One common problem we see in story submissions is spoiled dialog. The first paragraph opens with intrigue, the setting is revealed with deft strokes, and engaging prose pulls us right along until… the characters start to talk.

It’s as though the author decided to ring a cow bell instead of allowing us to continue in our pleasant reverie. Let’s take a look at how authors often spoil their dialog and consider eavesdropping as a metaphor for crafting inter-character communications that work.

When dialog turns us off, the problem is often that the interchange of words between characters has been assigned the wrong function. Dialog is meant to help in creating tone and atmosphere, reveal character, and engage the reader in the unfolding storyline.

Instead, many stories press dialog into the following roles: world building, exposition, explanations of difficult concepts, revealing background or historical information, and last but not least— “I have no idea what dialog is for, but I know my characters should say something.”

I’ll take the challenge of condensing all those bad ideas into a single example, a short exchange between two survivors of an unnamed apocalyptic event.

“Were you there when the dia-chromatomic portal opened up over Washington?” John asked breathlessly. “The purple lighting came all at once, synchronized like a deliberate attack.”

“Yeah, the Carlson administration had only been in office three days by that point,” Sue answered suspiciously. “There was so much bad feeling between the parties then, we didn’t know if it was an insurrection or what.”

“I thought climate change, myself. You know, the Earth has been warming past the 1.5 degree limit for years now, with man-made carbon from industry and power plants acting like a blanket in the atmosphere, holding in the heat. Thousands of species have gone extinct. Lots of people on the news were saying it was just our turn now.”

“Yeah, like all that stuff.  We deserved it.”

Have you ever overheard two people having a personal conversation, at work or at home, and you wonder what they’re talking about? Perhaps it’s a phone call where you only hear one side of the conversation, and you can’t help but try to piece it together. Someone screwed up the Jenkins account. Was that Bob? He’s always making a mess of things; maybe he’ll finally get fired. Oh no, it was because they had to take their kid to the emergency room during an important meeting? That must be Joan. She’s had to deal with so much, this will kill her!

Eavesdropping is compelling because you don’t have all the context. You have minimal clues as to what is going on, and the problem-solving part of your brain is struggling to put it all together, build context clues and game out what the answers will mean if it goes one way or another.

Your brain loves to do this. Even when you know you shouldn’t be listening, you have to decide to ignore the opportunity to eavesdrop. The natural reaction is to engage the imagination, not walk away from people and forget about it.

This is a powerful way to approach dialog. You don’t have to take away one side of the conversation, but you do want to withhold information and keep some context clues out of reach. Work to activate the reader’s eavesdropping impulse.

Let’s try that bit of dialog again.

Stumbling around the corner of an old, brick department store, Sue tried to stay clear of the cars and trucks burning in the street. That’s when she saw him.

“Thank God!” she said.

She was sure he saw her, heard her, but he turned away. After half a day, he was the only person she’d come across.

“Wait...wait! Hey, thank God you’re…”

Whoever he was, he turned on her, face blackened, clothes burned away in spots. “Don’t!” he said. “Just don’t...thank...God.  Get away from me!”

“Sorry...sorry. There’s no one else.”

“Yeah.” He said, looking her up and down. “You… weren’t outside.”

“But I saw it,” Sue answered, as though that might draw him closer. 

“The colors?”

“Purple, mostly,” she said, taking another step toward him. “Over the Capitol.”  She reached out tentatively, hand shaking, palm down. “I’m Sue.”

“Whatever. You didn’t see it, not down here. Get out of here, lady.” He turned back to his course, but soon stumbled, bracing himself against the hot brick wall. “I guess we deserve this,” she heard him say, “after all we’ve done.”

“Thank God!” helps convey character and reveal mental state. Thinking she was alone in a burning city, Sue sees someone and can’t help but blurt out her feeling of fortunately coming across another survivor. If she had stayed silent and tried to turn away without being seen, it would have conveyed a different mental state.

“Just don’t...thank...God.  Get away from me!” pretty definitely shows John’s mental state and puts him in conflict with Sue’s needs.

“But I saw it,” is Sue’s method of trying to keep that engagement going. She needs John, and she’s trying to say they are in this together. (And if she had said it directly, as in “Hey, look, we’re the only survivors and we’re in this together. We’ve got to help one another!” well...that is stilted and immediately break’s the reader’s suspension of disbelief.)

“The colors?” With that question, John is not really asking about colors. It’s a challenge. Have you really experienced this the way I have? You look like you were hiding in a safe place and came out after everyone had already died.

“Purple, mostly,” she said, taking another step toward him. “Over the Capitol.”

Look at that, we even put in a hint that this might be taking place in politically important place, perhaps Washington D.C. 

In this version the reader feels the tension between the characters and is engaged in building up context clues, just as you do when you eavesdrop on a personal encounter and you don’t know exactly what’s going on, but you’re happily trying to piece it all together.

And finally, stick with ‘he said’ and ‘she asked’ for 99% of your dialog tags. Avoid breathless adverbs and ponderous constructions like “John pontificated peacefully in whispers so mysterious as to keep us all in rapt attention.”

Keep your dialog simple and meaningful to the immediate emotions and needs of the characters in the scene. Use it to help create tone and atmosphere, reveal character, and engage the reader. 

One fun way to engage the reader is by thinking of them as eavesdropping on your characters’ interactions. What will the reader misunderstand? What clues are there that pull them forward? What relationships are building between the lines?

Don’t misuse dialog to over explain things, reveal your opinions, or bring in historical information. 

Keep it short and use dialog to put your characters at odds. Or sometimes, maybe they don’t even understand the context of their own situation.

“Can you get that done by noon?” Bob asked.

“Get what done? The part about...”

“Jesus, Joan! Have you been in this meeting at all!”

Finally, when do you put in all that information, exposition, background, and personal opinion?

To paraphrase John from earlier in this article. “Don’t!” he said. “Just don’t...”