Winter musings on dialogue

Sometimes the words flow easily.

Other times I cannot think of anything to say.

This can be bad when you want to finish the book you are writing. It is at times like these that I go back to basics and refresh my writing muscle with the wise words of others. This morning I am contemplating a lunch table conversation between antagonistic acquaintences, so I'm  reading up about dialogue as I scoff my bacon, mushroom and black pudding sandwich. (Very tasty!)

Dialogue, they say, should sound natural. At the same time, we need to omit all the awkward pauses, poor word choices , non sequiturs and pointless repetitions. We don't alwys speak in complete sentences, we drop articles and pronouns  and sometimes we just grunt - but somehow we get our meaning across!

In novel form, dialogue is a way of changing relationships, or bringing conflict to a head

It requires direction from the author and the scene direction should change after the conversatin occurs.It is possible that the people in the dialogue do not understand themselves, or their motivations; it is also possible that they do, but are incapable of admitting this to anyone else. Some even set out to deliberately confuse an already tense situation.

By the time I get this far,   I can usually see my way more clearly! I hope you can, too.