Notes from a Reddit thread about writing Banter between Characters
My personal rules:
Banter should never happen as dialogue for its own sake. You may think that by doing so you're giving your characters richness and depth, but what's actually happening is that they're having fun swapping in-jokes while your reader twiddles her thumbs. This relates to:
Banter begins when someone takes a dig a someone else, or tries to antagonise, poke fun or trick them, in the course of talking about other things. These 'other things' should be relevant to the story. By all means have the banter grow legs and derail the conversation.
Pay attention to where and when you use banter: it can serve you in several ways:
Prior to a sudden calamity, to enhance the impact.
During a calamity, to show the characters trying to bolster each others' spirits even if they know it won't work.
To distract the reader while you slip in an important clue or piece of information that they will kick themselves for not spotting later.
To end a conversation or scene that otherwise has no clear off-ramp.
To introduce the reader to a genuine point of tension between two characters when one oversteps the mark. LOTS of value here, with all manner of different shadings depending on how they and their other companions handle the overstep.
4. It's not necessary for characters to have a lot of history together before they can engage in banter, but in that case the character who STARTS the banter is revealing themselves to be cocky or seeking to dominate the conversation. Again: lots of value here since it puts the relationships between the characters on an ambiguous footing, creating space for them to grow together or apart as the story continues.
5. Whatever else you do, for the love of God DON'T banter about things the reader was not there to see. Banter is not funny to an outsider; it actively makes them feel excluded. So I guess there's an exception: if your intention is for the reader to feel the MC's isolation and exclusion or inexperience, drop in some banter that neither they nor the MC understand. But don't overdo it. Fair game for banter are events or character traits that the reader has already witnessed for themselves. In a real pinch you can reference a past event not witnessed by the reader in order to expose hypocrisy and puncture an ego that way, but try try try to avoid it if you can.
Banter can be written easier when you as the author know way more about the characters than the readers. I'd recommend you free write backstories attributes for your characters in order to help shape them into more dynamic personalities.
I'll also say that the banter I write in stories is necessarily connected to what's happening in surrounding events--or used intentionally to display some attribute of a character that I can't display otherwise.
There's really only two rules I can think of.
First up, don't have your guys break character just for the sake of delivering a good line. Not everyone is witty, not everyone has the same sense of humour, and not everyone cracks jokes in inappropriate situations. If you're doing banter and repartee all over the place you run the risk of erasing your characterisation and ruining the tone and drama of your scenes (I'm looking at YOU Girl Genius).
Second up, and this applies to comedy in general: it takes a shitload of time and drafts and rewrites.
How to avoid "Telling" when your character is expressing their inner thoughts?
You can't avoid it entirely, but as a general rule, compare something like "This made me feel angry" to "In that moment, I wanted to slap him." Both are just telling you how the character feels, but the less direct method feels better.
Give the reader bits and pieces of their inner monologue, but not the whole thing. A fun thing to do is play around with the contradiction between their inner thoughts and their actions.
You prick, you utter arsehole, I hate you so much thought Sam, as he shook the man's hand and said "Lovely to finally meet you" with a smile.
vs
Sam hated the man but he shook his hand and smiled because he knew it would be a bad move to upset them.
'narrate vs. dramatize' is that you narrate scenes that are better told and dramatize scenes that are better showed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5neBuGANxIk&t=291s
I like to break down flirting into two styles:
Compliments: This is when someone says something that's generally positive. It can be 100% genuine and kind or it can have more edge (ex. sexual comments about someone's body or behavior) or it can even be compliments disguised as insults.
Insults: This is when someone says something that's negative. It can range from light-hearted teasing to actually mean. The way to temper insulting style is with body language. Sort of a "forget what my mouth is saying and look at what my body is saying" thing.
You can have a bunch of different combinations of flirting (with book examples):
Person A and Person B say things that are positive/complimentary/genuine (Autoboyography by Christina Lauren)
Person A and Person B say things that are teasing/negative/insulting (Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, The Hating Game by Sally Thorne)
Person A uses compliments and Person B uses insults (White Hot Kiss by Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green)
Person A uses either compliments or insults and Person B is oblivious (Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson)
Person A and Person B like to mix things up (Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston is sort of an example. The characters flirt one way in the beginning and shift over time)
Obviously, you need to mix things up to keep it interesting, but I think people generally have a flirtation style and it will depend on your character. If you are doing the last one, with one oblivious character, it makes sense that Character A would try a bunch of different things to see what gets a reaction.
People that are genuine, open, confident, and kind will be more comfortable doing the compliment flirting. People that are defensive, cautious, contrary, and snarky are more likely to use the insult style flirting.
I think of flirting as having a push/pull interaction. When someone says something flirty the goal is to either push the other person off-balance (to catch them off guard) or to pull them in. Compliments and insults can be used both ways. While most people will generally stick with one style of flirting (compliment or insult), they will almost always do a combination of pushing and pulling to keep the other person engaged.
Also, I don't think you should focus solely on how their flirtation works in the first meeting. Flirting is a way a couple communicates, so it builds over time. It also creates a nice sense of anticipation for your reader, so if you can keep your love interests flirting, but not actually getting together for a while, you can string along your readers longer and create some great tension.
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