Bird By Bird "Dialogue"

This reading was exceptionally helpful when one starts to think about writing narrative. Bad dialogue ruins everything. It's the thing that makes me read the spark notes instead of the story itself. The only way that I think bad dialogue can be truly and completely avoided is by not using it at all. Aside from that the only other thing is to read it aloud over and over again until you figure out what is just not working. Most of the time I start by taking out one thing at a time until I have no dialogue left. But sometimes it's just one word that throws the whole thing off.