# Which novelist has the best dialogue? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 21, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413 "2010-07-21T01:35:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/21 "2010-07-22T15:40:06Z")
I’ll ditto Elmore Leonard and Larry McMurtry, and add Robert B. Parker and Ed McBain. I don’t know who’s best, but I enjoy the dialog of all of these guys. ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/22 "2010-07-22T16:59:04Z")
I didn’t really appreciate Ernest Hemingway’s dialog until I heard William Hurt read _The Sun Also Rises_. His dialog always seemed too, I don’t know, bare, I guess. But apparently that was my lack of imagination. Hearing Hurt read it brought it to life. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/23 "2010-07-22T17:17:19Z")
Boston lawyer turned novelist George V Higgins is the best dialogue writer I have ever read. \*It has, by now, become something of a cliché to describe George Higgins as a “master of dialogue,” but that, in fact, is what he was. Higgins’s ear for the rhythms of human speech - for the shrewd, funny, obscene, discursive monologues that form the heart of so much of his work - was uncanny and unprecedented, and has exerted an influence on the novels and stories of a great many writers who followed in his footsteps, such as Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, David Mamet, and John Gregory Dunne, to name only a few. In Higgins’s novels, dialogue was always the single most important element of narrative, and it served a variety of functions: illuminating character, creating a sense of personal and historical context, advancing the often convoluted plots. No writer in recent years has so effectively utilized the idiosyncrasies of the human voice. No one, really, has come close. \* from Barnes and Noble ---
**Author:** ![Lethal\_Babydoll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3be4f8/32.png) [@Lethal\_Babydoll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lethal_Babydoll)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/24 "2010-07-22T17:18:25Z")
John Sandford in his Prey novels ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_C](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Captain\_C](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_C)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/25 "2010-07-22T17:49:10Z")
Terry Pratchett, hands down. Any conversation between Vimes and Vetinari have got to be some of the best written dialog sequences ever created. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/26 "2010-07-22T20:15:10Z")
Plato ---
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/27 "2010-07-23T10:37:04Z")
> [@Sateryn76](#): > > John Irving isn’t bad either. True. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/28 "2010-07-23T13:19:09Z")
Another vote for Pratchett, plus Patrick O’Brian. Completely different but both excellent. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/29 "2010-07-23T13:23:40Z")
I agree with **Sateryn76** : love him or hate him, King writes great dialog. He can be clunky sometimes, but I can always hear his characters talking in my head and it’s never contrived, trite, or just plain _wrong_. His exchanges are very natural - they’re great. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/30 "2010-07-23T13:25:17Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > I’ll ditto Elmore Leonard and Larry McMurtry, and add Robert B. Parker and Ed McBain. I don’t know who’s best, but I enjoy the dialog of all of these guys. I came in here to mention McBain. “Fat Ollie’s Book” has a section where Fat Ollie describes how hard it is to write dialogue, because people talking constantly interupt each other and do not go around calling people by name when talking to them. ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/31 "2010-07-23T13:31:00Z")
Not to everybody’s taste, I’m sure, but _Jack Vance_ and his artful circumlocution. ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413/32 "2010-07-23T14:27:24Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > Another vote for Pratchett, plus Patrick O’Brian. > > Completely different but both excellent. I agree about Patrick O’Brian. At least, that’s how I imagine sailors spoke 200 years ago. “You have debauched my sloth!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-novelist-has-the-best-dialogue/547413.md?page=1)