Dialogue is not Human Speech (it just sounds like it)

I heard the above this morn and realized how very true it is. I mean, I knew it was true anyway (I tell enough people), but hearing it out loud and from someone else’s mouth really brought it home to me.

If your fiction dialogue sounded like your everyday, fer-real dialogue your readers would be bored. You would be bored (or you should be – if you’re not then that’s another whole tin o’problems). It would take forever to get your message across … too many digressions, someone would always interrupt, and who wants to read or hear a conversation you could have in your own kitchen? (‘Did you leave your magic ring in the pub again? I swear, you would forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on. And did you remember to put the garbage out? That nuclear waste isn’t going to walk itself out, y’know.’)

It’s getting your info across; it’s making your characters interact; it’s making that interaction interesting; it’s not human speech – it just sounds like it. And making it sound that way? That, my friends, is an art form in and of itself.