The process of creating great dialogue is extremely important in any fiction novel or short story, especially in the area of character development. When your dialogue falls flat, even a great plot can't compensate for it. Dialogue that is well-done however can pull a character-driven story forward very easily.
The following are some general tips that I've found helpful when using dialogue in short stories and novels:
1) Picture your characters as if they were on a TV show or in a play.
Ask yourself if anything seems awkward or out of place. There are situations where your dialogue is grammatically correct but won't resemble anything to what someone would say in real life. Changing this is a problem for some people, but it will make your story more real and believable to your readers.
2) Keep in mind the age, education, and geographical region of your characters.
I live in Tennessee. While it usually only happens when I'm excited, the word "ain't" sometimes escapes into my vocabulary. I'm aware that I even adjust the way I speak around people on one side of my family as opposed to the other because they live in different regions.
Children (usually) are going to have a more limited vocabulary compared to adults. People of different generations also have different slang terms. An example of this is the word "thong"-which to some people means a shoe, a flip-flop. This can sometimes provide humor for you: For example, the reaction of a grandson when his grandmother asks him if he's seen her thongs laying around anywhere.
3) If you're writing something you want to be long-lasting, be sparing on slang.
As of now, I'm 24 years old. I find myself using the word "sweet" (basically meaning "really great") in talking with people, probably more than I'd like to admit. I don't put it in my writing though, because there's a chance that it can be outdated by another word any day now (if it hasn't already).
In some cases slang may help you as a historical marker, but you also run the risk of a future reader not knowing what you mean. Some readers have fun figuring words out though, so it's basically a personal decision.
4) If all else fails, read it out loud.
You may catch something that you didn't notice before. Does the dialogue flow well when you speak it out loud? Does it sound too long-winded or too short? Are the emotions you want to convey coming through in the dialogue itself, or are you going to need to provide other context for the reader?
5) Pay attention to your own conversations and those of others.
I've found that some conversations often bounce around from subject to subject rather quickly and apparently for no logical reason. People interrupt each other when they remember something important they need to say. You can also show the personality of a character by how much they talk and how much they listen.
6) Find ways around the "he said, she replied" cycle.
Nothing is more boring than reading dialogue where every sentence is followed by either the words "said" or "replied." It's not like they're bad words that should never be used, but they're overdone sometimes. Once you've establish who's talking, you can often leave these off and the reader assumes each new paragraph is a switch of character.
If it's a long stretch of dialogue, I like to occasionally add some sort of action, emotion, or character thought to the beginning or end of the sentence. (If it's important for the readers to know the emotion in the dialogue as they're reading it, you may want to indicate it on the beginning and not the end-this keeps them from having to read a long stretch of dialogue again.)
Either way, doing this helps keep the reader focused on who's speaking and adds to the story. There definitely needs to be indicators of not just what the character is saying, but how and why they're saying it.
I hope these tips have been helpful to you. Good luck in your writing!
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