Writing Realist Dialogue?

It’s stranger than it seems.

Photo by Nick Hillier on Unsplash

One of my favorite writing exercises is to go to a coffee shop for an hour to listen, to observe, to eavesdrop. I’m in a coffee shop right now, eavesdropping on multiple conversations, and I’ve realized a few things about dialogue:

• People mostly talk about themselves. They don’t ask a lot of questions. They’re just waiting to say the next thing…