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Great Flash Fiction Ideas About Dialogue

Posted on October 28th, 2010 in How To by Guy Hogan
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Dialogue is the most important tool a writer has for bringing his or her characters to life. This is how to take your writing of dialogue to the next level.

Remember Kathleen Turner’s character in Body Heat saying to the William Hurt character, “You’re not very bright, are you?”  He says something like, “What?”  She says, “I like that in a man.”  This dialogue said volumes about him and her.  And sure enough, the end of the movie confirms what this dialogue told the viewer about the characters.

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Dialogue is the most important tool a writer has for bringing his or her characters to life.  This article is about how to take your writing of dialogue to the next level.

In real life, whether we admit it or not, we judge people based on how they talk.  Readers do the same with how characters talk in a flash fiction narrative.  I’m a flash fiction writer.  So, this article is about writing flash fiction dialogue.  But how to write good dialogue for flash fiction applies to any narrative no matter what its length is.

The first thing every writer must understand about writing dialogue is that unlike talk in real life, dialogue in flash fiction is not talk.  In real life, talk can be convoluted and repetitive.  That had better not happen in your flash fiction unless you’re saying something about a character by giving the character this kind of dialogue; which is usually not a good idea.  Convoluted and repetitive dialogue gets tiresome quick, fast and in a hurry.  If you get my point.

Read more in How To
« Why Do You Write?
How to Create Great Flash Fiction Characters »

So, you want your dialogue to be tight.  One way to make it tight is to only use “he said” or “she said” as qualifiers.  This is a general rule.  Of course there are exceptions to this rule.  Just keep in mind that what the character says and in what context the character says it in should clue the reader as to how the dialogue is said.

Here are five more things to keep in mind when you’re writing dialogue.  Good luck.

  • Dialogue by its nature is about conflict or at the minimum some sort of tension
  • Every character should have a different agenda and that agenda will shape what the character says and how it is said
  • Have your characters talk to each other and not to the reader
  • Don’t have your characters explain what is going on in the story
  • Dialogue must move the narrative toward its final denouncement

This link: A Young Woman’s Lust is a good example of what I’m talking about.

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