If Your Dialogue Reads Like a Press Release, We Have a Problem

talking versus speaking

Your characters keep delivering information at each other.

Real humans do not deliver information. They interrupt, evade, circle, repeat themselves, and lie. Press-release dialogue is what happens when the writer wants to make sure the reader gets the plot point — and forgets that no human in history has ever said 'as you know, Father, our company's quarterly revenue.' We diagnose the press-release voice that creeps into amateur dialogue, the simple read-it-aloud test that catches most of it, and the three rewrites that move a scene from briefing to conversation. By the end of this, your dialogue will sound less like an HR memo and more like two people who actually know each other.

Press release vs. conversation

The three rewrites that fix most dialogue

• Cut every line where a character explains something they both already know.
• Cut the names. People almost never use each other's names in casual speech.
• Add one interruption per page.
• Add one moment of intentional silence per scene.
• Read the whole scene out loud. If you stumble, the dialogue's wrong.

If your dialogue reads like an HR briefing, congratulations — you've written exposition with quote marks. Cut the names. Add the silence. Watch it become a conversation.

— L.A. Walton, The Book Maven

From the Maven Catalog

• Free eCourse — Dialogue 101
• Master Course — Conversations That Crackle
• eBook — Press-Release Dialogue Detox
• Toolkit — Dialogue Drill Toolkit

Read it out loud. Cut the names. Add the silences. The dialogue stops sounding like a press release and starts sounding like two humans with history.