Dialogue 101: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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Dialogue: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

With examples from Saiyuki, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, NICS, and Weiss Kreuz.

Dialogue is the backbone of most stories. It's a rare story that doesn't feature dialogue, and that's even more true in the world of fanfiction, where setting a scene usually comes second to letting familiar characters interact with one another.

Good dialogue can make your story more believable and interesting. Bad dialogue can make your story leaden, confusing, or dull. So it's important to know both the grammatical and the stylistic rules of dialogue.

Let's start with The Good and the Bad.

( I hate listening to people's dreams. It is like flipping through a stack of photographs. If I'm not in any of them and nobody is having sex, I just don't care. )