Elmore Leonard famously said that you should find all the parts of your writing that people tend to skim over—then delete them! But your readers will never skim over dialogue.

Why dialogue? Use dialogue to make the scene more immediate, vivid, in-the-moment. Use dialogue to reveal character, rather than having the narrator do it. Use dialogue to describe a scene—through the eyes of a character. Use dialogue to reveal conflict. Use it to reveal attributes of your characters—regional or ethnic identity, personality, temperament. Use it to reveal the thoughts of your character.

How to write compelling dialogue? Good dialogue never is a word-by-word transcription of the spoken word. But it needs to read as if it is. It should never seem contrived, made up. It should always be believable. How to do that?

Use oblique dialogue. Dialogue should not be predictable: “How are you?” “I’m fine.” Rather,

“Why did you come late to the party?”

“I was hoping to see you here! When did you arrive”

“I wasn’t even going to come, but I’m glad I did.”

Note that the speakers do not immediately or directly answer questions.

Use tone in your dialogue. Formal or informal? Contractions and shorter words indicate a more informal speech. It’s less organized; it jumps around more.

Use conflict dialogue. Readers will not be patient with dialogue that merely reflects good manners. Even close friends or spouses have occasional conflicts. Add conflict and disagreement to your dialogue.

Use ethnic dialogue. Rather than tedious, forced artificial spellings of special words, sparingly choose a few words or phrases. Enough to give just a hint of regionalism. “Californier” to indicate a Boston accent. Use “y’all” to indicate a southern dialect. Or “acts” to reveal an African-American pronunciation of “ask.” Use special regional constructs: “They been,” “they be,” “they was,” “he were.”

Use internal dialogue. How represent the thoughts of a character? If you describe the thought, no special treatment is needed. But if you are “quoting” the thoughts you have several alternatives:

• Use quote marks around the thoughts: “I’m in trouble,” he thought.
• Put the thoughts in italics. I’m in trouble, he thought.
• Do neither: I’m in trouble, he thought. -or- He wondered, Did Sally know what her mother had done?

I do not recommend the first. My editors prefer the second. I prefer the third, but it is a little harder to do.

Punctuation in dialogue? Just a few rules:

• Should always open and close quote marks.
• Punctuation goes inside of, not outside of, the quote marks.
• A new speaker should always have a new paragraph.

You can take a ho hum piece and add vivid dialogue—your readers will love it.