The Dialogue Dilemma We All Face

You know that feeling when you're writing a conversation between your characters and it just sounds... off? Maybe it's too formal, too expository, or reads like a script from an educational video circa 1987. You delete it. Start over. Delete again. Before you know it, an hour has passed and you're still stuck on the same three lines of dialogue, paralyzed by the fear that your characters sound like robots reading from a teleprompter.

Here's the thing: you're not alone, and the solution might surprise you.

Neil Gaiman, the master storyteller behind works like American Gods and Coraline, has a simple rule that applies to this exact problem: finish things. While this rule seems to address productivity rather than craft, it's actually the secret weapon you need to write dialogue that finally sounds like real people talking.

What Is Neil Gaiman's "Finish Things" Rule?

Gaiman has shared this advice repeatedly throughout his career: whatever you're writing, finish it. Don't endlessly revise. Don't abandon it halfway through. Don't let perfectionism stop you from reaching "The End."

The rule is deceptively simple. Gaiman argues that you learn more from finishing a flawed piece of writing than from perfecting the first chapter of something you'll never complete. Each finished work teaches you lessons that no amount of rewriting the same scene can provide.

But how does this apply to writing natural dialogue? Everything, as it turns out.

Why Dialogue Gets Stuck in the Revision Loop

Dialogue is particularly susceptible to the perfectionism trap for several reasons:

It's immediately obvious when it's wrong. Bad dialogue jumps off the page. When a character says something that sounds unnatural, you feel it in your bones. This makes it tempting to fix it right now, before moving forward.

We overthink how people actually talk. In our quest for "natural" dialogue, we second-guess every word choice, every contraction, every sentence fragment. We forget that real conversation is messy, imperfect, and often grammatically incorrect.

We use dialogue to do too much at once. We want it to reveal character, advance the plot, sound realistic, be witty, and convey information—all simultaneously. That's a lot of pressure for a few lines of conversation.

The result? We get stuck in an endless loop of tweaking and adjusting, never moving forward, never learning what the dialogue needs because we haven't seen it in context of the complete scene, chapter, or story.

How "Finish Things" Fixes Your Dialogue Problem

Here's the counterintuitive truth: the best way to improve your dialogue is to write bad dialogue and keep going.

When you apply Gaiman's "finish things" rule to your dialogue struggles, something magical happens:

1. You Discover Your Characters' True Voices

Characters don't reveal themselves in three perfect lines. They reveal themselves over the course of a complete draft. That throwaway comment in chapter three might inform how they speak in chapter one—but you'll never discover that if you don't reach chapter three.

By pushing through imperfect dialogue, you give your characters space to develop. You start to notice their speech patterns, their verbal tics, the things they would and wouldn't say. This knowledge comes from volume, not from perfecting every word before moving on.

2. You Learn What Dialogue Actually Needs to Do

When you finish a complete draft, you can finally see what each conversation is supposed to accomplish. That's when you realize the witty banter in chapter two is actually slowing down a tense moment. Or that the exposition dump in chapter five would work better as a brief exchange scattered across three scenes.

You can't see these structural issues while you're stuck on making individual lines sound perfect. You need the full picture.

3. You Stop Mistaking "Perfect" for "Natural"

Here's a secret: first-draft dialogue is often more natural than the over-polished version. Real people interrupt each other, trail off, say "um," and use poor grammar. When you keep revising the same conversation, you risk buffing away all those imperfect elements that actually make dialogue sound believable.

By pushing forward, you capture spontaneous conversations that might be clunky but feel real. In revision—of a completed draft—you can then trim the excess while keeping the authenticity.

Putting the Rule into Practice

Ready to apply this to your own writing? Here's how:

Set a "good enough" threshold. Before you write a scene with dialogue, decide what "good enough to move forward" means. Maybe it's "conveys the necessary information" or "feels roughly like these characters." When you hit that threshold, move on.

Use placeholders for problem areas. If a line of dialogue really isn't working, write [FIX: Character needs to reveal information about the murder but sounds too formal] and keep going. You'll figure it out in revision when you have more context.

Read dialogue aloud—but only after the draft is done. Yes, reading dialogue aloud helps, but not while you're writing it. Finish your draft, then do a pass where you read all the dialogue aloud and fix what sounds off. You'll be amazed how much easier this is when you understand the full arc of your story.

Track your learning. After finishing each piece, note what you learned about dialogue. Maybe you discovered your character is funnier than you thought, or that you over-explain things. These lessons compound with each finished work.

Remember: revision is part of finishing. The "finish things" rule doesn't mean "never revise." It means complete a full draft before you go back to perfect earlier sections. Revision is essential—but only after you've reached the end.

The Freedom of Moving Forward

The beautiful irony of Gaiman's rule is that by giving yourself permission to write imperfect dialogue, you actually end up with more believable conversations. You capture spontaneity. You discover nuance. You learn what your characters really sound like when they're not being micromanaged.

Your first draft dialogue might be clunky, overly formal, or too casual. That's fine. You're not building a house one perfect brick at a time—you're sketching the whole structure so you can see what you're actually building.

So the next time you find yourself stuck on a conversation, rewriting the same three lines for the tenth time, remember Neil Gaiman's wisdom: finish things. Write that awkward dialogue. Move forward. Complete your draft.

The natural, believable dialogue you're searching for is waiting on the other side.