Learn how to develop a winning strategy for creating realistic dialogue for your characters.

Use this handy checklist when writing dialogue to avoid some of the more common pitfalls of this aspect of fiction. Give your reader the benefit of the doubt and let him/her decide how the character is speaking.

When you’re working on a novel, your characters develop through dialogue. How much of your dialogue is based on actual conversations you have had or overheard? There’s no “perfect” percentage, but chances are you’re not relying on the outside world enough.

Go out to a coffee shop, sit down with your notepad and listen. Having trouble getting into the head of your rock star supporting character? Go to a concert. Can’t figure out how two of your office characters are going to react to each other? Go find an office.

Real world dialogue presents a challenge to many writers, and creating realistic dialogue in a fictional world can be even more trying. Here are some tips for improving dialogue:

Always carry around a notepad. Interesting dialogue can strike at any time, and good writers are always prepared to record any new ideas or information at a moment’s notice. Human beings forget most new information, and attempting to recall certain events or conversations even hours after they’ve happened can be almost impossible.

Write news articles every day. Treat an event like a news story and write it as such, using a simple set of rules. Don’t make up dialogue—keep a notepad handy in order to record direct quotes as they happen. Ask friends and family members to play along and ask them questions regarding an event. Record their responses and write a news article based on the dialogue record.

Do not paraphrase. Record dialogue as realistically as possible, using quotation marks and shorthand to record faster. Paraphrasing does not help create realistic dialogue because it simply isn’t accurate enough.

Rent documentaries. Documentaries are great resources for real-world dialogue education. Documentaries are like unscripted movies and can offer a recorded glimpse of how people in the real world speak and act without a script or stage direction. Documentaries also provide a wide range of characters that can be developed in fiction.

Listening to the way other people talk is an essential part of understanding the science of communication. Books are also especially helpful, because they can provide added insight into the "how" and "why" of communication that we have a tendency to take for granted in everyday communication.

Balance fictional and overheard conversations to mutually enforce the work and make it sing.