The values of well-crafted dialogue in your memoir

Dialogue, written well, can accomplish your most important goals:

• It can bring readers into your stories,
• acquaint them with your memoir’s key characters,
• ramp up readers’ emotions,
• add pizzazz—or grief or terror,
• keep up your story’s momentum,
• share information readers need to know,
• and entice them to keep reading.

Read more at SM 101’s blog post from 2014, Tips for using dialogue in your memoir. 

Dialogue can convey key characters’ emotions and distinct (perhaps conflicting) goals. It can reveal the dynamics between those in a discussion and convey what each values.

Add significant body language to dialogue and you will enhance your story’s message, bring main characters to life, and increase readers’ comprehension and enjoyment of your story.

Read more at SM 101’s post about dialogue from 2014—don’t miss this good stuff!

Also review SM 101’s more recent posts on using dialogue because good dialogue is essential in your memoir:

Are you using dialogue correctly in your memoir? 

Good dialogue is essential in your memoir 

Additional tips onusing dialogue

Create dialogue thatsounds natural  

After you've polished your dialogue, 

set it aside for a week or so. 

Then read it aloud. 

Does it sound natural? 

If not, continue polishing.

Your memoir and the importance of EMPATHY

You, as a memoirist, want to write about people that “readers bond with and root for,” writes Angela Ackerman, “and this happens because of one very important word: EMPATHY.”

“When characters are unique yet well-rounded and familiar in some way, we connect with them,” Angela continues. “We empathize with what they are going through, become tense when trouble hits, and relax when they emerge in one piece. We care about what happens to them because our emotions are engaged.”

You and I, as memoirists, have a big responsibility: to create realistic, fleshed-out main characters in our stories—not all the people, but central figures. Our job: craft believable individuals.

The stars of our narratives, the heroes, need to have:

• personality,
• quirks,
• depth,
• blind spots,
• complexity,
• obsessions,
• talents,
• weaknesses,
• inconsistencies,
• successes,
• and failures.

What trait is most prominent? His worst trait? Her most endearing trait?

What is his passion? What are her life’s goals? Did he drop out of high school to fight in World War 2? Does she have her PhD?

We pinpoint what makes these details unique within the context of our lives and stories. If she’s wealthy, or if he’s just barely scraping by—and if that is significant info for our readers—then we include it.

We use all five senses to round out our main characters. We let readers see, smell, hear, feel, and taste what we experienced with our heroes.

Does she usually smell like lilacs? Or garlic? Does he have red hair and freckles? Does she have dark skin and white hair? Does he smell like coal because he works in a coal mine? Do you wish he used deodorant? Are her hands soft and well-groomed, or are they rough and chapped? What does his voice sound like? Is she cute as a bug’s ear? Does he have a birth defect? Does he wear too much aftershave? Is she super-organized? Is he sloppy?

We want our readers to feel they know our main characters and can relate to them, care about them.

Analyze and then include your main characters’ body language: “Sometimes what people say without actually speaking tells us a whole lot more than what comes out of their mouths,” writes Melissa Donovan at Writing Forward blog. “Using body language to communicate is natural. We all understand it intuitively.… [C]losely observe people’s body language and learn how humans speak without words so you can bring unspoken communication into your writing.”

Our readers want to enter our stories with us. They want to identify with us, bond, cry, laugh, worry, and hang in there with us all the way to the end.  

You’ll enjoy reading more about creating empathy through action, a person’s flaws, self-doubts, and mistakes in Angela’s post, “3 Quick Tips To Help Readers Connect To Your Hero.” (Keep in mind the post is about developing fictitious characters, but Angela’s tips are important for real people in your memoir. Just be sure you’re honest and accurate in fleshing out your real person!)

Again: Include only those details that are unique within the context of your stories. If a bit of description is significant info for your readers, include it.

More next week on fleshing out our main characters.

More tips for using dialogue in your memoir

Pssst. Did you miss Tuesday’s post?

My entry in the First Paragraph contest

at Women’s Memoirs

received the Silver Winner award!

(Click on Silver Winner.)

Let us know how your entry does!

And now, let’s look at the best way to use dialogue in your memoir:

Needless dialogue can bore readers and tempt them to put down your memoir.

When we speak to one another, we make small talk that’s not important to include as dialogue (at least in most cases). That’s needless dialogue. For example:

“Hey, how ya doin’?”

“Great. How ‘bout you? You survivin’ this storm OK?”

Unless chit-chat holds significance for your story, eliminate it.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes people make the same point several times in a short conversation? For example, a person might say something like this two or three times in a given snippet: “The doctor said you need to go to the ER if your fever doesn’t break by midnight.”

Sometimes writers include repetitious phrases to emphasize urgency or emotion, but otherwise dialogue will be better without repetitions.

Use dialogue to show how each person in the conversation has a unique personality, emotions, and distinct, perhaps conflicting, goals to achieve. Dialogue can reveal the dynamics between those in the discussion, round out characters’ personalities, and convey what’s important to each of them.

Include body language. Usually people are in motion when they speak and those activities carry a message and reveal a person’s personality.

When a man is impatient, waiting for his wife to get dressed so they can go out, does he stand by the door and toss his car keys up and down, up and down? Is he sending her a coded message?

Does she habitually refuse to make eye contact when a certain topic comes up? What does she look at instead? Does she cross her arms over her chest? Does she swallow hard? Does she start a sentence she can’t finish? Does she change the subject?

Bottom line: Use brief but necessary dialogue—dialogue that will enhance your story’s message, bring main characters to life, and increase the reader’s comprehension—and include body language.

Related post:

Tips for using dialogue in your memoir