My writing group buddy said my dialogue sounded like a board meeting and it stung

Last Tuesday at our local library meetup, my critique partner Jen told me all my characters talk the same way, like they're giving a presentation. She said 'real people interrupt, mumble, and leave sentences half finished.' I went home and recorded a 10 minute conversation with my brother on the phone and realized he said 'um' 30 times and never finished a single point. Now I go back through my drafts and add stutters, pauses, and people talking over each other. It felt fake at first but after two rewrites of my short story, the beta readers say it feels like actual humans. Anyone else had to completely retrain how they write talky parts?

2 comments

2 Comments

barbara_sanchez8824d agoMost Upvoted

That thing about recording a real conversation is honestly the best writing advice I've ever heard. It's wild how much we edit out the natural messiness of how people actually talk, like the way my sister will say "so anyway" three times in one sentence and trail off into a totally different topic.

karenf4023d ago

Recorded my own phone calls after getting the same feedback. What helped me was writing dialogue without any punctuation or tags first, just raw words back and forth. Then I go back and add interruptions and half sentences where it feels natural. Took about three stories before it stopped feeling like I was doing something wrong.