How to Write Better Dialogue with Justin Lee Anderson

Learning how to write better dialogue is one way to capture your readers' interest. You want your reader to leave their own mind and go on a journey or have an experience with your characters. Having bad dialogue will pull them out of that experience into their own mind and break the magic of your story.

Today's guest is Justin Lee Anderson. Justin was a professional writer for fifteen years before publishing his first novel in 2015. As a scriptwriter, he has some great information for how authors can improve their dialogue and, in turn, improve their novel. In today's episode, we will talk about the importance of good dialogue, creating distinctive voices for each of your characters, and Justin will share some tips for how you can write natural-sounding dialogue.

01:22 Justin's Story.

07:56 SPFBO and his book the Lost War.

12:53 Why good dialogue matters.

15:00 Why authors struggle with dialogue.

17:20 What does good dialogue sound like?

19:38 How to add variation to character voices.

26:54 Consider a character's background, history, and experience when creating dialogue.

32:07 Importance of dialogue in a novel.

33:54 Is it ever ok to use dialogue for exposition?

36:57 Dialogue tags.

41:22 The use of accents.

43:45 Ways to improve your dialogue.

48:03 Finding inspiration.

Take something that you have written and go to a room by yourself. Read it out loud and ask yourself if what you have written works. If it doesn't, ask yourself, why not? What's wrong with it? What would you say? If you were thinking what that character is thinking, would you say exactly what you've written down? Or would you say something slightly different? Who are they saying it to?

Click Here for more Show Notes and a full transcript of the episode.