Smart Dialogue
Writing Smart, Revealing Dialogue
By Julie Tollefson
James D. F. Hannah, Shamus Award-winning author of the Henry Malone series, likes sharp, snappy dialogue (think Elmore Leonard) that hurtles a story forward and unveils the heart and soul of his characters. Here, he offers five tips for crafting dialogue that excites, reveals, and rings true — even when your characters have a lot to hide.
1) Unplug and listen — For the unapologetic eavesdropper, every venture outside the writing cave provides an opportunity to add to your dialogue bag of tricks. Coffee shops, restaurants, grocery checkout lines. Conversations with friends. Subway, train, and plane trips.
“The key is keeping yourself open and out in the world and listening — wherever people are,” James says. “Society is too often about going through the world with your earbuds in and your nose pointed at your phone, and we really need to get out of that sometimes and remember that to write about people, we have to be listening to people.”
Reading good writing also provides a master class in dialogue. James admires the finely tuned, purposeful dialogue of writers like S. A. Cosby, Lori Rader-Day, and Megan Abbott. Writers he read as a teen — including Robert B. Parker, Ed McBain, Elmore Leonard, and Robert Campbell — continue to inspire him.
“I am also a sucker for screenwriters who specialize in a particular brand of zingy dialogue, like Diablo Cody or Aaron Sorkin or Shane Black or Billy Wilder,” James says. “What’s better than listening to smart, funny people be smart and funny?”
2) Don’t sacrifice story in pursuit of realism — For James, the point of dialogue is to develop character and propel story. His goal is always to write dialogue that reveals character and relationships among characters. And often, that means their conversations bear only passing resemblance to an actual chat you might overhear in a bar.
“It’s more idealized re-creations of conversations rather than actual conversations—and that’s okay,” he says. “Focus on making your dialogue sing on the page. Make it funny and tough and tender and what feels realistic to the story, which is a whole separate thing from real life.”
Sometimes, the best way for James to find the rhythm of a scene or a character is to talk through his dialogue the way an actor would.
“Yes, you’ll sound like a lunatic to those around you,” he says. “Explain to them you’re committing acts of artistry here, and keep talking to yourself.”
3) Strike a balance between dialogue and action — The needs of your story dictate how much dialogue to include versus how much action or description readers need.
For James, a clever back-and-forth between characters comes easy.
“Sometimes it’s too easy, because I tend to write too much dialogue and I make everyone into a hyper-articulate smart-ass,” he says. “The job of revision is reining that nonsense in, adjusting the tone, making it fit. Still, even in those points where characters are maybe a page away from death, I play up the contrast between humor and inherent danger, letting one amplify the other. Dark humor plays well against needy, desperate characters.”
In early drafts, James’ characters drink a lot of coffee, smoke a lot of cigarettes, and struggle with their internal voices. In rewrites, though, much of that coffee, smoke, and struggle gets left on the cutting room floor.
“I strip that action out and rework it to focus on the dialogue—going back again to the how of what they say as much as the what of what they say,” James says. “This includes using ‘said’ or ‘say’ as my only dialogue tags and making sure the dialogue can do what it needs to do without additional hand-holding or adverbs.”
4) Write for yourself — Because you are always your own first reader, write dialogue you enjoy reading. James used this technique when he wrote “Somewhere Outside Salvation,” one of the “episodes” in the Grifter’s Song series created and edited by Frank Zafiro.
Though Frank set the stage with a series bible containing backstory and an episode synopsis, each writer had the freedom to make the stories their own. James' story features series main characters Sam and Rachel but also characters only James could create: a heroin-addicted German magician, a Ukrainian bearded lady, and a southern religious fanatic.
“My version of Sam and Rachel was probably a little quippier than in other episodes — I’m certain ‘Salvation’ is the only episode to reference both Bugs Bunny and Mean Girls — but I worked to stay as close to the essence of Frank’s vision as I could,” James says.
5) Make it count — In short stories, where every word pulls double or triple duty, dialogue is a writer’s Swiss Army knife, James says.
“In a novel, dialogue might be serving one or two purposes, but in a short story, it needs to be able to do multiple jobs. There’s no room for a two-page discourse on the potentially traumatic side effects of heart medications, so focusing on efficacy becomes vital,” he says.
And don’t worry if the words in your characters’ mouths feel wooden or clunky or dull early on.
“Accept that it’s never perfect in a first draft, but it can only get better once you have the first draft,” James says. “Everything is fixable once it exists.”