Convincing dialogue in a story can be a difficult thing to master. Those who prefer to use dense, descriptive passages to exposit might have a strength for this, but they risk boring a reader who's hungry for action. Dialogue can move a story along and cover the bases in terms of exposition, or it can be tedious and redundant, getting in the way of the plot. A healthy balance is key.
I struggled so much to get back into writing after a long period of writer's block and one thing that helped me to get back into prose was writing screenplays. I'd taken classes in this, and it is a great way to get dialogue onto a page without having to push through passages of description setting a scene. I used these as templates later and fleshed them all out, but it was a useful tool in getting back into writing and finishing stories.
The main feedback I get from my work is my dialogue is good, but it tends to limit the scene to akin to watching a play. I haven't given much description of the room, the ambiance, or even what the characters look like, and I need to work on this. I also tend to rely on a lot of flashbacks, so I try to limit these in terms of exposition and character building. I've been working more on my scene building and character descriptions, but it's best to avoid introducing characters with a wall of words depicting them in great detail. Mannerisms, modes of speech and showing behaviours – furtive, angry, despondent – will all aid in building your character throughout the book, we don't need to see the whole picture then and there.
One piece of advice I came across recently was avoiding redundant words. I tend to overuse many words, like “just” and “almost”, so if you feel you've overdone it with a word, and it's definitely redundant, a quick find and replace can narrow these down and weed them out. I also came across another piece of great advice about that horrid word “said”. Don't be afraid to use this in your dialogue, it's concise and simple. Looking for adjectives for said can slow you down so much in dialogue scenes because you're searching or overthinking this particular word. Even if you use it as a place holder, and later you come up with a more appropriate adjective, replace it then, but there's no law that says you can never use “said”. I definitely overuse “mumble” and “muttered” in my dialogue. And provided you're clear as to who is speaking and when, you won't need to rely on this as much as you think, and your dialogue will flow more naturally. Pay attention to how a conversation plays out between two people in a cafe or where you work, and try not to assume a certain demographic speaks a particular way. You'll be surprised how many people have said, “They don't talk that way” when reading young adult books.
Setting a scene for me is the hardest thing, I often tend to pad these parts out in second and third drafts. I always tell people to get the skeleton of the narrative down first. Don't spend too much time agonising over words and passages, and don't get bogged down with sentence structure in the first draft. Polishing one passage over and over won't get the skeleton built. Scene building is important, but there's always time later to expound and flesh out moments to include more description.
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