Four Dialogue Tips from Matt Bird’s The Secrets of Story
Yesterday I wrote about Matt Bird’s The Secrets of Story, a book that has a lot to offer writers, particularly in terms of characterization and writing process. Bird is a screenwriter, so it’s no surprise that I found his advice on writing dialogue especially insightful. Today, I want to share four of his tips that I found most valuable.
1. Metaphor Families
Bird introduces the concept of “metaphor families,” which refers to the kinds of metaphors a character naturally uses in speech. He recommends identifying a metaphor family for each major character as a way of ensuring their voice feels distinctive.
He gives the real-life example of news anchor Dan Rather, who revealed his own metaphor family during the high-pressure 2000 US election crisis. Under that pressure, Rather, usually polished and professional, revealed his rural-Texas metaphor family:
“Don’t bet the trailer money yet.”
“This race is as tight as the rusted lug nuts on a ’55 Ford.”
“The presidential race is still hotter than a Laredo parking lot.”
With this example, Bird makes a great point: Although authors often reserve their most nuanced characterization for slower-paced scenes, it’s really in moments of high tension that carefully constructed facades tend to slip, and personality comes out unfiltered.
I’ll admit that the idea of each character having a distinct metaphor family feels a little sitcom-y to me, but I still find it a useful exercise. Thinking of my own communication style, these days, my metaphors drift toward running: It’s such a big part of my day-to-day experience that it’s just where my mind goes first. Before I started running, my metaphors were more likely to draw from the arts, especially painting and sculpture. My husband, meanwhile, gravitates toward astronomy metaphors—if you’ve read his books, you’ve probably noticed he tends to draw on comparisons to supernovae, black holes, and galaxies.
As Bird suggests, considering your characters’ metaphor families can help keep their voices distinct and prevent them from blending together.
2. Simple Constructions, Incomplete Thoughts, and Interruptions
Bird also points out that “real people” (as in, not writers or professors—his words, not mine!) don’t generally speak in dependent clauses, conditionals, or parallel constructions. According to him, our minds simply aren’t quick enough to build complex sentences on the fly—plus, we know we’re likely to be interrupted, so we tend to present one idea at a time.
I hesitated over this point. As an editor married to an author, I do often speak in dependent clauses and parallel structures, and the idea of stripping that away feels unnatural.
But I loved Bird’s larger point about how people (don’t) listen to one another: “People, as a rule, don’t listen to each other. Even when we try, we frequently hear only what we want to hear, not what the person is actually saying.” Instead of fully listening, we tend to listen just long enough to guess the meaning, then interrupt—or we ignore what’s being said and wait for a chance to jump in and return to our own interrupted point.
That dynamic—half listening, interrupting, responding to what we think was said rather than what was actually said—naturally produces incomplete thoughts and broken constructions in dialogue, and a character’s response may not always match what the other party actually said. Good dialogue should reflect those patterns.
3. Default Argument Tactics
Another of Bird’s psychologically sharp observations: Everyone has a default argument tactic. It’s the strategy we reach for first, often without thinking, even when we know it isn’t productive.
Some people explode defensively as soon as they scent conflict; some walk away before the argument can even begin; some respond with humor. For me, my instinct is to drop my voice, steady my emotions, and try to approach things logically and empathetically, with a focus on each person’s feelings—very much in line with what I was taught in school. The more upset I am, the more reasonably I try to behave. That doesn’t mean I’m incapable of responding in more inflammatory ways, but it’s rare that I do so.
A character’s default argument tactic is shaped by all kinds of factors: upbringing, past experiences, overall personality. (I’m lucky not to have grown up around people whose default tactic was aggressive or nasty, and that’s reflected in my own default tactic!) Knowing your character’s default argument tactic can add depth and consistency to their dialogue and behavior, especially in moments of conflict.
4. Introductory Words
Finally, Bird recommends trimming introductory words like “yes,” “no,” “well,” and “look” from dialogue: everything before the comma. Cutting them makes exchanges not only more concise but more interesting:
“Are you going to the picnic?”
“No, I'm going to the bar.”
“Do you love me?”
“No, but I need you.”
“Are you visiting Iowa?”
”Yes, we need the rural vote.”
While I wouldn’t say this works in every case, I think it almost always does. Those little words rarely add much, and cutting them pushes emphasis onto the more meaningful and interesting part of the reply. It also requires the reader to connect question with answer—a task that’s not difficult enough to confuse us but is complex enough to engage us more deeply and even add depth and nuance. It can create the “chewing response” Donald J. Maass discusses in The Emotional Craft of Fiction (one of my top craft book recommendations).
Creating Distinctive Voices
Bird’s book is full of insights like these, but I found these four especially useful for thinking about dialogue: metaphor families, natural speech patterns, default argument tactics, and trimming introductory words. Together, they offer some fun, practical strategies for making characters’ voices distinct, believable, and alive on the page.
Enjoyed this article? Check out my recent blog posts on Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling.
