Tip #323: Compelling dialogue

imagine watching your scene, but in a foreign language with the subtitles turned off. What does the talking feel like? What’s the emotion behind the words? Who’s in control?
...
Let’s say Bob needs to tell Mary that her dog has been eaten by a python. As the writer, you need to decide not only what facts Bob knows, but how he’s anticipating Mary will react to the news. This will determine not only how he starts the conversation (“Say, you were talking about how you wanted to get a new dog, right?”) but every subsequent decision along the way.

http://johnaugust.com/2007/how-to-write-dialogue

Mary should also have her own (often conflicting) objective, even it's just something like getting Bob out of her house so she can change and get to work on time.

Tip #310: Consistent character voice

One technique that I find helpful is at the end of each story, I go through in editing and make a “dialog pass.” If I have a character, Bron, I will search for instances of “Bron said” so that I can pinpoint his scenes and make sure that his dialog sounds like it is coming from him.

http://www.davidfarland.net/writing_tips/?a=170

Tip #301: Info-dump via character reaction

How your character reacts to something gives your reader valuable clues as to how they should be reacting, what they should be learning from whatever just transpired, and how significant it is to the overall story.

Given example:

a character is staring out the window at night when, suddenly, she sees a firefly turn into a fairy princess out on the lawn. What is her reaction? If she thinks “Oh, no! Not again! That means dad will make me go out there first thing tomorrow and wash the fairy dust off the grass…” then that tells the reader that fairies are common in this world, and a bit of a nuisance. Not only do we get the character’s attitude about the firefly fairy, but we get valuable worldbuilding information (especially if this is the first time we see that this world has magic/fantasy elements to it). If she thinks “WHAT THE F*** IS THAT?!?!?!?!?!” and runs screaming from the room, we may take that as our cue that firefly fairies are not the norm and that something truly odd is going on.

http://kidlit.com/2012/09/19/the-power-of-reaction/

Tip #256: Character connections

as we create fictional characters, it’s easy to focus only on one character and forget about who that character knows, and who their acquaintances know and how they know each other.

http://lifemusecoffee.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/even-in-the-fictional-world-its-all-about-who-you-know-amwriting/

Tip# 61: In a world built of words...

Dialogue is the number one thing that marks a character out... Not description or action or physical quirks. Dialogue.

http://screenwritingtips.tumblr.com/ Tip #526

Which is one of the reasons why first person novels so often have such strong protagonists; the author has invested significant time in finding/perfecting the character's voice.

Tip #51: The setting

when I think back on the books that grabbed me as a young reader and made me want to become a writer—from Jane Eyre, to the stories of J.D. Salinger, to My Antonia—I now recognize the extent to which the characters in these books were shaped by setting. And the settings were as vividly detailed and idiosyncratic as the characters who peopled them.

http://www.glimmertrain.com/b41watrous.html

Tip #5: Ramble, obfuscate & talk around the point

People in real life ramble, obfuscate, talk around the point — they don’t just state facts at each other. Trust me: there is NOTHING more boring than a scene in which two characters carefully, politely tell each other the truth.

http://screenwritingtips.tumblr.com/