The Dialogue Doctor Podcast

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**The Dialogue Doctor Podcast**

Writing great books is critical to generating sales and building a following of readers. On the Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins and other writers discuss how to write dialogue that will excite readers and help you sell more books.

Latest Episodes:

Why Readers Aren't Connecting with Your Main Character with Liz Woodiwiss [ep 351] Oct 19, 2026

Show notes

Why do some characters grab us almost immediately while others never quite come alive?

You can have an exciting plot. You can have beautiful worldbuilding. You can have a character you know intimately.

And readers can still say, "I just don't connect with them."

In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins sits down with developmental editor Liz Woodiwiss to explore what she calls emotional ignition. It is the moment when a reader stops merely being curious about a story and becomes emotionally invested in a character's experience.

Liz's interest in the subject began with her own novel. After finishing a massive first draft and beginning the revision process, she started getting an uncomfortable piece of feedback from alpha readers. They liked the story, they were interested in what was happening, but they weren't connecting with her main character.

Then her husband gave her an even more painful diagnosis: the novel sometimes felt like reading National Geographic.

That sent Liz down a year-long study of reader connection, showing versus telling, point of view, emotional engagement, and what actually makes a character feel alive on the page. Along the way, she began developmental editing, working through dozens of novel openings and several full manuscripts, and started noticing the same problem over and over again.

Writers were trying very hard to make readers care, but caring cannot simply be demanded. Readers need evidence. They need access to a specific human experience that allows them to form an attachment for themselves. That is where emotional ignition begins.

Jeff and Liz explore the difference between hooking a reader intellectually and engaging them emotionally. An intriguing opening line can create curiosity. An exciting event can create momentum. A dangerous situation can create tension. But none of those automatically creates attachment. To become emotionally invested, the reader needs access to the person experiencing those events.

The conversation explores:

why knowing your character deeply does not guarantee that the reader knows them
the difference between the "book in your head" and the book actually on the page
why authors often struggle to see missing emotional context in their own work
how developmental editing can expose the mechanics behind reader connection
why starting with action does not necessarily create emotional investment
how quickly writers should introduce a character's vulnerability, wound, or potential for growth
why readers need to feel as though they have a role in the character's journey
how a character's attention reveals what matters to them
why interiority gives readers privileged access to a character
how memories, judgments, expectations, and associations build emotional intimacy
why physical embodiment helps readers feel emotions instead of merely understanding them
how relationships reveal who a character is
why even an antihero needs meaningful connections to the world around them
how setting becomes emotionally meaningful through the character's perception
and how character voice distinguishes one fictional person from every other character a reader could follow
Jeff and Liz also discuss why novels possess emotional tools that visual media cannot use in quite the same way.

Film can give us actors, music, camera movement, and performance.

Fiction can give us direct access to another person's inner world. We can know what they notice. What they remember. What they fear. What their body feels. What assumptions they make. What they care about. And what they refuse to admit even to themselves. That access creates vulnerability between the character and the reader. And vulnerability creates connection.

Ultimately, emotional ignition is not about finding one perfect trick for making readers love a character.

It is about combining a series of craft tools to create the conditions where emotional attachment becomes possible.

Because the goal isn't simply to make readers understand what happens to your character.

The goal is to make them feel like they are experiencing it with them.

Check out Liz's article here: lizwoodiwiss.substack.com/p/emotional-ignition

How to Slow Down Emotional Moments So Readers Can Feel Them [ep 350] Oct 12, 2026

Show notes

Are your characters changing emotionally faster than your readers can follow?

In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins sits down with author Hazel Behrens to work through a scene from her novel and examine one of the trickiest parts of writing emotion: How much space does an emotional change need?

Hazel is writing a novel about Liz, a woman struggling with the death of her only child. Years after the loss, Liz has buried herself in research, family history, and familiar routines as a way of avoiding the grief she still has not fully faced.

Hazel knows how to create emotional material. Her concern is that because she knows the story and the characters so well, she sometimes moves through emotional moments too quickly, leaving the reader behind. That leads Jeff and Hazel into a conversation about the velocity of emotion.

Some emotional changes happen slowly: a character drifts from one feeling into another through a series of small moments.

Other emotional changes happen all at once: something happens, and suddenly the character is somewhere completely different emotionally.

Those two kinds of changes need to be handled differently.

Jeff introduces a simple framework for understanding those moments:

trigger
transition
response

Something creates the emotional movement.

The character has to move through that change.

Then we see what the new emotion causes them to do.

For a small emotional shift, the trigger might be nothing more than a thought.

For a major emotional shift, the trigger (and the space surrounding it) usually needs to be larger.

Jeff and Hazel explore:

how to recognize when an emotional transition is happening too quickly,
why emotional changes need a clear trigger,
how the size of the trigger should match the size of the emotional shift,
when a single line of inner thought can smooth out a transition,
how body language communicates emotion more powerfully than explanation,
why dialogue is more than characters simply speaking to one another,
how a character can be "in dialogue" with an object, a memory, an email, or even someone who is no longer present,
why interaction helps ground the reader in the present moment,
how formatting and paragraph structure can change the emotional distance of a scene,
how dialogue, body language, and internal thought can work together,
and how giving an emotional moment just a little more room can dramatically increase its impact.

The conversation also looks at the relationship between form and emotion.

Longer reflective passages can create distance and make the reader feel as though they are inside a character's thoughts.

Dialogue and physical interaction bring the reader closer to the immediate moment.

That means writers can use the shape of the scene itself to mirror a character's emotional journey.

As Liz begins trapped inside her grief, the writing can feel more inward and reflective.

As she begins reconnecting with the people around her, the scenes can become more grounded, active, and interactive.

Jeff and Hazel also examine places where Hazel is already doing this particularly well, including the way food, family relationships, and repeated interactions with Liz's husband can become markers of her emotional progress.

The lesson is not that every emotional moment needs pages of reflection.

Sometimes the fix is one sentence.
Sometimes it is one more exchange of dialogue.
Sometimes it is simply allowing the character to react before the story moves on.

Because if the character changes emotionally but the reader never has time to experience that change, the moment won't land.

The writer already knows how the character feels.

The job is to make sure the reader gets there too.

For more on the craft of writing, check out DialogueDoctor.com

BookBub, TikTok, Translations & Kickstarter: An Indie Author Roundtable [Write Wrong Repeat Ep 6] Oct 09, 2026

Show notes

What's actually working for indie authors right now? What are they actually trying? And what is producing results?

In this episode of Write, Wrong, Repeat, JP Rindfleisch IX, Tom Holbrook, Crys Cain, Jeff Elkins, and Holly Lyne get together for another brutally practical check-in on their writing careers and author businesses.

Everybody brings something different to the table.

Crys is continuing to push into translated editions, experimenting with different distribution options after changes at KDP, and using regular free promotions to support sales across a growing catalog.

Tom has a BookBub Featured Deal sending tens of thousands of readers into his cozy mystery series and gets into what happens after the free downloads start rolling in: sell-through, Kindle Unlimited reads, reviews, reader magnets, and whether a huge promotion actually translates into long-term readers.

Holly reports back from her first in-person event under her pen name, where she sold out of books and saw an incredible conversion rate among readers who stopped at her table. She also talks about special editions, reader magnets, BookFunnel promotions, Publisher Rocket, and the constant challenge of deciding which marketing tools are actually worth paying for.

Jeff talks about launching NRDS Season 2, the strange emotional crash that can follow publishing a book, balancing fiction with developmental editing and the Dialogue Doctor, and experimenting with TikTok as both an author and an editor.

And JP has been testing just about everything.

He talks about selling nearly ninety books at a live event, using extremely clear signage to attract exactly the right readers, planning a special-edition Kickstarter, changing his TikTok Live schedule, growing his newsletter through BookFunnel, selling damaged special editions, simplifying his website setup, experimenting with dictation, and discovering that turning off Amazon ads did not necessarily hurt his sales.

The conversation gets into:

BookBub Featured Deals and what happens after thousands of free downloads,
Sell-through from one book to the next,
Amazon and Kindle Unlimited,
Free-book strategies,
Book translations and international publishing,
TikTok and BookTok experiments,
Building social media around individual series,
In-person author events,
Reader magnets and newsletter growth,
Special editions,
Kickstarter campaigns,
BookFunnel promotions,
Amazon and Facebook ads,
Direct sales,
Publisher Rocket and AI-assisted category research,
Author websites and storefronts,
Dictation and productivity,

And the eternal indie-author question: Do I really need to be doing all of this?

As always, nobody on Write, Wrong, Repeat has the one perfect answer. Instead, five working authors compare notes on what they tried, what surprised them, what seems to be working, what they're abandoning, and what they plan to test next.

If you're trying to build an indie author career, market your books without losing your mind, or figure out which of the endless author-business strategies deserves your time and money, this episode gives you a look at what those experiments actually look like in practice.

Because sometimes the best author-business advice isn't "this always works."

It's, "I tried this. Here's what happened."

Subtext, Inner Thought, and Emotional Blind Spots [ep 349] Oct 05, 2026

Show notes

How do you write a character's emotions when the character doesn't actually understand what they're feeling?

In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins sits down with author Joan Lightning to work through a scene from her epic fantasy novel A Jealous God.

Joan's protagonist, Cherix, presents an unusual writing challenge.

He has spent his life inside a culture that has left him disconnected from his own emotions and relationships. He forms attachments. He feels guilt, sadness, fear, loyalty, and affection.

He just doesn't recognize those feelings for what they are.

That creates a fascinating problem for the writer. The character can't tell the reader what he feels, but the reader still needs to feel it.

Jeff and Joan dig into how to solve that problem by using inner thought, physical responses, rationalization, body language, and emotional contradiction.

Instead of having Cherix think, "I'm sad," the scene can let him experience a strange physical discomfort, question why it is happening, and then explain it away.

The character remains emotionally unaware.

The reader doesn't.

The conversation also explores how to build tension in a scene that contains a great deal of dialogue but very little physical confrontation.

Jeff and Joan talk about:

how to create tension through subtext
how to use inner thought between segments of dialogue
how to let the reader understand emotions the POV character cannot name
why emotional reactions still need to appear on the page even when a character represses or misunderstands them
how to use physical sensations as clues to hidden emotion
how a character can rationalize feelings instead of recognizing them
where to pause dialogue and let the POV character process what just happened
how to introduce unfamiliar cultures and social structures through character perspective
how to describe objects the POV character has never encountered before
how much worldbuilding explanation a reader actually needs
and how fear, curiosity, and uncertainty can make a first encounter feel real

The scene also gives Jeff and Joan a chance to look at one of the great challenges of fantasy POV.

Cherix encounters people, customs, musical instruments, horses, saddles, and social expectations that are completely normal to the reader—or to other characters—but entirely new to him.

That means Joan has to describe familiar things without letting Cherix suddenly possess knowledge he could not possibly have.

And sometimes the answer is not to explain more.

Sometimes it is to let the character misunderstand.

The episode ultimately comes back to a simple principle:

The character does not always have to understand the emotion.

But the reader does.

For writers working with deep POV, emotionally repressed characters, unreliable narrators, fantasy cultures, subtext-heavy dialogue, or characters with major emotional blind spots, this conversation offers a practical look at how to bring the reader inside an experience the character himself cannot fully explain.

For more, check out DialogueDoctor.com

What Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" Teaches Us About Character Voice [ep 348] Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

Why do writers keep studying Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" more than forty years after it was published?

In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins sits down with members of the Dialogue Doctor community to dig into Carver's famous short story and figure out exactly what writers can learn from it.

"Cathedral" has an almost absurdly simple premise: a man, his wife, and her blind friend spend an evening together in a living room.

And yet Carver turns that small situation into a significant emotional transformation.

The group starts by talking about Raymond Carver, his influence on the modern short story, and why "Cathedral" became such an important piece of literary fiction. Then the conversation shifts from literary appreciation into writing craft.

At the center of the story is a first-person narrator who is insecure, jealous, prejudiced, and frequently unlikeable.

So why do we keep reading?

And how does Carver gradually change the way we feel about him?

Jeff and the group break down the techniques Carver stacks together to move the reader from emotional distance toward intimacy.

They explore:

how Carver creates an unlikeable first-person narrator through character voice
why insecurity can be more interesting than simply making a character cruel
how the narrator's voice subtly changes as the story progresses
the difference between reflective monologue and grounded dialogue
how moving from three characters to two increases intimacy
why physical proximity and touch change the emotional intensity of a scene
how power gradually shifts away from the narrator
why experiencing something creates more emotional intensity than hearing about it
how Carver moves the narrator from observing blindness to actually experiencing a version of it
how repetition, body language, and verbal habits create distinctive character voices
why simple language can carry complicated emotional ideas
and how multiple craft tools can work together to create one unified emotional journey

The group also digs into the famous ending, where the narrator and Robert draw a cathedral together with their eyes closed, and asks whether Carver earns that final transformation.

Why a cathedral?

Why does drawing it matter?

And why does a story about three people sitting around drinking, smoking, eating, and watching television end up feeling like something much larger?

One of the biggest lessons from "Cathedral" is that emotional storytelling does not require an enormous plot.

It requires control.

Carver knows when to move from prose into dialogue. He knows when to shrink the cast. He knows when to change the power dynamic, when to bring characters physically closer, and when to let the narrator experience the very thing he has spent the story judging from a distance.

For writers trying to create stronger character arcs, better first-person voices, deeper intimacy, or more emotionally powerful scenes, "Cathedral" offers a remarkable example of what happens when all the tools of a scene begin working toward the same emotional destination.

Because sometimes a story doesn't need explosions, murders, or massive twists.

Sometimes it just needs two people, a piece of paper, and a cathedral.

How to Write Quiet Scenes with Big Emotional Stakes [Ep 346] Sep 21, 2026

Show notes

How do you write a quiet conversation scene where the real conflict is happening inside the character?

In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins works with Dennis Kurlas on a reflective scene from Dennis's novel. The scene follows Margo as she meets her friend Fran for lunch and prepares to reveal something deeply personal: she has feelings for two different men.

On the surface, the scene is simple. Two friends sit at a café, talk about life, discuss romance, and catch up. But underneath the conversation, much more is happening.

Margo is trying to understand what she feels. She is deciding how much to reveal. She is testing whether Fran will affirm her, challenge her, or redirect her. She is also balancing romance, career, identity, social expectations, and the life she thought she was supposed to build.

That makes the scene a perfect case study in writing internal conflict.

Jeff and Dennis talk through how to shape the emotional journey of a scene where the stakes are not punches, chases, explosions, or arguments. Instead, the stakes live in pauses, hesitation, inner thought, body language, and the space between lines of dialogue.

They discuss how to:

start closer to the action instead of opening with too much reflection
move reflective prose into stronger places inside the scene
use setting without letting it stall the emotional movement
make dialogue connect cleanly after multiple rounds of revision
add inner thought at emotional turning points
use silence between paragraphs to create tension
avoid melodrama by choosing one sharp emotional sentence instead of overexplaining
show a character deciding how much truth to reveal
clarify what the reader is supposed to hope for
and make the final beat of a reflective scene ripple through the rest of the story

The conversation also digs into Margo's larger emotional conflict. Is she supposed to embrace the fullness of life, love, career, and desire all at once? Or is she supposed to pull back and focus on the professional life she has built?

That question changes how the scene should end. It changes Fran's role in the story. It changes whether Fran becomes an engine pushing Margo toward growth or an anchor pulling her away from it.

This episode is especially useful for writers working on literary fiction, romance, women's fiction, historical fiction, character-driven scenes, or any moment where the most important action is emotional rather than physical.

Because sometimes the hardest scenes to write are not the big action scenes.

Sometimes the hardest scenes are two people sitting at lunch, talking around the thing that matters most.

Dennis Kurlas also appears in episodes: 335, 317, 280, 246, 174, and 117

How Writers Can Use the Enneagram to Build Better Characters [Ep 346] Sep 14, 2026

Show notes

Can the Enneagram actually help you write better characters? Or is it just pseudoscience with numbers, occult-looking diagrams, interpretive dance, and a suspicious amount of personality-test confidence?

In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins sits down with JP Rindfleisch IX to talk about the Enneagram as a tool for writers.

Jeff and JP approach the topic with the right amount of usefulness and skepticism. They are not treating the Enneagram like scientific law. They are not suggesting writers should trap characters inside rigid personality boxes. Instead, they look at the Enneagram as a practical storytelling tool: a way to think about how different characters make decisions, respond to stress, create conflict, and develop distinct voices.

The conversation starts with JP's approach to building character personality from the inside out, then turns into a funny and honest breakdown of the Enneagram's strange history, its disputed origins, its religious baggage, and why people are so drawn to systems that help them understand themselves and others. Then Jeff brings the conversation back to craft.

For writers, the most useful part of the Enneagram may not be memorizing all nine numbers. It may be starting with the three major centers: thinking, feeling, and instinct.

From there, Jeff and JP talk about how characters respond differently when they are under pressure. Some characters move toward fear and anxiety. Some move toward shame. Some move toward anger. Those core responses can help a writer build a cast where each character reacts to the same event in a different, believable, emotionally grounded way.

The episode digs into:

how personality tools can help writers without becoming a cage
why characters should not all process conflict the same way
how fear, shame, and anger can shape a character's voice
how the Enneagram's three centers can help you build a more varied cast
why the nine types are more useful when you go big-to-small
how helpers, achievers, challengers, loyalists, investigators, peacemakers, and individualists can show up on the page
how Jeff used Enneagram thinking while developing characters in NRDS and Mojo and Mayhem
why wings, subtypes, and deeper Enneagram theory can become too muddy for practical character work
how basic fears and desires can help define a character quickly
and how healthy, average, and unhealthy versions of a type can help writers think about character growth

This is not an episode about taking a personality test and assigning your protagonist a number.

It is an episode about using personality frameworks lightly, strategically, and creatively so your characters do not all sound like slightly different versions of you.

Listen in if you are trying to build a more varied cast, sharpen character voice, deepen conflict, or understand why one character reacts with anger, another with shame, and another with fear.

Because the point is not to prove the Enneagram is true.

The point is to steal what helps you write better fiction.

How to Open a Fantasy Novel: Action, Tension, and Character Growth [Ep 345] Sep 07, 2026

Show notes

How do you open a fantasy novel with action without confusing the reader?

In this episode of The Dialogue Doctor Podcast, Jeff Elkins sits down with new fiction author Malcolm Coon to work through the opening of Malcolm's fantasy heist novel.

Malcolm has built an epic fantasy world loosely inspired by a D&D world he created with his brother when they were kids. Now he is turning that world into a story about couriers, rooftops, rebellion, hidden danger, and a young character being pulled into something much bigger than himself.

The craft problem starts with the very first scene.

Malcolm wants to open with movement, danger, and a rooftop chase. But he also wants readers to understand the world, care about the character, and know what kind of story they are stepping into.

That creates the central question of the episode:

How do you balance action, tension, worldbuilding, and character emotion in the opening pages?

Jeff and Malcolm dig into the difference between starting with action and starting with high pressure. They talk about why a solo chase scene can be hard to make emotionally engaging, how reflective prose can slow tension, and why sometimes the better opening is not "start with danger," but "start with joy, then interrupt it."

They also get into practical craft tools writers can use immediately, including:

How to keep a chase scene at ground level

Why trigger should come before response

How backstory can rob an action scene of tension

When inner thought works in third-person close POV

Why a character's "brain voice" has to be treated like another character

How to use internal reflection at emotional turning points

Why mentor characters need clear emotional pressure

How supporting characters can reveal the protagonist's growth arc

When to use an anchor character to show the path the hero must reject

How to make an opposing POV feel like the hero of their own story

As the conversation expands, Jeff and Malcolm move from scene-level edits into the larger architecture of the novel. They talk about Pep, a young courier looking for purpose, identity, belonging, and participation; Saul, the protective uncle figure who understands the cost of rebellion; and Maddie, the mysterious courier who pulls Pep toward the mission.

This episode is especially helpful for fantasy writers, adventure writers, heist writers, and anyone revising an opening chapter that has cool movement but not enough emotional clarity yet.

Listen in if you are trying to figure out how to hook readers, introduce your world, build tension, reveal character, and make your first chapter do more than simply start fast.

Because a great opening scene does not just move.

It teaches the reader what kind of story they are about to love.

For more, check out DialogueDoctor.com

Is Publishing Still Worth It? Authors Talk Burnout, Book Marketing, & Hope [Write Wrong Repeat Ep 5] Sep 04, 2026

Show notes

What happens when a group of working authors sits down after a rough month and tells the truth about publishing?

You get this episode of Write Wrong Repeat.

In this conversation, JP Rindfleisch IX, Holly Lyne, Jeff Elkins, Tom Holbrook, and Crys Cain check in on their writing lives, business experiments, marketing wins, publishing frustrations, and the strange emotional math of trying to build an author career in public.

August was not an easy month.

The group talks honestly about grief, health scares, family chaos, ADHD, burnout, stalled goals, tight finances, pre-order jail, and the pressure to keep producing when life refuses to cooperate.

But this is not just a "publishing is hard" episode.

It is also full of practical author-business conversation. The group gets into translations, BookFunnel, mailing lists, Facebook ads, TikTok, direct sales, Kindle Unlimited, pen names, book events, reader connection, writing to market, paranormal detective fiction, cozy mystery, sports romance, and what happens when your book accidentally shares a title with James Patterson.

They also wrestle with a bigger question:

What is still giving you hope about publishing?

The answers are messy, funny, honest, and surprisingly encouraging.

The group talks about how old strategies do not necessarily die just because new tools arrive, why reader connection still matters, how community can keep authors moving, and why there are still more paths than ever for writers who are willing to experiment, simplify, adjust, and keep going.

This episode is for authors who are juggling too many projects, wondering what marketing tools are worth their time, trying to decide between KU and direct sales, struggling to write through a hard season, or asking whether publishing is still a place where real writers can build something meaningful.

Listen in for a candid, funny, behind-the-scenes look at the author life as it actually happens. Imperfect progress, weird experiments, failed plans, small wins, big pivots, and enough hope to keep writing.

Timecodes:

0:00 – Welcome to Write Wrong Repeat Episode 5 0:55 – Chris on why August is always chaos 1:50 – Translations doubled Chris's income 4:15 – BookShift, translation tools, and foreign-language mailing lists 8:50 – Tom on translations, grief, cozy projects, TikTok, and ads 12:50 – Facebook ads, scaling slowly, and building profitable momentum 17:50 – Holly's August: health scare, Amazon cliff, NetGalley, and TikTok dips 23:05 – Jeff's update: the conference, Mojo and Mayhem, and TikTok experiments 30:15 – Writing to market with supernatural detective fiction 39:00 – Paranormal cozy vs. urban fantasy detective: where does the book fit? 41:45 – Kindle Unlimited, wide publishing, direct sales, and reader behavior 52:00 – JP's update: ADHD, art projects, TikTok Lives, direct sales, street teams, and simplifying the business 1:05:15 – Preorder jail, KDP changes, and the search for publishing hope 1:07:25 – What gives authors hope right now: TikTok, KU, direct sales, translations, audio, and reader connection 1:12:05 – More niches, more tools, and why old publishing strategies still work

Tony Lee on Writing Fast, Thinking Like a Publisher, & Building an Author Career That Lasts [Ep 344] Aug 31, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, Jeff Elkins talks with Tony Lee, also known to many readers as Jack Gatland, about writing fast, building a sustainable author career, and learning to think like a publisher.

Tony has worked across comics, screenplays, licensed fiction, journalism, audio drama, and novels. In this conversation, he shares what those different forms taught him about compression, dialogue, character, deadlines, reader expectations, and story momentum.

Jeff and Tony talk about the transition from traditional media work into indie publishing, why readers remember characters more than plot mechanics, how Tony uses reader feedback to shape his series, and why authors need to be honest about which books are passion projects and which books keep the business alive.

They also discuss burnout, AI, productivity tools, writing to market, author conferences, comparison, money, and the mindset shift that happens when a writer stops waiting for permission and starts making strategic decisions about their own career.

This is a funny, blunt, deeply practical conversation for authors who want to build a writing life that actually works.

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