Have you ever wanted to make your dialogue so powerful that readers are drawn, irresistibly, into your story? The secret could lie, not in what your characters say, but in what they don’t say!

In this guest post by pro editor Kathryn Craft, you'll discover how to make your dialogue glow with inner structure.

Some writers say they can’t begin to write until they hear their characters talking. Then writing becomes as easy as popping a water balloon: just let all your characters’ deepest thoughts pour out while you take down what is said.

Unfortunately, that isn’t what it takes to be a writer. That’s what it takes to be a transcriptionist.

Here’s the problem with transcription:

You’ll type out pages and pages of talk during which nothing has happened other than a conversation at a kitchen table. While your characters are yammering, the reader will become as inured to the words as if she were touring a house wallpapered with the New York Times. You are unlikely to redecorate—those little black marks were a pleasing addition to your word count; why paint over them?

Add to this that your dialogue is now etched on the walls of history. Your character actually said these words—you heard him!—what can you do? We all know that once we’ve spoken, we can’t take back our words.

Authors: Why, pray tell, are you relinquishing so much control?

Allowing your characters to open their mouths and let all their feelings spill out in one long aria may be the easiest way for you to learn of your characters’ inner conflict, but for the reader, it’s not the most engaging.

What most of us love about literature isn’t the melody, but the hearty orchestration of the entire work. Dialogue—along with setting, imagery, point of view, voice, action, inner monologue—is only one of many instruments through which a story speaks to a reader. Dialogue should contribute, not dominate.

So if your characters won’t shut their yaps while you’re trying to distill their relatable yet intersecting goals in a way that creates true drama, through story action, I say...

Gag ’em!

Once you are free from the distraction of their words, you will find something more important than what your characters were willing to say: subtext.

Consider this example. Your character goes to the window, looks out, and says, “Look, it’s snowing.”

What have we learned about this character?

Only that she can deliver a weather report. That’s not enough; this line of dialogue isn’t pulling its weight.

Think about the load that one line could carry, though, if:
  • this mother’s only son is about to drive back to college, and we know from a previous scene that her beloved mother died in a car crash due to snowy conditions.
  • this is a battered wife who’d hoped to make a break for it, and from her backstory we know that she loves snow because it covers all the dirt and the whole world looks clean.
  • this southern farmer has been praying for much-needed rain for his imperiled citrus crop—and instead, it snows.
That is subtext.

Subtext is not easy to find. Where do you look for it? Hint: Your characters will rarely blather on about it. (Note that “sub-” part. It likes to hide.)

Yet understanding subtext—what is implied, as opposed to stated explicitly—is imperative before you start putting words in your characters’ mouths. You can’t go back and “apply” subtext; it must emerge from the depths of the conflict at the heart of your story.

Gagging your character for a while is a great way to build the tension that will encourage subtext to emerge.

To learn the truth of this, try writing your story for a few weeks without letting the characters speak. When a character desires to tell you something, instead pick up a pen, and make a “journal” comment in your character’s voice. Not only will you find subtext on these pages, the word “journal” will draw an important distinction in your mind: “for private use only.”

Keep that gag duct-taped to their mouths

In the meantime, keep that gag duct-taped to their mouths until it has soaked up almost all the saliva necessary to produce speech.

Once you rip the tape from your gagged character’s mouth, both you and your reader will be leaning forward, dying to know what he’ll say. Because it won’t be “Please pass the salt” or “I’m so happy to meet you I’ve heard so many nice things about you”—it will be something important.

If your journal entry reveals that your character is frustrated about something, go back to your story and orchestrate that frustration on the page. Give her a backstory in which she was ignored, or slighted. Prop setting elements in her way. Set an immediate goal to create a sense of plot urgency and then convincingly delay resolution. Withhold from her what she needs.

When your character can’t stand it anymore, and you metaphorically rip the duct tape from her mouth, will she say, “I am so frustrated”?

I don’t think so. She might say: “All I wanted was to matter for five minutes in this day.” And your reader, knowing all your character has been through, will nod her head in appreciation of the lifelong impact of this truth.

No doubt about it, lean, anticipated dialogue has power. Lace that dialogue with subtext, and it can transform your story.


  Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, an independent manuscript evaluation and line editing service. Her women's fiction and memoir are represented by Katie Shea at the Donald Maass Literary Agency. The first chapter of her memoir, Standoff at Ronnie's Place, modified as a stand-alone essay, was published online by Mason's Road, the online journal of Fairfield University's MFA program. She blogs about Healing through Writing.