Quotes and dialogue: 10 tips on how to use them effectively

Quotes are great. They’re often my favorite part of a novel. In the form of dialogue, they move a story along like almost nothing else, and they break up those chunks of heavy gray description that can weigh a book down if the author isn’t careful.

But quotes don’t write themselves. Some authors use them well; others, not so much. So here are some simple, practical suggestions about how to use quotes effectively.

1

Emphasize dialogue

A good novel should have both, but there’s an advantage to dialogue: It lets you inside a character’s head without a lot of tedious description. When the characters themselves tell you what they’re thinking, you get their thoughts from their own lips. And the way they tell you what they’ve got to say gives you even more insight: into their motivations, their emotions, their biases, their limitations.

In practical terms, quick-hitting dialogue is a lot easier on the eyes than dense blocks of text from an author who presumes to know what his characters are. Of course, the author does know. After all, those characters were born in the author’s head. Still, a narrator who describes what a character is thinking seems like a secondhand source. Readers want a front-row seat; at least, I know I do, and dialogue provides that.

This does not mean dialogue is the only way to get inside a character’s head. In a first-person story, especially, you can get inside the character’s head without it. But it’s still the most natural, direct way of communicating what’s on the character’s mind.

It’s also a good idea to break up dialogue with description, and vice versa. Extremely long sections of dialogue can feel more like a screenplay than a novel, while extended description can feel static, like a visit to an art gallery.

2

Write conversationally

Remember that the people are talking. Writing dialogue is not just taking some description and slapping a couple of quotes around it. It’s a way of describing what characters are thinking, what they want to communicate, and who they are without some third-party analysis.

This isn’t as easy as it seems. In watching a well-reviewed TV show the other day, I noticed a teenage character say something like, “We will need to trek over to that mountain.” What teenage uses the word “trek” in a sentence (unless the character’s a science fiction nerd talking about Star Trek)? This was probably a case of description masquerading as a quote that was placed in the character’s mouth — a particular risk with screenplays, which lean heavily on dialogue.

One of the most important things to keep in mind when writing dialogue is that it’s meant to be spoken. That doesn’t change just because it’s on a printed page. As you’re writing, recite it to yourself (or even aloud) to be sure it sounds natural to your own ear. But be careful: Don’t go to the other extreme and rely on buzzwords and catch phrases you’ve heard just because they sound like dialogue. Stay original.

3

Define each character’s voice

This can be one of the biggest challenges for a writer. You know how you talk, so it’s easy to simply transfer your own conversational style to your characters. But if you do that, they’ll all sound alike — and like you.

Be sure the words spoken come from the mind of each particular character. If you’ve put a lot of effort into developing a unique character, you’ll have an easier time defining his or her voice. If, however, the character is two-dimensional or poorly developed, it will be tempting to fall back on stereotypical accents and rely heavily on clichés as crutches when writing dialogue.

Strong character development is the key to engaging and convincing dialogue.

4

No speeches, please

You’re not writing a speech for some self-important politician. You’re writing for someone who’s reading to be entertained or informed. Long blocks of text, whether they’re descriptive or in quotes, can seem daunting to a reader — especially in the age when tweets are in and Shakespearean soliloquys are out.

Just looking at a dense block of gray on a page can feel exhausting. (This is another reason snappy dialogue, with its frequent paragraph breaks, can move a story along so effectively. It’s like running a treadmill instead of struggling up a hill.)

Besides, it’s not realistic. Most people in a conversation don’t drone on ad nauseam. Those who do tend to get tuned out, right? So why should you expect a reader to keep paying attention to a character who does the same thing?

If you have to break a quote up over two or three paragraphs, ask yourself whether it’s worth it — and whether there might be a better way to present that information.

5

Make clear who’s talking

Don’t keep the reader guessing about this. How often have you seen a quote go on for four or five sentences before finally identifying the speaker? “She said,” shouldn’t always go at the end of the paragraph. Inserting the attribution after the first sentence breaks up the quote and keeps things moving.

It doesn’t hurt to change things up occasionally by leading with the attribution, either.

Just don’t leave readers wondering who’s talking if it’s not clear in the flow of the narrative. It can become a distraction. The more they focus on trying to answer that question, the less attention they’ll be paying to what’s on the page.

6

Minimize dialogue tags

On the flipside of No. 5, if it’s already clear who’s talking, you don’t need a dialogue tag. If you’ve got a back-and-forth between just two characters, inserting “she said” after each line slows the section down and quickly becomes tedious. Don’t be condescending to the reader. Let the dialogue speak for itself.

For the most part, dialogue tags (aka attribution) should be reserved for cases where it’s not clear who’s talking. If three or more people are engaged in a conversation, they can be helpful in sorting things out. The same is true if you’re starting a section of dialogue and it’s not clear who’s going first.

If you decide to use a dialogue tag, “said” is usually fine. You don’t need to switch things up by using words like “criticized” or “gasped” or “enthused.” These are fine occasionally, but they’re often overused in a quest for variety. (If you must use “exclaimed,” please don’t use it with an exclamation point. That’s redundant.) The main point to keep in mind is that these varied tags draw attention away from the dialogue itself, which is the last thing you want to do.

The best writing lets the dialogue speak for itself, conveying the speaker’s tone, emotion and vocal inflections without relying on dialogue tags and exclamation points.

7

Avoid jargon (except…)

On the one hand, a character’s words should reflect his or her background. On the other, the reader should be able to understand them. There can be a tension between these two goals if the reader and character come from two different worlds, and it’s up to the author to bridge this gap as seamlessly and effortlessly as possible.

Sometimes, genre can help your audience make the necessary connection. Readers of science fiction are likely to know what a character means in referring to wormholes, cyborgs and quantum drives are. Fans of noir fiction will probably understand a character who talks about a “button man” or a “canary.” But in general fiction, you can’t make those assumptions.

Unfamiliar and unclear jargon will stop readers in their tracks or send them scrambling for a dictionary. But explaining that jargon in the author’s voice will slow things down, too. That’s why the jargon is used best when it 1) flows naturally from the character and 2) can be understood based on the context.

The same thing goes for accents. If your character’s accent is so thick you have to convey it with multiple odd spellings, readers may feel like they’re reading something in a different language. The energy it takes to translate thick accents inside the reader’s head can be tiring or distracting, and may or may not be worth it. Use accents sparingly and with discretion.

A related topic: Swearing. You have to balance how natural, and expected it might be from mouths of certain characters with how acceptable it is to your readers. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. So, be true to your characters and trust that your work will find an audience that appreciates your authenticity. Or, write to your audience and create characters who will speak naturally within that framework.

8

Avoid fads

Remember the mullet? Maybe you do. What you might not remember is that it was actually popular for a while (at least in some circles). The same goes for beehive hairdos, per rocks and The Partridge Family.

It may be popular today to write in the present tense, but will it be a decade from now?

Characters don’t speak in computer shorthand. They’re not going to go around saying “LOL” or “AFK.” You might want to think twice about using here-today, gone-tomorrow pop culture references. If you try too hard to make your characters sound hip or trendy, you might accomplish just the opposite. It’s entirely possible for something to be all the rage when you’re writing Chapter 1 and yesterday’s news if your book’s published months later.

Another downside: Such references often look forced. Don’t try too hard.

9

Quotes shouldn’t boring (even in nonfiction)

You don’t see much dialogue in nonfiction. Quotes, however, serve the same primary purpose: They allow the source to speak directly to the reader.

In nonfiction, though, the author doesn’t have as much control. You’re not dealing with a fictional character, so you can’t simply make something up or change it to suit your purpose. You have to remain true to what the person actually said.

Even if it’s awkward. Or grammatically incorrect. Or boring as hell.

Nonfiction does have a reputation as sleep-inducing. The authors of those tedious textbooks from your school daze made them educational, but not engaging. (No wonder kids don’t like homework.) So, it’s become almost come to be expected. Many authors use an “academic” tone because they’re writing for an academic audience; but still others emulate that style because they want to sound impressive or knowledgeable.

That’s not good if you want people to actually read what you’ve written: About only thing more boring than academic writing is the fine print in a contract.

The way quotes are used in nonfiction doesn’t help. They’re not usually part of a dialogue. Most authors include them for the sake of authority: “If Dr. So-and-So from Harvard says it, it must be true.” But even if the author isn’t writing a textbook, quotes from professors, scientists, lawyers or other experts will likely seem like they belong in one.

Yawn.

Those experts are not, generally, professional writers. If you, as the author, devote too much space to quoting them directly, your writing won’t seem professional — or original. It’ll seem dense and derivative.

The solution is to limit the use quotes from such sources, and to choose those quotes that are the most lively and conversational. If you know what they’re saying and can say it more clearly, do so. There’s nothing wrong with paraphrasing, as long as it’s clear that’s what you’re doing, and the message isn’t lost in translation.

10

Nothing is absolute (even this rule)

There are exceptions to almost any rule you can come up with. It all boils down to this: If you keep your dialogue compelling, authentic and easy to understand, you’ll be golden.

The crucible of open dialogue and the echo chamber of fear

There’s a school of thought that’s gaining currency. It states that people don’t have a right to an opinion about things that don’t directly affect them.

The argument usually goes something like this: “You can’t possibly know what it’s like to deal with this, because you’ve never gone through it, and you never will. You’re not one of us, so you don’t get a say!”

This is dangerous for more reasons than one.

First, it sets up an adversarial mentality between two “sides” before anyone even gets a chance to express their ideas. It perpetuates the “us vs. them” attitude that has become so pervasive in today’s culture.

Second, it makes identity more important than the substance of what might be said. It assumes that a particular group is unqualified to weigh in, not because of what they might say, but because of who they are. If any member of the “out” group dares to speak, he or she had better parrot the party line – thereby adding nothing to the conversation – or risk public censure/alienation.

When identity is codified into law as the basis for inclusion, things get ugly. People aren’t allowed to vote because of their gender or skin color. This is both bigoted and undemocratic.

Third, depriving a segment – any segment – of the population of a voice makes dialogue impossible and casts the status quo in stone. Conforming to a status quo without question makes growth impossible, because it shuts down the marketplace of ideas. Only through dialogue can we bounce ideas off one another and find better solutions than any of us might have arrived at on our own.

Shutting people down makes greater understanding impossible, too. But when any group that shuts out people who “aren’t like us” isn’t interested in understanding other points of view. Members of such a group think they know everything already, and that other perspectives hold no value moving forward.

Free speech

Finally, it violates the spirit of free speech.

In the Skokie case, courts ruled that neo-Nazis were allowed to march through a heavily Jewish community that included a number of Holocaust survivors on the grounds that freedom of speech trumped their feelings. They were, essentially, trying to create a “safe space” for themselves. I, personally, disagree with the court on this. I think speech and events designed to provoke an incendiary response add no value to the public discourse.

But the point is, the court thought so highly of free speech it allowed an event most considered repugnant to go forward.

Now, before someone decides to lecture me about the First Amendment applying to governmental limits on free speech, rest assured, I get that. Shutting people down based on their identity doesn’t violate the letter of that amendment, but it sure as hell undermines the spirit of it. That spirit is founded on the notion that we’re all better off when we feel free to share openly – and when we make the effort to listen. Even – and perhaps especially – when what the other person’s saying might challenge our prejudices.

Most places aren’t Skokie, and most people aren’t neo-Nazis. This essay isn’t about such extremists, or anyone whose views are so clearly worthy of disdain. It’s about ordinary, rational people who are being told to STFU because they belong to a specific group – regardless of what they might say. Not a group like the KKK, but much larger groups, many of which aren’t joined electively and hold no abhorrent or even unified views. Not all (fill in the blank) are alike!

Imagine if someone said sports fans had no right to an opinion on free agency because it only directly affects players and owners. Or if people without children were told they had no right to speak their mind about the condition of our schools. Many people are affected by actions indirectly, and many of those people have ideas about those actions. Do they have as much insight as those with direct experience? Perhaps not. But those outside a situation can bring valuable perspectives that, in some cases, offer ideas based on a more detached view. Pre-emptively dismissing such ideas because of their source rather than their merits is short-sighted and foolish.

The crucible

Conclusions and prejudices may turn out to be well founded, but they still need to be challenged. And those challenges need to come from people with different perspectives. Otherwise, how will we know for sure whether they’re valid? We might still believe in a flat Earth, a geocentric model of astronomy, that dinosaurs lived alongside humans and that masturbation leads to blindness. Forming a hypothesis and conducting an experiment are crucial to the scientific method. But how can you form a reasoned hypothesis if you’ve never considered alternatives? And why bother to experiment if you already (think you) know the answer?

When you shut out people you worry might have opposing views based on nothing more than the messenger’s identity and the fear of being offended, you set the table for the kind of insular thinking that spawned Jonestown. An extreme example? Sure. But the principle is the same. And if the principle operates unchallenged for long enough, that’s the kind of thing that ends up happening. The frog will boil.

So, the next time you tell someone they don’t have the right to an opinion because they’re not like you, ask yourself whom you’re hurting. They won’t be the only losers, because it’s not a zero-sum game. Your conclusions might be right. Them might be wrong. Or, just maybe, greater truth and understanding might arise from the crucible of open dialogue.

Without such a crucible, nothing new and beautiful will ever be fashioned. Increasingly, out of fear, we’ve chosen to replace this crucible with an echo chamber.

There are no “safe spaces” when it comes right down to it. The world is a brutal and dangerous place, which is precisely why we need to stop alienating one another. We may not achieve safety, but we can find hope for a better world – not by ostracizing and dismissing others before they even open their mouths; only by engaging.

Like it or not, we’re all in this together.