From Clunky to Captivating: How to Write Snappy, Authentic Dialogue

When dialogue works, it pulls readers in, deepens characters, reveals emotion, and keeps the pace movin’ steadily. But when it doesn’t? Dialogue can feel like speed bumps… awkward, stiff, and an annoying part of a reader’s journey. As a copywriter, corp comms girly, and now-retired journalist, I’ve been writing for my entire professional career, and I’ve seen my writing mature and evolve in ways I never expected. In terms of fiction, though? Dialogue is the one skill I’ve sharpened most of the years, and I’m happy to tell you how I did. Ready to level up your characters? Let’s explore common pitfalls, easy implementations that can bring your story to life, and some tricks I recommend for keeping your story palatable.

Voice and Tone: Not Just for Corporations

Ask anyone who works in content marketing – consistent voice and tone are crucial for building trust and engagement. I used to do a lot of client work, which meant adapting to each individual brand’s specific voice and tone to create something believable. Interestingly, I’ve found that this same perspective is highly beneficial for fiction writing.

Voice is your character’s personality on the page. It shows up in diction, syntax, pacing, and how they see the world. Dialogue should align with the narrative voice in first-person stories. Essentially, to some degree, your first-person narrator should speak how they narrate. Easy, right?Tone is the emotional undercurrent of a scene or line. A sarcastic tone lands differently than a sincere one, even if the words are similar. Tone can be implied without dialogue tags – it’s all about word choice, and choosing the proper pieces to build your greater picture. (By that, I mean “I joked,” “I flirted,” and other similar clarifiers should not be necessary in well-toned dialogue. If you’ve nailed it, your readers will know it’s joking or flirtatious. If they don’t, back to the drawing board.)[image error]Pexels.com","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"woman reading book while resting in bathtub","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="pexels-photo-6621191" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="

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Authors can only benefit from applying techniques used in brand voice analysis: take samples of your character’s dialogue and look for patterns. Are they consistent? Are you unintentionally blending tones between characters? Can a reader identify who’s speaking without the dialogue tag?

Understanding tone shifts can also help regulate pacing, tension, and emotional payoff – just like it does in strategic communications. After you’ve completed even just a chapter in your draft, it’s worth revisiting the voices of your characters to see where they land.

Common Dialogue Pitfalls to Avoid

It’s easy to fall into some common traps that make for bad dialogue. It’s an unfortunate truth that bad dialogue is easier to write than good conversation, but that’s totally okay – drafts are meant to evolve. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the original 2011 opening of Industrialized, Part One: Experiment, compared to the version that came out in 2024.

2011:

Humans are ridiculous. Our lives are oftentimes dictated by vanity and luxury, and where those two meet is in the realm of the wealthy. Those with money can afford to be beautiful. They can afford gadgets and apparatuses that the average man cannot. Unfortunately, wealth is often wasted on uneducated and corrupt bigots.

2024:

People are ridiculous. Vanity and luxury often dictate our lives, and those two meet with particular flair in the realm of the wealthy. From parties to drugs to mechanical corsets that suck the life out of vainglorious wearers, I’ve found that wealth in Tesland is more often than not wasted on uneducated or corrupt bigots.

The first version reads more like a philosophical essay than Kristina’s internal voice. It’s abstract and impersonal in tone, and it tells rather than shows – namely in the gadgets and apparatuses line. Plus, the language is too formal – Kris is a firecracker, and while she can play a respectful role, she rarely does. 

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The new version that debuted with the story? Changing Humans to People instantly took out that philosophical, reflective tone and grounded it in a punchier opinion. The “gadgets” have become a specific item our narrator clearly doesn’t like, and it introduces the world without a dump of exposition. Essentially, we get a taste of Kristina’s opinions with much less telling. 

So while many factors can play in any given piece, let’s explore some of the common pitfalls you may see in dialogue and narration.

Overexplaining
When characters say everything they’re thinking or feeling out loud, it drains tension and undercuts subtext. Those with money can afford to be beautiful is much less interesting than mechanical corsets suck the life out of vainglorious wearers. The worst thing about overexplaining? It doubts the intelligence of your readers. Let them draw their own conclusions – if your work is well-crafted, they’ll reach the conclusion you’re hoping they will without you telling them to. Perfect Grammar
I know, I know. Writers should know grammar and syntax. But the truth is that rules are meant to be broken. Real people rarely speak in polished sentences. Overly correct speech often makes dialogue sound robotic. If you lean into proper grammar for your narration (assuming it’s not first person), your readers will trust that you’re breaking rules intentionally in dialogue. They won’t even notice it. If everything is flawless and robotically structured? They’ll linger on those awkward or grammatically wrong sentences, and they may even find themselves ripped out of your story. Perfect grammar doesn’t make for perfect immersion. Periodt. Everyone Sounds the Same
When all characters use the same vocabulary, rhythm, or tone, your dialogue loses its realism. Character voice matters! Mix it up. Clipped language can make a character distinct, while longer sentences with bigger words may fit another character. Maybe one uses slang or colloquialisms while another is more formal. Each distinction you add to your story brings out the richness of the world you’re building. And the best part? Your readers will learn to recognize who is speaking without needing a dialogue tag.Info-Dumping in Conversation
Don’t use dialogue to shoehorn exposition. People don’t recap history to each other for no reason. Because I don’t believe in tearing down other writers, I’m going to tear up my own work again and show you a piece from the 2011 draft of Part One: 

“I need to cut off this corset.”

He stared at me unseeingly for a long moment. “It is not meant to come off, Miss Simmons.”

“Which is why I need a scientist to help me remove it,” I said. “I don’t want it to suffocate me while I attempt to remove it. It is killing me. It tightened again today, and if it gets any tighter I’m certain that my lungs will explode.”

Versus the 2024 version: 

“I need to cut off this corset.” 

Titus stared for a long moment, chewing his lip. “You know it’s not designed to come off.” 

“Which is why I need your help,” I said.

We know Titus is a chemist. We know the corset is killing her, that it tightened again. The only time Titus calls her “Miss Simmons” is in workplace reviews or a strict “listen, I’m working and don’t want to be interrupted” scenario. Cutting out the info dumps instantly streamlined the story and made it more immersive. That being said, I usually info dump in first drafts so I can go back and reference plot points. I typically remove those moments in my second draft, because those are there strictly for me as the world weaver – not for the reader to see.

Emotional Tells Instead of Showing
Avoid explaining what emotions mean in dialogue. Let subtext, body language, and pacing do some of the heavy lifting for you. If you have to say “I was so in love with him,” you’re not showing it enough. If you say “that went against my moral code,” you didn’t show your character tensing up enough at the suggestion that spurred that thought. Telling doesn’t allow your world to sing, and it doesn’t allow your reader to immerse themselves in the world and stakes you’ve built.

How to Craft Snappy, Natural Dialogue

Now that we’ve explored some pitfalls to avoid, let’s dive into some easy tricks you can apply to create dialogue that feels natural and a world that feels lived-in. 

Start Late, Leave Early
Cut greetings, small talk, and meandering intros. Jump into the heat of the exchange. That scene we saw under point four in the previous section? In both the OG draft and the polished debut, Titus doesn’t greet Kristina when she calls him after her mechanical corset tightens. He snaps, “What do you want, Kris?” There’s an abruptness to the tone that immediately tells us the conversation is an inconvenience to him, that he doesn’t want to be talking. Going straight to business works for the snappiness of this character, but it’s also pretty natural in day-to-day interactions. We’re not all quite so formal and rigid, especially with people we know well.Conflict Drives Conversation
Good dialogue is rarely polite or smooth. Give your characters competing goals, misunderstandings, or tension. I like to build character webs to understand where natural conflict arises, but you don’t have to go that deep. Get into the headspace of your characters and ask yourself where they might naturally make a misstep. Use Action to Ground the Scene
Characters don’t speak into a void. Have them move, react, hesitate – body language can reveal what words conceal. Heck, body language can cut down your dialogue, too! Less is often more, and letting the world breathe around the characters can do wonders for reader immersion.Know Each Character’s Voice
Every single character in your story should sound different. If they sound too much alike, you might want to assess if you have a self-insert problem. Long story short, you don’t want your characters to sound like you! Consider how their background, mood, and personality influence their speech. Some are blunt. Some ramble. Some avoid the point. Whatever it is, infuse a bit of distinction in each character’s tone.Dialogue in First-Person POV: A Special Case

In first-person narration, the line between dialogue and internal monologue blurs, so it’s a little bit different than your standard day-to-day dialogue writing. You’re not just writing what the character says – you’re filtering everything through their perception, bias, and emotional state. That means:

Internal reactions can replace external exposition. Instead of saying, “I was furious,” let your narrator’s thoughts or clipped responses reveal it. Sure. Burn the place down again. Great idea. And you can go even deeper with physical reactions, too! Instead of saying, “I loved him so much it hurt,” you can have their heart skip a beat and their chest tighten after something sweet is said. Narrative immersion is an incredible tool that can help you stick to the “show, don’t tell” rule if you’re diligent and attentive.
Narration should match the character’s voice. Keep inner commentary as vibrant and personal as their spoken lines. As you saw previously with the original draft of Part One, Kristina’s narration had to evolve to be as snappy and cranky as she was. This was, admittedly, a challenge to write – she sounds nothing like the author who penned her story. And honestly? It’s worth it. Grounding yourself in your character’s distinct voice (and exploring it through a bit of voice and tone analysis) can make each story you write feel distinct and unique.
Subtext is powerful. First-person narrators don’t always have to be honest with themselves – or the reader. Kristina sure as heck isn’t. Let tension build in what they don’t say out loud. And don’t be afraid to make them unreliable! In the Industrialized series, we eventually learn a lot about the world that the narrator herself doesn’t know. I, as the author, knew all these details from the very beginning, but Kristina had to learn them. That was part of the journey, and if she knew those details upfront, the book would have turned out rather differently. Let the subtext of your story challenge your readers to think, and more importantly, let it challenge your characters.
Read it Out Loud

One of the simplest, most powerful ways to elevate your dialogue is to read it out loud. It’s an annoying process, I know, but it’s so worth it. 

If you’re reading and a line makes you stumble, sounds overly stiff, or includes phrasing you naturally contract while speaking (like “I will” turning into “I’ll”), that’s a sign your characters would face those same hurdles. Spoken rhythm reveals awkwardness that silent reading often masks. Reading aloud also helps you spot pacing issues, emotional beats that don’t land, and opportunities for stronger character voice. For me, most importantly, if a line makes me cringe, it’s got to go.

While you’re at it, try a quick “If/Then” logic check: if your character says or feels something in the scene, then what should logically follow? Does the emotion track? Would their history lead them to this reaction? Combining a read-aloud pass with a fact-check of internal consistency is an easy and effective way to make sure your dialogue sings.

Now… Get Writing!

Great dialogue doesn’t always sound exactly like real speech – it’s heightened, compressed, and intentional. But it feels real because it flows with rhythm, purpose, and personality. When in doubt, ask: Is this what the character would really say in this moment? And is it what they’d say out loud? If not, revise until the answer is yes.

Your story lives in the space between characters – make that space worth reading.

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