Dialogue: How to Hear Voices in Your Head

One of the hardest parts of writing is getting the dialogue right. You ask yourself question after question, debating line after line:

• Does that sound natural?
• Would she really say that?
• This is the stiffest argument I've ever read.
• Oh. My. Goodness. Why did ever I think that sounded right?
• Pffttt. Who is he? Homer? No one would phrase it like that in 2016!

I've found that many times I just cannot connect with the dialogue in some books that I read, leading me to reflect on my own dialogue style. It seems that sometimes when trying to make something sound realistic, it's easy to try too hard. So how do we fix that? How do you make dialogue a strength?

One of the more interesting resources I came across was Nadia Kalman's TED-Ed original titled "Three Antisocial Skills to Improve Your Writing." Check out the short video below and find out how eavesdropping, imagination, and muttering to yourself may help to improve your dialogue skills. As Kalman puts it, it shows "how to hear voices in your head" and improve your writing.