17 Dialogue Pet Peeves (& Some Suggested Solutions)
Hi! I’m Ani, a fiction editor specializing in and loving all things romance, fantasy, and lit fic. I’m a cheerleader for indie authors, a writer and poet myself, and a prolific chai drinker. Reach out, and let’s talk editing!
***TW: Brief swearing in an example sentence
From my reading and editing experience, here are my seventeen dialogue pet peeves (and solutions for writers encountering them) that throw me into the depths of despair (/j):
(TL;DR at the end)
Old man staring with big eyes at a piece of paper.
(1) GERUNDS
Appositive gerunds in dialogue hurt my ~heart~. Okay, but what even are appositive gerunds?
First, what is a gerund? A gerund is a verb that has “ing” attached to it and functions as a noun. For example: “Picking up the spoon, he cautiously approaches the spitting pot of soup.” “Picking [up]” here is functioning as a noun. This next example is not a gerund because it functions as a verb: “He is picking up the spoon off the counter.” Easy way to tell: If “is” or “are” are in front of the verb with the “ing” ending, then it’s not a gerund! If the “ing” verb is on its own, it’s a noun, which makes it a gerund! This is confusing, I know. Meet me in the comments with questions!
Second, what is an appositive? An appositive is similar to an “aside”. An example of an appositive would be “Peter, who I am friends with, is coming over for lunch.” See the appositive? It’s an additional piece of information that is bracketed to separate it from the rest of the sentence. It adds more information that is usually non-essential to the sentence. An example of a gerundial appositive in a sentence is as follows: “We’ll find you, not wasting a moment to do so.”
A couple things with this sentence! First, the “not wasting a moment…” gerundial appositive. This adds more information to the core of the sentence (”We’ll find you”), but it’s kind of unnatural. Would you say this out loud? That’s always a good metric for dialogue. For me, it gives me a weird mouthfeel, personally. You’re going to hear this a lot throughout this essay, but this is where reading your dialogue out loud will be essential!
Next thing is the formality of “to do so.” I rarely hear this phrase in day-to-day talk. Listen to people chattering around you (in a coffee shop, maybe?). Does this come up often?
Given all that, a possible change could be “We’ll find you! We won’t waste a moment.”
Notably, not all gerundial phrases are appositives. For example, “We’ll find you! We won’t waste a moment taking you down.” This sentence uses a gerundial phrase—”taking you down”—but instead of being an appositive, this functions as a direct object (a subject for another time).
(2) Unrealistic dialogue
(Yes, we’re still going, but it’s okay: The next points will be shorter. Ish.)
Straightforward metric for me: Would I or someone I know say something like this? (Ignore this metric if your writing relates to words or phrases or languages that are part of fantasy worlds.)
If you see this in writing you are revising, then again, try reading your dialogue out loud to yourself to help with this! Listen to the way it rolls off your tongue. Maybe even have yourself and a friend read the dialogue together back and forth.
(3) Choppy dialogue
Dialogue that is cut off. While a character might drop an “I” or “you” somewhere, they are likely not doing so every single sentence.
For example, “I don’t wanna do it” vs. “Don’t wanna do it.”
(4) Age-appropriate dialogue
Is the dialogue age-appropriate? Are they a young teenager using adult swears? Are they an older adult talking about “aura”?
(5) Indistinct
The joy of dialogue is that, when done well, we don’t really even need the names attached to dialogue tags to understand who is speaking! This is achieved by giving each character “dialogue tics,” so to speak.
An easy way to aim for this includes writing lists of words that characters would or wouldn’t say, and then sticking to that. This includes really getting into the backstory of the character too (not in the story per se, but in your head).
(6) Clunky
This is similar to the choppy and gerund points: Dialogue that, when read out loud, has an unnatural flow (too many verbs, too many adjectives, adverbs in strange places, etc.) could be gently pruned for better flow. An example sentence and my edit follow:
“The charismatic, gregarious man was quickly making himself to put together his favorite, most interesting items on his Notes app list.”
Okay. What is necessary here? My edit:
“[Name] put together a Notes app list of interesting [specify the item].”
Making up my bracketed items: “Levi put together a Notes app list of interesting venues.”
Notice how most of the adjectives, adverbs, and extra verbs disappeared? The edit retains only the absolutely necessary information to smooth the awkwardness. We don’t need to know that Leo is charismatic and gregarious—that should already be established by his actions or will be established in the future. Similarly, we don’t need to know that he did this quickly, and we don’t have to put up with “making himself to put together…” We can condense this! And because we can, we should!
In poetry, we talk about word economy—the idea that we should only use only as many words as absolutely necessary to precisely convey what is in our heads. This cuts away any fluff, which would otherwise encourage readers to skim. We want every sentence to hit exactly as intended, and as a result, every word needs to be carefully considered.
Writing is hard! This is an example of why! And of course, this doesn’t have to be true in your first draft. Typically, overwriting and then pruning down is your best bet with drafting novels or poetry alike. But when you’re ready to prune, word economy will be important to keep in mind.
(7) Over reliance on dialogue tags
Dialogue tags are extremely helpful for separating dialogue between characters, clarifying who is speaking, and supporting emotion indicators. However, it is absolutely possible to overuse dialogue tags, particularly in adult or new adult fiction. “Gasp,” “cried out,” “wailed,” “grumbles,” “retorts,” “comments,” “rasp,” etc. are all excellent, descriptive dialogue tags! However, when one uses them in excess, they start to weigh down a manuscript.
Within this topic is also an over reliance on adverbs in support of dialogue tags. If every dialogue tag has an adverb attached to it, the dialogue is likely not doing enough work tapping into the emotional core of the character—or its sensory details are lacking complexity. This means that the author needs to explore more explicit emotion in their dialogue:
From “I hate this,” she said angrily.
To “Fuck! I hate this!”
Immediately, we get a stronger sense of the emotion at hand. We added an intensifier (the swear word), more exclamation marks, and took out the dialogue tag AND adverb, both of which were getting in the way of the emotion.
~We’re halfway through ~
A quick break for the brain: have a cute picture of two foxes cuddling.
Two foxes cuddling :)
Onwards.
(8) “As you know, Bob” dialogue
“As you know, Bob” dialogue is dialogue involving a character telling another character or themselves about information/backstory that they would never naturally talk about with another person/themselves. For example, if somebody saw a car wreck happen, and another person saw it with them, they wouldn’t later talk about it and say, “Man, that car wreck was awful. The 18-wheeler hit the other car and the person got out before the fire engulfed the Mazda. They ran away from the car, and it exploded.”
Normally, this conversation wouldn’t happen, because the other person was there to see it and would already know all of this.
(9) Similarly, expository dialogue
Expository dialogue is dialogue that only serves to reveal plot, worldbuilding, or character details. For example, the fanfiction.net classic:
“Hi, I’m Raven Red, and I have black hair with rainbow highlights. I’m 5’5”, and I love black cats because I’m not a dog person. My family hates me, and I can’t wait to escape this town.” (Imagine this with worse punctuation and spelling. I can’t make myself do it lol.)
(10) Dialogue that doesn’t move the plot forward
Every piece of dialogue should be meaningful to either the characterization of the characters or the overarching plot. Is it revealing a character’s goal? Their motivations? A conflict between characters? Is it a negotiation involving a plot point that needs to be resolved? Is it supporting the events in the book? If none of these questions apply, then the dialogue might be isolated from the plot a little bit. The more relevant the dialogue is to the plot, the more effective it will become.
Literary fiction writers will have a slightly different approach to this, as literary fiction is often more vibes than plot. More on this in another post.
(11) Avoiding dialect in dialogue
There is no reason to avoid dialect in dialogue! Dialect is the spice of language. It only improves what is already there, when sprinkled on top correctly.
Is your character Southern American? Appalachian? French? Midwestern? British? Take a stab at some fun linguistic research! Figure out which words they’d be more likely to use and how to indicate with irregular spellings how they say certain words! Don’t be afraid of dialect. If you approach it with care, dialect will feel more natural than stereotypical or affected in your dialogue.
(12) Using declaratives to reveal plot points explicitly
Ex: “I, as your detective, will solve this case!”
“IT’S OVER FOR YOU NOW.”
“ABYSSSSS IMPACT.”
^DBZ is a good example of this (although it’s camp so it’s allowed to do this intentionally).
Instead, characters could reveal their emotions and plot functions more naturally through sensory cues, subtle dialogue, and thoughtful dialogue tags.
(13) Overly formal dialogue in non-formal settings.
Sometimes, we as writers just need to relax into our characters. It can be easier for some people to write formal dialogue rather than informal, and that’s totally understandable. I’m right there with you! But this may not be the characterization you want—and if that’s true, my recommendation is to read out your formal dialogue and then try to read it aloud from memory instead of while looking at the manuscript. Your brain will immediately switch it from formal to closer to your regular speech.
(14) In contrast, incorrect formal speech in situations that call for it
If it is appropriate to use formal language, there is one stumbling block in particular that will likely appear before you (as it has before me, many a time):
Relying on a thesaurus to translate informal language into formal language will seriously trip you up. Formal language actually has different grammatical structures than informal language on occasion and different constructions than we are used to. The best way to get used to this is to listen to speeches and read less modern fiction, etc., until we’re comfortable with it. Then, we can replicate it. With practice, it’ll come! Then, this will be a permanent tool in our toolboxes!
(15) Ironically self-aware dialogue
“Did I just do that?? I just did that!!”
‘Nuff said.
(16) Thinking out loud
This isn’t true in every circumstance, but frequently, a character thinking out loud to themselves is used to reveal backstory or character insights that couldn’t otherwise be revealed. The problem is, thinking out loud is often stagnant: How can we move the plot along without something happening? Thinking out loud is passive. No action is occurring. Additionally, how will this improve the characterization if another character isn’t there to reflect the POV character back at them?
If you’re seeing this in your writing, I would suggest introducing one of the existing characters into the scene. Make their interaction spark the information naturally!
FINALLY! (17) Dialogue INTENTIONALLY trying to make people feel something.
It just doesn’t work, unfortunately.
For example, say I enter a sentence with the intention “I’m going to make people laugh with this.” This will stunt my ability to reach the reader (unless I’m just incredibly cool and talented that day, I guess. Always an option).
Instead, I should reach for the emotional core of the character and write the dialogue for the character, not the reader. The reader should not exist in our minds. The readers are coming to us, not us to them. So let’s make what we want! Listen to our characters! Explore their worlds and inner thoughts! Dialogue based on a solid understanding of the character will convey the emotion to the reader better than going in with the intent to make the reader experience that same emotion.
And that’s it! We made it!
TL;DR:
(1) gerundial appositives
(2) unrealistic
(3) choppy
(4) not character age appropriate
(5) indistinguishable from other characters
(6) clunky
(7) over reliance on dialogue tags
(8) as you know, Bob
(9) expository —worldbuilding/character/plot
(10) doesn’t move plot forward
(11) avoiding dialect
(12) declarative dialogue
(13) overly formal
(14) incorrectly formal
(15) ironically self-aware
(16) thinking out loud
(17) MAKING an audience feel something
Thank you so much for sticking with this! If you made it all the way to the end, you get a prize (haven’t decided what yet, but a prize!).
Drop a comment below if you have any questions or thoughts! If you disagree or have additional pet peeves, I’d love to hear it!!
And that’s it for today! Next up, a developmental edit of insurgent.
