#dialoguehelp

friendly reminder that the word “said” did not kill your scene.

you don’t need to replace every line of dialogue with “he rasped” or “she intoned” or “they gasped breathlessly” (please no). your dialogue is not dying because of your tags. it’s dying because the rhythm is off.

👀 let me explain:

✨ what is dialogue rhythm?

it’s the flow of speech between characters. the beats. the pacing. the way words bounce, interrupt, cut off, trail, clash. it’s less about the words themselves and more about the energy they carry.

dialogue rhythm is what makes two people arguing feel like a boxing match, or a confession feel like a car crash. it’s how you keep tension in the room. if your rhythm sucks, no amount of fancy tags is gonna save you.

🔪 signs your dialogue rhythm is off:

every character is speaking in full, polished sentences like it’s a staged play

nobody ever interrupts, stammers, hesitates, or doubles back

the emotional pace stays flat, even in high-stakes scenes

all the action beats are “he nodded” “she smiled” “they looked at her” over and over

you read it out loud and it feels like a middle school skit

👂 here’s how to fix it:

Read your dialogue out loud. Like, actually out loud. if it sounds robotic, it is robotic. listen for places where people would realistically pause, ramble, get cut off, or trail off. insert those beats. add the mess.

Use white space and formatting to control speed. short lines = fast pace. long blocks = slow burn. a line break right before someone says something unhinged? elite move. example: “You really think I’d betray you?” Pause. “You already did.”

Cut 30% of your dialogue. if you can remove the line and nothing breaks, it was filler. chop chop. more silence = more tension. not every reply needs a full answer.

Let action interrupt speech. don’t wait for the character to finish talking before you show what they’re doing. intercut body language or physical actions mid-line. it mimics how people actually talk. like this: “Don’t touch that—” she lunged forward, grabbing his wrist. “—you don’t know what it is.”

Stop overexplaining with tags. you don’t need to say “she shouted angrily” if the line is literally “GET OUT.” trust the line. if the dialogue’s strong, “said” works just fine. if the dialogue’s weak, “murmured” won’t save it.

🛑 but what about dialogue tags?

use them! but treat them like punctuation, not prose. the goal is clarity, not ✨flair✨. you want the reader to know who’s speaking without noticing the machinery.

“Said” is invisible. “Snarled” is a spice. Use spices sparingly.

better yet: mix tags with beats to keep rhythm tight. example:

BAD: “I hate you,” he said angrily. “I hate you,” she snapped back.

BETTER: “I hate you,” he said, jaw clenched. She didn’t even blink. “Good. Then we’re even.”

💡 TL;DR: your scene doesn’t need fancy tags. it needs movement. conflict. silence. interruptions. character-specific tone. you fix that by fixing the rhythm, not the verbs.

go back to your WIP, open your messiest conversation scene, and test it. read it aloud. break it up. cut what drags. add one beat of silence. give someone a half-finished sentence and a reason to storm out.

watch how fast it starts to breathe.

P.S. I made a free mini eBook about the 5 biggest mistakes writers make in the first 10 pages 👀 you can grab it here for FREE:

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

Hallo, I'd like you to meet Wang Xiaoman—my favorite key character in my novel N39° Legend—Across the Taklamakan. He's a smart… hmm… handsome guy from southern China. He loves making friends and is always eager to help—though sometimes his help ends up… not so helpful. I've been waking up at 5 a.m. every day to spend an hour studying Southern American slang, but he still doesn't trust me, a non-native author, to nail it (secretly, I think he's probably correct). He dreams of speaking authentic Southern street slang, so he's got something to say to all you native speakers out there. Take it away, Xiaoman. [hands him the mic]

Ayo, Tumblr! Ya boy Wang Xiaoman rollin’ up. 26-year-old young buck—only made it to third grade ’fore I bailed. Been haulin’ six-wheelers to stack paper, now I got a slice of the action in a big-ass garage. Hell, I even snatched a stage win in a rally-raid—shaved three full minutes off the record in a bone-stock Wrangler. But that’s all past-glory chatter, ha~

[Xiao Gai cut in: tell the folks why you here.] Bet. Xiao Gai says the slang in the book ain’t half bad, but I need that real back-roads flavor from y’all. Tryna sound smooth as them country boys croonin’ on the porch radio—ya dig? “Y’all,” “ain’t,” “fixin’ to,” the whole nine. So help a brother out. If I spit somethin’ whack as hell, call me on it—drop a comment, school the author, do ya thang. I wanna rep my desert crew with legit drawl (yeah we’re out in the dunes but we got Southern vibes!), no cap. Appreciate it, y’all!

[XiaoGai snatched the mic back.]Much obliged, y'all!

......

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Why We Don’t Use Real Life Dialogue in Our Books

This is from when Em was super young and I wrote it all out and saved it because that’s what I do.

There is a Halloween Sleep Over at my house. There are six 14-year-olds. They are making cheesy ghosts with olive faces. This is the dialogue. It is verbatim.  This is the reason why we don’t have perfectly accurate dialogue in our stories.

DIRECT CONVERSATION BEGINS NOW

Didn’t H — make…

There. I said it.

Mushy dialogue sucks. It’s nothing space in your story and sometimes it’s nothing space in your life. You know what I’m talking about, right? You meet some cool human at a coffee house and talk to them and it goes like this:

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“How’s it shaking?”

“It’s shaking well, thank you.”

“Yeah. Weather is nice, right?”

“It’s quite sunny.”

“Cool.”

“Yes, it’s lovely.”

Random…

What’s that mean?

Dialogue, baby. It’s that magic place where the characters get to speak for themselves.

So, the number one tip is super obvious, but yet… so many of us don’t do it.

SAY YOUR DIALOGUE

Out loud.

  That’s easy enough, right? But actually listen to how the words sound. Is it awkward? Too perfect? Is someone saying an 895-word sentence?

Think about the breath units.

Wait. Breath units? What’s that?

A breath unit is how many syllables are read in one breath. You breathe at periods and commas and punctuation marks, right?

So, if your dialogue sentences have more than 20 syllables? It’s going to be cruddy. If it’s all five or less? It’s going to sound cruddy too.

Poets use this writing tool and think about this all the time. Fiction writers should too because the cadence of your words and your writing matters AND because you should have as many tools in your tool box as possible.

Once you know the tools, you can break the rules for dramatic effect. Stephen King often writes a 100-word sentence full of long breath units and follows it with a one-breath-unit sentence-slash- paragraph for a dramatic punch.

Genius.

And I sort of did that up there.

See? This sentence is super long (40 syllables):

Stephen King often writes a 100-word sentence full of long breath units and follows it with a one-breath-unit sentence-slash- paragraph for a dramatic punch.

And followed it with this (2 syllables):

Genius.

That’s not dialogue, but it helps make it understandable, right?

And to be fair, not all people and all cultures have that typical upper middle class white person in the United States breath unit. Think of Eminem or Busta Rhymes or Tech N9ne for a second and all the words each of those men can say in one breath. Chopper-style rap has this awesome, intense emphasis on speed and pronunciation, which throws the rules of breath units out the window. Here’s a link to some fast rap examples courtesy of Red Bull.

Warning: There is profanity.

And those differences are important. It’s good to remember where the ‘rules’ come from and who they come from and also to give yourself the liberty to play with them or against them.

So, do that. Say your dialogue aloud. Play around with the breath. Think about the things your character is feeling underneath the words she’s saying.

If a cop or a werewolf is chasing your Scooby gang, they aren’t going to be eloquent and have long beat units. If they’re on drugs, giving a speech, or borderline hysterical? Those beats are going to show that.

WRITING NEWS

I’m heading to Freeport, Maine on Sept. 28 and then Houston and Virginia Beach pretty soon to promote my picture book biography of Moe Berg. It’s called The Spy Who Played Baseball. 

I’ll be hanging with a lot of other cool authors in Freeport.

  ENHANCED, the follow-up to FLYING is here! And the books are out of this world. Please buy them and support a writer.

  Flying

The last TIME STOPPERS BOOK is out and I love it. You should buy it because it’s empowering and about friendship and bias and magic. Plus, dragons and elves.

How to Get Signed Copies: 

If you would like to purchase signed copies of my books, you can do so through the awesome Sherman’s Book Store in Bar Harbor, Maine or the amazing Briar Patch. The books are also available online at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

For signed copies – email [email protected] for Sherman’s or email [email protected] let them know the titles in which you are interested. There’s sometimes a waiting list, but they are the best option. Plus, you’re supporting an adorable local bookstore run by some really wonderful humans. But here’s the Amazon link, too!

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You can buy prints of my art here. Thank you so much for supporting my books and me and each other. I hope you have an amazing day.