Yesterday, I got rejected by Space and Time.  Soon after the e-mail came in, I took a good, hard look at my short story to see if I could improve anything for the next magazine I submitted it to (Lightspeed Magazine).  It mostly looked good, but one thing I noticed was that when I wrote the dialogue between the two main characters, I wasn’t keeping certain things in mind that I should have.  Hopefully, you guys can learn from my mistakes.  Here are some things you should think about while writing dialogues.

• The social status of each speaker
• The setting/environmental factors
• The speakers’ ages
• Words that the speakers tend to say often
• How smart each speaker is
• What they want
• How much they enjoy talking
• How long they have to talk
• What they enjoy talking about
• Who else could be listening
• How the speakers wish to be seen
• Topics each speaker wants to avoid
• How much they trust each other
• Things only one speaker knows
• What each wants and is willing to give

With these in mind, your dialogues should turn out much more realistic.

The follower of the day is optionalcake.