Dialogue should serve a purpose. When well written, it moves the story forward and adds to depth to our characters. It’s pivotal to create intimacy between our readers and the story. In section XXXX we cover the mechanics of good dialogue. Now let’s discuss rewriting to eliminate common dialogue problems.
If dialogue doesn’t provide information, add emotion to a scene, or move the story forward, then we have to ask if it’s necessary. If it does none of these things, we cut it. Our goal when cutting dialogue is not to remove so much that we lose the “feel” of the character, but to remove anything that is no more than filler or fluff. When rewriting, begin by reading the dialogue aloud. Listen to each line to pick out the difference in each character’s speech and, most importantly, to make sure the dialogue feels natural. Any area that has us stumbling is likely to trip up the reader as well and needs rewriting.
Next, we compare our dialogue to the narrative. There should be a balance between the two. When rewriting, we estimate how much of our novel is narrative and how much is dialogue. If there is considerably more of one or the other, edit to bring them back in balance. But don’t eliminate whole sentences and paragraphs simply for the sake of cutting. When rewriting to trim dialogue, we examine each line of dialogue, searching for unnecessary words or thoughts. When we want to add dialogue, we find areas where perhaps the narrative is telling. Perhaps we could show the same information through dialogue. Often, rewriting to eliminate colloquialisms or descriptive words tightens dialogue enough to achieve the goal, but we must take care not to lose meaning or tone while doing so.
For example, we can safely remove dialogue prompts, or statements that are intended to elicit a response. In most cases these are not needed and can be removed without changing anything.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Whoa, that’s a big hotdog.”
“Sure is.”
In the above, no matter what comes before, the first two lines of dialogue serve no purpose. They fill a space, and nothing else. If we rewrite to remove those, the scene has the same information while tightening the dialogue.
“Whoa, that’s a big hotdog.”
“It is.”
Of course, there is much more to rewriting dialogue than what we’ve discussed here. In the following sections, we’ll examine tags and attributions and how to rewrite them to tighten the prose.
Dialogue should serve a purpose. When well written, it moves the story forward and adds to depth to our characters. It’s pivotal to create intimacy between our readers and the story. In section XXXX we cover the mechanics of good dialogue. Now let’s discuss rewriting to eliminate common dialogue problems.