The one thing your characters should never say (and what they should say instead)

There’s one particular line of dialogue that can often be tempting to put into your fiction, because you tell yourself that you’re just trying to reflect the way people speak in real life.

But, if a line of dialogue doesn’t either tell us something about the character who’s speaking, or move the action of the story forward in some way, it should be eliminated — even if you think it “sounds like real life.”

This is why the one thing your characters should never say in fiction is: “Fine, how are you?” as a response to another character asking “How are you?”

(There is one exception to this rule, which I’ll share at the end.)

Now, what to write instead, when two characters first encounter each other in a scene?

In many cases, you could simply cut the lines describing an initial encounter and greeting, and just jump in to what might feel to you like the middle of the scene (but which would probably end up being a more interesting place to start).

Or, you could write something to quickly describe the action before moving on to the meat of the dialogue. I greeted her, and she said she was fine.

(If you choose this route, it would be great to also find a way to add some subtext or additional interest here: I greeted her, and she said she was fine, but her eyes showed she’d been crying.)