On-the-nose dialogue

On-the-nose dialogue is speech in which characters state precisely what they feel, want or already know, so the line carries no subtext and the reader has nothing left to infer.

If a woman's husband has died, she does not need to say I miss him so much. The reader has the information; what the line adds is the sensation of being told something obvious by someone who does not trust them.

The three recurring forms are easy to search for in a draft. Naming the emotion — I'm so angry with you — instead of letting behaviour carry it. Telling another character what they already know, which is exposition wearing a costume: As you know, we haven't spoken since Dad's funeral. And stating the theme aloud, usually in the third act, usually by the character who has just learned it.

The repairs are rarely subtle rewrites. Grief shows as a woman setting two places at the table and then clearing one. Affection shows as one character worrying about another, particularly unreasonably. Both are indirect, and both are more convincing than the statement, because the reader concludes it themselves.

A fast diagnostic: read the dialogue aloud in a flat monotone. Delivery cannot rescue it there, so if the line stops working, the words were never doing the job.