Dialogue Examples: 8 Classic Passages, Read Line by Line

Good dialogue is people doing things to each other with words. A line can ask, refuse, flatter, stall, accuse or change the subject, and the best exchanges leave somebody with fewer options than they had a moment earlier. The examples below are short passages from novels and plays that are now in the public domain, quoted exactly, with a note on what each speaker wants and which line changes the situation.

Read every example with three questions:

1. What does each speaker want from the other person right now? Not in life: in this exchange.
2. Which line changes what can happen next? There is usually one. Find it.
3. What is left unsaid, and how do you know it anyway? That is the subtext, and it only works when the reader can infer it.

After the eight classics there is an original scene revised five ways, the same material laid out as a screenplay, a punctuation reference for prose dialogue, and three exercises to try on your own draft.

1. Evasion that reveals character: Pride and PrejudiceLink to this section

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813), chapter 1.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

“Do not you want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife, impatiently.

“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

Mrs. Bennet wants an audience for her news. Mr. Bennet wants to enjoy withholding one. Austen lets him refuse twice without a word, reporting his silence in narration ("replied that he had not", "made no answer"), so when he finally speaks, his single line lands as a move: he names her want out loud and grants it with as little enthusiasm as grammar allows. We learn the shape of their marriage before anyone describes it.

What to take from it: a refusal does not have to be a "no". Silence, a literal answer to the wrong question, or naming the other person's motive all refuse, and each one tells us who the speaker is.

2. Two people, one argument, mirrored lines: A Christmas CarolLink to this section

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), Stave One.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?"

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."

The nephew wins this exchange by repeating Scrooge's own sentence back with the terms reversed. The structure is the argument: the same three beats, with poor turned to rich and merry turned to dismal. Dickens then gives Scrooge the defeat in narration, "having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment", and has him fall back on "Bah!" and "Humbug." A character reduced to repeating a catchphrase has lost.

What to take from it: when two characters want opposite things, give them parallel lines. The reader hears the clash in the rhythm before weighing the content.

3. Exposition as an argument: A Scandal in BohemiaLink to this section

Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia" (1891).

"You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room."

"Frequently."

"How often?"

"Well, some hundreds of times."

"Then how many are there?"

"How many? I don't know."

"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen."

This is exposition: Doyle needs the reader to understand Holmes's method before the case begins. Instead of having Holmes explain it, he has Holmes test Watson and win. The short questions speed up as the trap closes, and Watson's answers shrink from "Frequently" to "I don't know." The point is made by a small defeat we can watch, and the number Holmes then supplies, seventeen, is the proof.

What to take from it: if a character must explain something, give the explanation an opponent. Information delivered as part of a contest reads as drama rather than briefing.

4. Conflict over manners: Alice's Adventures in WonderlandLink to this section

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), chapter 7.

"Have some wine," the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. "I don't see any wine," she remarked.

"There isn't any," said the March Hare.

"Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it," said Alice angrily.

"It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited," said the March Hare.

The offer is a trap, and Alice walks into it by being reasonable. Each speaker accuses the other of the same fault, and the March Hare's last line works because it is true: Alice did sit down uninvited. Carroll's comedy depends on both sides being partly right, which is also what makes ordinary arguments hard to end.

What to take from it: the strongest counter-line is one the other character cannot simply deny. Give the antagonist a fair point.

5. Comic rhythm through repetition: The Importance of Being EarnestLink to this section

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act I. In a play, the speaker's name stands above each speech, as a character cue does in a screenplay.

Lady Bracknell's two words do all the work. By repeating Jack's answer as a question, she makes him defend it, and every detail he adds to sound respectable ("black leather", "with handles", "ordinary") makes his position more absurd. The stage directions ask the actor to play it straight, which is why it is funny. A few lines later she does it again: "The cloak-room at Victoria Station?"

What to take from it: an echo is one of the cheapest ways to apply pressure. When one character repeats another's words back, the first speaker has to justify them.

6. One line that holds a whole worldview: The Great GatsbyLink to this section

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925), chapter 6.

"I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"

Nick offers the sensible view. Gatsby's reply is short, and it tells us almost everything the novel is about: he does not merely hope to win Daisy back, he believes time can be undone. Fitzgerald gives it no explanation. Instead he follows it with a physical image, Gatsby looking "around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house," and lets the reader do the rest.

What to take from it: you do not need a speech to reveal a character's central belief. Let someone else state the reasonable position and have your character reject it in a few words.

7. When to stop hinting: Jane EyreLink to this section

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), chapter 23.

"I tell you I must go!" I retorted, roused to something like passion. "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!"

Indirect dialogue is not always better. Jane has spent chapters concealing her feelings from Rochester, and this is the moment the pressure breaks. The speech earns its directness from everything she has held back. Notice how it is built: a run of questions that each push harder, the list "poor, obscure, plain, and little" taking his likely objections in turn, and a three-word answer to all of them.

What to take from it: plain speech is most powerful after a long silence. If every scene says everything, a climactic declaration has nothing to break through.

8. Understatement at the end: The Sun Also RisesLink to this section

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926), the novel's last lines.

"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Brett offers a comforting fantasy. Jake agrees with the words and refuses the comfort: "pretty to think so" means it was never going to happen. Hemingway puts a stopped car and a raised baton between the two lines, so the interruption does the work a sigh or a speech would otherwise do. This is the iceberg theory at the scale of a single reply, and a clean example of understatement.

What to take from it: a reply can agree on the surface and disagree underneath. The gap between the words and the meaning is where the reader feels the loss.

What the eight examples have in commonLink to this section

Technique	Example	Use it when
Refusal without "no"	Mr. Bennet's silences	You want a power imbalance without an argument
Mirrored lines	Scrooge and his nephew	Two characters hold opposite positions
Exposition as a contest	Holmes and the seventeen steps	The reader must learn something before the plot moves
A fair counterpoint	Alice and the March Hare	An argument risks becoming one-sided
The echo	"A hand-bag?"	One character needs to put another on the spot
The short rejection	"Why of course you can!"	A belief matters more than its explanation
The plain declaration	Jane's "You think wrong!"	Pressure has built up over many scenes
Agreement that refuses	"Isn't it pretty to think so?"	An ending should carry loss without saying so

Each one works because a speaker is trying to get something and the other person's reply changes their chances. Style differs enormously between Austen and Hemingway; that underlying movement does not.

One scene revised five waysLink to this section

Studying finished passages shows the result. Revising your own shows the decisions. Here is an original scene taken from a flat first draft through five revisions, one technique at a time.

The situation. Leah arrives at a radio repair shop five minutes before closing. Her father leaves town tomorrow, and she wants to give him his repaired radio tonight. Tomas, the repairer, has fixed it, but the collection slip is in her father's name and Tomas wants the owner's say-so. Leah does not want to call: she told her father she lost the radio.

First draft. The facts are all here, and nothing happens:

"I need the radio tonight because my father leaves tomorrow," Leah said.

"I can't give it to you because you aren't the person on the slip," Tomas said.

"I'm afraid to call him because I told him I lost it."

"That is a difficult situation."

Both speakers explain instead of trying. Leah spends her secret in the third line, before she has tried anything else, and Tomas comments on the problem rather than acting on it.

Revision 1: give the request an obstacle.

Leah slid the collection slip across the counter. "You close at six?"

"Five minutes." Tomas reached for the radio. "Your father collecting?"

"He's packing. I'll take it."

Tomas kept his hand on the handle. "Get him on the phone."

"Could you ring him?"

"Of course. What's the number?"

Leah turned the slip face down. "Don't say I brought it in."

Now each line is a move. "He's packing" is information and an excuse at once. Tomas's hand on the handle makes his refusal visible. Her last line reveals the secret under pressure, which is far more interesting than volunteering it.

Revision 2: make the subtext specific. Vague hints ("You know how fathers are") make the reader work out the situation instead of feeling it. A concrete line does better:

"He still asks whether I've checked the station's lost property."

We infer the lie and her embarrassment, and Tomas has something definite to respond to.

Revision 3: put the exposition inside a decision. Tomas could list every part he replaced. Choose the one detail that changes what Leah does next:

"Just a loose wire. He won't have lost his stations."

"You kept them?"

"Didn't need to touch the dial."

She pulled out her phone. "I'll call him."

Her father will get back something unchanged, and that makes confessing bearable. Remove the detail and test whether her decision still holds; if it does, the detail was decoration.

Revision 4: shift the power without raising the volume. Instead of making Tomas more hostile, give him a reason to stay:

"Is he still riding that blue bicycle?" Tomas asked.

"He gave it to me."

Tomas took his coat off the hook, then hung it back. "We have time."

"We have time" reverses "Five minutes" without a speech, and the coat carries the decision.

Revision 5: let her say it plainly. After several evasions, as with Jane Eyre, the direct line becomes the strongest one:

"I broke it," Leah said. "Then I lied. Please stay while I tell him."

She is no longer asking him to help hide something. She is asking him to witness an admission, and the scene has turned.

The same exchange as a screenplayLink to this section

A screenplay presents dialogue without quotation marks or speech tags: a character cue in capitals, the line beneath it, and action written as what the camera can see. Here is part of revision 1 as a script page would lay it out:

The actions ("keeps his hand", "turns the slip face down") are the beats of the scene: they give actors and readers something to watch, which matters more on screen than on the page. The screenplay dialogue reference shows the real margins, and the annotated screenplay example has an opening page whose dialogue works the same way: a spilled coffee, a deadline and one word, "Cold."

Punctuating dialogue in proseLink to this section

These are the US-English conventions most style guides share. Other languages and house styles differ; whatever you follow, keep it consistent and make every change of speaker easy to see.

• New speaker, new paragraph. Each time the speaker changes, start a new paragraph, even for one word.
• A dialogue tag continues the sentence. "Keep it," she said. The comma goes inside the closing quotation mark, and the tag starts lowercase.
• Questions and exclamations keep their own mark. "Tonight?" he asked. No comma after the question mark, and the tag is still lowercase.
• An action beat is its own sentence. "Keep it." She closed the box. Closing a box is not a way of speaking, so it is not a tag.
• A line interrupted by a tag. "If you leave now," she said, "you'll miss him." The second half continues in lowercase because it is the same sentence.
• Said is usually enough. It disappears as the reader reads. Use action beats where a movement matters, as Tomas's hand on the radio does, not to avoid repeating "said."

Purdue OWL's quotation mark guidance covers the US rules in detail.

Three exercises for your own dialogueLink to this section

1. The silent refusal. Take an exchange where one character says "no." Rewrite it so they never say it: they answer a different question, change the subject, or name the other person's motive, as Mr. Bennet does.
2. The echo. Find a line in your draft that a listener ought to question. Have the other character repeat its key words back as a question, and let the first speaker dig themselves deeper, as Jack does with the hand-bag.
3. Earn one plain line. Choose your most important scene. Go back through the earlier scenes and remove any place where the character already says the thing outright. Save it for the moment it costs them something.

For timed practice with a partner or a class, the seven dialogue exercises build on these. To see how a scene's first lines set up what its dialogue has to do, read how to start a story.

When you revise a scene in Plot, keep a save point before you start, then compare the two versions side by side. Read both aloud. Keep the one where you can say what each person wanted and what changed by the end.