Something that isn’t obvious is that conversations are more than just the dialogue. That is to say, the words exchanged by characters are only a part of the overall exchange, there’s more to it, and any work of narration featuring conversations has to deal with it somehow.

That is why we have actors, both in the traditional, theatrical sense and the more modern cinematic interpretation. They provide what’s missing to the dialogue alone – the subtleties of non-verbal expression and context provided by a visual representation of what is happening.

Conversations have a few roles in fiction and narratives. The most obvious one is the information conveyed for the sake of the audience so that they may understand what’s happening. This in itself can be executed more or less successfully, in the worst case leading to awful expository dialogue. But, sometimes, there’s another facet to conversations.

A conversation as a character piece, so to say, a way of expressing a character and presenting it to the viewer, or player, or reader.

Conversation is a way for the creator to talk about the character without saying anything explicit about them. Just like in interactions with real people, from what and how the character speaks we can deduce who they are.

Originality comes up often when discussing fiction. There’s a typical pressure for originality, as that is seen as a trait a narrative should possess. But at the same time, every author is bombarded from all sides by patterns and templates they are almost required to follow.

That’s a bit paradoxical, isn’t it?