Dialogue. The very word strikes fear in some writers' hearts. For others, there's the assumption that dialogue needs only "sound realistic" to be good. One of the hacks you won't be hearing in this episode of the How to be an Author podcast is "read it out loud." Yes, you can do that, but that won't actually improve the dialogue on your novel. When you're writing a book, each line of dialogue needs to have a purpose in your story: to advance the plot, to define relationships, to promote character development, and to convey information, among other things. Even if you're an experienced author who has been wriitng for a while, you'll get something out of this thought-provoking episode.