I Have A Lot Of Trouble With Writing Casual Dialogue. I Just Never Know When To Include Physical Gestures

I have a lot of trouble with writing casual dialogue. I just never know when to include physical gestures and actions and facial expressions and how often to say he/she said/yelled/whined etc. I can write dialogue pretty well when it's important to the plot, but when it's just some filler stuff to keep it going, it just starts to fall apart :(

Hey there, anon!  Thanks for sending your question :)  This is a subject I’ve been working on for the past few months, actually, so I understand your pain!  Dialogue – or rather, the descriptors around it – is something that doesn’t feel quite natural to write.  There are two reasons for this:

Conversations move much more quickly in real life.  When we talk to someone, we are so focused on the information they’re giving us that we don’t always think about their body language, or even how they’re speaking – “explaining,” “mumbling,” “berating,” “perseverating,” etc.  It’s not something we consciously register, so it’s not as easy to write as setting description, dialogue, or thoughts.

Dialogue descriptors are a relatively new trend in literature.  I’ve found that in most the classic literature I read, dialogue is less frequent – and when it is used, it’s rarely accompanied by body language or dialogue tags.  Dialogue descriptors became more popular when movies and TV hit the scene.  Writing became less information-centered – focusing more on details that make the scene more imaginable.  This makes it much more difficult to do research!

So if dialogue descriptors are hard to recognize in daily life and in literature, how do we write it naturally?  How do we know how much is too much, or when and where to introduce it?

Well, like all aspects of fiction writing – dialogue, description, internal dialogue, worldbuilding – it’s important that it’s only used to the extent it’s needed.  If it becomes distracting or overwhelming, you’re misusing it.  These are my criteria for when dialogue descriptors become too much:

The description takes longer than the action it’s describing.  Descriptors become distracting if they take up too much time – just like if an actor held a facial expression for too long.  It would stall the scene, and the point would be lost.

How to test this: Put one of your dialogue-heavy scenes on your phone to test it out.  While looking at yourself in the mirror, have Siri (or Cortana or whatever the hell else) read your scene to you – while she does, act it out in the mirror.  Make the expressions and perform the body language.  Read the dialogue, external and internal.  Ill-timed or excessive description will become apparent to you this way.

The description is superfluous or too wordy.  Descriptive dialogue tags (e.g. “shouted,” “heckled,” “joked,” “complained”) and accompanying adverbs become superfluous if they describe something the dialogue already portrays.  Examples:

“I knew it was you!” she exclaimed.  (The exclamation point already states that it’s an exclamation.)

“You are so selfish!” he shouted angrily.  (You could get away with “shouted”, but it’s implied that the character is angry by their dialogue.)

“I thought you said you were free tonight,” she said in confusion, her eyebrows wrinkled.  (Confusion is apparent in the dialogue; also, the image of her eyebrows wrinkling is more powerful than the “Tell” version, “in confusion”.)

It doesn’t add to the scene.  Common descriptors, like raising eyebrows, blinking, swallowing, and shaking or nodding of the head are excessive in real life conversations, but not necessary in your scene.  If body language doesn’t affect the tone of the dialogue or move your characters through the scene (e.g. sitting down at a table) then it’s unnecessary and clutters the prose.

As for writing dialogue itself, I’ll refer you to this post I made a little while ago about dialogue improvement.  If you have any further questions, I’ll gladly take them :)  Happy writing!

If you need advice on general writing or fanfiction, you should maybe ask me!

Me me me me!! Im glad i stumbled upon the humans are space orcs when i was reading

"Hoops, strings, and other placebos" by bubblebtch, Hollow knight fanfiction.

I mean like- Mary being the only human in a bug kingdom is a fascinating read to me, learned about the humans are space orcs through the comments section.

Go read the fic btw, its hilarious 100%. I almost binge it on 1 day. 10/10 would read again.

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Uhhhh nice

the sky concept art masterpost!

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Writing Advice

For the love of god, don't write a character being an expert (especially the BEST EXPERT) in anything you don't personally want to research.

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