If dialog is an essential part of every memoir—and of course it is, then why not make it effective—make it say what needs to be said—and interesting—so that it also keeps the reader reading. Write better dialog. Dialog performs several functions that make your story appealing and meaningful. Every memoir ought to have some dialog […]

If dialog is an essential part of every memoir—and of course it is, then why not make it effective—make it say what needs to be said—and interesting—so that it also keeps the reader reading. Write better dialog.

Dialog performs several functions that make your story appealing and meaningful.

Every memoir ought to have some dialog so why not write better dialog.

I am going to start off with offering you some reasons for including dialog in your memoir—to shore up my insisting every memoir ought to include dialog.

Reason #1. Dialog allows the reader to hear the character speak for himself or herself.

For instance, if your character was a person who was frequently on the defense about his behavior, you could quote him saying:”

• “I know it didn’t look good,” my uncle Victor replied in his timid voice, “but it wasn’t me who did it.”

Reason #2. Dialog is an opportunity to use regionalisms and particularities of speech that distinguish your characters and portray them to your readers.

• Here’s a “for instance”: “Ain’t much wrong with it,” my grandfather would say when he was very pleased with something.

Regionalism and particularities also offer you an occasion to present your character’s education and social standing as well as the person’s psychology.

Reason #3. You can include mannerisms when you write better dialog —or in this case, gaps in the dialog. You can even write in the pauses if that was typical of the person.

• Here’s an example: After asking my grandmother a question I could often hear in the ensuing silence that the faucet was dripping or a dog was barking in the distance. I wouldn’t know if she was thinking of her answer or if she was just savoring how clever I was to have said what I had said. Eventually, after a long pause, she would respond. As I grew older, I learned to let there be space in our conversations to allow her to answer at her own pace.

Reason #4. Dialog allows us to show and not tell.

You’ve heard of the importance of show and not tell. Using dialog permits the writer to put awkward “tell” elements into the voice of the character rather than into that of the author. In this way, dialog becomes “show.” When the author presents info in a dialog, however, it is “tell.” Here are two examples:

• An author might have written the following: “John was an immature person.” In this case the writer is telling the reader something. Should we believe the writer? Is the writer simply prejudiced? On the other hand, had the writer written in the character’s dialog:
• John said, “I was an immature person in high school.” Here the character is speaking for himself and the author cannot be charged with imposing a point of view on the reader.

Reason #5. Dialog imparts immediacy to the story. It has a “you are there” quality.

“Look at me,” Marita said. “Look at these hands.”

Reading these words on the page makes us feel we are with Marita looking at her hands.

5 Tips to Write Better Dialog

Having given you 5 solid reasons to use Dialog in your memoir, I will now offer you my Tips for Writing More Effective and Interesting Dialog

Tip #1. Keep your dialog short—if you want to be believed.

The following dialog is really an explanation:

It’s harder to mess up short dialog than it is to mess up long dialog. As already stated, keep explanations for the narrative. Explanations are really about telling. Telling is often necessary but it should not be in the dialog.

Open quote: “This is my cousin Elizabeth,” closed quote Nancy replied, open quote “whose father once had a hardware store on the corner of Huntington and Blake and whose business won best in the state three times in a row, but who finally got sick of hardware and turned to accounting.” Close quote

People just don’t speak that way. The writer knows it and the reader knows it. The writer is merely trying to provide information that may be necessary later in the story.

This rewrite is better memoir. Notice the short dialog with an accompanying narrative:

Open quote “This is my cousin Elizabeth,” closed quote Nancy replied. [Now let’s go to the narrative] Elizabeth’s father, Nancy explained, once had a hardware store on the corner of Huntington and Blake. His business had won best in the state three times in a row, but he finally got sick of hardware and turned to accounting.

In the narrative that follows Nancy dialog, the author has used indirect dialog. I have a whole video on direct and indirect dialog available for you on this channel.

Tip #2. Insert feeling and emotion in the dialog.

Again keep analysis or interpretation for the narrative.

“I hate you!’ he snarled. He had been putting up with his brother for a long time and would no longer do that.

Tip #3. Do not replicate dialogs from real life into your story. Real Life speech does not generally offer interesting dialog.

Next time you are in a public place, listen to dialog around you. You will easily notice how repetitive, aimless, and meaningless it often is. Much of it just fills the air! Lifestory dialog has to move your memoir along. It cannot be a filler. It cannot be used because “That’s really what we said.”

In the first example I will provide, the dialog doesn’t move the story along. It’s simply imitative of real life. In the second, we have a glimpse of the character’s life and so this bit of dialog does move the story along.

Here is an example of terrible dialog that imitates life:

“What will you ladies have today?” the waitress asked Theresa and me.

“What’s the special?” I asked.

“Halibut.”

“Halibut! Oh, I had halibut at my daughter’s the other day. It was good and she always does a good job of baking it but I don’t think I want it again. No, I want something else.”

This is true to life but not very interesting.

Here is some better, more interesting dialog:

“What will you ladies have today?” the waitress asked Theresa and me.

“What’s the special?” I asked.

“Halibut.”

“Halibut!” For a moment, I was taken away by a feeling that I could not describe, but then it came to me. I had ordered halibut the day Tom had taken me out to lunch to tell me he was divorcing me.

It’s easy to see that the second example brings us right into the story. Notice how short the dialog is

Tip #4. Skip dialog if it doesn’t add anything.

Yes, dialog can give voice to a character, but let’s not make that voice boring. In the first restaurant scene above, it would be preferable to skip the dialog with the waitress and just move on to what happened between the speaker and Theresa. If nothing happened, skip the restaurant scene altogether.

Tip #5 Don’t make dialog up out of whole cloth.

Of course, you have to find your dialog in what you 1) actually heard, 2) have found from a letter or a journal, 3) feel confident is a composite of what the person would have said, or 4) is so short or so factual that no one will dispute it. (For example: “”Jane is my sister.”)

You should not make dialog up just to ease your writing task, of creating drama so you can make the story interesting.

If you would like to explore receiving help with your dialog—or any aspect of memoir writing, we offer a 30-minute complimentary get-to-know-you coaching consultation.

Here’s the bonus I promised you: a link to our YouTube video explaining Direct and Indirect Dialog. It will help you to be more focused in using dialog.

To view more Youtube videos on how how to write better dialog click here and here

Good luck writing dialog into your stories!