Dialogue
isn't easy to write well. In fact, it is one of the red flags that
editors use to spot an amateur writer. Maybe it's because beginning
writers use dialogue more as a vehicle to deliver information than for
its primary purpose: to increase tension and emotion in a scene.
Both
fiction and nonfiction writers need to know dialogue skills.
Nonfiction writers, memoir to how-to, now incorporate at least 50
percent scenes in their books. Scenes include action and dialogue. If
you can't write a good scene, your book won't sing.
So how do you learn to write great dialogue?
I
was taught a two-step method that serves me well. Step 1: Learn to
listen to how human beings talk--and how they don't listen to each
other. Step 2: Learn to pare down the real-life dialogue into dialogue
that works on the page.