Writing authentic character conversations

When I first started writing, one of the most difficult parts I found was creating dialogue between characters that was believable. Most of the time, it came across as robotic and never felt natural.

Instead, I would sit down and read other novels and see how they had gone about it. However, I never understood how they made it seem convincing.

Dialogue is supposed to move the plot along, whether it is through an exchange of information or character development. Either way, each conversation needs to have some form of purpose to it.

That is why it is crucial that you are intentional with your dialogue and using it as a tool in your writing.

🤌Want vs. need

I read recently a post about how someone had heard the writing advice, "you need to understand a character's wants and needs," but they didn't know what this really meant.

Let me use an example:

Mary wants to play video-games for longer.

Mary needs to do her homework.

In this very simplistic example from me, the "want" is the desire the character knowingly has, whereas the "need" is the subconscious understanding of what is best for her.

When applying this to a conversation, it is all the more important. A character wants to give up and not help the protagonist, so their words should reflect this.

However, the character needs to understand the situation and help in some way as deep down they believe that is the moral thing to do.

One way in which this can be shown is by having a character's actions betray their words. So in this example, the character, let's call him 'Steve,' wants nothing to do with our protagonist. But he continues to stay and question why our protagonist is doing the things they are. This shows a sense of curiosity that Steve can't ignore. Here, the subconscious is coming into play.

🏡Gardener and architect

Most writer's are aware of these terms, but they may have other names to you. Plantser vs Pantser is another of these. It just defines your style of writing and how much planning you do.

For me, when trying to write lifelike dialogue, I like to plan the character's wants and needs, but that's it. I like the natural feel of writing a character without planning them to death. It makes it feel more realistic to me. It might be worth planning some backstory elements so that you know your character a little better, but keeping it minimal is best.

By using the wants and needs you have defined for your character, it helps you understand how you can utilise them to move the plot forwards - rather than the plot moving at the expense of wooden characters. It means that each person in your novel has their own motives that they work towards, but link to the plot in some way that doesn't come across as too coincidental or unnatural.

That's all from me today,
Fin :)