Unless you are writing a very unique sort of fictional book, your characters are going to have to speak one another.

That means you will need to do know to write dialogue.

Dialogue is quite simply the characters speaking to one another. Character A has a point to make to Character B. Perhaps they argue; perhaps they want to get a certain point across.

Good dialogue is more than just what the characters are saying. You should be able to discern the differences between characters by their dialogue. Men and women speak differently as a whole, but not all men or women speak alike.

How do you decide how to write good dialogue? The simplest way is to listen. Writers are notorious for eavesdropping on conversations around them, but this a good way to learn dialogue. Listen to how your mother speaks, how it is different from your father and brothers. Listen to your boss.

An educated person is going to speak a lot differently than someone who has never been to school. These are useful ways to make the dialogue sound unique for each character.

However, be cautious about the overabundance of dialect. Using a thick Scottish accent or a Southern accent over and over might get a little annoying after a while. At the same time you might want to include it the first time a character speaks so the reader gets the idea of how the character sounds.

Watch for punctuation in your dialogue. "The quotes come around the spoken word," she warned.

"But what if I don't get to finish--"

"You mean if I interrupt you?" she asked.

"Well, yes..." His voice tailed off.

In the final example you will note he stopped talking or paused. In the first, she cut him off. In both those cases, you also get examples of the use of what are called "dialogue tags." "Said" is the most common dialogue tag and often you don't even need them.

"Stop!"

You don't need to say "she shouted" in that instance. It's obvious that whoever is speaking is giving a command. The same is true if your character is asking a question.

"Where are you going?"

Unless you need to identify who is speaking there is no need to follow that sentence with a "she asked."

Beware of the use of adverbs in your tags, such as:

"You are such a jerk," she said coldly.

In that case you can probably tell the meaning of her words or how she is speaking to him, unless she is teasing. In which case you might write that sentence with a descriptive tag:

"You are such a jerk." She chuckled and smacked his shoulder with a playful shove.

As noted, said is the most common form of dialogue tag and if you are uncertain about what to use, it is also the safest if you need to differentiate between two characters. Many writers prefer not to use it at all but to use action to note which character is speaking.

"Where are you going?" Her mother stepped in front of the door slowing Ella's mad dash to escape.

"Out to meet some friends." Ella grabbed her purse. She checked her watch. "And I'm running late."

"Will you be home for dinner?" (there is no need for a tag here. We've already established Ella and her mother are the only two speaking._

"Maybe."

Beware of dialogue that is repetitive or useless or that you are using as an info dump. Don't have two characters suddenly discussing something they would both know about unless you are bringing new information to one or the other.

Exercises for developing dialogue:

• Listen to people around you and watch how they speak and if you can tell the difference from one person to the next
• Try writing out in dialogue a conversation you've had with someone recently
• Listen to different dialects and think of how you would translate that to dialogue
• Study dialogue in published books and see how it is used
• Experiment with dialogue tags