Welcome to the Celebrate Africa Awards 2021
The Ambassadors Africa team invite you to join us as we celebrate the unique culture and voices of Africa brought to life through storytelling. We welcome our African brothers and sisters to share their st...
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Dialogue in our stories should be purposeful, believable, and compelling. It should always have a reason for existing. If it isn't achieving anything, then it's only taking up important real estate in your story. Good dialogue has the power to breathe life into your characters. You may even inspire readers to flaunt your characters' quotes as a meme or a tattoo. Hey, it could happen.
What does dialogue accomplish?
💬 Develops characters: A character's speech patterns and what they talk about can provide a lot of information. We can learn about the place they live, their upbringing, their personality, their mood, their motivations, and so on. The trick for many writers is to make sure each character's way of speaking is unique enough to distinguish one from another.
💬 Drives the plot forward: Conversations between characters can provide moments of conflict that may affect decisions they make later on. Through dialogue, characters are able to share all types of information that is important to the plot.
💬 Hints at things to come: Dialogue is a tool of foreshadowing. Characters will often speak of a future event and whether or not they're excited about it. Or they may describe some past event they hope will not be repeated.
💬 Delivers exposition without info dumps: Dialogue is one way readers learn about various aspects of the story, such as setting and backstory. Because characters often talk as they engage in activities, dialogue is an excellent way to deliver information while keeping the pace moving forward and avoiding lengthy descriptions.
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How do we write good dialogue?
Aim for speech that's realistic: No matter what sort of fiction we write – whether it's anchored concretely in reality, or set within a completely imaginary world – our dialogue should sound natural. In real life, our mouths just move. Our brains aren't always on the lookout for grammatical errors. We speak in fragments and use slang.
One easy way to make sure your dialogue sounds natural is to read it out loud then ask yourself these questions:
