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Dialogue is part of the backbone of every good romance, and well-done dialogue will give your story movement and emotion. Let’s start with a few rules to get us started.

Forget about perfect grammar. Split those infinitives, end with prepositions, use contractions, use incomplete sentences and run-on sentences, and even use slang. That’s how people speak in real life, and your characters should do the same. That is, unless one of your characters is an English professor and you want him to sound stuffy and stiff.

Write in short sentences. Don’t give any character a long piece of monologue. It will make your story drag. People rarely say sentences that are longer than ten to twelve words long during conversation. Again, this rule can be broken if you have a character who is naturally long winded.

Don’t use dialogue to recap what has already been said in description, and don’t load a conversation with back-story just to get the back-story in there. This rule really shouldn’t be broken unless it is absolutely necessary, and a skilled writer rarely has to resort to falling back on this.

Let your characters have fun. Allow them to have pet phrases that are unique to them. For instance, one of my characters never swears, but she does say “crap” when she’s done something she feels is stupid. Another one doesn’t use the word “however” but uses “nevertheless” instead.

Your characters should think the same way they speak. If you have an uneducated character who speaks poorly, then when you are in the character’s point of view, you should also have his thoughts reflect that same characteristic.

No talking heads. What does that mean? It means you need to have some action and movement in your dialogue. People are not static, they move and make gestures when they speak, and your characters should do the same thing. Adding description of action to your dialogue also allows you to forgo he said she said.

Everything in your story, and I mean everything, including dialogue, should move your story forward or reveal something about a main character. Anything that doesn’t do that is wasted words and space that could be better used for something pertinent to the plot.

One more word about the rules and then we’ll get into the details of writing dialogue: None of these rules is carved in stone. They’re really just guidelines and can be broken intentionally. That’s called artistic license. Just remember it takes a very skilled writer to pull it off and if you decide to break the rules, you might be doing so at a detriment to your story.

By this time, you are probably thinking, “Okay, I have the rules, but I still don’t know how to write dialogue.” The thing is if you know how to hold a conversation with someone, you know how to write dialogue. It just seems difficult when you start to write it. Don’t despair there are things you can do to get the hang of it.

The easiest way to get a feel for it is to watch a sitcom on TV and write down an entire conversation between two of characters. You’ll quickly see how the conversation flows from one character to the next, each expanding on the other ones contribution to the conversation.

It’s the same in real life. When we converse, we say something then listen to the other person’s response, and then we respond to that and so on. The dialogue in your story should flow the same way.

Often, I’ll write the dialogue for a scene first and then add the description and action later. Seeing the dialogue in its barebones state makes it easier to see how it flows. I’m able to see if it makes sense without everything else. This prevents me from relying on internalization or description to make the conversation work. Remember, the other character in the conversation doesn’t know what the point of view character is thinking, so thoughts cannot add to the conversation.

Here’s one last thing to think about when writing dialogue. Many readers will skip over description and go right for the dialogue. That should be sufficient reason enough to practice writing interesting, well-written dialogue that sparks your readers’ interest.