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• Check for details. Men tend not to pay close attention to details; they don't usually notice expressions or body language; they stick to basics when describing colors and styles. Can you scale back the level of detail?

• Check for abstractions. Men tend to avoid euphemisms, understatements, comparisons, and metaphors. Can you rephrase your hero's dialogue in concrete terms?

• Check for approval-seeking behavior. Men tend to be direct rather than ask for validation or approval. Can you make your hero's comments less dependent on what the other person's reaction might be?

If You're a Man

Here's how to make your heroine's dialogue more realistic if you're a male writer:

• Check for advice. Women tend to sympathize and share experiences rather than give advice. Can you add empathy to your character's reactions and have her talk about similar things that happened to her, rather than tell someone what he should do?

• Check for bragging. Women tend to talk about their accomplishments and themselves in a self-deprecating fashion rather than a boastful one. Can you rephrase her comments in order to make her laugh at herself?

• Check for aggressiveness. Women tend to be indirect and manipulative; even an assertive woman usually considers the effect her statement is likely to have before she makes it. Can you add questions to her dialogue, or add approval-seeking comments and suggestions that masquerade as questions?

• Check for details. Women notice styles; they know what colors go together (and which don't); and they know the right words to describe fashions, colors, and designs. Can you ramp up the level of specific detail?

• Check for emotions. Women tend to bubble over with emotion, with the exception that they're generally hesitant to express anger and tend to do so in a passive or euphemistic manner. If you need your heroine to be angry, can you give her a really good reason for yelling?

• Check for obliviousness. Women notice and interpret facial expressions and body language, and they maintain eye contact. If you need your female character to not notice how others are acting, can you give her a good reason for being detached?

1. Eavesdrop (politely) as real people talk. How do two women speak to each other? How do two men speak to each other? How do a man and a woman speak to each other?

2. Can you guess the nature of each relationship? For instance, do you think the couple you've listened to is newly dating or long-married? On what evidence did you base your opinion?

3. Write a dialogue using what you've learned and applying the appropriate checklists from pages 167-168.

4. Read your dialogue aloud. Unnatural lines may hide on the page, but they tend to leap out when spoken.

5. Listen to someone else read your dialogue aloud. Better yet, get a man and a woman to read the appropriate parts. How do the lines sound? How do they feel to the speakers?

WHEN NOT TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING

Dialogue is an important part of story-showing, but some writers allow their stories to be talked to death. Straightforward narration is sometimes a better way to handle information.

Here's a list of what not to do with your dialogue:

• Don't talk about every single event. Not every action that happens in your story is important enough to be talked about. Not every word that passes a person's lips is crucial to the story line. Showing two people talking about something as insubstantial as the weather occasionally serves a purpose—perhaps to illustrate how uncomfortable they are talking about anything else. But keep this kind of conversation brief, and always consider whether the talk is there for a reason or if it's just filling space.

In her short contemporary romance Captive in His Bed, Sandra Marton uses such unimportant chat to illustrate how her hero's brothers begin their campaign to get the hero, Matthew, to talk about his troubles:

The brothers settled in their favorite booth and gave the waitress their order.

Alex