Dialogue Writing

The constraint is that a player hears these lines, often more than once, and sometimes out of the order they were written in. A line has to work on its own, survive repetition without grating, and stay in character while delivering whatever the designer needs it to deliver. Variants exist so the same moment does not always sound identical.

It is written for performance. That means thinking about how a line will be delivered, keeping it short enough for the space it plays in, and writing it so a voice actor and a localisation team can both work from it. Interface and system text belong to the same discipline in practice.

Story Writing builds the events and the arc. Dialogue writing is what those events sound like when a character opens their mouth.