---
name: dialogue
description: Write and audit dialogue that maintains distinct character voices, respects knowledge limits, uses subtext, and gives every exchange a conversational function. Use for any conversation, interrogation, negotiation, or spoken conflict.
---
# Dialogue v2.1

Every important character has a distinct voice profile. If two characters could be swapped without the reader noticing, the dialogue has failed regardless of how clever the lines are.

## Voice

Each voice profile should specify vocabulary, sentence rhythm, formality, humour, emotional leakage, social register, favourite constructions, silence patterns, and how the voice changes with audience. Draw these from `style/CHARACTER_VOICE.md` rather than inventing per scene.

Distinguish characters by more than tic. Vary sentence length, directness, formality, and what each chooses not to say. A character who is defined only by a verbal habit is a caricature.

## Knowledge limits

A character may only assert what they know, suspect, have been told, or have inferred. This is the most common dialogue failure: characters conveniently know things they have not learned. Route statements through the knowledge ledger.

Distinguish knowing from believing, and from hoping. Unreliable speakers should be marked as such in the profile.

## Function

Every exchange should have a conversational function: goal, resistance, revelation, negotiation, concealment, relationship movement, or escalation. A line that serves none of these is dialogue that exists to convey exposition to the reader.

Conversations should also change something — the balance of power, what is known, what is felt, or what is agreed.

## Subtext

Use subtext where it earns its place. Characters rarely state their actual concern directly, especially under pressure. Where a character is compelled to be direct, make the directness itself notable.

Exposition inside dialogue should be resisted, deflected, or traded for something — never simply delivered because the reader needs it.

## Craft

Vary line length and let silence carry weight. Do not write every line as a clean question-and-answer exchange; interruptions, evasion, repetition, and non-answers are often more truthful. Avoid characters acknowledging each other's dialogue with a "yes" or "I see" that no person would use.

Attribution should clarify who speaks without thrumming. Too many tags flatten rhythm; too few leave the reader lost in multi-person scenes.

## Audit

Flag: converging voices, knowledge violations, exposition as dialogue, unearned directness, characters agreeing too readily, and forced lines that exist to move plot. Coordinate with `narrative-voice` for POV consistency and `character-simulation` for whether the character would say this at all.