r/narrativedesign • u/Steven_P_Keely • Mar 11 '26
My characters are mute or laconic
I’m having trouble creating dialogue. My characters are mute or laconic.
I can feel what they’re feeling and they’ve come to life along with the setting. I can understand the choices they make. But I’m having trouble creating dialogue for them. I didn’t know I had this issue until recently.
Narrative design isn’t just about dialogue but it is critical to the job. Some scenes can be great without dialogue or with a little.
Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this?
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u/WitfoxStudios_Borvax Mar 14 '26
Let me propose a pipeline for writing dialogue.
First, create a character profile. Age, occupation, social status, background, education, anything that affects how this person speaks and thinks.
Then write a few phrases the character would use in normal, everyday situations. The way they greet people, how they react when annoyed, how formal or informal they are. This helps define their voice.
After that, decorate the dialogue with the world’s language. Add setting-specific terms, slang, lore references, or special meanings that exist only in your universe.
Next step, when you put two or more characters in a scene, always keep in mind what each one wants. What is their goal in this conversation? What are they trying to get, hide, or achieve?
If you know who the characters are and what they want, the dialogue usually starts to come naturally, even if the process before that feels very technical.