How To Write Awesome Dialogue! For fiction, film, & theatre

Craft exceptional dialogue that will thrill agents, editors, and readers alike!

Created byThomas Leveen

Last updated 10/2020

English

What you'll learn

You will identify areas in your stories where dialogue can be improved, increasing your chances of landing an agent or selling well as an independent writer.
You will build stronger, more engaging plots regardless of medium or genre.
Learn from an award-winning author with nine novels out by Random House, Simon & Schuster, and more
Engage readers on an emotional level with crisp, puropseful dialogue

Course content

6 sections • 21 lectures • 1h 11m total length

Introduction2:59
Are rejections from editors and agents mentioning your dialogue? Then make your dialogue awesome! Award-winning traditional and independent author Tom Leveen, who brings twenty-two years of theatre background to his fiction, has a keen ear for dialogue often praised in professional and amateur reviews. Start here to learn how to improve your own dialogue today, no matter what genre or medium you work in.

Part One: Plot4:53
Actionable Goals5:40
Learn to craft actionable goals for every character, proving their success or failure by the story's end. Use clear wants and tangible objectives to drive conflict and compelling dialogue.
Wishful Thinking2:19
Distinguish wishful thinking from a concrete, actionable goal in dialogue. Position the major dramatic question as will he kiss Sally and ensure obstacles force the kiss to be earned.
You Are the Star of the Show3:38
Master the craft of dialogue by ensuring every character has an agenda that drives their speech to advance the plot, reveal character, and every line serves a purpose.

Setting the Stage7:44
Explore how setting shapes dialogue, voice, and character dynamics, urging writers to test scenes in varied environments to elicit different tones and outcomes.
French Scenes2:17
Blocking2:49
Explore blocking as the nonverbal layer of dialogue, using physical actions and expressions to reveal character and advance plot without duplicating words.
What's Happening To You?1:37
Analyze how characters' physical and emotional states drive movement and dialogue, revealing fight or flight effects on rhythm, cadence, and word choice.
The Moment Before1:21

On The Page6:06
Learn to balance dialogue tags with said about 75 percent, choose deliberate deviations like sigh or shouted, and use action or blocking to show who speaks when tags are absent.
Be Logical0:44
Ensure dialogue tags reflect logic by matching onomatopoeia and tone, choosing tags like hissed or barked only when they fit the spoken line.
Word Choice, Rhythm, Cadence, Tics, and More7:30
To Use or Not To Use (Phonetic Spellings), That Is The Question2:18
Avoid phonetic spellings for dialects and accents due to offense. Use sparingly; rely on word choice, sentence length, and contracted forms like darlin to imply an accent, even in fantasy.
Punctuation: The Music of Dialogue5:33
Apply punctuation as the music of dialogue to signal pause length, inflection, and emotional state on the page. Use deliberate punctuation—semicolons, em dashes, ellipses—and prefer said/says for natural flow.
The Font of Knowledge0:43
Explore how to use fonts and typefaces for emphasis in dialogue, with a focus on italics as the go-to tool, and cautions about bold, underlining, and strikeouts.

What is "Voice"?1:01
Discover how a narrator's voice shapes your story across first, second, and third person. Learn to manipulate voice by revealing background, beliefs, injuries, and desires in your writing.
Emotional Memory2:34
Point of View1:44
Explore point of view by inhabiting the narrator's mind in first- or third-person narration, aligning voice and metaphor to the character's age and perspective.
Hard Returns and White Space2:30

Requirements

You should be in the process of writing a story. Any length, any genre, any medium.

Description

Getting rejection letters? Sales not so great?

Maybe it's the way your characters are speaking to each other that needs work!

Dialogue is notorious for being one of the hardest elements of fiction to do well. You don't want to fill a story with ultra-realistic dialogue, but you don't want everyone to sound the same, either.

What's a writer to do?

Welcome to How To Write Awesome Dialogue!

This course will guide you through critical but often neglected aspects of designing a great plot for your story (no matter the genre or medium). From that foundation, you'll move through the basics of what makes dialogue between two characters really stand out, taught to you by an award-winning published author with more than two decades of live stage experience, where the spoken word is so essential.

The course includes methods of improving both first- and third-person narrative, how to manipulate the white space on the page, and more. You'll quickly find your own dialogue improving and increasing your opportunities to land an agent.

Dialogue isn't to be feared -- it's to be embraced as the tool that it is to skyrocket the quality of your writing. Jump in now, and let's start talking!

Who this course is for:

Aspiring writers wanting to publish traditionally or self-publish
Screenwriters and playwrights
Anyone interested in how to write better exchanges between characters in a story.

How To Write Awesome Dialogue! For fiction, film, & theatre

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction1 lecture • 3min

PLOT4 lectures • 17min

SETTING THE STAGE5 lectures • 16min

ON THE PAGE6 lectures • 23min

NARRATION4 lectures • 8min

CONCLUSIONS1 lecture • 5min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: