It’s often difficult to write a believable dialogue on the page, and that could be because we don’t “write” a conversation the way we speak one. Have you ever listened to people talk? We often mangle the language a little when we speak. When is the last time you asked someone, “Do you think that we will be on time?” When we speak it the question more often comes out “Do you think we’ll be on time?” Or simply “You think we’re on time?”
This may not be the best example but you can see what I mean. With speech we tend to get in a hurry or we get too familiar with our subject and find ourselves taking shortcuts. When writing we have to remember that the rules do still apply.
I recently read a post by Dave Farmer, he did a short story completely in dialogue. No clues, no descriptions, nothing but dialogue between two people. He did a great job and you can check his story out here, That Day. He got the idea from another blog which you can check out here, Indigo Spider. They used a photograph as a visual clue and wrote a story using only dialogue. I even tried my hand at it, and found it a fantastic exercise!
Why not give it a go and post a link to it here? Remember to let the characters speak clearly, you can’t use he said, she said. The reader must be able to distinguish the speaker. I’m much less scared of dialogue now, I think I conquered my fear! Here’s mine! A Call to the Vet.
Limebird Writers 