Try Dialogue

There's one technique authors often overlook in business books. Dialogue.

Direct speech in stories and anecdotes is a great way to introduce a change of rhythm, to increase authenticity, and to allow a little more of a casual tone.

And a conversation between characters or voices in your book allows you to raise and answer a reader's queries directly.

The most influential writer of dialogue for me was George V. Higgins, who wrote crime books based in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s.

Higgins would open a chapter with a description of a location and the people present. Then the rest of the chapter would take place through dialogue alone.

The dialogue told the story in a way that showed readers what was going on.

Higgins caught the rhythms of how his characters spoke so well that he didn't mention the identity of the speaker for page after page, because it was clear.

His books are probably a little old fashioned now – but they remain an absolute object lesson in how powerful a tool dialogue can be in fiction.

And an invitation to nonfiction writers to try the same technique.