• Never, ever explain your dialogue. If it doesn’t convey what you want, rewrite it. 
  • Paragraph whenever a character starts speaking unless just a very few words precede the dialogue (He looked up.) Don’t bury your excellent dialogue—set it off. Paragraphing for dialogue also makes a dialogue scene look more inviting, thanks to the white space on the page.
  • Use plenty of sentence fragments. Most people do in conversation, so have your characters do it more often.
  • Use past perfect tense rarely—and only when it’s really necessary.
  • Screenwriter’s trick: Try to avoid direct answers to questions asking for a yes or no. The answer is nearly always obvious from the rest of the sentence.