Why Your Dialogue Sounds Fake (And How to Fix It)

Dialogue problems fall into a few predictable categories: it's too on-the-nose (characters say exactly what they mean), it's too expository (characters tell each other things they both already know), or every character sounds the same. Good fictional dialogue isn't a transcription of how people talk — it's a heightened, edited version that conveys more information than real speech, more efficiently, while sounding natural.

The Most Common Dialogue Problems

• On-the-nose dialogue: Characters say exactly what they feel or think. "I'm angry that you betrayed me." Real people — and compelling fictional ones — almost never say the direct emotional truth, especially in conflict. They say something adjacent, something that deflects, something that proves the emotion rather than naming it.
• Exposition as dialogue: "As you know, Bob, our mission is to retrieve the artifact from the planet Zarkon." Characters don't explain to each other what they both already know. If information has to be delivered, put it in the mouth of someone who doesn't know it yet.
• Every character has the same voice: Dialogue reveals character. A teenager doesn't speak like a professor. A person who grew up poor doesn't speak like one who grew up rich. If you covered up the character tags, could a reader tell who's talking?
• Too much of it: Long stretches of unbroken dialogue — even good dialogue — become tiresome. Break it with action, reaction, or internal thought. People do things while they talk.
• Attributions that explain the tone: "I hate you," she said angrily. The dialogue should carry the emotion. If it doesn't, fix the dialogue, not the attribution.

How to Fix It

• Read it aloud. Anything that trips you up when reading aloud is a problem. What sounds natural to the eye often sounds robotic in the ear.
• Give each character a speech habit. One character asks questions. One speaks in declarative statements. One deflects with humor. One trails off. These habits cost nothing and create distinction.
• Let characters talk past each other. Real conversation isn't a clean exchange where each person responds to what the previous person said. People bring their own agendas. They change the subject. They answer the question they wished they'd been asked.
• Remove all adverbial attributions. Eliminate "she said breathlessly," "he said sarcastically," "they said angrily." If the tone isn't clear from the words themselves, fix the words.
• Cut what characters would know. Any time a character is explaining something to someone who already knows it, cut it or find an in-story reason for the explanation.