How to Write Believable Dialogue in Your Food Memoir: Examples from Nora Ephron's Heartburn

Photo by @gb_hernandez

You have the storyline of your food memoir pinned down. The characters (aka you and the other key players) have been mapped out to feel like well-rounded people readers could connect with. There’s an inspiration board with pictures and quotes next to your desk to kickstart your work every day.

However when you write scenes, interactions between people, the words are stiff and snooze-worthy. You’ve made everyone in your life have an elevated vocabulary and “sound” smart, but it doesn’t seem authentic. Readers wouldn’t believe these were genuine conversations.

We all know cheesy dialogue when we see it: There’s a feeling of using conversations to either dump a ton of information on the reader or it’s thrown in to talk about feelings or characters, but it doesn’t reveal much about the characters or story.

Dialogue is a sign to the reader that something important is happening. It also reveals something about your characters and how they see the world. So, when you make it believable — like conversations real people have — you emotionally hook the audience into turning pages quickly.

Enter Nora Ephron’s Heartburn about a cookbook writer who is seven months pregnant when she discovers her husband’s affair. For the fans of her screenplays including When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Julie and Julia, you’ll instantly recognize Heartburn’s conversation cadence that is distinctly Ephron. The novel has some fair criticism, but you can’t deny the gift the author has to craft dialogue that doesn’t feel forced or fake. You can picture the scenes between characters even in a solid page of only conversation. 

Fiction and memoir are tied closely together as far as structure goes. A good book will include boundaries around time, an emotional storyline bringing the main character further away or closer to their ultimate goal and a change in the character. 

One of the ways you can tap into the evolution of yourself in your food memoir is dialogue. Reconstructing dialogue is one of the pitfalls of memoir because you’ll never get it exactly right, but that’s what disclaimers are for in the introduction.

Memoir seems like an “easy” thing to write, but as soon as a client turns in pages, they begin editing conversations and sections of their lives because they’re afraid of the backlash. It’s hard to look at yourself as a character. But that’s the mark of a captivating memoir—one that embraces the missteps of being human.

So, how can you write dialogue in your food memoir that draws readers into your world, instead of pushing them out? Here are 3 tips from Nora Ephron’s Heartburn. 

1. Let Your Characters Say What They Want to Say

One hallmark of Ephron’s work is writing characters who have quirks and flaws. With that, she allows them to say the things we only wish we could say — good, bad and just plain ugly.

When main character Rachel spreads a rumor that another character contracted an infection from a toilet seat, it’s equal parts jaw opening and then closing as you grab your popcorn. She also doesn’t say it just to say it. The rumor comes because Rachel is deeply wounded and wants to hurt the other character. Isn’t that why any of us say mean things in the first place?

This comment will come back around, but it rings true to the reader because it just falls out of her mouth. There’s no self-editing, which happens when people have been deeply hurt. Where dialogue reads as untrue is when writers try to hold back what their characters really want to say. As a reader, you can feel it too. 

No one will win any awards for being the best character in your book. Audiences want interesting and authentic characters who can say the things we wouldn’t dare, so one day we might take that chance. (Minus toilet-seat infections.)

2. Don’t Be Afraid of Short Sentences

Reading Heartburn, it’s hard not to picture every scene as a movie. Which is why it isn’t surprising it was made into a film. Where Ephron goes right is where most authors go wrong. She’s not afraid of short sentences and a rapid back and forth between characters. 

Yes, you don’t need the details of every conversation, but sometimes, the “pleasantries” paint a more realistic picture. 

For instance when Rachel’s husband says he’s going to stop seeing his mistress, she comes back to Washington D.C. with him from New York. When she goes to her friends’ house, the husband opens the door and asks how she is. Rachel replies she’s back and then asks how she (Rachel) is, to which her friend responds that she’s back. 

In this quick exchange, you see a mutual understanding that Rachel is there, and that’s all she has to offer. Even more, her friend gets it and won’t push it. 

You can say a lot with a little, and you have to trust you’ve laid enough of the foundation that your readers can pick up on even the smallest conversations.

3. Embrace Things Being “Said”

As a former addict of “exclaim”, “sighed” or “shouted”, I now embrace the simpleness of “said” as a dialogue tag. That’s not to say that there isn’t a time and place for some variety, but writers overuse different dialogue tags to get their point across.

In Heartburn, Ephron rarely uses a different dialogue tag than said. 

I said to Mark.

He said.

I said.

Said my father.

It all works. Writers are resistant to “said” because it seems redundant and boring, but if your dialogue tag has to tell the reader your character is angry, you’ve already lost. The emotion and information should come more from the content of the conversation instead of how a character said something. You can create inflection and tone without stating exactly what those are with a dialogue tag. 

As you craft your food memoir, come back to these 3 examples from Nora Ephron’s Heartburn when you feel like your dialogue isn’t ringing true. Like any storytelling element, it takes time and revision to implement these principles. 

If you feel you’ve done everything you can and need help getting to the next step, get on my coaching waitlist here. Because writing dialogue like a Hollywood screenwriter will take your food memoir from “meh” to “mouth-watering” in no time. Isn’t that why you’re writing in the first place?