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Ksenia Anske

July 3, 2017

13 secrets of great dialogue

by Ksenia Anske


Illustration by James Joyce

Illustration by James Joyce

Illustration by James Joyce

Illustration by James Joyce

Most of these are borrowed from Dialogue by Robert McKee (which I highly recommend and which I'm rereading at the moment). And some come from regurgitated stuff in my head—things I'd picked up from various sources over the years. You can argue that there is no such thing as perfect dialogue, but I'd argue back that as much as dialogue can be fluid and nebulous, it must have a form. It can fluctuate within that form, but without form it bogs down the narrative with melodrama (which stems from unclear character motivations) and other dialogue sins (info-dumps, on-the-nose talk, repetitiveness of arguments, inadvertent summaries, random interruptions, unfinished thoughts, etc.).

So. I created a cheat-sheet of sorts for myself which I'll share here with you and will bookmark for myself to return to when I feel like my dialogue sucks and I don't know how to fix it (which is almost every day). 

1. ACCELERATE YOUR PACING VIA INDIRECT DIALOGUE

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TAGS: Dialogue, the terrible beast, so hard to write it well, and yet it moves us so much, when written well, What to do?, Study it to death, of course, Write, Read, Repeat