: Creating Dialogue So I've decided to become an Author. Frankly I have respect for the learning curve. My biggest problem that I have run into thus far is the conversations between characters.

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It's the same advice as for everything in the writer's craft: Write a lot and fail a lot. Publish wherever, on amateur prose sites, listen to critique, and improve.

At first you'll keep writing crap. Then, for a long time you'll keep writing crap but gradually you'll start noticing where you're going wrong, and start improving. And finally, some five novels worth of text later, you'll start writing decently.

Remember, you'll never fix your mistakes without external feedback. Find some community editors/proofreaders to point your mistakes out to you (and next time you write, scan your own text for these, before submitting to editor!).

Dialogue is one of easier parts of writing. Absorb some rules that will make both your and your readers' life easier:

no less than one paragraph per speaker, usually exactly one paragraph per speaker.
actors don't float in void exchanging lines. Mix actions and emotes with the speech.
until you've mastered assigning voices to characters, try to keep dialogues between two persons. Getting a dialogue of 3 or more is tricky for a beginner.
Learn to give your characters some characteristic voices that make them distinguishable without tagging them in the dialogue. Don't overdo that, don't make them sound like some parodies.

You can try some exercises:

describe an object through dialogue: one person asks, the other describes. The object is never named, though it's something moderately common (think a medieval peasant describing a helicopter.)
write a whole dialogue in a description. Two people talk behind soundproof glass, describe them in such a way that the reader will know what they talk about.
sneak a message past a dialogue party. One party of the dialogue is deadly scared of something, but keeps that a secret from the other. Make it apparent to the reader while keeping the other party of the dialogue in the dark. Bonus points: never name the feeling.
sneak a message past the reader. Make a dialogue, in which the reader will never suspect one asked an entirely off-topic question, and the other answered; covering with idle chatter the two exchange secret info which becomes known only when explained later.
Have an entirely non-verbal dialogue. Not a single word spoken, only emotes, but the two come to an agreement, or otherwise.
try to write a dialogue between three or more parties, tagging them only in the beginning and never later, leaving the reader without doubt who speaks what. Bonus points: no fancy accents or very mannered speaking. All three have the same education and ethnic background.
A dialogue where one party never speaks. Specifically, not a monologue. Bonus points: make the speaker quite satisfied with the result.

...but the best way to get them to work is to interweave them as parts of your works, not separate pieces. Most of them can add quite a bit to the value of the story, when executed right. I'd say non-verbal dialogues are ones of the best. Then, of course, you will fail a lot - but that is expectable. Just keep trying.

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