Dialogue: Giving Your Characters a Voice

In this episode of Daggers & Daydreams, we dive into one of the trickiest (and most fun!) aspects of writing: dialogue. How do you make it sound real without being boring? How do you give each character a distinct voice? And what do you do when all your characters sound like…you?

We share our earliest (and cringiest) attempts at writing dialogue, the advice that’s actually helped us improve, and the pitfalls we still fall into. Plus, we shout out some of our favourite authors who nail character conversations and unpack what makes their dialogue so effective.

Timestamps:
00:20 – Intro
00:50 – Earliest memories of writing dialogue (and hilarious fails)
08:52 – Making dialogue sound natural (reading aloud, dictation, stealing from real life)
11:01 – Giving characters distinct voices (quirks, tone, education, personality)
13:55 – Common dialogue pitfalls we’ve fallen into

25:46 – The controversy of dialogue tags
31:45 – Little improv game: can you guess whose character is speaking?
35:46 – Books/resources that helped us level up
37:23 – Dialogue “rules” we’ve happily broken (and why it worked)
39:32 – Authors who nail dialogue according to us

Keywords: writing dialogue tips, character voice, realistic dialogue, novel writing craft, witty banter, subtext in fiction