Syd Field writes that dialogue must have a purpose. It:
- moves the story forward
- communicates facts and information to the reader
- reveals character
- establishes relationships between characters
- makes your characters real, natural, and spontaneous
- reveals the conflicts of the story and characters
- reveals the emotional states of your characters
- comments on the action
Stephanie Kay Bendel writes:
Though you are striving for a semblance of reality in your conversations, you must avoid many things that actually do occur in real life conversations. No one wants to read dialogue that is peppered with expressions like “you know” and “you see?” etc. The principle to follow is: serve the meat only. If it doesn’t move the plot along or help to characterize the person speaking or help to establish the tone of the scene, omit it.
Karl Iglesias writes about subtext, “characters have too much to lose if they’re direct, and you want the reader to experience the scene actively instead of passively.”
With subtext, the reader is not told what to think and instead discerns it for themselves.
“The more it means to the character, the more difficult it is to say. If there’s no restraint, no inhibitions, no guilt, no shame, there’s no drama.” Robert Towne
