In an episode from the recent remake of The X-Files, one character’s dialogue tried to tie together two disparate events into one unified theme with a heavy-handedness that dragged me right out of the story. I wasn’t alone in my reaction. A reviewer described that same dialogue as having “all the convoluted desperation of a three a.m. term paper thesis.” On-the-nose dialogue sticks out.

The expression comes from hitting something “on the nose,” or getting it exactly right. When referring to dialogue, it generally means that a character says exactly what they’re thinking. My definition of on-the-nose dialogue is broader and includes when characters say exactly what the writer needs them to say for the sake of an audience. The problem with on-the-nose dialogue is threefold: it’s unbelievable, boring, and pulls the audience out of your story.

Let’s look at some types of on-the-nose dialogue and how to avoid them.

The first type is when characters say exactly what’s on their minds. Imagine an older married couple staring at the negative result on a home pregnancy test, and the husband asks the wife, “How do you feel?” And she replies, “Well, I guess I’m mostly relieved, but it’s kind of bittersweet too because while our lives won’t be completely upended, I’m a little sad not to have another baby since our children are all grown up.” Do real people talk like that? Was her speech interesting? Did it make you engage at all as a reader? Most of the time, people don’t say exactly what they mean. Look for the subtext, or the indirect meaning, in a scene. Can characters express themselves by what they don’t say or by something they do instead? Suggesting by showing rather than telling is more believable and makes the audience invest in figuring out the characters.

Another type of on-the-nose dialogue results from the dreaded data dump, or exposition that the audience needs. Too often, writers have characters tell each other things they already know just for the sake of the audience. For example, two crime scene technicians already know how luminol works; it’s unbelievable that one would explain to the other the science behind it. And at Thanksgiving dinner, the relatives already know that Uncle Bill is a serial cheater who always marries the other woman; no one would likely announce to the others that he’s on his third, fourth, or fifth wife. A character might, however, crack a joke based on that unsaid, shared knowledge. To avoid a data dump of expository dialogue, find another source for the information.

On-the-nose dialogue also can result when the writer uses a character to restate the story’s theme. The fix? Just don’t. Don’t do it. If you’ve crafted a sound story with believable characters, your audience already gets your theme; you don’t need dialogue to hammer it home. Instead, if you want to echo the theme, look for an image, action, sound, or music that can do the same thing. You’re showing rather than telling, and since it’s more subtle, the audience will work harder and delight in their discovery.

What if you’re stuck and don’t know how else to get the needed information down on the page? That’s what first drafts are for. It’s okay to write on-the-nose dialogue at first to make sure the scene is complete. Just make sure to go back with your editor’s red pen and revise, looking for places to use subtext, other sources for exposition, and different ways to make your theme resonate.

Brutus: Peace! Count the clock.
Cassius: The clock has stricken three.
- Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Brutus and Cassius may have been talking about clocks in 44 B.C., but the first mechanical one wasn’t invented until the mid-thirteenth century. This famous anachronism illustrates the problems in writing historical dialogue. The dialogue has to be of the time and yet not too obscure for modern audiences. And even if the dialogue manages to be true to the time, it also has to be true to the audience’s sense of that time.

Let’s start with the most obvious problem: historical dialogue should avoid anachronistic words and phrases. A character in 1912 can’t describe another character as “goofy” or talk about a place being like “boot camp”; the adjective “goofy” dates to 1921, and “boot camp” came into use around 1941. A good etymological dictionary can catch these errors. Writers can also develop a feeling for the words and rhythm of speech in a time period by reading primary sources.

A more subtle problem occurs when modern concepts creep into historical works. For example, the phrase “making a good impression” or the word “negotiating” used as a euphemism for rougher dealings may not ring true in a work set in the late fifteenth century. Even in a show as meticulously scripted as Mad Men, modernisms sneak in. Again, relying on primary sources can help spot these interlopers.

Another challenge is making the dialogue understandable for modern audiences. For instance, calling a character a “glos colverd bricon” may be the greatest medieval insult ever, but if the audience doesn’t understand it, the words are wasted.

Here’s another tricky challenge: the dialogue has to be true to the audience’s sense of the time period. For example, the word “wisecrack” actually dates back to 1906, but it sounds as if it came later. If a story is set shortly before WWI, that word could jar readers if they associate it more with the 1920s and 1930s. If they wonder about a word, then it pulls them out of the story.

Coming up with believable curses that fit a time period is hard too. A colleague who is writing a screenplay set in the Renaissance noted that a curse with shock value back then may not shocking (or understandable) now. Conversely, things that we consider terribly shocking today may not have been then. Her solution is to stay true to an audience’s sense of what’s shocking today and write the curse with the flavor of the time.

Writers for children face another hurdle. Given the audience, it may be awkward or unwise to use real curse words. How does a writer handle foul-mouthed characters like pirates or gangsters in a children’s story? Robert Louis Stevenson solved the problem by making up his own imaginative curses in Treasure Island. The pirates say “By thunder!” a lot and call each other a “confounded son of a Dutchman!” In a more recent example, the writer in books that I edited used food-based curses for her mouse characters, such as “crepes!”

Writers that tackle historical dialogue face many challenges, but surmounting them is worth the effort. Understandable, believable dialogue transports audiences to another time and place.

Dialogue is more than words. It can show the reader how your characters interact. In every scene, characters talk (or avoid talking) because they WANT something. They may use different strategies to get it, communicated by words and actions. If one strategy doesn't work, then a character will try something else. That scene construction leads to conflict and forward movement in your story.

The simplest way to make dialogue realistic is to invest time listening to how people really talk. Tune in at a baseball game or concert. Eavesdrop on the booth behind you in a restaurant. Listen to children chatting at the bus stop. What you'll notice is that people don't give a summary of events because the person they're talking to already knows the situation and remembers what's happened to this point. Also (although there are exceptions) people seldom say exactly what they mean. How often have you heard a real person say something like: "I'm being extra particular about ordering my meal from the waiter because I want you to think I'm in control when actually I'm really nervous about being out with you for the first time." That may be an extreme example, but on TV last night, I heard this line of dialogue: "You are a bad woman because ..." I cringed for that writer.

Beyond listening to real people talk, WATCH how they interact. Listen for what isn't being said. This observation can spark ideas about what characters do when they want to avoid communicating. Do they fidget? Dive into their smart phones to play Sudoku? Actions say more than words about how your character interacts with others; they show rather than tell the reader about the scene's undercurrents.

Sometimes, just listening to real people isn't enough. Writing believable dialogue in historical fiction is a challenge. The writer teeters on a tight rope between evoking a sense of the period and being unintelligible to modern readers. If you're writing period dialogue, look at books written around that time, or for the 1920s on, movies. Note words and sentence patterns that convey a sense of the time while still being understandable to modern readers. Arm yourself with a good etymology dictionary to avoid anachronisms, but use your own discretion too about a word sounding right for the historical period. Even when you're right and the word is of the time period, if a reader wonders about it, then you've pulled them out of the story. An example is the word "bouncer." It's been around since the mid-1800s, but if I read it in a story set during the Civil War, will I wonder?

Dialogue is an indispensable building block for constructing scenes. Using these tips can result in characters that interact in engaging, believable ways, so that readers keep turning the pages to find out what your characters will say (and do) next.

This post originally appeared in Laurinda Wallace's SimplyLife blog.