Realistic Dialogue

Trying to make your dialogue realistic seems like an admirable goal, right? It would, hopefully, make the whole of your text more believable and genuine, help bring the reader into your world. But what do we call "realistic" dialogue? When does dialogue begin to feel "unrealistic"?

Tough questions.

Realism in a story is left to the judgment of the reader, just like everything else, but for dialogue, it seems an even more tenuous relationship, perhaps because everyone tends to have their own talking habits. Some people stutter a lot. Some people use the same words a lot. Some people are very polite and formal. Some people tend to ramble incessantly about certain things even though there's not really any reason to and it really annoys the people who are trying to listen to them. And so on. But this idea, this sense of incredible variety, is where we can find our best answers to those tough questions, I think.

Obviously, not everyone talks the same way. Therefore, our characters shouldn't all talk the same way, either. Dialects and speech tendencies are the main keys, I think, especially if the characters are traveling a lot.

These sorts of things add significant complexity to your writing, so much so, in fact, that you might find yourself getting bogged down with trying to keep all your talking ducks in a row. I suppose it just depends on what you're comfortable with, really, how much variety you want. Not every character has to sound completely different, of course; in fact, it'd probably be just fine if most characters sounded about the same. I just think that a bit of subtle differentiation between characters - especially major ones - will make for a more interesting and engaging read. Plus, it's just more fun to write.