Dialogue: Creating Tension between Characters

Question: How do you create tension and excitement in the dialogue when the scene you are writing isn’t exactly high tension?

Answer: What is dialogue? Dialogue is an interaction between human beings and you can always find or create tension between two people. It doesn’t matter if they are the best of friends. Lets say you feel like your dialogue is a little boring, you are revealing things and trying to move the plot along, but there is no real tension created. You want to look at the two characters who are having the dialogue.

We’ll use an example of two sisters. What was it that bugged one sister about the other? Maybe it was that one sister borrowed clothes and never returned them. Guess what, you can throw that into the scene and immediately create tension. They are having a dialogue and the sister looks down and sees her best dress crumpled up in the corner. Tension is mounting and the dialogue they were going to have is added to by tension you know existed in the relationship.

In memoir you know your characters very well, so it’s easy to add tension. You want to be true to what actually happened, but lets say that during that exact conversation there really wasn’t a crumpled dress on the floor, is it OK to put it there? Yes because it did happen, maybe not in that moment, but it did happen so it is a true and creates a believable depiction of the relationship.