watch on television, a character whose voice really stands out to you. Once you have the character in your mind, put them in an impossible situation. Try to think of a circumstance that will really challenge them. Now write the story. Focus on nailing that character’s voice.
EXERCISE 2: WRITE PEOPLE YOU KNOW Another way I would exercise my dialogue muscle was by writing short stories about my kids. I have five children and each one has a very distinct personality. The stories I wrote about them were complete fiction. I would write about them swimming at the pool and trying to decide what kind of dive to do off the diving board, or arguing about who would get to sled down the hill first, or getting scared in the woods while they were on a walk. It helped me with my dialogue because it forced me to focus on replicating different voices that I knew well. Steps for Doing the “Write the People You Know”
Exercise • • • Pick three people you know well. It might be your parents or some of your friends. Ideally, they will each sound distinct in your Dream up a situation that would require them to talk to one another. Write mind. that scene. As you go, focus on making them sound on the page like they sound in your head. One of my favorite types of short stories to write would be stories with only dialogue. These stories had two contrasting characters. For example, an angry wife and an apologetic husband, or an eccentric old man and a tipsy teenager, or a guy looking for a date and a woman hoping to catch a cab. I’d write a conversation between my characters using only dialogue. No descriptions. No actions. Just the words coming out of their mouths. I wrote tons of stories this way. When I started publishing, I took my favorite 10 conversations and turned them into a book called “7 Nights in a Bar.”
Steps for Doing the “Write with Only Dialogue”
Exercise • • • Step one is to define your characters. Keep it simple. You don’t need a ton of back story. Pick a one sentence description for each that says something about their Now intentions. Decide what they are going to talk about. Ideally, you will pick a topic that will accentuate the differences between them. Now write their conversation using only dialogue. Remember, these exercises are about practicing. Your work doesn’t have to be perfect. I recommend you do them as writing sprints. Set a timer and write for an hour without leaving your chair. When you are done with your sprint, go back and read what you did. If you like it, maybe it will turn into a bigger project. If you don’t like it, put it in a folder somewhere and do another one tomorrow. The point is the practice. It will pay off later when you write a book.