Hot take: Getting told my dialogue was 'too on the nose' wrecked my writing for a month

I had this critique partner in my online group who kept saying every line I wrote was too direct. She pointed out a scene where my character said 'I'm angry because you lied to me' and asked if real people talk like that. At first I was DEFENSIVE but then I started listening to actual conversations at the coffee shop near my house. People talk around things, they change subjects, they say the opposite of what they mean. Has anyone else had their whole style flipped by one piece of feedback?

3 comments

3 Comments

sagecooper1mo ago

Whoa, wait - you actually started eavesdropping on strangers to improve your writing?! That's both genius and a little unhinged, I love it! But seriously, that "too on the nose" feedback can sting for real, especially when your first instinct is to defend every word. It takes guts to actually listen and change, so props for turning that rough critique into something that made your dialogue better.

davidkim1mo ago

My buddy actually did that eavesdropping thing too, he would sit at a bus stop with a notebook and jot down random snippets he heard. One time he wrote down this whole argument between a couple where the guy just kept saying "okay" over and over until she stormed off, and we used that for a scene where a character was deflecting instead of confronting. That kind of feedback from someone like @sagecooper really does force you to listen different, once you start catching the way people trail off or use silence it's hard to go back to writing those clean little lines that sound like a textbook.

jakeb811mo ago

Yeah, that eavesdropping thing sounds pretty out there but honestly it worked. I used to think good dialogue was just people saying what they meant clearly, but @sagecooper is right about listening to actual conversations changing things. Once I started paying attention, I realized most people don't talk like they're reading a script. They stop mid sentence, they use sarcasm, they let silence do the talking. That feedback really did mess with my head at first but now I can't unsee how flat my old writing was.