Common Dialogue Mistakes in Fiction Writing

Effective dialogue enhances storytelling, but common mistakes can confuse readers and disrupt flow.

### Common Dialogue Mistakes in Fiction Writing and How to Fix Them
* ✍ Writing effective dialogue is crucial in storytelling, as it **showcases character interactions** and **advances the plot**, but it can be **challenging to execute correctly**.
* 📖 One frequent error is mismatched attributions, where the action line following a dialogue line can **confuse readers about who is speaking**, potentially **disrupting the flow of the scene**.
* 😮 Another common mistake is skipping character reactions; it's essential to **include characters' emotions and actions during dialogue** to enrich the narrative and reflect the **dynamics of the conversation**.
* 📜 Incorrect paragraph breaks can lead to confusion about which character is speaking, so it's vital to **keep all lines from the same speaker in the same paragraph** to maintain clarity.
* 🗣 Distracting dialects can hinder readability; while sometimes necessary for **authenticity**, they should be used **sparingly and in a way that remains understandable** to the reader.
* 👥 Name calling or name dropping can feel unnatural in dialogue; it's often better to **convey character names through attribution lines or narrative context** to ensure a more authentic exchange.
* 📝 By addressing these common mistakes, writers can create **smoother and more engaging dialogue** that enhances the **overall quality of their storytelling**.

If you're writing a novel or even a piece of short fiction, then dialogue is likely going to be a component of your storytelling. Nearly all novel-length works include some amount of dialogue to illustrate how the characters interact with each other and propel the plot forward. But writing dialogue effectively can be really, really challenging, and if you don't do it right, you run the risk of alienating the reader or looking amateurish. So today, I'm going to walk you through the five most common dialogue mistakes that I see when I am editing novels, and also go through some real examples with you, and show you exactly how to fix each of those mistakes so that you can go back through your own manuscript, your own story, and fix all of those errors with your dialogue. If you're interested in fiction writing, if you're working on a book manuscript, or you're interested in the publishing industry at all, I recommend subscribing to my channel. Every single week, I post a new video covering a topic under one of those umbrellas, and I would

love to have you around. So now let's dive into the very first dialogue mistake that I often see in manuscripts: mismatched attributions. The attribution lines are so, so important when you're writing dialogue because that is what the reader is looking for in order to determine what character is saying what line. So whenever something is off with the attribution, if it's incorrectly placed or incorrectly worded, then the reader can just get confused, and that can throw off your entire scene of conversation. What I mean when I say mismatched attributions specifically is that the action line that comes after a line of dialogue is actually following the other character, not the character who just spoke that line of dialogue. So this is something that you really need to see to understand. So let me go through the first example here: Where did Ryan go? Joey asked. I thought he told you. Joey looked concerned. Kelsey's eyes widened. Can you tell which character, Joey or Kelsey, is saying that second line? It's quite confusing because the

attribution line is. Joey looked concerned, but does that mean he said, I thought he told you, because Joey also is the one who just answered the question. So, did Joey just ask the question and then answer his own question, or was that actually Kelsey responding? But for some reason, we saw Joey's response before we heard anything about Kelsey. This is something I see all the time, and I think it happens because you, as the writer, know exactly who's saying what. And in this case, you know you did the correct thing by putting the other speaker's response on a separate line. So, you might think, Oh, the reader's gonna register that that's Kelsey speaking, but Joey looked concerned when she said that. It might be confusing to read. So, what you really need to do here is ensure that the speaker is the first person that you mention after the line of dialogue, whether it's a simple attribution like Joey said or Kelsey said, or it's some kind of action line about them looking a certain way, doing

something you need to make sure that that first sentence after the line of dialogue is focusing on the speaker of that line of dialogue. Then, after you've established what the speaker said or did, then you can talk about the other character and what they're doing in response. So, let me show you what a revised version of this exchange would look like. Where did Ryan go? Joey asked. I thought he told you, Kelsey said, her eyes widening. Joey looked concerned. Now, it is crystal clear that Kelsey is the one who is responding, her eyes are widening, and Joey is looking concerned. We know exactly what is happening, as well as who is saying what. The next mistake that I often see in dialogue exchanges, especially in novels, is that you are skipping over the character's reactions. Now, whenever you're writing a scene of dialogue, make sure that you are not just showing the character's lines one after another, but you are also showing what the characters are doing throughout the scene as they're speaking. You're showing

their reactions, you're showing their tone of voice, you're showing their expressions. All of that is going to give us just as much intel about what's going on, the dynamics of the scene, the emotional underpinnings of the scene, as what they're actually saying verbally. So, they are critical, critical components of any dialogue scene. And all too often, you will see pages and pages of dialogue where it's just line by line by line by line by line, and that's it. We're not really getting that extra layer and that understanding of what's going on in the character's broader environment. The character's expressions, tone of voice, and their actions become especially important when there is a dramatic or shocking moment within the line of dialogue. Something is being revealed, something surprising is being said, something consequential is being relayed from one character to another. Those are moments where you really need to take a step back from the conversation just for a line or two and show the reader how the character is reacting. And if you overlook that, then

It feels like something is missing from the scene, so again, let me show you what I mean. Did you hear about what happened at the gym? Steven asked. No, I've been in class all day. Mark replied. One of the treadmills caught fire while a woman was running on it. She had to be rushed to the hospital and everything. Did they know the cause? Mark asked. As I was reading through that, did you register that something felt like it was unspoken? Something felt like we weren't fully seeing the reaction that we needed to from Mark before Mark asks what the cause of the fire is. It really feels like we need him to react to this really shocking news that the treadmill caught fire while a woman was running on it. So make sure that you have a character react at the moment that some kind of revelation or important information is being relayed. So let me show you what that would look like in this exchange. Did you hear about what happened at the gym? Steven asked. No, I've been in class

all day, Mark replied. One of the treadmills caught fire while a woman was running on it. She had to be rushed to the hospital and everything. Mark gasped. He'd been running on one of the treadmills just that morning. Do they know the cause? he asked. This scene flows much more authentically, and we have a much better sense of what's going on emotionally for Mark when he hears about the treadmill catching fire. He gasps, so we register as readers that he's shocked, surprised by this revelation. And then he adds the detail that he was there just that morning, which also signals to the reader how he is personally interpreting the news that has just been told to him. When we don't have those two lines, the scene just feels like something isn't being said, that Mark is being oddly cold and almost inhuman by not responding to the shocking news that Stephen is giving. Another dialogue mistake that I see all the time is incorrect paragraph breaks. Now, just like the attribution lines, where you break the paragraphs and break

the lines of text when you are writing a scene of dialogue are very, very important to the reader's understanding of the scene, as well as the reader being able to track exactly who is saying what. You really, really need to get the formatting of your paragraph breaks right in a scene of dialogue; otherwise, it can be impossible for the reader to follow. So, let me show you what an incorrect paragraph break looks like in an example. When I got to the grocery store this morning, I saw a strange man waiting by the main entrance, Jordan said. I took the long way and went into the other door to avoid him, but then once I got inside, he was right there in front of me. It really freaked me out, so I rushed past him, then made my way to the back of the store to pick up some milk, but he followed me. Can you tell who is meant to be speaking the second paragraph? Because in this text, it seems as though it's a continuation of Jordan's story. However, the formatting here tells us that this is another person speaking.

because we have a full quotation in the first paragraph and then a full quotation in the second paragraph. So, coming across something like this in a novel is just super confusing because now the reader doesn't know, was that Jordan talking or was that the person that Jordan was talking to responding? So, that just will throw off the entire exchange because then you'll be off on who is saying what and it'll just be extremely difficult to get your head back on straight. What you need to do to ensure that your paragraph breaks are correct is to keep all of the text from the same speaker in the same paragraph. That is the easiest way to do so. However, in some cases, like potentially with the example I showed you, you have a really, really long paragraph and sometimes you just need to break it up, especially if a character is telling a very long story. Maybe it is going on for half a page or even a page or more, and you need to break that up into paragraphs to be more digestible to the

reader, what do you do in that case whenever someone's speaking for a long period of time? If you are continuing a line of dialogue into the next paragraph but it's the same speaker, all you need to do is leave off the closing quotation mark at the end of the earlier paragraph so that will signal to the reader, Oh, this line is actually continuing into the following one. So, I'm going to show you the example here on the screen where we just remove that ending quotation mark, and then we know, Oh, Jordan is continuing with her story here. She is still the same speaker. So, make sure that you are doing this if you have someone who is speaking for a long period of time. But as I said in this case and in most cases, just make sure that the lines from the same speaker are all in the same paragraph because in most cases that works just fine. The next dialogue mistake I want to point out is distracting dialects. This is when in order to convey how a character is speaking or how they are saying

something you are writing out their line of dialogue phonetically rather than in the standard English spelling. In some cases, this can be pretty distracting to read, and in severe cases, it can be almost impossible to even interpret what the character is trying to say. And therefore, you're really defeating the whole purpose of your dialogue because we're not understanding what they are saying. It's difficult to follow, and that's just not how you want to engage a reader in your story. In some cases too, if not done well, it can give us a certain impression of the character that maybe we would or would not have had if you didn't write out that dialect in that way. So if you watched my video on writing techniques that I hate, you will have seen that this is one of them, and admittedly, it caused kind of a lot of controversy in the comments. I know you all have a lot of opinions about writing dialects. Some of you came to the defense and said, you know, sometimes it's necessary. So I wanted to bring it back up here.

because I do still think it is a common dialogue mistake. But secondly, I also want to acknowledge the points that were brought up and say that I completely agree. In some cases, it is more authentic. In some cases, it is necessary for you to write out a dialect in dialogue to do that character justice. And if it is someone who's from the south, so you write out a light southern drawl in the dialect, that is not likely going to be super, super distracting, especially if you do it well. So, I definitely think there are cases where it can work. However, if it's not necessary and if your characters don't have a specific trait that really requires them to speak in a dialect, I say avoid it entirely because you can really make for a bad reader experience if you do it poorly. If it is totally necessary to write a character's lines of dialogue in dialect, then make sure that you do not go overboard and that the lines are always still perfectly readable. Ultimately, my approach to this is do it right or just

don't do it at all because in most cases it's not necessary. The final dialogue mistake I'm going to go over today is what I'm calling name calling or name dropping. This is when a character is either directly calling the person that they are speaking to by their name when it really isn't necessary and it's very clear that they're speaking to one another, or they are dropping the name of another character where it's also very clear that they would both already know who that person is and there's not really a need to speak their name aloud. I am a big stickler for having dialogue really sound authentic and how we actually speak and also be true to the situation. So, if I'm speaking to my mom, I'm not going to call my mom by her first name, for example. These techniques of name calling and name dropping are often used by the writer whenever they are trying to convey another character's name without using an attribution line. So, for whatever reason, you don't want to say Jane said or John said, and you

instead have Jane and John call each other their names in the actual conversation, or it's the very first time we're meeting that character, and really the only way that we can get their actual name is to hear someone else say it. This happens with first-person stories especially, so there are totally valid reasons for using these techniques. However, I do believe there are other ways you can get this information across more smoothly, so let's go through an example. What are you making for breakfast for you, Mary? I'm making your favorite, of course, pancakes. Now go upstairs and grab your sister Molly, will you? Do you see here how it's a little bit awkward that the person that Mary is talking to is calling her Mary out loud when it really seems like they're the only two people in the scene, so there's not really a reason for her to say her name? And then, too, she's saying your sister Molly. Of course, Mary already knows her sister's name is Molly, so in most cases, that person should just say, Go get your

sister. So, how do you fix this? The first approach is to move the name to the attribution line so you can use the narration to your advantage and have that be the way that the reader learns the characters' names, especially if you're working in third person, or you can reveal the character's name in another action line in the narration that's totally unrelated to the conversation. So, let's see an example of both of those. What are you making for breakfast? Mary asked. For you? I'm making your favorite, of course, pancakes. Now go upstairs and grab your sister, will you? Mary headed upstairs to Molly's room. Doesn't this just sound much more natural, like an exchange between two people who know each other intimately? At the same time, we still get all the same information that we got in the prior example. We learned that Mary's name is Mary because we see it in the attribution line. We also learned that her sister's name is Molly through the narration line that comes after the conversation. I hope these tips help you.

find those dialogue mistakes in your own manuscript and correct them so that your story reads smoother. Let me know in the comments what dialogue challenges you faced in your writing or any responses and questions that you have to the mistakes that I pointed out in this video. Now, I admit that I did hold back on one of the biggest dialogue mistakes that I see all the time because I go through it in a completely separate video called My Biggest Dialogue Pet Peeve. So, go check that out for one more big bonus dialogue mistake, and I promise it'll be worth it. As always, if you found this video helpful, please hit that like button and subscribe to my channel. It really means a lot to me and makes me that much more excited to put out these videos for you every week. Thanks so much for watching, and happy writing. [Music] You

Dialogue Mistakes You Might Be Making (with Examples)

Alyssa Matesic

Mismatched attributions in dialogue can confuse readers about which character is speaking.

The action line following a character's dialogue should clearly indicate who is speaking to avoid confusion.

It's important to mention the speaker first after the line of dialogue to ensure clarity for the reader.

Focus on the speaker's actions and reactions immediately after their line of dialogue.

Show the characters' reactions, tone of voice, and expressions throughout the scene to provide depth and context.

Highlight dramatic moments with character reactions to important revelations or shocking news for a more engaging narrative.

The Importance of Dialogue and Paragraph Breaks in Writing

Mark is shocked to hear about a treadmill catching fire, especially since he had just been running on one that morning.

The emotional impact of the news is emphasized through his gasp and personal connection to the incident.

Correct paragraph breaks in dialogue are crucial for reader understanding, as they help track who is speaking and avoid confusion.

Continuing a speaker's dialogue into the next paragraph can be indicated by leaving off the closing quotation mark.

Writing dialogue phonetically to convey a character's dialect can be distracting and hard to interpret, potentially defeating the purpose of the dialogue.

While using dialects can be authentic and necessary in some cases, it's best to avoid them if they aren't essential to the character's trait.

The Pitfalls of Name Calling and Name Dropping in Dialogue

Name calling and name dropping in dialogue can feel awkward and unnatural, especially when characters are already familiar with each other.

These techniques are often used by writers to convey a character's name without using attribution lines.

However, there are smoother ways to provide this information without disrupting the flow of conversation.

Improving Character Name Reveal in Dialogue

Moving character names to the attribution line or revealing them in unrelated narration can create a more natural dialogue flow.

This approach allows readers to learn the characters' names organically while still conveying the same information.

The video offers tips to identify and correct common dialogue mistakes in writing.