Welcome to the first Warmup Wednesday! Every Wednesday during Nanowrimo this year, I’ll be sharing a different writing exercise to help you get into the swing of noveling. This week, we’re doing one of my favorite warmups: plain dialogue.

The beginning of a novel is all about characterization: establishing who your characters are, what they want, what they don’t want, and what goes on inside their heads. And where does characterization come from? Dialogue. (Well, among other things, but I’m trying to make a point over here.) Unfortunately, dialogue is among the top five things I have heard new writers complain about struggling with. It’s a very difficult beast to tame. So as you begin your novel this week, let’s talk about a way to warm up that will help you strengthen your dialogue skills and make sure your brand-new, shiny characters are putting their best feet forward.

I’d like you to look at the last scene you wrote that contained a dialogue exchange. If you did your 1,667 yesterday, it’s highly likely that you have something to work with in there. Now, open a blank word document on the other side of your screen or on a second monitor, or get out a sheet of paper, and copy that dialogue word for word, leaving out anything that isn’t a character speaking. No “she said,” no action sentences filling in the pauses, no description. Just what’s in the quotes, line by line.

Done? Ok, now read it aloud to yourself. Minimize the main document if you have to, to keep yourself from thinking about the stuff you know goes in between those words. Ask yourself, does this sound like people talking? Does the conversation flow like it would in real life? Basically, do these people sound real? Alive?

Now, we’re going to do something I normally don’t recommend during Nanowrimo: give yourself permission to make edits. First of all, because you probably saw some mistakes if you’re anything like me, and now you can’t just not fix them or they’ll drive you bananas. Secondly, one’s inner editor can be hard to shut down, and I’ve found that leaving some space for it every day is immensely helpful in easing yourself into the sea of imperfection that is the first draft. Let yourself fiddle with the dialogue, without any other words around to distract you. Then, when it sounds as much like a real conversation as it possibly can, put your dialogue tags and action sentences back in and rest on your laurels. You just improved your dialogue a lot.

This is not only a good way of revising dialogue that feels a little off to you, but also a great exercise to begin your writing session with as it brings you into close contact with the unique voices of your characters. You can now start on your daily word count with those voices ringing loud in your ears, shouting at you about all the horrible things you’re about to put them through in the next 30 days.

And now that I’ve made you do that by hand, I’m going to show you a trick. If you’re using Scrivener (which, by the way, you can get a discount on if you sign up for Nanowrimo!), go to Edit > Writing Tools > Dialogue Focus (on some versions this is called Linguistic Focus) and select “Direct Speech” in the window that pops up. Everything that’s not dialogue will be grayed out until you re-select “None” or close the window. This gives you a quick way of checking how your dialogue is looking as you write, without having to copy it down elsewhere. The shortcut for bringing this up is Windows key (or Command on Mac) + Control + L.

Happy writing!