Editing your dialogue

Writing dialogue in 3-D, part 3 of 6

Introduction

You’ve listened to your characters speak and duly wrote down what they said. So now it’s perfect and natural and lean, right?

Wrong.

Now is when you take back the control to edit, revise, and rewrite. Now that you know what they said and how they said it, you know how they speak, you can mold that dialogue into what is needed for the story.

Just don’t lose that voice as you go through this process.

The superfluous

Often, a dialogue scene is good, but contains too much stuff that, while natural, isn’t lean, and isn’t conducive to the story.

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

There can be idle chit-chat, conversations (or part of a conversation) that isn’t doing anything necessary. It’s not driving the story and it’s not building character. It’s just stuff your characters said that you need to edit out or tighten.

And sometimes that excess dialogue fluff doesn’t fit the mood, tone, or pace of the scene.

Cut out the superfluous dialogue, like this one:

“Hi, Jim. It’s me, George.”

“Hello, George.”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine and you?”

“I’m doing well, except the Mafia has put out a contract on me and the hitman is chasing me at this very moment, so I need you to meet me at the corner of Hollywood and Vine with the car in three minutes. And bring an extra weapon for me. Okay?”

“Will do. See you then. Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

That doesn’t sound like the natural dialogue these two characters would be having in that moment. It’s not only superfluous, it doesn’t fit the moment.

The unimportant

Just like leaving out the unimportant and superfluous parts of a dialogue conversation, leave out the unimportant and superfluous scenes altogether.