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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18443
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Ask yourself a basic question: why are my two characters speaking to each other? Chances are, it is for one of the following reasons:

1. to prove how witty they are (and, by extension, how witty you are as author)

2. to ask about something

3. to confirm or deny something 

4. to avert suspicion

5. to blame or praise someone

6. to promise or threaten something

7. to explain something

8. to deny something

9. to help someone or frustrate / hinder them

For reasons 2 to 9, you can ask one or more of the following questions of yourself as author:

A. Why are they saying what they are saying?

B. When are they saying it?

C. To whom are they saying it?

D. In what circumstances are they saying it?

E. What are they trying to achieve by saying it?

F. What are they trying to avoid by saying it?

Once you start to ask these questions about your characters and their dialogue, you will see how you can add plot elements. If I'm blaming someone, something happened. What was it? If I am threatening someone, they have done something or might do something or have stumbled upon something ... tell me what it was. Set the context.

Asking yourself who these people are and why they are saying what they do will help you to understand who they are and give them things to do as well as things to say. It will help you to put them into situations. Characters need to be put into situations and then taken out of them again to advance the plot of your story.

As others have said, make sure you **have** a story! In the real world, people rarely talk without a context and the context in this case is what should inform and drive your plot.

If your dialogue primarily falls into the first category (to show off), then you really need to rethink what you are writing and why. Nothing wrong with showing off: celebrities are forever writing books which show them as intelligent, witty or erudite human beings. However, such books do not fall into the category of fiction as the term is popularly understood although they may be fictional nonetheless.

Original score: 2