Ten Authors Who Write Great Dialogue | LitReactor

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1. Douglas Adams

The author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy blends the fantastical with the prosaic (neatly distilled into an alien named Ford Prefect) in his snappy, fun style. perhaps his ability to converse is due to the fact that he started out as a radio soap opera writer before turning his hitchhiking episodes into novels. from the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy:

‘baby,’ said ford, ‘you’ve got three pints to spend.’

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‘three pints?’ Arthur said. ‘at lunch time?’

the man next to ford smiled and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. he said, ‘time is an illusion. twice as much at lunchtime.

‘very deep,’ said arthur, ‘you should send it to the reader’s digest. They have a page for people like you.

‘drink’.

2. Judy Blume

the young adult expert has touched the hearts of countless teens and tweens over the years, establishing a world that is both safe and risky, honest and entertaining. much of his success is due to his unequivocal understanding of the workings of the adolescent mind and mouth. are you there god? it’s me, margaret:

Nancy spoke to me as if she were my mother. ‘margaret, darling, you can’t miss laura danker. the big blonde with the big you-know-what!

‘oh, I noticed her right away,’ I said. ‘she is very beautiful.’

‘beautiful!’ Nancy snorted. be smart and stay away from her. she has a bad reputation.

‘what do you mean?’ I asked.

‘my brother said she goes after the a&p with him and the moose’.

‘and,’ added janie, ‘she’s been wearing a bra since fourth grade and I bet she’s getting her period.’

3. Jeffrey Eugenides

eugenides has written three highly successful novels, the virgin suicides, middlesex and the most recent the marriage plot. The Detroit Greek native is long on poetic descriptions, but he is that rare novelist whose eloquence sounds natural in his character voices. from middlesex:

‘well, the way you pretend to be blind is just, you stumble a lot. But the thing is, this blind man in Bermuda never trips. he stands tall and knows where everything is. and his ears are always focused on things.’

I turned my face away.

‘see, you’re crazy!’

‘I am not’.

‘you are.’

‘I’m being blind,’ I said. I’m looking at you with my ear.

‘ouch. it’s okay. yes, like this. that’s really good.’

Still holding my hand, he leaned closer and I listened, felt, ever so gently, his warm breath on my ear. “Hello, Tiresias,” she said, laughing. ‘It’s me. Antigone.’

4. Barbara Kingsolver

In addition to being a widely published novelist, Kingsolver is also a poet and essayist. his dialogue is sharp and memorable, an absolute force of meaningful emotion. from the poison wood bible:

‘with all due respect,’ my father said, ‘this is not the time or the place for that kind of business. Why don’t you sit down now and announce your plans after I’m done with the sermon? the church is not the place to vote anyone in or out of public office.’

‘the church is the place for it,’ said tata ndu. ‘ici, maintenant, we are voting for jesus christ in office of personal god, people of kilanga.’

The father did not move for several seconds.

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tata ndu looked at him curiously. ‘excuse me, I wonder if I have paralyzed you?’

father finally found his voice. ‘you do not have.’

5. Elmore Leonard

the crime novelist’s dialogues are so catchy, so agile, so easy to say, that his novels and stories have become some of the most famous movies in hollywood: get shorty, jackie brown, 3:10 to yuma, out of sight and, of course, the excellent justified special effects series starring leonard’s terse lawman raylan. out of sight:

‘you sure have a lot of shit here. What is all this? handcuffs, chains… what is this?

‘for your breath,’ karen said. you could use it. put some in your mouth.

‘devil, it’s mace, huh? what do you have here, a billy? use it on the poor unfortunate criminals… where’s your gun, your pistol?

‘in my bag, in the car’. she felt her hand slide from her arm to her hip and rest there and said, ‘you know you don’t have a chance of making it’. the guards are already here, they will stop the car.

‘they are already in the baton persecuting Cubans’.

His tone was calm, unhurried, and surprised her.

‘I programmed it to slip through the cracks, you might say. I was even going to blow the whistle myself if necessary, send out the amber alert, have them running around in confusion by the time I got out of the hole. boy did it suck in there.

“I think so,” Karen said. You’ve ruined a $3,500 suit my father gave me.

She felt his hand move up her thigh, the fingertips brushing her pantyhose, the way her skirt was pulled up.

‘I bet you look great too. tell me why in the world you ever became a federal marshal, jesus. in my experience with bailiffs, they’re all beefy guys, like big-city idiots.

“The idea of ​​going after guys like you,” Karen said, “appealed to me.”

6. Sinclair Lewis

Perhaps because Lewis was also a playwright, he shows a deft handling of dialogue in his many novels. his characters not only speak, they sing. from main street:

didn’t remember, what was it?, kennicott sitting next to her in the fort whimpering, urging, ‘look how scared that baby is. he needs a woman like you.

magic had fluttered around her, the magic of the sunset, the fresh air and the curiosity of lovers. she held out her hands to both that sainthood and the boy.

entered the room, doubtfully sucking his thumb.

‘hello,’ she said. ‘what’s your name?’

‘heh, heh, heh!’

‘you’re absolutely right. I agree with you. dumb people like me always ask children their names.

‘heh, heh, heh!’

‘come here and I’ll tell you a story of… well, I don’t know what it will be about, but it will have a skinny heroine and a prince charming.’

7. Toni Morrison

morrison is one of the great writers of our time. his novels are rich and tangible, and never more so than through the vivid dialogue offered by his deeply textured characters. from beloved:

‘something funny about that girl,’ paul d said, mostly to himself.

‘funny, how?’

‘acts sick, sounds sick, but doesn’t look sick. good skin, bright eyes and strong as a bull.

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‘she is not strong. she can barely walk without holding on to something.

‘that’s what I mean. she can’t walk, but I saw her lift the rocking chair with one hand.

‘you didn’t’.

‘don’t tell me. ask denver she was there with her.

8. Jean Rhys

the dominican novelist turned jane eyre upside down with a wide sea of ​​sargassum and created a totally original voice, a stream of consciousness in good morning, midnight. her characters fly off the page into a fully realized dimension thanks to her force of conversation. of the wide sargassum sea:

‘then why don’t you ever come near me?’ she said. ‘or kiss me, or talk to me. why do you think I can take it, what reason do you have to treat me like this? do you have any reason?

‘yes’, I said, ‘I have a reason’, and added very softly, ‘my god’.

‘you are always invoking god’, he said. ‘believe in God?’

‘of course, of course I believe in the power and wisdom of my creator’.

She raised her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth turned down in a quizzical questioning way. she for a moment she looked a lot like amélie. maybe they are related, I thought. it’s possible, it’s even likely in this damned place.

‘and you’, I said. ‘believe in God?’

‘it doesn’t matter’, he replied calmly, ‘what I believe or what you believe, because we can’t do anything about it, that’s how we are.’ she knocked a dead moth off the table.

9. John Steinbeck

the prolific nobel and pulitzer prize winning author created full, vibrant universes populated with enduring characters. his dialogue is such that a reader can hear it as if it were being spoken aloud; the words do not lie inert on the page. of mice and men:

‘I forgot,’ Lennie said quietly. I tried not to forget. honestly, i did, george.

‘okay, okay. I’ll tell you again. I have nothing to do I could spend all my time telling you things and then you forget them, and I say them again.

‘i tried and i tried,’ said lennie, ‘but it didn’t help. I remember about the rabbits, George.

‘to hell with rabbits. that’s all you can remember are those rabbits. okay.! Now listen and this time you have to remember so we don’t get into trouble. do you remember sitting on that gutter on howard street and looking at that blackboard?

lennies face broke into a delighted smile. ‘why sure, george, i remember that… but… what did we do then? I remember some girls came and you say… you say…’

‘To hell with what I say. remember we used to go to murray and ready’s and get work cards and bus tickets?

‘oh sure, george, now i remember’. Her hands quickly went to the side pockets of her coat. she said she softly, ‘george… i don’t have mine. I must have lost. she looked at the ground in despair.

‘never had any, you crazy bastard. I have both here. Do you think I’d let you bring your own business card?

Lennie smiled with relief.

10. David Foster Wallace

Wallace was one of the most innovative writers of our time, influencing an entire generation of authors with his self-conscious, existential, and post-ironic approach to writing. wallace wrote dialogue like no other: he did everything his way, and his way was unique. from the system broom:

‘do you want to hear what I think?’ says mindy metalman lang.

‘I’m a huge ear,’ says rick vigorously.

‘I think you’re just tired, tense and understandably upset, and so you’re not being fair and making up these lies.’

‘and who can i ask has the temerity to claim i’m making up lies,’ rick says briskly under his breath, looking up and away. his face is full of light.

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