: Re: Critique: three person dialogue Up until now, I'd only written dialogues between two persons. I'm not very sure if this dialogue is flowing smoothly. Is there anything I can do to improve its

@Hamaas631

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I think the flow of the conversation works fine. I found no confusion regarding who spoke, who listened, or why the characters participated the way they did. That being said, it wasn't really a three-way conversation. Tom spoke to two characters, both of whom listened. They took turns commenting without competing for ‘air time’, they didn’t hold different positions from each other, and never attempted to take the conversation in different directions. Both Adele or Anny wanted the same thing from the conversation (to listen to Tom). You could remove either of the characters and the conversation would require little change. This is not wrong for your story, of course. I can't know that. I'm just addressing the larger issue of conversation between more than two characters.

If you’re feeling that this dialogue isn’t popping, the reasons might be more basic. There isn’t any conflict here. Since drama is conflict, the exchange feels a bit flat (undramatic). Conflict doesn’t have to be big, it can be subtle. Really it just means divergent goals. Character 1 wants A, character 2 wants B. If they both can’t get what they want, you have a conflict. Since screenwriting is my thing, I tend to look for conflict in dialogue. Tom wants to convey his thoughts about possession. Adele and Anny want to listen. Everyone’s desires are served, thus no conflict. What if Adele was interested in listening, but Anny wasn’t. Maybe she just wants to relax and so resists the serious tone the conversation is taking. Now you have a compound conversation driven by conflict.

Finally there is subtext. Maybe I have too small a piece of your story to tell, but I detect no subtext. This is what screenwriters call ‘on the nose’ writing, which means that what your characters are talking about is all they’re talking about - there’s nothing below the surface with a different or deeper meaning. Only for reasons of making the point, imagine this. Anny loves Tom, she doesn’t want to hear him waxing about nothing belonging to anyone, because she interprets it as his unwillingness to commit to anybody romantically. Thus the comments she feeds into the conversation suggest this other take and further drive the conflict. I know I’m speculating a lot, but it’s tough to interpret small pieces of narrative.

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