Realism in Dialogue

A great question from my inbox:

Hi Lisa, I’m on the spectrum and after looking at the dialogue I wrote, I want to barf. Every bit of it sounds like two robots talking on “The Jetsons.” Do you have any tips for making dialogue more realistic when you’re not sure if your real-life dialogue is realistic?

I’ve been sitting on this question for a while (sorry, D). I’ve taken so long to respond, partly because it’s a big question, and I have a tendency to go on (ironic for a short story editor, I know).

Mostly, though, the delay is personal. As an autistic myself, my real-life dialogue can be unrealistic. And while I’ve let go of pleasing unsatisfied interlocutors with my conversation skills, as an editor, I’ve made it my business to master revising written dialogue. Even so, I still have a bit of imposter syndrome. Writing an authoritative post should quelch that last bit of self-doubt, right? We’ll see!

Before that, I want to address the autism part. I encourage you to acknowledge that you may have better intuition for written dialogue than you think. If you’re like me, you’ve spent your life trying to fit in. Accordingly, you’ve spent years scrutinizing social interactions and putting words to the rules that others take for granted. Written dialogue is a great place to use all those observations! And even if you aren’t, written dialogue can be revised (unlike the spoken words we can’t take back). You will get this.

Let’s jump in!

First, let’s get on the same page about realism. You might not know that dialogue is not a word-for-word transcription of a conversation. Conversation is filled with social niceties, tangents, dead ends, unintentional misunderstandings, and topic changes, and often lacks a connection to what comes next. Conversely, dialogue is foremost a narrative mode (one of five, the others being action, thought, description, and exposition). It is used to intentionally deliver information to your story’s characters (and reader). Consequently, it is edited for any of the above conversational anomalies that don’t move the plot, character arc, and/or conflict forward while retaining the look and feel of the real-life interaction.

So, the realism we strive for in dialogue is to simultaneously make each line of dialogue essential to the story while appearing as natural and uncontrived as possible. Today, we’ll look at three qualities that help us accomplish this: desire, strategy, and conflict, using two dialogue samples.

One of the main aspects of plot, conflict, and character development is desire, so it makes sense that it will factor heavily into the characters’ expression in dialogue. In dialogue, desire often emerges as “the reason I called,” similar to real life.

Let’s look at how this works in the first sample, an excerpt from “Meeting Sarah” by Andy Weir, where Towne, a reporter, is conducting a phone interview with Stoltz, a wealthy businessman:

Hello? Daniel Stoltz here.”

“Mr. Stoltz,” came the voice from the other end. “This is Maria Towne of the San Francisco Chronicle. Do you have a moment to chat?”

“Sure, why not? I’m out on an errand right now but we can talk for a minute if you like.”

“Thank you for taking the time,” said Maria. “First question: What is the secret to your success? You have a large personal stake in companies such as Microsoft and Macintosh.”

“Actually, Macintosh is the name of a product,” he said. “The manufacturer’s name is ‘Apple’.”

“All right, I’ll note that down. Anyway, your investments have proven to be perfect. Everything you fund turns a huge profit. Some say you have the Midas touch. What do you say to that?”

“I don’t see how I could,” he said. “I don’t do anything. I just let them get on with their business and don’t interfere.”

“How do you choose what companies to invest in?”

He switched the phone to his other ear. “Oh I’m just like any other investor. I look at business plans and come to an informed decision.”

“Let’s turn the clock back a bit,” she said. “In college, you were a theoretical physics major working on your Ph.D. But you quit grad school and invested your then-modest savings into various high-risk ventures. Why the sudden change of lifestyle?”

“Oh you know how it is. I was twenty-four years old and I decided to change my life. Happens all the time.”

“Several experts in the field say you had innovative ideas. Ideas that could have revealed genuine understanding about the nature of time itself. They even talk about time manipulation.”

Daniel sighed. “I did one equation about the curvature of space and people got all worked up about time travel. I guess it makes for good press, but it’s just theoretical masturbation.”

“But you wrote some detailed papers on it,” she pressed. “In one paper you state it could be possible to ‘rewind’ time, sending your current consciousness back to a younger version of yourself.”

In this bit of dialogue, Towne’s desire is to question Stoltz about time manipulation. Stoltz’s desire emerges in response to her line of questions—he wants to throw her off his trail. The characters’ desires dictate their responses: Towne digs deeper into Stoltz’s business and background, while Stoltz minimizes and pulls away.

Considering that, let’s look at an excerpt from “Barn Burning” by Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel). The two characters, the host and his guest, are dating the same woman, who is asleep upstairs. The host has accepted an invitation to smoke weed with his guest, who has just confessed that he likes to burn down barns:

“I’d like to hear about the barns,” I said.

He gazed at me. His face, as usual, was expressionless.

“You don’t mind me telling you about it?” he asked.

“Go right ahead,” I replied.

“It’s very simple, really. You pour gasoline around, throw on a lighted match and whoosh! It’s all over. Takes less than fifteen minutes to burn to the ground. Of course, I’m not talking about large barns. More like sheds, really.”

“So…” I said, and I stopped. I couldn’t figure out how to go on. “So why do you burn down barns?”

“Is it strange?”

“I’m not sure. You burn barns, and I don’t. Obviously there’s a difference between the two.”

He sat there blankly for a time. His mind seemed all twisted around, like putty. Or maybe it was my mind that was all twisted around.

“I burn roughly one barn every two months,” he said. And snapped his fingers again. “That seems about the right pace. For me, that is.”

I nodded vaguely. The right pace?

“So, are these your own barns you burn?’ I asked.

He looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about. “Why would I burn down my own barns? What makes you think I own so many barns?”

“So, what you’re telling me,” I said,” is you burn other people’s barns, correct?”

“That’s right,” he said. “Of course that’s right. Other people’s barns. So it’s illegal. Just like you and me sitting here smoking grass—definitely against the law.”

I was silent, resting my elbows on the arms of the chair.

“I burn other people’s barns without their permission. Of course, I always choose one that won’t turn into a four­-alarm blaze. I don’t want to start a fire—just burn down barns.”

I nodded, and snuffed out the stub of the joint. “But if you’re caught you’ll be in trouble. It’s arson, after all. You blow it and you could wind up in jail.”

“I won’t get caught,” he said casually. “I pour on the gasoline, strike a match, and take off. Then I have a good time watching it all from a distance with binoculars. I won’t get caught. The police aren’t going to comb the streets over a lousy little barn burning down.”

He was probably right, I thought. And no one would ever think that a well-­dressed young man driving an expensive foreign car would be running around torching barns.

“Does she know about it?” I asked, pointing upstairs.

“She doesn’t know a thing. Actually, I’ve never told another soul. It’s not the kind of topic you can bring up with just anybody.”

In this excerpt, the host tells us outright that he wants to know more about his guest’s illicit hobby. Throughout the dialogue, it becomes clear that the guest wants to tell his host about it when he says, “Actually, I’ve never told another soul.” Since they both want the same thing, the dialogue flows easily, with the host asking probing questions and the guest responding in detail.

TIP. You can boost the realism in your dialogue by ensuring that the characters’ desires drive the interaction. Use the dialogue as a narrative tool for moving the characters closer to (or further away from) their desire in the story.

You’ll notice that there’s a pattern of how information is delivered in dialogue—even though all the characters know what they want, none of them go straight for it. Like in real life, the characters work off each other’s responses as they edge closer to the desired outcome.

In “Meeting Sarah,” Towne doesn’t start the conversation by asking about time manipulation. She works her way there in the guise of the interviewer. She isn’t particularly skillful about it—a better interviewer would find a way to make Stoltz bring up the subject himself—but she does try several ways around Stoltz’s deflections—asking about the secret to his success, his Midas touch, and how he chooses investments. Stoltz parries her advances, careful not to give her anything to use to her advantage. In the end, Towne doesn’t get what she wants, though this information sets up the story’s twist beautifully, which is the point of this dialogue.

The strategy is almost the opposite in “Barn Burning.” Both characters are getting what they want as they go, and it almost feels like they are doing everything they can to keep the other talking. The host seems careful not to make any judgements and instead asks questions that dig deeper into each detail as he tries to understand. The guest’s replies don’t seem to hold anything back and are full of new details to explore.

TIP. To achieve realism, strengthen the strategy behind your characters’ desires. It helps to think of revising dialogue like playing chess with yourself. You want both sides to win, so as you turn the board, make the best move in response to the previous move. While you’ll have an independent strategy for each side, you must consider what is on the board before going forward. Dialogue is likewise two-sided. Have your characters listen to each other, respond, agree, disagree, misinterpret, ignore, deflect, anything that helps you transmit the information you need and move the characters closer to (or further from) their desires. Look for a balance between what they are responding to and what they want so that the dialogue makes sense and flows smoothly.

One of the side effects of this back-and-forth between the characters is conflict. Conflict is a product of the two characters’ desires moving out of and into alignment—tension and release. And even when characters’ desires align, there is the threat that they won’t in the future. It sounds very dramatic (and it can be), but it’s really an imitation of real life.

For example, in “Meeting Sarah,” the characters’ desires are in conflict. Classic drama. Towne wants information that Stoltz doesn’t want to give, just like a real-life interview. And because of Towne’s unskilled approach, Stoltz can match her every move. Even so, the tension builds as the questions get more pointed. When Towne finally makes her point, she gives us information that makes us as curious as she is. It pulls us into the dialogue like listening to a contentious interview might in real life.

In “Barn Burning,” the characters’ desires are complementary, so there isn’t the same dramatic sense of tension. But, as the characters work to keep the conversation going, the tension is almost more about whether one will stop talking or get off topic. Add to that the underlying conflict of the shared, sleeping woman, and the ease of the dialogue begins to feel tenuous. It is palpable when the host risks asking what she thinks of the barns. We can all relate to awkward conversations made more tense by our circumstances, so the scene is compelling and realistic.

TIP. To create realistic conflict, take note of whether the characters’ desires are in alignment or not. Then, put yourself in their shoes. How does the way they speak, act, move, or feel change as the tension rises and falls? Build those subtle shifts into the dialogue to make the characters’ responses realistic and relatable.

Though conversation and dialogue look similar, they are very different from each other. Even when conversation is purposeful, the purpose is not something connected to a larger predestined plotline. Dialogue, on the other hand, is fundamentally a narrative mode used to deliver information to the characters and reader. The key to realism is to disguise the dialogue’s purpose by mimicking conversation. You can begin by tying your characters’ desires into the dialogue, strategizing to balance their responses with their pursuit of what they want, and capitalizing on how conflict builds tension through the scene.

Has my answer to this question given birth to more questions? Leave a comment!