Hello and welcome back to my blog.

One of the hardest things in writing fiction is dialogue. One of the biggest challenges is how to not make the characters all sound the same. So the following will be a way to improve dialogue:

1. As you go through your dialogue look for words that repeat. Several of the things I found was I often had my characters starting off a sentence with “basically” or “so . . .” It’s okay for one or two characters to have similar slang or patterns of speech, particularly if they’re in the same job. Like two cops would probably sound similar in some of the words they use.
2. Another idea is to know the terms used for the period the book is set in. If it’s set in the 1700’s would they use slang like “that’s the bomb” (is that still used today) or “that’s sick”. Not likely.
3. To get how young people talk today there are ways to do that. One way is to get someone in the age group you are writing about read through the dialogue and correct the slang terms. That’s the best way if you have teenagers or know someone who does and they’re willing to help. Another way is to go to where people hangout and casually listen to how people talk and that can give you some ideas.

That’s it for today, make it a great one.