Design Thought Leader

If a character is speaking, I just say the words to myself very quickly and almost always write them down with no corrections, which is completely the opposite of what I do when I’m narrating in third-person—I write and write and write. Actually, I’d like to get some of the looseness I have in the dialogue into the narrative. I’m very formal in the narrative… because I’m English, I think, and we have very formal ways of writing. But I like that looseness.

Dialogue shouldn’t be writerly. I try to keep the natural rhythm of people’s speech and not give it a literary texture, but it’s not always easy. You’re trying to force the plot forward, so you are going to give it a literary texture just to make the thing work. But I prefer natural dialogue if I can get it.

Zadie Smith
Novelist