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Dialogue should sound natural while remaining economical. Revise dialogue to remove filler, strengthen characterization, and ensure each exchange advances plot or reveals character.

Dialogue in first drafts often includes excessive pleasantries, unnecessary explanations, and repeated information. Revision can tighten dialogue dramatically while improving its effectiveness. Real speech includes hesitations, interruptions, and incomplete thoughts, but transcribing speech directly produces boring dialogue. Good dialogue mimics natural speech while remaining purposeful. Remove filler words and expressions that don't strengthen characterization. If both characters say "um" and "like," maybe only one does—this creates distinction. Remove exchanges where characters repeat information the reader already knows purely for other characters to learn it. Each line should reveal something about character, advance plot, create tension, or accomplish multiple purposes simultaneously. Dialogue reveals character through what they choose to discuss, what they avoid, their vocabulary, speech patterns, and reactions to others. A character who speaks in brief sentences under stress but elaborates extensively when comfortable reveals character through pacing changes. A character who jokes to avoid emotional topics reveals avoidance through deflection. Consider subtext—what's unsaid beneath the words. Two characters can discuss weather while genuinely discussing relationship tension. The dialogue about weather is literal; the actual conversation is about intimacy and distance. This layering creates depth. Read dialogue aloud during revision. Your ear catches rhythmic problems, repetition, and unnatural phrasing that silent reading misses. If dialogue is hard to speak, readers will feel that difficulty, creating subtle awkwardness. Test whether removing a line of dialogue creates problems—if not, it probably wasn't necessary. Strong dialogue serves multiple purposes and creates efficiency.

Dialogue serves multiple purposes: revealing character voice, advancing plot, building tension, and creating intimacy between characters and readers. Effective dialogue sounds natural while remaining purposeful and economical.

Dialogue is often the most revealing element of characterization and one of the most difficult techniques to master. Each character should have a distinctive voice—not through artificial speech patterns but through word choice, sentence length, rhythm, and what they choose to discuss or avoid. Chekhov understood that what characters don't say is as important as what they do say. Subtext—the unspoken tension beneath dialogue—creates dramatic power. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy uses dialogue to reveal the vast differences between characters' inner worlds even when discussing mundane topics. Effective dialogue avoids exposition—characters shouldn't explain information primarily for the reader's benefit. Instead, they should speak naturally while pursuing goals and navigating relationships. Each line should reveal something about who the character is, what they want, or advance the plot toward its inevitable conclusion. Reading dialogue aloud is essential—bad dialogue sounds awkward and forced when spoken, while good dialogue flows naturally despite being carefully constructed. Remove filler words and pleasantries that don't serve characterization. Let silences and interruptions carry meaning. Create conflict within conversations where characters want different things and misunderstand each other. This generates authentic tension that propels both character development and plot forward simultaneously.

Ernest Hemingway developed this into his famous 'Iceberg Theory,' but the technique predates him. The key is understanding that readers enjoy inferring meaning. When you trust them to recognize what's being avoided, you create a collaborative reading experience.

Practical steps:
1. Identify the central tension before writing dialogue
2. List everything characters would avoid saying about this tension
3. Create a parallel conversation about something mundane with unusual intensity
4. Add 2-3 'pressure leaks' where the real subject almost emerges
5. Let one character come closer to truth than the other—asymmetry builds drama

The breakthrough moment carries exponentially more power because readers have been waiting. The longer you delay this release, the greater its impact.

The Echo Technique transforms simple callback references into windows of psychological revelation. In Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment,' Raskolnikov repeatedly distorts his conversations with Porfiry in his own mind, each misremembering revealing his paranoia and guilt more clearly than any internal monologue could.

The key is calibration. Too obvious a distortion breaks believability; too subtle and readers miss it entirely. Aim for the emotional truth of how the character heard the words. A mother who heard 'I need space' as 'I don't love you anymore' reveals her deepest fear.

Advanced application: let the reader witness the original conversation, then encounter the distorted echo chapters later. This builds trust with your reader as a co-conspirator who understands the characters better than they understand themselves.