Using dialogue in nonfiction

Dialogue in nonfiction transports us to a different time and place where the reader can experience the story, like in a movie. Used with discernment, dialogue can boost your writing to a new level.

Some people hesitate to use dialogue in nonfiction—after all, most of us don’t record our conversations. So writing dialogue can feel like we’re not being truthful. If you haven’t recorded a conversation, there are other ways to use dialogue.

Retelling a true story

The most obvious is by retelling an actual story. In this case you may think you have to use actual quotes, but this is hard if you don’t have a perfect memory. Instead you can use representative dialogue. You don’t remember the exact wording, so you recreate it as well as you can. Debbie Adams recreated dialogue when she wrote this in Japan Harvest:

“We have heard from Arkansas: your daughter has been in an accident and she didn’t make it.”¹

Most readers will assume that some of the dialogue is representative.² When you retell a story to a friend, your listener understands that you’re not quoting verbatim. This is a piece of dialogue that Judith Ricken wrote in a Japan Harvest article about an exchange at her local immigration office:

“Look I have number 2011 but I don’t need it anymore because I have already got everything done, would you like to have it?”³

Do you intuitively understand that she’s telling you approximately what was said?

But be careful not to make up comments or conversations that never happened—that is fiction.

Broad representative dialogue

A broader version of representative dialogue is this by Levi Booth:

When I meet a Japanese person, the conversation after the basic greetings often goes like this:
Them: “Wow, your Japanese is good.”
Me: “No, no, no! I have to study more.”⁴

Now that’s not an actual conversation, but represents conversations many of us have had. By relating a shared experience, he used it to great effect to draw us in.

Imagine reading the gospels without any dialogue. For example, the story about the paralysed man would look different without Jesus’ words (see Mark 2).

Tips to avoid mistakes

Here are other guidelines for writing dialogue:

• Share only what you need to communicate your message. Avoid sharing too much.
• Write realistic dialogue. This is hard. Writers are usually advised to spend time in public places “eavesdropping” on real conversations. That’s hard if you don’t live in a country that speaks the language you write in, but try it next time you overhear a relevant conversation.
• Write well. You can be too realistic in replicating dialogue. Good writing is not exactly how people talk. When we talk, we hesitate and repeat words, our grammar is often bad, and word choice is not always accurate. Don’t write like that.
• Only include relevant dialogue. Small talk will cause readers to skip to the next piece of interesting information.
• Use unobtrusive dialogue tags (he said, she said). It is important to tell your reader who is speaking. But you can distract your reader by using other words like this: “‘I don’t understand what you’re implying,’ she puzzled thoughtfully.” The dialogue is self-explanatory here and “said” is acceptable.
• Respect your reader. You don’t need to spell out obvious details. If you tell a reader something they can figure out for themselves, you aren’t respecting them.⁵

Next time you read a book with good dialogue, take note of what makes it good. When you read nonfiction, notice how the writer uses dialogue: how they’ve done it well, and what they could have improved.

Dialogue can give extra dimension to your writing. Give it a try.

1. Debbie Adams, “Standing firm in hard times,” Japan Harvest, Winter 2020.
2. Boni Wagner-Stafford, “The Terrible and Terrific Truth About Using Dialogue in Nonfiction,” https://ingeniumbooks.com/terrible-terrific-truth-dialogue-nonfiction/, August 28, 2018.
3. Judith Ricken, “Help with a visa extension,” Japan Harvest, Spring 2020.
4. Levi Booth, “Forget excellence, pursue generosity,” Japan Harvest, Summer 2020.
5. Boni Wagner-Stafford, Ingenium Books, “Getting Nonfiction Dialogue Wrong: 8 Bad Mistakes to Avoid,” November 13, 2018.