An Easy Tip to Avoid Infodumps in Your Dialogue

By Janice Hardy

Just because a character says it, doesn’t mean it isn’t an infodump.

Dialogue is one of my favorite parts of writing. It's fast-paced, grabs attention, and usually keeps the reader reading. When two characters are having a zippy conversation, readers feel like they’re hanging out with them and are part of the story.

But those conversations can also contain the dreaded infodump-as-dialogue.

Infodumping (throwing in a lot of "need-to-know" information at one time) doesn't just happen to prose. Characters can have conversations they'd never have, talking about things they'd never talk about, just so authors can explain things to readers.

Which is bad, because...

Infodumps remind readers they’re reading, and can knock them right out of the story.

5 Ways Your Dialogue Annoys Your Readers

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Make sure your dialogue is helping your story, not chasing readers away.

I read a lot of first drafts, and one area that frequently needs work is the dialogue. It’s understandable since we often need to write the dialogue before we know what the character’s voice sounds like. Think of it as placeholder dialogue—it’s there to remind us what the character needs to say, but it might not be the way they ought to say it.

For example, the character might be too formal, or say something too on-the-nose about how they feel, or they sound like every other character in the room. The dialogue is more “this is the information the character needs to convey” and less “this is what the character says based on how they feel right now.”

5 Ways to Layer Depth into Your Story

By Jodi Turchin, @jlturchin

Part of The How They Do It Series

JH: Just because you write all the dialogue first doesn't mean you can't craft a layered story. Jodi Turchin shares tips on adding the depth after your first draft is done. 

Jodi Turchin is a Young Adult novelist represented by Dawn Frederick at Red Sofa Literary. She’s also a photographer, a high school English teacher, an adjunct college professor, and a former actress and director.

Website | Twitter

Take it away Jodi…

3 Quick Building Blocks to Creating Crackling Character Chemistry

By Bonnie Randall

Part of The How They Do It Series 

JH: When sparks fly between characters, so do the pages. Bonnie Randall shares tips on creating irresistible chemistry between your characters. 

So, I’m reading a novel right now—romantic suspense—and I’m enthralled by the snap-crackle-pop of sexual tension between two of the characters.

Except…I don’t think they’re the characters the author intended me to get giddy for. In fact it might even freak her out to know that the hottest couple she created is… <drumroll> the hero and the heroine’s grandmother.

Yes. Grandmother.

(Hey—don’t look at me that way. I don’t make the news, I just report it).

How to Handle Multiple Speakers in a Scene Without Confusing Your Reader

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Too many cooks might spoil the soup, but too many speakers will clutter the scene.

Before I dive in today, here's a heads up that I'm guest posting at Writers in the Storm today, chatting about 10 Ways to Get a Stuck Story Moving Away. Come on by and say hello.

I love dialogue. It’s the easiest thing for me to write, so there’s usually a lot of it in my books. When it’s just a few people talking it’s no trouble at all keeping the speakers clear, but the more character I put in the room, the harder the dialogue is to write. 

Wait, let me clarify that.

The dialogue is still easy. It’s the keeping everyone straight without overwhelming readers that makes me want to scream.

I Hear You: Creating Character Voices in Non-POV Characters

By Janice Hardy. @Janice_Hardy

Just because a character doesn't have their own point of view, doesn't mean they shouldn't have their own voice.

Years ago, I saw a movie (one of my favorite, super-cheesy disaster ones) where five of the female characters had the exact same appearance. None of them were main characters, and before long it was impossible to remember who was who and what storyline they belonged to. Nothing they said or did stuck with me after that.

It was a perfect example of why not developing your supporting characters enough can mess up a perfectly good story.

Non-point-of-view characters run this same risk if they don’t have their own distinct voices. But without being inside their heads to help create that voice, it can be tough to make them sound different.

Let's look at ways to craft different voices for the characters in your novel.

Jamie Fraser Eats an Apple: Using Objects to Inject Character and World-Building into Dialogue

By Lisa Lowe Stauffer, @LisaLStauffer

Part of The How They Do It Series

JH: What’s in a scene is more than just stage dressing and props. It can be an opportunity to show your characters and the world they live in. Lisa Lowe Stauffer visits the lecture hall today with tips on how to do just that.

Lisa Lowe Stauffer, author of Two By Two (Zonderkidz, 2018) eagerly anticipates the release of the next book in the Outlander series. In the meantime, she stays busy writing books for children and teens, volunteering with SCBWI as the Assistant Regional Adviser to Southern Breeze region, and traveling with her own red-headed husband.

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter |

Take it away Lisa…

5 Tips for Using Voice in Dialogue

By Vincent H. O’Neil

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: Voice is a tricky aspect of writing, from finding the author's voice to creating the voices of the characters. Please help me welcome Vincent O'Neil to the lecture hall today, to share his thought and tips on using voice in our dialogue.

Vincent H. O’Neil is the Malice Award-winning author of the Frank Cole mysteries and the theater-themed mystery Death Troupe. HarperCollins recently released the fifth and final novel in his military science fiction Sim War series, written as Henry V. O’Neil.

Website | Goodreads | Facebook |

Take it away Vincent...

Sunday Writing Tip: Clean Up Your Dialogue Tags

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Each week, I’ll offer a tip you can take and apply to your WIP to help improve it. They’ll be easy to do and shouldn’t take long, so they’ll be things you can do without taking up your entire Sunday. Though I do reserve the right to offer a good tip now and then that will take longer—but only because it would apply to the entire manuscript.

This week, delete unnecessary dialogue tags.

Dialogue tags are important, but not every spoken line needs a “(s)he said” after it. Too many tags in a row sound clunky at best, melodramatic and silly in the extreme. Go through your tags and decide if you truly need it or not. In most cases, it’s clear who’s speaking, or there’s already stage direction or action attributed to the speaker.

Formatting Dialogue in Fiction: He Said, She Said

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Dialogue is more than just writing down what your characters say--it's also using the correct punctuation and structure so readers understand who's speaking and how. 

I once had a debate with someone over the proper structure of a dialogue tag. She felt that you should always write "said Bob," because you wouldn't say "Ran Bob up a hill." I felt it could go either way. "Get thee to a nunnery" sound fine, right?

So, which is correct: "Bob said," or "said Bob?"

I checked with my linguist expert, and she says there's nothing grammatically wrong with "Bob said." Which verb-noun pairs you use determines how odd it sounds to you.

Learning To Write Dialogue From The Wire And Anne of Green Gables

By Spencer Ellsworth, @spencimus

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: We're a little off schedule this week, but it's been one of those weeks. Instead of the regular Indie Author guest today, we have Spence Ellsworth in the lecture all to share some thoughts on writing dialogue. 

Spencer Ellsworth has been writing since he learned how. His short fiction has previously appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and at Tor.com. Over the years, he's worked as a wilderness survival instructor, paraeducator in a special education classroom, and in publishing; he currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and three children and works at a small tribal college on a Native American reservation. His novel A Red Peace just released from Tor.

Website | Twitter | Goodreads

Take it away Spencer...

Don’t Speak: The Power of What’s Left Unsaid When Crafting Dialogue

By Bonnie Randall

Part of the How They Do It Series (Monthly Contributor)

As a writer, and a therapist, dialogue is sacred to me; conversations convey so much: personality, preferences, desires, motives, and, yes, a person’s story. Yet in fiction, as in life, sometimes the most powerful message delivered is what isn’t said. The unspoken, the implied, and the evaded can turn up the volume of a story, creating poignancy, pathos, and the tension we are always striving for as writers.

Did I Just Say That? When Characters Say Dumb Things

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

There are moments in my life I wish I could take back. The kind where I opened my mouth and inserted my foot right up to my hip bone. They still haunt me even though it's been years and I'll never see those people again (it's worse with the people I still see all the time, ack). Sometimes, those verbal slips got me into trouble I would have avoided if I'd just kept my mouth shut. 

Characters can say stupid things, too. So at least my gaffes provided some good fodder for my stories.

How Dialogue Can Help Re-Structure a "Needs Some Work" Draft

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

I’m guest posting over at Writers in the Storm today, chatting about a fun plotting and story developing technique I’m trying with my new novel. Come on over and ask, “What Do You Want Your Readers to Wonder About?” with me.


One of the many daunting revision tasks is facing a finished novel that needs work, but the core story is mostly okay. You know one or two of the subplots will need to go, but you're not totally sure which ones. Certain scenes absolutely need to be moved to different parts of the book, but you're not sure how they’ll fit in. You stare at it, and it feels like you're going to need to rewrite the whole dang thing, yet you know that most of it is actually workable.

Knowing where to start fixing the issues can be hard, but I’ve discovered a little trick:

Look at the dialogue first.

Want Better Characters? Get Rid of the Dialogue

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

In novels, we often rely on what a character says to show who they are. Their actions also play a role, but the focus is usually on the big stuff—the choices made, the sweeping gestures, the plot-driving tasks. Yet, it’s often the little things people do that make them memorable.

I once read a book (I don’t remember which one or who wrote it it was so long ago), but there was a scene where something had happened and the police were talking to witnesses. The protagonist did not want to be remembered. So a character with her scrunched up the side of his face so it twitched, limped over to police, and answered questions with a strong southern accent. She was appalled, and thought he’d just given them away. He said, “Nope, all they’ll remember is the twitch, the limp, and the accent.” Funny thing, after probably twenty years, that’s all I remember about that book as well.

What Are You Really Saying? (The Use of Subtext)

By James R. Tuck, @JamesTuckwriter

Part of the How They Do It Series (Monthly contributor)

Ah, subtext my old friend. It's good to see you again.

As a quick catch up, subtext is the meaning that falls under the words spoken in a conversation. It is all the things inside your characters that color their word choice coming to bear weight on what they say and how they say it. It can add a lot of texture to your writing.

How to Punctuate Dialogue

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

How we punctuate dialogue tells our readers how to read that dialogue. We can show pauses, questions, interruptions, who’s speaking and how they’re doing it. It’s a useful tool for telling our stories.

If it’s been a while since you were in a classroom, or you’re new to writing and still figuring out the rules of dialogue, let’s look at some common questions for punctuating dialogue in a story.

How to Subtly Boost Your Dialogue’s Power With Body Language

By Alex Limberg, @RidethePen

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: It's funny that writing a good story depends a lot on what not being said. It's a constant balance between giving our readers the information they need to understand the story, and holding enough back so they can lose themselves in that story and make their own assumptions and judgements about it. Alex Limberg visits the lecture hall today to share some tips on one great way to say a lot without saying anything--body language. 

Alex is blogging on ‘Ride the Pen’ to help you boost your fiction writing. His blog dissects famous authors (works, not bodies). Create intriguing descriptions of body language or any other story part with his free ebook “44 Key Questions” to test your story (download here)or check out his creative writing exercises. Shakespeare is jealous. Alex has worked as a copywriter and lived in Vienna, Los Angeles, Madrid and Hamburg.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Take it away Alex...

Writing Dialogue: 4 Ways to Avoid Floating Head Syndrome!

By Bryn Donovan, @BrynDonovan

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: Dialogue is wonderful, but it can be an area that readers can get lost in if not done well. White rooms, talking heads, confusing speakers--and to help clear up those fuzzy, yet chatty, areas, Bryn Donovan takes the podium to share some tips on floating head syndrome.

Bryn is the author of two novels and the reference book Master Lists for Writers. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, and she blogs at bryndonovan.com.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Take it away Bryn...

Something Worth Saying: Writing Effective Dialogue

By Joyce Scarbrough, @JoyceScarbrough

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: I'm a sucker for good dialogue. Conversations draw me in, and a wonderful turn of phrase can make me love a character. But dialogue isn't as easy as copying down what people say, and it can be tough to find the right balance between real dialogue and real-sounding dialogue. Please help me welcome Joyce Scarbrough back to the lecture hall today to share a few tips on writing effective dialogue. 

The valedictorian of her high school graduating class, Joyce Scarbrough is a Southern woman weary of seeing herself and her peers portrayed in books and movies as either post-antebellum debutantes or barefoot hillbillies á la Daisy Duke, so all her heroines are smart, unpretentious women who refuse to be anyone but themselves. Joyce writes both adult and YA fiction and has four published novels as well as several short stories available as Kindle downloads. Joyce loves hanging out with other writers and stays active in the Mobile Writers Guild as well as her regional chapter of SCBWI. She’s lived all her life in beautiful LA (lower Alabama), she’s the mother of three gifted children and a blind Pomeranian named Tilly, and she’s been married for 31 years to the love of her life—a superhero who disguises himself during the day as a high school math teacher and coach.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indie Bound

Take it away Joyce...