Hi Ava,
Good advice above. All I would add is: put some jokes in or some conflict. Both can help to liven up dialogue, as long as they're appropriate to the narrative.
Tony

Good point from Colin, that dialogue is not speech. It has to feel realistic, but good dialogue really isn’t, because true reported speech would either read like gibberish or be incredibly boring. There was a thread about this a while ago where I said this:

I came home from work on the bus this afternoon and watched (I use the word deliberately) two men in front of me having a conversation. It went something like: "Are you...er..?" "Aye... been to... said I have to go for a..." There was about 10 minutes of this before I got off the bus. The things that struck me were: obviously these two knew what each other was talking about and were filling in the unspoken gaps. Mainly though, I noticed how much was said by body language and facial expressions. These two factors can be conveyed in written dialogue but there is a terrible danger of it coming across as 'telling' rather than 'showing'. It is much more digestible for the reader if the dialogue is expanded to show the body language and, at the same time, the mood of the speakers.

No one else would know exactly what they were talking about, so this couldn’t be simply transcribed into dialogue. The skill, for us as writers, is to rewrite the conversation so that readers think it’s a genuine conversation.

Dee

Actually, from reading the posts on this thread a couple of times, I wrote a scene today (with dialogue) and it ain't half bad! In other words - I dont hate it!

So thanks!

Sarah

Cheers Gaius. Your comment is much appreciated.

Best

John

Hi Ava

That is the great thing about Write Words everybody pitches in and helps everybody else. Best 35 quids worth I 've ever spent.

Best

John

Hi Sarah

The next stage is to post it somewhere so we can discuss it with you. Then we can make suggestions which you can either accept or ignore. At the end of the day it is your writing after all. But if you want to grow and improve there is no finer way and no better place to do it.

Best

John