Dialogue is essential often times in creating the necessary conflict in stories. But it is difficult to do mostly because of the easy short cuts that tell a reader everything the dialogue is supposed to convey.
Take for example this exchange:
“I’m fine,” she sighed even though she wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine.
Cool. Okay the character isn’t fine even though she says she is fine. That’s what the writer is telling the reader.
Okay so when editing how can you make it evolve?
I like to start by adding action. So it would evolve to something like this:
“It’s fine,” X sighed continuing to spin the coffee cup slowly on the table.
Instead of being told X isn’t fine and nothing was fine, readers can see that X is fiddling as a distraction.
How would you go back and change the example used?
Camile Grant 
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