An example of dialogue is any passage in which characters speak to each other: their words go in quotation marks, and each new speaker starts a new paragraph. Good dialogue does more than pass on information. Every line shows who is speaking, what they want and what they would rather not say, as in this three-line exchange:
“Did you tell her?”
“I told her the car needs work.”
“That's not what I asked.”
The 24 examples below, 12 from public-domain classics and 12 written for this page, are grouped by what the dialogue does, and each is followed by a short note on why it works. This page is about craft, not punctuation: for where the commas and quotation marks go, see how to format dialogue, and for a step-by-step method, see how to write dialogue.
| To see dialogue that… | Go to | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| To see dialogue that…Shows who a character is | Go toCharacter | Examples1–4 |
| To see dialogue that…Says one thing and means another | Go toSubtext | Examples5–7 |
| To see dialogue that…Turns on a fight or a power gap | Go toConflict and power | Examples8–11 |
| To see dialogue that…Gets someone to do something | Go toPersuasion | Examples12–13 |
| To see dialogue that…Delivers background without stalling | Go toExposition | Examples14–15 |
| To see dialogue that…Is quick, funny or flirtatious | Go toBanter and wit | Examples16–19 |
| To see dialogue that…Breaks off, dodges or fills a room | Go toInterruptions and silence | Examples20–24 |
Dialogue that shows character
These exchanges introduce people. Nobody describes them, and by the end of each one you know how they think.
“What is his name?”
“Bingley.”
“Is he married or single?”
“Oh, single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”
“How so? how can it affect them?”
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome? You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.”
“Is that his design in settling here?”
“Design? Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.”
Mrs. Bennet wants one thing from this conversation, a promise to call on the new neighbor, and her husband's whole strategy is to pretend he doesn't follow. His short, mock-innocent questions are the joke, and she never notices. Watch where the leverage moves. Until the line in bold, she has the news and the momentum. The moment she says what she wants, the decision is his, and all he has to do is refuse, which in the next line he does: “I see no occasion for that.” Her last reply also dodges his literal question. Asked whether marriage is Bingley's “design,” she brushes the word aside (“Design? Nonsense”) and goes straight to the demand. The reader learns the novel's premise without a word of narration, because the facts arrive as ammunition in a marriage.
“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge's nephew. “You don't mean that, I am sure?”
“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.”
“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.”
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”
The nephew wins by borrowing Scrooge's own sentences and reversing every word: merry becomes dismal, poor becomes rich. Mirrored lines make an argument visible in its shape. They also leave Scrooge with nothing but his catchphrase, and Dickens tells us why he repeats it: he has “no better answer ready.” A verbal tic can be most revealing at exactly that moment, when a character runs out of words.
“Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford, introducing us.
“How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”
“How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment.
“Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself.
Holmes's first real sentence to Watson is a deduction, and his second refuses to explain it. Conan Doyle shows the detective's method and his vanity in one move, and the reader, like Watson, now wants the explanation the scene withholds. A character who could answer and chooses not to plants a question the story has to settle later.
“You're the new one.”
“Danny Ferris. I don't start till Monday, but they said I could come in and—”
“Spell it.”
“F-E-R-R—”
“Not you. The councilman.” Ruth Okonkwo didn't look up from her screen. “Your story spells him three different ways.”
Ruth never says hello or gives her name, her lines stay at four words or fewer until the one that matters, and she cuts Danny off twice. The interruptions tell you who holds the power in the newsroom, and the misspelled name tells you what she cares about. One beat, her eyes on the screen, does the rest of the description.
Dialogue with subtext
In these exchanges the real subject is never named. The characters talk about something small and concrete, and the reader hears the argument underneath.
“They look like white elephants,” she said.
“I've never seen one,” the man drank his beer.
“No, you wouldn't have.”
“I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't prove anything.”
An American and a young woman wait for the train to Madrid at a station in the Ebro valley, and the story never says what they are arguing about. The quarrel over white elephants is the real quarrel in miniature: she offers an image, he dismisses it, and she turns his dismissal into a judgment of him. When he finally mentions the operation, he calls it “awfully simple,” “not really an operation at all,” “just to let the air in,” and the more he reassures her, the less her answers sound like agreement.
“You took Route 9.”
“It's quicker.”
“It's twenty minutes longer, Dad.”
“Fewer left turns.” His father signaled, early and for a long time. “Your mother never liked the left turns either.”
Theo looked at the dent in the passenger door, the new one, and didn't ask.
Neither man mentions the real subject: whether Theo's father should still be driving. “Fewer left turns” is an admission dressed as a preference, and the mention of Theo's mother adds a second loss without naming it. The dent is the evidence, and Theo's silence is his decision, for today.
“They fixed the espresso machine,” Priya said.
“About time.” Marcus rinsed his mug. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“It's just the title. Same desk.”
“Sure.”
“You'd have been good at it.”
“I know.” He put the mug back in the cupboard, still wet. “The machine's yours now, I guess. Since you're management.”
The conversation is about a coffee machine, and both of them know it isn't. Priya plays the promotion down twice, Marcus's “Sure” refuses the modesty, and his last line turns the machine into the job he didn't get. The wet mug going back into the cupboard is the only sign of what this costs him.
Conflict and power in dialogue
Power in a scene shows in who asks and who answers, who repeats themselves and who backs down, and whose lines get shorter.
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.
“What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.
“Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”
The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The line is polite, and it is still a rebellion. Dickens puts the force of the scene into the reactions, the master turning pale and clinging to the copper, and into the repetition. Asked “What!”, Oliver says exactly the same words again instead of backing down. Repeating a line unchanged lets a weaker character hold their ground without raising their voice. It doesn't save Oliver from the ladle, and Dickens doesn't pretend it does.
“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!”
…
“Tell us your name!” said the man. “Quick!”
“Pip, sir.”
“Once more,” said the man, staring at me. “Give it mouth!”
“Pip. Pip, sir.”
“Show us where you live,” said the man. “Pint out the place!”
Every line the man speaks is an order, and every line Pip speaks is an answer that shrinks to his own name. That imbalance is the threat, before anything happens. The dialect is light: one respelling (“Pint”) and one idiom (“Give it mouth!”) make the voice rough without slowing the reader down.
“Tell me, once for all, are you engaged to him?”
Though Elizabeth would not, for the mere purpose of obliging Lady Catherine, have answered this question, she could not but say, after a moment's deliberation,—
“I am not.”
Lady Catherine seemed pleased.
“And will you promise me never to enter into such an engagement?”
“I will make no promise of the kind.”
“Miss Bennet, I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a more reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into a belief that I will ever recede. I shall not go away till you have given me the assurance I require.”
“And I certainly never shall give it. I am not to be intimidated into anything so wholly unreasonable.”
Lady Catherine's demands grow longer while Elizabeth's answers stay short and level, and the narration explains only one thing: that Elizabeth answers by choice, not out of deference. The visitor has the rank. The woman who refuses calmly has the power, and the scene turns on that reversal.
“Left here.”
“The app says straight.”
“The app has never driven to my mother's.”
“The app has never had to.” Jonah took the left. “We were there in August.”
“For one night.”
“Two nights, Eli. Two nights on an air mattress in the sewing room.”
“You could have said something in August.”
“I'm saying it now.”
The fight starts with a turn and ends with Eli's mother, and each line raises the stakes a notch: the route, the visit, the air mattress, the accusation. Nobody shouts. The escalation is in the corrections (“Two nights”) and in the last line, which turns a grudge into an announcement.
Persuasion and negotiation
When one character is steering another, the reader enjoys watching the moves, especially when the person being steered can't see them.
“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”
Tom wheeled suddenly and said:
“Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing.”
“Say—I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd druther work—wouldn't you? Course you would!”
Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:
“What do you call work?”
“Why, ain't that work?”
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:
“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”
“Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?”
The brush continued to move.
“Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple.
…
“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”
Tom never asks for help. He answers a question with a question, treats the job as a privilege, and lets the brush argue for him: “The brush continued to move” is the most persuasive line in the scene. By the time Ben asks for a turn, he believes it was his idea.
“We can do forty cents a word,” Hannah said.
“For the essay or the reported piece?”
“Either. Both. We love both.”
“The reported piece is eleven interviews and a records request that took four months.”
“Which is exactly why we love it.”
“Then love it at a dollar.”
There was a pause on the line, and the sound of a door closing.
“Let me talk to Graham.”
The writer never argues that she deserves more. She makes the editor's own word do the work. Each line answers the one before it exactly, which keeps a negotiation easy to follow, like a game of tennis. The closing door is the tell that her ask has landed.
Exposition in dialogue
Exposition is background the reader needs. In dialogue it usually stalls when characters tell each other what both already know, for the reader's benefit, and works when someone lacks the facts and needs them now, or when the facts become ammunition, as in Example 1.
Before.
“As you know, Captain, ever since the Treaty of Marrow forty years ago, no ship from the Ninth Isles may dock at Calder without a harbor writ signed by the Guild.”
“Yes, and as you know, the Guild has refused every writ since the drought began.”
After.
“Writ,” said the harbor clerk, without looking up.
“We're out of the Ninth Isles. There's no writ. There's been no writ for three years.” Captain Sedda put both hands flat on the counter. “I have a crew that's been drinking rain since Tuesday.”
“Then you have a thirsty crew and no writ.”
The first version has two people who already know the rules recite them for the reader's benefit: an info dump disguised as conversation. The second gives the same facts to a captain who needs something from a clerk who won't give it, so every fact arrives as pressure. The treaty's name and date can wait. The reader understands the rule because they watch it hurt someone.
“Bed twelve is ninety over fifty,” Delia said. “He was a hundred and ten at midnight.”
“He's post-op. That's not unusual.”
“He's also been on a blood thinner since Tuesday, and his belly's harder than it was an hour ago. I'm not calling it. I'm telling you what I'd want to know if I were you.”
Dr. Amin looked at the monitor, then at her. “What would you do?”
“I'd page your senior before you finish that coffee.”
The facts are technical, but they arrive in the order a night nurse would give them, to a first-year resident who needs them right now. That is one reliable way to handle exposition in dialogue: the listener truly lacks the information and has a reason to want it. Delia also defers to the hierarchy while overriding it (“I'm not calling it”), which gives the scene a second tension.
Banter and witty dialogue
Banter is an argument both people are enjoying. It runs on quick reversals, each speaker picking up the other's words and turning them.
BEATRICE. I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you.
BENEDICK. What! my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?
BEATRICE. Is it possible Disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain if you come in her presence.
BENEDICK. Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
BEATRICE. A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.
Each line catches a word from the last, Disdain, courtesy, love, and throws it back. Benedick's boast that he loves no one hands Beatrice her best line, because she simply agrees with him. Insults this attentive are a kind of flirtation, and the audience can tell long before Beatrice and Benedick can.
LADY BRACKNELL. Do you smoke?
JACK. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
LADY BRACKNELL. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is. How old are you?
JACK. Twenty-nine.
LADY BRACKNELL. A very good age to be married at. I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
JACK. [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.
LADY BRACKNELL. I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
Wilde's comedy runs on answers that reverse what the listener expects: smoking is approved because it counts as an occupation, ignorance because it is natural. Lady Bracknell questions Jack like a magistrate and rules on every answer, so the interview reveals her values far more than his. His one stage direction, “After some hesitation,” shows he has worked out what she wants to hear.
“You examine me, Miss Eyre,” said he: “do you think me handsome?”
I should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware—“No, sir.”
“Ah! By my word! there is something singular about you,” said he: “you have the air of a little nonnette; quaint, quiet, grave, and simple, as you sit with your hands before you, and your eyes generally bent on the carpet (except, by-the-bye, when they are directed piercingly to my face; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a question, or makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque. What do you mean by it?”
“Sir, I was too plain; I beg your pardon. I ought to have replied that it was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question about appearances; that tastes mostly differ; and that beauty is of little consequence, or something of that sort.”
“You ought to have replied no such thing. Beauty of little consequence, indeed!”
Jane's “No, sir” slips out before she can soften it, and her apology makes things worse, because it lists the polite lies she should have told. Rochester answers a two-word rebuff with a long portrait of her, which shows how closely he has been watching. He has the power in the room and she has the honesty, and the romance grows out of that imbalance.
“That's the last can of Harbor Fog.”
“I know. I'm holding it.”
“I've been matching that color for six weeks. They discontinued it.”
“Then you know how I feel.” She tucked the can under her arm. “I've been matching it for seven.”
“You're making that up.”
“I'm painting a boat. I don't have time to make things up.”
He looked at the can, then at her. “Half?”
“Do you have a second bucket?”
Each line takes the other's words one step further (six weeks becomes seven), so the reader hears two quick minds rather than an author's jokes. The boat is the detail that makes her a person instead of a rival. The deal at the end is the first thing they agree on, and an excuse to keep talking.
Interruptions, silence and crowded rooms
What doesn't get said, or gets cut off, can carry a scene. These examples use dashes, dodges, one-sided calls, a crowded table and a phone screen.
“So I have some news—”
“Pass the potatoes, love.”
“Mom. I have news.”
“Is it the good kind?” Her father was still looking at the potatoes. “Because if it's about the car—”
“It's not about the car.”
“What's wrong with the car?” said her mother.
“Nothing's wrong with the car. I'm moving to Lisbon.”
The em dashes do the work: the daughter is cut off by a request for potatoes, and she cuts off her father before his worry about the car can finish. Each interruption tells you something about the family, and when the announcement finally comes, it lands flat in the middle of a conversation about something else, which is how real news often lands.
“Where were you on Thursday night?”
“What time Thursday?”
“Let's say after ten.”
“Let's say I was home.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
Gil Tranter looked at the recorder, then at the mirrored window, then at his own hands. “My dog.”
“Your dog.”
“He's very loyal. He'll back me up.”
Tranter never refuses a question. He answers each one with a question, an echo or a joke, the way a guarded man might talk on the record. The detective's flat repetition, “Your dog,” is her whole reply, and the beat (recorder, window, hands) shows where he thinks the danger is.
“Hi, it's me. No, I'm fine. I'm—Mom, I'm fine. I'm calling because—yes, I got the box. Yes, the scarf. It's very warm. Mom. Mom, Dr. Halvorsen called.”
A long pause. On the stove, the kettle began to tick.
“No, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'll call you after Thursday. I love you too.”
The reader hears only one side, so the mother exists in the gaps: every dash and every repeated “Mom” is her talking over her daughter. The pause after the doctor's name is the loudest moment in the scene. A one-sided call lets a viewpoint character keep a secret on the page while showing the person she can't yet tell.
“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don't see any wine,” she remarked.
“There isn't any,” said the March Hare.
“Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,” said Alice angrily.
“It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited,” said the March Hare.
“I didn't know it was your table,” said Alice; “it's laid for a great many more than three.”
“Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.
“You should learn not to make personal remarks,” Alice said with some severity; “it's very rude.”
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
Every reply at this table breaks a rule of polite conversation. The Hare's offer is a trap, Alice's complaint is turned back on her, and the Hatter changes the subject twice. The scene stays easy to follow with several speakers because every line is tagged and each speaker keeps one manner: the Hare contradicts, Alice objects, the Hatter swerves.
A week after Paul moved out, Lena texted him for the first time.
did you take the blue colander
It was my grandmother's.
it was from a yard sale
My grandmother loved yard sales.
Under his name, three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.
I'll leave it on the porch.
In text messages, typing habits are voice. Lena writes in lowercase without punctuation, Paul in full sentences with periods, and the reader can hear who is trying to sound calm. The colander is the breakup in miniature, and the typing dots, the only line of narration, show him deciding to give it back.
What the best examples share
Strip away the period costumes and the same few moves turn up again and again. Borrow the move, not the words.
| Move | Examples | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| MoveA want against resistance | Examples1, 10, 12, 13 | How to use itGive one speaker a goal and the other a reason not to hand it over |
| MoveThe real subject left unsaid | Examples5, 6, 7, 24 | How to use itLet them argue about a small, concrete object or errand |
| MoveShort answers to long speeches | Examples4, 10, 18 | How to use itThe speaker who says less often holds the power, or the truth |
| MoveMirroring and repetition | Examples2, 8, 16, 19 | How to use itTurn a speaker's own words back on them, or repeat a line unchanged |
| MoveA beat that carries meaning | Examples6, 7, 12, 21 | How to use itOne telling action instead of three tags |
| MoveFacts under pressure | Examples1, 14, 15 | How to use itGive background to someone who needs it now, or use it as ammunition |
| MoveLines cut off or dodged | Examples4, 20, 21, 22 | How to use itDashes for interruptions, questions and echoes for evasion |
Dialogue that moves
- Starts late, at the first line that matters
- Each speaker wants something in the exchange
- Answers dodge, deflect or answer a different question
- Each voice is recognizable without its tag
- Ends when something changes: a decision, a reveal, an exit
Dialogue that stalls
- Opens with hello and how are you
- Both characters agree on everything
- Everyone says exactly what they feel
- Characters explain what both already know
- Keeps going after the point has landed
Use these examples in your draft
Reading good dialogue helps. Rebuilding it with your own characters teaches faster. Five exercises, each tied to the examples above:
- Rebuild a classic in your setting
Take Example 2 or Example 12 and rewrite it with your characters, keeping the structure: the mirrored sentences, or the question answered with a question. You will notice how much of the effect is shape.
- Bury the subject
Pick a scene where your characters say what they feel. Find a small object in the room, as Examples 6 and 7 do with a car and a coffee machine, and make them argue about that instead.
- Shift the power
Rewrite a confrontation so the weaker character's lines get shorter and calmer while the stronger one's get longer, as in Example 10. Then read both versions and decide who should win.
- Cover the tags
Hide every tag in a page of your dialogue. If you can still tell who is talking, as you can in Examples 11 and 19, cut the tags you don't need. If you can't, give the voices more to tell them apart before you cut. The list of words to use instead of said covers the tags worth keeping.
- Keep a file of examples
Copy exchanges you admire into one document as you read, with the book and page, and write one line under each on what it does. After a few months it becomes a reference shelf for your own style.
In a long chapter, ask the Strokes Assistant to list the exchanges where one character tells another something both already know, the stalled kind of exposition in Example 14.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between direct and indirect dialogue?
Direct dialogue quotes the speaker's exact words: “I'm moving to Lisbon,” she said. Indirect dialogue reports them in the narrator's grammar, without quotation marks: she told them she was moving to Lisbon. Direct dialogue is vivid and slower. Indirect is quicker and suits routine talk, so many scenes mix the two.
How do you start dialogue in a story?
Start late, at the first line that matters, and skip greetings unless the greeting is the conflict. Open with a question, a demand or a reply to something the reader hasn't heard yet, then let the narration catch up. Dickens brings Magwitch into Great Expectations with “Hold your noise!” and only then describes the man who shouted it.
Is dialogue in a play written differently from dialogue in a novel?
Yes. A play sets each speech after the character's name, with no quotation marks or tags, and puts stage directions in brackets or italics, as in the Wilde and Shakespeare examples above. A novel puts speech in quotation marks, with tags and beats in the narration. The craft is the same: want, resistance, subtext and distinct voices.
