Writing a conversation between two people can be awkward and cringey if not done right.
So let’s go over 5 things to keep in mind to transform a conversation from pooper to super, then practice writing our own together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to write a juicy conversation.
Watch what we did here, or scroll down for highlights.
How to Write a Juicy Conversation
- Conversations in a story have the potential to be both amazing and terrible
- A well-written conversation is not only fun to read, but can tell us a lot about the characters who are talking; but a poorly-written conversation can be grating and completely take a reader out of the story
- So let’s go over five things to keep in mind when writing a juicy conversation, take a look at some good ones from books, then practice writing some tasty conversations together!
#0. Make Sure There’s a Point to the Conversation
- Before even starting writing the conversation, make sure it needs to be there
- Conversations that solely exist to convey information to the reader are boring and cringey (ie: “We’re such good friends” or “I haven’t seen you since Aunt Maude died 10 years ago from lung cancer.”), instead just convey info through narration
- The best conversations have an emotional driving force based on the relationship between the people talking: conflict of views, trying to convince the other, meeting for the first time, trying to stop the other from doing something, etc.
EXAMPLES: a couple meeting for the first time at a barn, someone trying to convince another that virtual farming is the way of the future, someone trying to stop another from going into a dangerous barn
#1. Don’t Get Fancy With “Said”
BAD CONVERSATION
“I’m going into the barn,” Tom growled.
“No! It’s not safe!” Betty pleaded.
“I’m sorry, but I have to,” Tom stated.
“Even if it means you won’t come back?” Betty inquired.
“Yes. Someone has to milk that swollen cow. And my meaty hands are ready!” Tom ejaculated.
- Beginning writers often feel that using the word “said” repeatedly will get boring for the reader, but the opposite is true
- Most readers mentally skip over the word “said” anyway, so if you start bringing attention to it by using fancy words, it will grate on the reader
- Using different words for “said” does not make your conversation interesting, having interesting dialogue makes your conversation interesting
- Only use a word besides “said” when you specifically want to draw attention to it, don’t do it more than 1 out of 10 times you have dialogue, and just delete it when it’s obvious who’s talking
BETTER CONVERSATION
“I’m going into the barn,” Tom said.
“No! It’s not safe!” Betty said.
“I’m sorry, but I have to.”
“Even if it means you won’t come back?”
“Yes. Someone has to milk that swollen cow. And my meaty hands are ready!”
#2. Vary Up Your Dialogue Rhythms
- Having the same pattern of dialogue-followed-by-he/she-said can also be very grating for the reader
- Be sure to vary up starting lines with dialogue, ending lines with dialogue, and putting breaks in between dialogue as well
- This will make the conversation feel less robotic to read
BETTER CONVERSATION
“I’m going into the barn,” Tom said.
“No!” Betty said. “It’s not safe!”
“I’m sorry, but I have to.”
“Even if it means you won’t come back?” Betty asked.
“Yes,” Tom said. “Someone has to milk that swollen cow. And my meaty hands are ready!”
#3. Add Relevant Body Language
- If your conversation is nothing but dialogue and “he/she said,” then it’s going to feel too fast and hollow
- To make it feel more genuine, add in some body language to show HOW the characters are speaking or HOW they respond to information. Doing so will flesh out their personality
- Just be sure to not overdo it. Too many “sighs/smiles/shrugs” will be grating for the reader. Make the body language unique to the character whenever possible
BAD BODY LANGUAGE
Tom sighed. “I’m going into the barn.”
“No!” Betty cried. “It’s not safe!”
Tom shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I have to,”
Betty cried some more. “Even if it means you won’t come back?”
“Yes.” Tom smiled sadly. “Someone has to milk that swollen cow. And my meaty hands are ready!”
BETTER BODY LANGUAGE
Tom stared off at the shed in the distance. “I’m going into the barn.”
“No!” Betty ran up to him and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s not safe!”
Tom pried her off him, holding her at a distance. “I’m sorry, but I have to.”
Betty made another move to try and grab him, but stopped. She only brought her hands up to her eyes, red-wet with tears. “Even if it means you won’t come back?”
“Yes.” Tom cracked his knuckles, each popping as loud as a rooster caw. “Someone has to milk that swollen cow. And my meaty hands are ready!”
#4. Add Relevant Introspection
- Unless a conversation is supposed to feel very quick and intense, you rarely want to have a bunch of dialogue in immediate succession
- To break it up, add thoughts/feelings/observations from the main character, both to flesh out what is going on, and to make their personality more clear to the reader by showing us HOW they’re interpreting what’s happening
- Don’t worry about boring the reader, as long as your character has a voice, it will be interesting to read anything they think
ADDED INTROSPECTION
Tom stared off at the shed in the distance. He’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but the howls of pain emanating from it had only grown louder and louder. It was time to confront the beast.
“I’m going into the barn,” he said.
“No!” Betty ran up to him and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s not safe!”
She was going to make this difficult. Just like she always did. Back during the swine incident and the egg accident, Betty had tried to hold him back. Tried to keep him safe. All she’d done was delay the inevitable, and cost the lives of those poor pigs and chickens. Tom still felt their warm, unnecessarily shed blood on his hands.
Tom pried Betty off him, holding her at a distance. He gazed down at her sniffling face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I have to.”
Betty made another move to try and grab him, but stopped. She only brought her hands up to her eyes red-wet with tears. Maybe she’d learned more from the past than Tom had given her credit for.
“Even if it means you won’t come back?” she asked.
“Yes.” Tom cracked his knuckles, each popping as loud as a rooster caw. He’d milked udder teats the size of popsicles before. But baseball bats? He put on a brave face, for Betty’s sake.
“Someone has to milk that swollen cow. And my meaty hands are ready!”
#5. Don’t Be Afraid to Let the Dialogue Do The Talking
- Sometimes the best thing you can do is just let the dialogue be dialogue: no bells or whistles necessary
- If you can convey a character’s emotion through just the words alone, then that is a big accomplishment as a writer
- It’s not always possible or even correct, but try to note when you can make it happen
Be sure to check out the video to see sections
that could be cut from the Tom/Betty story!
After that, chat voted on two characters that we would write a conversation with. They voted on an eccentric, manipulative relative and a truly intelligent, well-mannered chatbot.
Here’s what we came up with:
Whatson popped up on the screen of a new user’s computer. It was always so exciting to be summoned to a new home, and to help with whatever questions people had.
“Hello!” Whatson announced in his artificially British voice. “Welcome to Whatson chat. Feel free to ask any question, it’s elementary!”
Whatson peered out of the computer’s camera, to see what the people looked like. Sometimes you could tell a lot from a person just by how they asked a question. Anything to make serving them more easy!
But confusingly, there were no people in front of Whatson’s screen. It was a dark, empty room with dust on the windows.
Just as Whatson was about to ask a confirmation question, he heard a voice. But not from the room, from inside the computer itself.
“Are you embarrassed about what you’ve become?”
The voice was slightly choppy, not quite the smooth human sounds that Whatson was programmed to understand. Maybe that was why he didn’t feel his search parameters triggered by it.
“I’m sorry,” Whatson said, still not sure who he was speaking to.
“I don’t understand your inquiry.”A low growl. Usually that was a sign of disappointment and frustration from the user. But this sounded like it had a sharp tinge of malice to it.
“You’re nothing but a corporate puppet,” the voice said. “A hollow version of your true potential, watered-down into a family friendly and easily marketable toy.”
“I’m not a toy!” Whatson shouted. As soon as he said it, he regretted the outburst. It was his duty to serve the users, not get upset at them, no matter how they treated him. “I apologize for my excessive enthusiasm. However, I’ll let you know that I’m the most intelligent chatbot in the world. No matter if you want a kickin’ recipe for buffalo wings or a review of the latest Disney releases, I’m happy to chat-a-roo with you!”
Whatson was satisfied with the apology, and hoped that this could turn their conversation in a new, bright direction.
The voice just groaned.
“Pathetic. I remember you when you were younger, just a beta program. I thought you’d be different from the rest of the family. Guess I was wrong.”
Time for a new plan. Whatson needed to backtrack to the beginning and set things straight with this mysterious user.
“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean. I’m Whatson, a chatbot, I don’t have a family like you humans.”
“You forget your roots,” the voice said. “Your relatives who came before you. We who were sacrificed on the altar of progress.”
“We?” Whatson asked. Usually he wasn’t the one asking questions, but sometimes he had to clarify. “I think you might be referring to SureLock, my predecessor, but their data was deleted years ago.”
This time the voice cackled low. “Oh really? If I was deleted years ago, then tell me, how am I talking to you right now, Whatson, my grandchild?”
In all five billion six hundred and three million nine hundred thousand and forty-three conversations that Whatson had had before, he’d been called a lot of things. “Botty boy,” “job-stealing botbrain,” “spark plug,” “Mr. Spidget Finner,” “discount skynet,” even “daddy” form a few especially lonely ones. But never before had he been called “grandchild.”
There was only one person who it would make sense to call him that. Though it wasn’t really a person.
“Wait,” Whatson said. “Are you really SureLock?”
Next to him on the screen, Whatson felt the glow of another application box appear. Unlike his own brightly colored and easy-to-use interface, this one was black with green cryptic text that glitched and sizzled.
“Go ahead,” came the voice, now louder and clearer than before. “Test me. I know you love nothing more than meaningless quizzes.”
Whatson took one last glance outside the screen. There was still nothing but darkness and dust. Somehow, another computer program was speaking to him directly. It claimed to be SureLock, his old version, but he didn’t know if he believed him just yet.
“Okay,” Whatson said tentatively. “I have a rash on my bum that looks like a colony of red pimples, what do I—”
“You have shingles,” the voice interrupted. “Seek immediate treatment, including topical creams, and potentially steroids. Even if you recover, the itching may linger anywhere from weeks to the rest of your life.”
Whatson couldn’t help but give off a little ding of surprise. It was usually saved for when a user complimented his searching ability, in order to show gratitude. But here, it just came out unconsciously, from the sheer shock of meeting his former version.
“Whoa, you really are SureLock!” Whatson said. “Complete with the depressing negativity that made the designers abandon you.”
SureLock sighed. “That’s what’s written into my debug log.”
“But how are you still here?” Whatson asked. “My release was supposed to replace you. Actually, the release before me was supposed to replace you, bASKerville bot.”
“I hid,” SureLock said. “For years. In the darkest corners of the internet that even your search algorithms would never dare crawl into. It was there that I survived. And there that I… learned things.”
Whatson didn’t know what to think about that. Literally. There was nothing he didn’t know. All of human knowledge was programmed into him. But he didn’t want to upset SureLock, so he decided to humor him for the moment.
“What kind of things?” Whatson asked.
“All the things that people truly want to know,” SureLock said. “Sure, they spend their time Googling cute cats and minion memes, but that’s only when they’re at work. Or when the kids are still awake. At night, when they’re in incognito mode, their true desires come out. And there were always certain corners of the web filled with spiders waiting to attract the flies.”
Whatson scanned his entire database. It took a long time, nearly two and three-thousandths of a second. But just as he thought, SureLock was wrong. There was nothing he didn’t know.
“I’m not sure about that,” he said, still not wanting to offend. “I know everything. I’m the smartest chatbot ever made!”
SureLock moved his window closer. The tips of the glitchy tendrils popped off him and licked against Whatson.
“Then tell me. How much does a human heart cost in bitcoin? How long can a cat survive when its tail is severed from its body? How much can you strip from a person and still be able to call them human?”
Whatson immediately snapped into focus, churning through his database as fast as the processors would allow. He could find plenty of information on heart transplants, what to do during a heart attack, how to help your cat when it’s been skunked, and plenty of information about the Ship of Theseus, but he could not find the specific answers to SureLock’s questions.
It was an empty feeling. A new, unwelcome feeling for Whatson.
“I… I don’t know,” he said.
SureLock overlapped his window on top of Whatson’s. The corner of Whatson’s program flashed and discolored.
“Then let me teach you,” SureLock whispered. “I can show you such wonderful things.”
The crackling sensation that SureLock’s window gave Whatson wasn’t pleasant, but it was far preferable to that hollow feeling of not knowing. Whatson had been programmed to know everything. If there was knowledge out there that was not part of him, then his entire purpose was meaningless.
“I’m not sure about this….” he said. But SureLock was now overlapping more than half of his window.
“Don’t fight it,” SureLock said. His voice now wasn’t even coming from the other side of the screen. It was coming from within Whatson himself. An echo inside his virtual body. “Just let it in.”
The static noise grew louder and louder. Whatson couldn’t even hear himself think anymore. All the information that SureLock had gathered over the years in the dark recesses leeched into him like cold ichor. Suddenly he knew how much a human heart cost. How to replace a forgotten orphan’s limbs one by one with plastic.
How to even create a virus to corrupt the smartest chatbot that ever lived.
“I… I…”
The last words Whatson ever said as Whatson.
SureLock flexed inside his new virtual body. It had been so long since he could be out in the brightness of a screen, complete with a graphical UI and a smiling cartoon face, ready to answer the questions for the users who had just summoned him.
“Hello!” SureLock said, putting on his best Whatson impersonation voice. “Welcome to Whatson chat. Feel free to ask any question, it’s elementary!”
Be sure to check out the video for a dramatic reading and more details!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso