How to Write Dialogue: When Someone Interrupts
It’s all about the punctuation.
For fiction writers, dialogue can be the difference between knocking our books out of the park and punting.
Think about it this way: every single novel has a single objective. It’s the author’s job, through their words, to transport the reader. It’s as close to magic as mere humans ever get.
By the time we’re reading novels, our brains have years (decades, even) of experience with language.
We aren’t all the same, of course. But humans are finely tuned communication machines and we pick up stilted or not-quite-right dialogue (spoken or written.)
As a neurodiverse mother of three neurodiverse children, I know that we might individually be more or less sensitive to language that isn’t quite right. But eventually, it becomes obvious. And when that happens in a novel, it yanks us right out of the story.
There are differences between spoken and written dialogue.
In order to sound normal, written dialogue is more formal than spoken dialogue. Because we can’t adequately write nonverbal communication, characters need to say more out loud than humans actually do.
