: Re: How to plan dialog and keep it on track? When I'm writing a plotline, it often works out that I know two characters will be meeting each other in a particular scene, and that they will converse.

@Eichhorn147

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I've discovered from experience that whenever I try to shoehorn my dialogues into how I think they should go or how I want the scene to work out, they always end up very stilted and unnatural.

The method that I've found works for me is only having an end-state in mind. That is, Person A should now have this knowledge, Person B this knowledge, etc. And then maybe something like "Person A should feel like they're trapped".

Then I simply let the conversation flow between the two characters, no matter how it comes out (but always keeping the end-state at the back of my mind). Sometimes I'll achieve the exact outcome I wanted, other times it means I need to rethink either this scene (is this really the best way to convey this information?) or rework previous/future scenes (can this happen/be conveyed in another scene instead?) - but I find that doing this makes for much more natural dialogue.

As always, YMMV on this - it's very much a character-driven approach and relies on you being very familiar with how they think and act. It does also mean that I need to go back later and revise the dialogue, because natural speech =! effective writing.

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