Make Dialogue Work for Your Fantasy Novel

Drive the plot forward Through dialogue, the characters can trade information. Back story, information, needed knowledge and what has been going on elsewhere can be given to a character through dialogue. When a fantasy tale is written in limited omniscient, the hero needs to listen to others and read their mannerisms to gather data. In this POV good dialogue is essential.

Reveal Personality: What a character says or doesn't say, can reveal traits about their personality. When writing Fantasy in this POV what a character says is vital to giving the hero an insight to what others are thinking, and what they are feeling. When characters discuss a third person, the hero is given information they can use.

Back Story: Information is given through dialogue but the Fantasy author must be careful not to repeat information. Dialogue can give new light on events. Speech can add confusion to scenes with lies and deceit and add threat by not revealing information needed for the hero. It can add depth to character and realism to a situation by revealing emotion. How different characters react in dialogue can reveal personality traits, clarify loyalty, or give new slant to problems.

Locality: Accents, slang, colloquialisms, syntax and other habits can show different localities in dialogue. If the troupes characters come from different races and nationalities, they can have their own peculiar style of speech.

Conflict: Conflict within the group, bias, anger, dissention, flirting, romance danger or threat can be indicated by dialogue accompanied by revealing modifiers. Dialogue allows for argument, confrontation and conflict. How often do people in stressed situations explode, with the resolution drawing them closer, binding the troupe together, despite differences?

Often what isn't said, can tell the reader more about a character than a stream of dialogue. If a character fails to warn the hero of a threat, then the reader will be less likely to trust them and will be aware of foreshadowing, without the author needing to state the fact.

Different Views: The dialogue can give hints of threat, or emotion. If one character is threatened by a certain landscape while another sees it as welcoming, the reader is given a sense of threat. If a snow scene looks pristine and virginal to one character while the other sees the frigid expanse as a wasteland, the reader is given an insight to how the characters are feeling.

Tips:
1 Try to make dialogue work for you as you write.

2 Remember that dialogue is not real speech but is just an author's interpretation, used to give the illusion of speech.
3 Add gestures to modifiers and snippets of description to give an idea of location and surroundings. Remember dialogue without action can become boring.