ten bad pages The craft of writing. Obtained via strikethrough.
A legal-pad cover: Why Your Dialogue S^%$S, and how to fix it, $13

Why Your Dialogue S^%$S

And How to Fix It

$13

A printable and fillable editing workbook for finding the dialogue that sounds fine but isn’t pulling its weight.

Cut the explanation. Keep the pressure.

Printed to order, coil-bound so the pages lie flat, and shipped free to US addresses in about two to three weeks. The PDFs come with it: download them right after checkout. Buying it as a gift? Ship it straight to them. The QR code on the last page gets them the PDFs too.

Your characters probably talk too much.

They answer questions they should dodge. They explain things everybody in the room already knows. They tell us how they feel, then the prose tells us again just in case we missed it. Sometimes they’re funny for three pages and nothing happens.

None of this necessarily sounds bad. That’s why it survives revision.

Why Your Dialogue S^%$S is a hands-on editing workbook for finding the dialogue that sounds fine but isn’t pulling its weight.

One of the fastest ways to improve dialogue is to make it shorter, so the workbook starts there: take a dialogue-heavy scene and cut it by 50 percent. Not because short dialogue is automatically better, but because cutting forces you to decide what the scene needs.

What's inside

  • Start cutting

    Cut a dialogue-heavy scene in half, then work through the problems that hide inside conversations.

  • Printable or fillable

    You get both. Keep the pages beside you while you work, or type straight into the exercises, tables and audits.

  • For the scene that almost works

    The characters sound like themselves. There’s conflict. And the scene still drags. You don’t need better banter — you need dialogue that earns its space.

Look inside

  • The Dialogue Function Audit: tick what a conversation is doing, from moving the scene forward to making it funnier, then note what changes because it happens.
    Dialogue Function Audit
  • A before-and-after page: a first-draft exchange beside the same exchange after the cut.
    The Answer Can Go
  • The Second Conversation worksheet: what each character says beside what they’re trying to do.
    The Second Conversation
  • The Character Voice Map: how a character talks when nervous, angry, lying, dodging a question or wanting something.
    Character Voice Map
  • The Exposition Audit: the information a conversation carries, who in the scene doesn’t already know it, and a better way to deliver it.
    Exposition Audit
  • The Dialogue Editing Checklist quick reference: the conversation, the cut, what isn’t said, voice, and a final pass.
    Dialogue Editing Checklist

Inside the workbook

  • Cut a dialogue-heavy scene by 50 percent
  • Take away an answer and let a character dodge the question
  • Track what a character says against what they want from the conversation
  • Map how each character behaves when nervous, angry, lying or avoiding something
  • Find information stuffed into dialogue for the reader’s benefit
  • Strip away the prose and read a scene like a screenplay
  • Check what comes after the quotation mark
  • Run the whole thing against ten pages of your manuscript
  • Dialogue Editing Quick Reference
  • Printable PDF
  • Fillable PDF

Purchase includes a printable PDF and a fillable PDF. The printable version is for writers who want the pages next to them while they work; the fillable version lets you type directly into the exercises, tables and audits on a compatible PDF reader.

Printed to order, coil-bound so the pages lie flat, and shipped free to US addresses in about two to three weeks. The PDFs come with it: download them right after checkout. Buying it as a gift? Ship it straight to them. The QR code on the last page gets them the PDFs too.

Download right after checkout, and we email you the links too — they work for 30 days. Lose them? Email [email protected] and we'll send more. Not what you expected? Reply to your receipt within 30 days and we'll refund it.