How to Write Dazzling Dialogue: The Fastest Way to Improve Any Manuscript (Bell on Writing)

by James Scott Bell

If you think of speech as action, it will keep you from writing soggy, inert dialogue.

Speech as action reminds you that characters talk in fiction because they want to further their own ends.

So the first secret of dazzling dialogue is to give your characters their own agenda checks in every scene.

Great dialogue begins before you write a line. It starts by creating a cast of characters who differ from each other so there is always the possibility of conflict or tension.