dialogue-polish
Dialogue polish
Good dialogue is not how people talk. Real speech is full of "um", repetition, and pleasantries that would bore a reader in a page. Good dialogue is how people talk with the boring parts removed and the tension left in: people interrupting, dodging, answering the question they wish they had been asked, and saying less than they mean. The reader hears natural speech; the writer has actually made something much more compressed.
Two failures account for most stiff dialogue. Everyone sounds the same (the author's voice in every mouth), and everyone says exactly what they mean ("I am angry because you forgot my birthday"). This skill revises a conversation to fix both, keeping the writer's story, characters, and intent. It changes how things are said, not what happens.