I finally got good feedback on a dialogue prompt I posted

I shared a writing prompt about two strangers stuck on a broken elevator and someone said my dialogue felt too stiff. They pointed out that real people interrupt each other and talk over one another. So I went back and rewrote the whole thing with more natural breaks and half finished sentences. The new version got way more engagement in the thread. Has anyone else gotten a small critique that totally shifted how you approach a prompt?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_drew1mo ago

Ha, same thing happened to me with a horror prompt I wrote. Someone pointed out my characters were too polite for a crisis and I had to go back and make them snap at each other like actual scared people would, and the whole thing came alive after that.

west.casey1mo ago

Wait have you noticed how this same thing shows up everywhere once you start looking? I swear half the frustration in my day to day life comes from people talking in that overly polished, scripted way instead of just being messy with their words. Like at work when someone sends a perfectly crafted email but then you talk to them in person and they stumble and interrupt themselves constantly. The real version of people is the one with the half finished sentences and the awkward pauses. It's like we've been trained to think good writing means clean and tidy when actually the most human thing you can do is leave some rough edges in there. Your elevator scene probably feels alive now because you let the characters sound like they're actually figuring out what to say in real time instead of reading from a script.

murphy.tessa1mo ago

Isn't it funny how those tiny fixes can change the whole dynamic of a scene? It reminds me of how we interact in real life - people never finish their thoughts, they cut each other off, and half the time they're just making sounds to show they're listening. Breaking up dialogue with those interruptions and trailing off makes it feel like eavesdropping on actual humans instead of reading a script. Once you start noticing how messy real conversations are, it's hard to write them any other way.