Derived from Greek, dia(through) + logos(words), the spoken word within your story is critical if readers are to engage in a meaningful way. It somehow has to be true to the tone and style of your story, completely authentic for your character but also move the story along without screaming “Hey look at me, I’m moving the story along!”.
I have a love/hate relationship with dialogue as both a reader and a writer. Too much and it can seem like endless chatter. Too little and you feel like you’ve missed half of the story. Finding the balance when I write can be hard.
The genre, style and tone set the framework for the dialogue you need to consider as a writer. Forensic detective stories need at least one detailed oriented character so that the reader can understand what is going on but spend too much time explaining everything and it becomes a slog; rom-coms need a protagonist that can share their emotions (even if it’s only through internal dialogue) but some motivations need to stay hidden otherwise it would be a very short book. Regardless of your POV, dialogue can help writers bring their characters to life in a way that exposition cannot. Dialogue is definitely a better way to show and not tell.
Let’s start on the inside with some inner dialogue. For me, this is a little bit like hide and seek.
With inner dialogue the reader has access to the character’s innermost thoughts, their feelings and all the painful truths they try to hide from the world. It can be revealing and, particularly for unreliable narrators, a source of conflict or tension. It whispers all their secrets (even the ones they don’t yet understand). Every character will have some kind of inner dialogue, the choice for the writer is how much of it they expose but more importantly, how much of it their character listens to. Consistency is also important. If you are going to let the reader see into the mind of the main character, remember to open the door early in the story.
There are two types of inner dialogue (of course there are!) – direct and indirect.
Regardless of the tense of the main story, direct inner dialogue is written in the present tense as it seeks to convey what the character is thinking at that point in time. It is usually formatted with italics, although I am mindful that this can be annoying. Any inner dialogue that is written in the past tense is considered ‘indirect’ which I feel conveys the distance between the now (which isn’t really now) and when the thoughts may have occurred.
The POV will also impact how your inner dialogue works.
- For a 1st person POV: I ran towards the door pulling hard on the handle. Damn it! It’s locked.
- For a 3rd person POV (close): Romy ran towards the door pulling hard on the handle. Damn it! It’s locked, she thought.
However you (my fellow writer) chose to do it, this form of inner dialogue has the same dynamic push/pull as regular dialogue. Something happens; your character responds to it. Action, reaction, conflict and other people will all cause those thoughts to change which can help propel the story from one point to the next.
But if you need to take a moment and stay inside your character’s head, then you’re looking at a monologue (a.k.a a stream of consciousness). Which is the same. Only different.
There’s a smudged line between inner dialogue and a monologue. Both are internal. Both can reveal as much as they hide but for me, a monologue is the internal equivalent of a speech. There is less push/pull; more broadcast. A monologue speaks to the audience not with your character. The formatting rules are the same but ‘Damn it! It’s locked‘ is very different from ‘No. No. How can it be locked? It isn’t supposed to be locked. He was supposed to make sure all the emergency exits were open. That was the plan. I must have told him a hundred times. Damn it Jax! What have you done? Romy pulls hard on the handle again. This is my fault. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. He was never reliable. How could I have been so stupid?‘ Both are about a locked door but the latter is so much more.
Interestingly I have found it easier to use inner dialogue since shifting to a 3rd person POV. There is something more natural about moving through the minds of my characters that is easier now I, as the narrator, am on the outside. If you’re struggling, I recommend you try a different perspective. It might help unstick your characters and your dialogue.
I wonder if that makes any sense? she thought to herself.
The Curious Wordsmith 
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