What techniques do you use to create dialogue that feels authentic and drives the narrative forward?

Real language dialogue is quite similar to having a convincing chat with friends: it must have flow, character, and sincere purpose. Let's address the hand-on ways to use your script dialogue as a medium that causes your storytelling to move forward. 

Listening and Watching Eavesdropped Conversations
The best way to learn authentic dialogue through real-life conversations. Lounge around in a café or public transport, listen to the tone, speech rhythms, hesitations, and interruptions. These subtle things bring dialogue to life and grasp the reader's attention. 

Pro tip: jot down your observations or discreetly record bits (with permission!) to refer to later.

Give Each Character Their Own Speech Patterns
Your characters can never be clones. They can use different speech styles, choices of vocabulary, pacing, and sentence structures to the extent of personalizing and indicating character traits and backgrounds directly through those styles and structures.

For instance, a character from a rural background might use simpler language compared to an urban, educated character.

Dialogue to Show, Not Tell
An articulate dialogue that develops a story should be able to unveil pertinent details regarding the characters or plot rather than just saying them outright. Displaying conflict, tension, or hidden motives through conversations keeps readers hooked.

Pro Tip: Exposition or information dumps can be replaced with dialogue exchanges to increase the reader's interest.

Create Conflict Through Dialogue
Dialogues are the best place to find conflict, misunderstandings or differing viewpoints as a vehicle for introducing them. Conflict-driven conversations heighten narrative tension and lead the reader to discover what unfolds next.

Example: Disputing characters about a business decision can inadvertently reveal their personal grievances and differing morals.

Purge Mercilessly
Oftentimes, less is more. By cleaning up your dialogues from redundant expressions, you make them tight, sharper, and ensure that each line corresponds to the character and story. Additionally,  you can think of the dialogues as being spoken out loud. If it's distracting and doesn't feel right, then it likely needs a little change!

Opposite impulse. It's a guiding principle which insists you try the opposite of whatever your impulse or inclination may be. For instance, if your character has just been diagnosed with stage four cancer, your impulse may be to be dramatic or sad. You may feel inclined to have the characters weep and whatnot. The principle of opposite impulse implores you to instead explore the exact opposite. What would happen if you instead had your character laugh and be jovial.

The point of opposite impulse is to avoid making the obvious choices and being terribly predictable and it often results in interesting discovers. While you most likely will backtrack from the most extreme results of opposite impulse, you are unlikely to fall back into the mundane. Additionally, a common consequence of this experiment is subtext.

If you haven't tried opposite impulse before, now is a great time to start. I promise, it will become one of your most cherished principles.

To create authentic dialogue, I first focus on understanding the character’s goals and emotions in the scene. Their words should reflect what they want and need, driving the story forward. I avoid long, unnecessary speeches and keep the dialogue purposeful—each line should reveal something about the character or the situation.

I also think about pacing—how quickly characters respond and how pauses or interruptions can add tension. Dialogue should feel natural but still purposeful, keeping the audience engaged without overwhelming them. I make sure that the exchange has both depth and clarity, with every line advancing the plot or character development.

One technique I swear by is reading the dialogue out loud—it’s amazing how much more natural it sounds when you actually hear it. Sometimes, I even rope in a friend, and we act out the dialogue to see how it flows in real-time.

I also spend time really getting to know the character. I dive into their behavior, how they think, their emotions, strengths, and weaknesses. The goal is to understand them so well that their words feel authentic and true to who they are.

Another thing I avoid is over-structuring dialogue. I let my gut and imagination guide me—it’s all about finding that balance between staying true to the character and driving the story forward. And keeping it fluent and natural is key; stiff dialogue is a total narrative killer!

My wife thinks I'm crazy, but I often act out the dialogue while writing. I usually don't realise I'm doing it until she laughs at me. The way I write dialogue is to balance realism with the needs of the story, which often means trimming away the fat - not getting too wordy or flowery and making sure each line earns its place - while ensuring the dialogue isn't just flat and perfunctory. Good dialogue should flow like music, and often that means finding the rhythm of it. Getting the characters right in the first instance is usually the best foundation for good dialogue.

Genre and setting will affect this greatly, but I believe the most important thing is knowing your characters well; even if you're not including all their hopes, background, goals, and personalities in the script itself, you need to know these things as they can influence the way they communicate. The better you know them, the better and more distinct their dialogue will be.

There are a lot of different factors that go into a character's dialogue. You need to take into consideration the setting, time period, and background of the character along with the specific relationship they have with the other character(s) they're conversing with. At the end of the day, I fully immerse myself in the world I'm writing and question whether someone would say something or if I'm just writing it to move my plot forward. You usually want to avoid overly formal writing (unless that character calls for it) and use everyday language instead. I'd also avoid using tactics such as telling instead of showing and having a character explain something to the audience. Dialogue needs to be organic and you shouldn't treat your audience like kindergartners (unless you're writing a kid's show ). The best way to make sure your dialogue sounds right is to say it out loud. If it sounds off when you say it, odds are it will sound off to the audience and reader. 

Once the purpose of a scene has been firmly established, dialogue should be used to both reveal character and drive the story to the turning point of that scene. 

To ensure authentic dialogue, read all the dialogue out-loud yourself - record it if need be. Use accents, the character’s intonation, pacing etc so it really sounds like how you hear them in your head. And really listen - does it sound like that character? Or does it just sound like how you talk with a (bad) accent? 
 

Driving the narrative forward often involves exposition. Top tricks for exposition are aplenty - but the general rule I’ve found is make the exposition ammunition. Either in an argument, or a secret, or something which shifts the scene. You need a good BS detector for your own work. If it feels like it isn’t working - trust yourself, it isn’t. And others will spot it too. So try it a different way. 
 

Lastly, come in late, get out early. Everyone knows this but so many writers don’t actually push it as far as they can. Keep chopping off the first line and the last line (even and especially if you like those lines) until the scene no longer makes sense. If possible, ensure the audience has to pay attention to keep up - start the scene in the middle so they have to listen to orientate themselves. For example, a lot of the time, you don’t actually need the scene to start with someone entering. The key to pacing is kinetic energy that drives one scene into the next with no downtime - and that means leaving a scene as soon as it’s done, and beginning the next one as quick as possible.