How I Write Believable Dialogue

As I mentioned in my character-building post, I’m an introvert who spends a lot of time observing rather than interacting.

This gives me a unique advantage when it comes to dialogue: I hear how people actually talk to each other.

I listen everywhere — grocery stores, banks, waiting rooms, restaurants. Not eavesdropping with malicious intent, just being naturally observant while people conduct their conversations around me.

And honestly, most people aren’t exactly quiet about their discussions!

Real dialogue is messy. People interrupt each other, leave sentences unfinished, use filler words like “um” and “you know,” and speak in fragments rather than complete thoughts.

They have regional accents, personal speech patterns, and unique ways of expressing themselves.

They also reveal character through how they speak.

The grandmother who calls everyone “honey,” the teenager who ends statements like questions, the businessman who speaks in corporate jargon even at family dinner — these speech patterns tell us as much about people as their actions do.

Here’s where my love of acting becomes invaluable: I act out my scenes and read all dialogue aloud.

This might sound silly, but it’s the most effective way to test whether your characters sound like real people or like a writer trying to write dialogue.

When you read dialogue silently, your brain automatically smooths over awkward phrasing and unnatural rhythms.

But when you speak the words aloud, every clunky sentence, misplaced stress, and unnatural pause becomes glaringly obvious.

Reading dialogue aloud helps me identify several crucial elements:

Pacing and rhythm: Does the conversation flow naturally, or does it feel rushed or dragged out?

Stressed words: Are the emphasized words falling in the right places to convey the intended meaning?

Natural breathing patterns: Can you say the sentence in one breath, or do you need to gasp for air halfway through?

Emotional authenticity: Does the dialogue match the character’s emotional state, or does it sound detached from their feelings?

Character consistency: Does each character have a distinct voice, or do they all sound like the same person?

If I stumble over words while reading aloud, or if something sounds forced when spoken, I know it needs revision.

The goal is dialogue so natural that it flows effortlessly off the tongue.

One of my secret weapons for authentic dialogue is borrowing from real life.

I’ll take conversations I’ve overheard or participated in and weave them into my stories. This adds an extra layer of believability because actual people spoke those words in real situations.

Of course, I don’t steal entire conversations verbatim — that would be weird and potentially problematic.

Instead, I borrow speech patterns, turns of phrase, or natural responses that ring true to how people actually communicate.

I mentioned last week how a church member’s discussion about her career change sparked an entire romance novel idea.

But it wasn’t just her situation that inspired me — it was also how she talked about it.

Her specific word choices, her enthusiasm level, the way she structured her thoughts — all of that became part of how my heroine would discuss her own career challenges.

The woman was flattered to learn she’d inspired both a character and that character’s speech patterns. She was even more excited when she saw the base model I’d chosen for her love interest!

When my characters come from different regions or countries, I don’t guess how they might speak — I research it.

For non-American idioms or expressions, I’ll spend time looking up authentic vocabulary and speech patterns. But even better than internet research is asking real people.

I have friends scattered across the country who help me with regional accents, local slang, and area-specific expressions. When I’m writing a character from New Jersey, I’ll ask my native-born New Jersian, “How would you naturally say this?”

For international characters, I reach out to people from those countries.

People love helping with novel research! When I tell someone, “I’m working on my next book and need help with authentic dialogue from your region,” they get excited to contribute.

They’ll not only answer my specific questions but often volunteer additional information about local speech patterns I hadn’t even thought to ask about.

I always offer to include their names on my Thank You page, and so far, no one has turned down that credit.

People enjoy being part of the creative process, and I get authentic dialogue that would be impossible to achieve through research alone.

Here’s something many new writers struggle with: real speech is often boring, repetitive, or hard to follow in print.

People say “um” constantly, repeat themselves, and go off on tangents that have nothing to do with the main point.

While I want my dialogue to sound natural, I also need it to serve the story.

So I take the best elements of real speech — the rhythm, the personality, the authentic expressions — while streamlining it for readability.

I remove most filler words unless they serve a specific characterization purpose. I tighten rambling conversations while maintaining their natural feel.

I keep interruptions and incomplete thoughts when they add realism, but I make sure they don’t confuse readers.

The goal is dialogue that feels completely natural while being more focused and purposeful than actual conversations usually are.

One of the biggest dialogue challenges is making sure each character sounds distinct.

If I cover up the character names in my manuscript, readers should still be able to identify who’s speaking based on their word choices, sentence structure, and speaking patterns.

This is where all that character biography work pays off.

When I know my heroine grew up in rural Georgia with highly educated parents, her speech will reflect both her regional background and her family’s influence.

When my hero is a former military officer turned business executive, his dialogue will be more formal and direct.

Just like maintaining physical consistency for characters, I need to maintain speech consistency too.

If my hero has a particular way of expressing affection in book one, he can’t suddenly sound completely different in book two without a good story reason.

This is another area where reading dialogue aloud helps — I can catch when a character suddenly sounds off or inconsistent with their established voice.

When readers tell me my characters feel real and my dialogue sounds natural, I know all this work has paid off.

Good dialogue doesn’t call attention to itself — it simply allows readers to fall deeper into the story world and connect more strongly with the characters.

The combination of careful observation, performance testing, real-world research, and collaborative input creates dialogue that serves both authenticity and story needs.

Your characters stop sounding like a writer’s invention and start sounding like real people having real conversations.