Write Non-Boring Nonfiction Stories With Dialogue

When you look at your nonfiction writing when you try to tell a story, does the story end up looking like the same kind of paragraphs as the teaching part? Not only that, maybe when you write your stories, you get caught up in trying to remember exactly what happened and tell us about every gesture to bring each sip of coffee to your lips. Every single back and forth of the conversation. I’m exhausted just writing this out, and you know that’s not the way to tell a compelling story. But, how do you tell a compelling story when you’re trying to describe something that actually happened and not fiction?

There’s a fine line, and I do it really well in this article, You Don’t Have To Get Naked to Be Creative (But You Can). You’ll see there that I include dialogue for a situation that happened 13 years ago and wasn’t recorded so I don’t have a transcript. In that case, I went for truthiness. What’s the gist of what happened, and what’s true to my memory? That’s more important than transcribing each actual phrase because what’s important is what happened next for me that was motivated by what I remember hearing.

When I edit books, a lot of times the author has included stories, but they’re written just like information paragraphs, or they’re written like scenes of a play with every bit of back and forth captured. For the former, the stories don’t stand out on the page and can’t breathe, and for the latter, the reader is suffocated by blah, blah, blah. I find that this is usually for one of two reasons: the author doesn’t know how to write dialogue, or the writer doesn’t know when to use dialogue.

Fortunately, help is here. I studied and taught writing dialogue in fiction, drama, and poetry classes. All the same rules that apply to when and how to use dialogue in creative writing totally apply to nonfiction writing, too. Below, I share three common times during a story when you’ll want to add dialogue, as well as the punctuation hacks so you can take these ideas and be confident you know how to use them correctly.

Dialogue might be a good idea when…

1. You report that someone said something
2. Someone behaves badly
3. You anchor a reader in the story so they hear it

1. You report that someone said something

If it’s important for understanding the story to know that someone said something, in almost every case, the best way to reveal this information to the reader is to hear it straight from the speaker in dialogue. Below, the reported speech is underlined, and then you can see how I revise the statement to instead reveal dialogue and open up the scene.

For instance, instead of:

She told me I was fired. I tried to argue, but I just made it worse.

Write:

“We no longer need your services, and you have until the end of the day to clear your — ”

“Oh, is that how you treat whistle-blowers around here?”

Between the two samples above, which one paints the clearer picture? Which one helps you understand what’s at stake and how the speaker feels? The second one shows you how the speaker made it worse and shows you those painful words of being let go so you feel the situation more fully.

Punctuation hack: Notice that the first line of dialogue ends with “ — ” which indicates an interruption from the next character’s speech. If instead someone’s statement trails off, you can capture that with an ellipsis like this “your . . .”

And one more thing, always put punctuation inside quotes: “. . . ?” not “….”?

2. Someone behaves badly

While it’s indulgent to write a draft and call someone names and label behavior you find painful or disagreeable, there’s a better way to get the reader on your side. By merely telling a reader unpleasant facts, you give them a choice to engage with the information or ignore it. When you instead let the reader hear what happened in dialogue, you put the other person under more scrutiny and while being a more trustworthy narrator.

Instead of:

My mom put me on a diet when I was five years old because she was narcissistic. I couldn’t believe she called me fat.

Write:

“I knew you were fat. You’re going on a diet,” Mom said.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I thought being big was good. Years later, I realized this was less about me and more about her concern for how others saw her.

The first example above over-explains that the mom was a narcissist. The rewritten dialogue version doesn’t need that word because it trusts the reader to get it because the picture is painted more fully. The dialogue version also leaves it unquestioned that this happened because we hear it, whereas, in the first version, a reader might question if that was the reason or if it happened exactly as the narrator says it did.

Punctuation hack: don’t have two characters speak in the same paragraph. Notice that the mom’s dialogue is on one line, and there’s a line break before you get the speaker’s physical response. If this was all on the same line, it could be difficult to keep straight who’s saying and doing what.

There’s a comma at the end of the mom’s speech, and if you’re not ending the sentence with a quotation, then you’ll want to continue the sentence from the quote with a comma and then close the quotes and finish the sentence.

3. You anchor a reader in the story so they hear it

I love opening a scene with dialogue, even if I pause a few sentences in to catch the reader up with the setting, etc. Especially when a story is long or takes place within a theme that visits a series of events across several locations and times, using dialogue helps the reader keep up with where the story moves. In these cases, the appropriate dialogue might be one phrase or feature one speaker and then continue telling the story. Those moments of including dialogue give the reader an auditory way to connect with the details and keep up.

For instance, instead of:

A long description of the first day of school scene in 1989 and backstory

Write:

“What did you do over the summer?” Caroline asked.

Her new Lisa Frank erasers smelled like envy. I looked down at my yellow pencils with stubby tips and wondered what I could say that would possibly compare.

Often, it can feel like there’s a lot a reader needs to know so a scene will make sense. When the dialogue is compelling, that’s less true. Notice how Caroline conveys that it’s back to school in the question she asks. And, you can see from the speaker that it’s around the late 80s-early 90s with the Lisa Frank reference. With the two girls discussing their summer vacations, any backstory can enter this conversation, and the plot can move forward.

Punctuation hacks: Avoid words besides “said Caroline” in the dialogue tags. It’s less effective to connect a piece of speech to a long action phrase like, “Caroline said coldy, unzipping her brand new backpack.” With a long dialogue tag, it’s like the dialogue has a long roll of toilet paper stuck to its shoe. Trust the speech to speak for itself, and in separate sentences tell us any action from the speaker that’s relevant.

Want more help?

I just hit the high points here of when to use dialogue and basic grammar rules so you can use dialogue effectively. At the end of the day, why tell us that, “her words cut through me like ice,” when you can instead let her speak and then cut the reader like ice? That’s how to write stories your reader won’t forget because you made them feel something.

If you want help with your witty repartee, look no further than Aaron Sorkin’s Masterclass on screenwriting.

For those that need more grammar and punctuation help to be sure you’re writing A+ dialogue and all your quotation needs, I recommend The Purdue Online Writing Lab.

Additional tips for when to use dialogue and making it effective await you at The Self-Publishing School.

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