Dialogue that sounds real is almost never a transcription of how people actually talk. Real speech is full of ums, repetitions, and boring pleasantries, while fictional dialogue must feel real while doing narrative work: revealing character, creating conflict, and moving the story forward. The trick is to write speech that reads like conversation but is far more purposeful, cutting everything that does not reveal something new about the character or the situation.

First, give each character a distinct voice. Voice comes from word choice, sentence length, rhythm, and what a character avoids saying. A teenager, a retired soldier, and a university professor should not be interchangeable in a transcript with the names removed. Read your dialogue aloud with the names covered; if you cannot tell who is speaking, rewrite until you can. Small, consistent habits, such as one character who always answers questions with questions, do more than phonetic accents, which quickly become caricature.

Second, use subtext: what characters do not say is often more powerful than what they do. When a character says 'I'm fine' while packing a suitcase, the reader understands the marriage is over without a single line of explanation. Subtext arises when a character's words and their situation conflict, or when two characters talk about one thing while really negotiating another, like a couple discussing dinner while actually deciding whether to separate. Write the surface conversation, then check that a second meaning runs underneath it.

Third, cut the greetings and the filler. Readers do not need 'Hi, how are you?' and 'I'm good, how are you?' unless the pleasantry itself is the point, such as a character clinging to politeness during a crisis. Enter conversations mid-stream and exit before they wind down naturally. Every line should either advance the plot, reveal character, or raise tension; if it does none of these, it is decoration and should go.

Fourth, use action beats instead of adverbial dialogue tags. Rather than writing 'she said angrily,' show her slamming a drawer or gripping her cup until her knuckles whiten. Beats also pace a conversation, giving readers a visual anchor and a pause that mimics real speech rhythm. Use 'said' as your default tag, because it is invisible to readers, and reserve alternatives like 'whispered' or 'shouted' for moments when volume genuinely matters.

Fifth, let conflict live inside dialogue. Even friendly conversations gain energy when characters want different things, misunderstand each other, or avoid a topic. A scene where everyone agrees is usually a scene that can be summarised in narration instead. Ask of every exchange: what does each character want from this conversation, and what is stopping them from getting it? When you can answer that, the dialogue writes itself with tension built in.

Finally, read all dialogue aloud and listen for rhythm. Real fictional dialogue has a musical quality: short exchanges quicken pace, longer speeches slow it, and interruptions create urgency. If a line sounds stiff when spoken, it will sound stiff on the page. Record yourself reading a scene if needed; your ear catches wooden dialogue faster than your eye. With practice, writing dialogue becomes less about rules and more about hearing your characters clearly enough to transcribe what they would actually say under pressure.

Dialogue punctuation trips up many new writers, but the rules are simple once learned. A dialogue tag follows a comma inside the closing quotation mark, as in 'I can't believe it,' she said, while an action beat ends with a full stop: 'I can't believe it.' She slammed the door. Start a new paragraph every time the speaker changes, without exception, because readers rely on paragraph breaks to track conversation. Master these basics early and your dialogue will look professional before a reader even judges its quality.

Sometimes the strongest dialogue choice is no dialogue at all. A character who refuses to answer, who leaves a question hanging, or who changes the subject tells the reader everything about their fear or guilt. Silence creates tension precisely because readers expect speech, and withholding it makes them lean in. Use silence sparingly, at moments of high emotion, and pair it with a physical beat so the scene stays alive: a character who says nothing while refilling a glass is far more interesting than one who simply stands there.