CHAPTER 6
DIALOGUE: TALKING IT UP
BY ALLISON AMEND
I’ve been on a lot of bad dates. A lot. Some were blind dates; some I wish I had been blind for. But what amazes me is that the more I learn about fiction, and the more I learn about dating, the more they seem eerily parallel. Why? Because dialogue is the key to a successful date, and, I would argue, to successful fiction. There is nothing worse than sitting over a plate of cooling penne with nothing to say, and there is no substitute for the heady feeling you leave with when you just seem to “get each other.” That connection hinges on dialogue.
Fiction can go without dialogue, and I’ve certainly been on a couple of great dates that didn’t involve a lot of conversation, but, in general, dialogue is what keeps you coming back for more. The characters’ interactions provide the scintillation that brings the reader to the story, and more often than not dialogue is a key part of this interaction. What makes the War part of War and Peace so boring (sorry, Tolstoy) is the fact that it’s just the author droning on and on like a college lecture on geology. What’s exciting is hearing Natasha speak with Andrei (Peace), not reading dry re-creations of military maneuvers (War).
The characters are the ones in the story interacting with each other, so they are the people, not the author, who have the power to affect other characters. Perhaps the best way to let the reader really see the characters interacting with each other is to let them talk to each other. If it’s done well, the readers will forget that the people they are reading about are the writer’s creation. The characters will assume a life of their own. And isn’t that the real purpose of fiction?
DIALOGUE EXPLAINED
Dialogue is everything in fiction that isn’t narration. In other words, it’s the stuff between the quotation marks—what the characters “say.”
There is no official rule for how much dialogue to use in fiction. Some stories are dialogue-heavy, others dialogue-light. For example, Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is almost all dialogue, while The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka has practically no dialogue. Most stories find a balance between dialogue and narration. Switching between the two gives a work of fiction a nice diversity. Narration tends to have a dense feel, whereas dialogue—which reads quickly and offers lots of white space—has a zippier feel, making it like a cleansing dish of sherbet between courses. Again, I reference the theoretical “perfect date.” You neither talk too much nor have to prod the conversation. It should be an exchange, a give-and-take.
There are two fundamental ways a writer can reveal any moment in a story—summary or scene. Summary is where the action is summarized, or “told.” In contrast, a scene depicts the moment in real time, showing us exactly what transpires. Scenes are where dialogue makes its appearance. The effect is similar to that of watching a scene in a play or film, where the actors are speaking to and interacting with each other. Both scene and summary are frequently used techniques, and both have their place in fiction. But just as showing is more powerful than telling, scene is more powerful than summary. In fact, scene is the primary means by which a fiction writer “shows.”
Save summary for moments when you want to relay information quickly and efficiently or when you want the narrator to revel in the pure telling of something. For the most important moments in your story, you’ll want to switch to scene.
In Lorrie Moore’s “People Like That Are the Only People Here,” a mother brings her seriously ill baby to the doctor for some tests. Moore could have given the reader a summarized account, something like this:
As the doctor explained that the baby had a tumor, the baby practiced his new pastime by switching the light on and off, on and off, increasing the Mother’s nervousness and fear. When the doctor pronounced the words Wilm’s tumor, the room went dark.
This summary is fine. But notice how much more lifelike and dramatic the moment is when translated into scene. Here is what actually appears in the story:
The baby wants to get up and play with the light switch. He fidgets, fusses, and points.
“He’s big on lights these days,” explains the Mother.
“That’s okay,” says the surgeon, nodding toward the light switch. “Let him play with it.” The Mother goes and stands by it, and the Baby begins turning the lights off and on, off and on.
“What we have here is a Wilm’s tumor,” says the Surgeon, suddenly plunged into darkness. He says “tumor” as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Wilms?” repeats the Mother. The room is quickly on fire again with light, then wiped dark again. Among the three of them here, there is a long silence, as if it were suddenly the middle of the night. “Is that apostrophe s or s apostrophe?”
We see and hear the scene with enough detail that it feels as if we’re really there in the hospital witnessing it. Notice how effectively the on/off of the light plays against the dialogue. Also pay attention to the contrast between the surgeon’s calm and the mother’s nervousness, beautifully illustrated with her irrelevant question about the apostrophe. The summarized version gets the point across; the scene immerses us in the moment.
It’s entirely possible to have a scene with no dialogue, where the thrust is conveyed just through physical action, but more often than not, dialogue will play a central role in a scene.
How do you know if a moment should be translated into dialogue or not? Well, dialogue tends to draw lots of attention to itself so you want to make sure you are dialoguing moments of real significance, be it character development, plot advancement, or a moment of extreme drama. A six-page scene of dialogue in which characters discuss carpool arrangements followed by a six-page scene in which the same characters reveal past infidelities serves the purpose of both inflating the importance of the first scene and diminishing the power of the second—if the reader even got to the second scene after slogging through the first six pages about the traffic on Main Street. The wise writer would relate only what was necessary about the carpool, perhaps not even using dialogue, then save the dialogue for the good part.
Key moments in a story lend themselves to being portrayed in dialogue.
If a moment is of real significance, the reader likes to be there, sitting front and center, watching and hearing. Often, authors choose dialogue to portray a confrontation scene, for example, when Patricia accuses her sister of stealing her boyfriend, or when Richard finally summons the nerve to ask his father if he lied about his military record. The dialogue doesn’t have to show a cataclysmic moment for the characters, but the reader should come away from the dialogue scene with an increased understanding of the story.
In Charles Baxter’s “Gryphon,” a boy’s boring suburban existence is exponentially expanded by the arrival of a mysterious substitute teacher who awakens his imagination. To get a sense of the teacher’s unorthodox views, Baxter lets us hear her speak:
“Did you know,“she asked, walking to the side of the room so that she was standing by the coat closet, “that George Washington had Egyptian blood from his grandmother? Certain features of the Constitution of the United States are notable for their Egyptian ideas.”
One of the kids at school is skeptical about the teacher, so it’s important that we hear his reaction to her:
“I didn’t believe that stuff about the bird,” Carl said, “and what she told us about the pyramids? I didn’t believe that either. She didn’t know what she was talking about.”
When the teacher reads the class’s tarot cards and foretells a death, one of the students reports her to the principal, and she is dismissed. The climax of the story is when the protagonist explodes in anger at the snitch. This important moment is portrayed, of course, through dialogue.
“You told,” I shouted at him. “She was just kidding.”
“She shouldn’t have,” he shouted back. “We were supposed to be doing arithmetic.”
“She just scared you,” I said. “You’re a chicken. You’re a chicken, Wayne. You are. Scared of a little card,” I sing-songed.
Wayne fell at me, his two fists hammering down on my nose. I gave him a good one in the stomach and then I tried for his head. Aiming my fist, I saw that he was crying. I slugged him.
Throughout the story Baxter alternates scene with summary, using ample portions of each, but he knows exactly which moments are worth letting the characters speak for themselves.
THE ILLUSION OF REALITY
Everybody talks. Well, practically everybody. One would think that dialogue would be one of the easiest aspects of fiction to pull off. After all, we use it every day. But good dialogue is deceptively difficult to write.
Your first task is to ensure that your dialogue sounds real. In past centuries, fictional dialogue had a certain theatricality, as in this line from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights:
“Why, Master Heathcliff, you are not fit for enjoying a ramble, this morning. How ill you do look!”
But nowadays dialogue tends to sound like actual people conversing with one another. What they say shouldn’t seem rehearsed or robotic. And yet it’s all too easy to write something along these lines:
Upon spying the Grand Canyon for the first time, Jeannie-Lynn and Billy-Joe exclaimed, “What a splendid vista!”
“See?” Their mother pointed. “The scrub brush creates a harmonious palate of green-tinted lushness in the vastness of the canyon.”
“I’ll have to relate this to my fourth-grade class!” Jeannie-Lynn said.
Few people talk like that. They talk more like this:
When they finally reached the edge of the Grand Canyon, Jeannie-Lynn and Billy-Joe opened their eyes wide in amazement. “Wow,” said Billy-Joe.
“That’s so awesome,” Jeannie-Lynn whispered.
“See the scrub brush like we saw in Grandma’s backyard?” Their mother pointed. The children nodded.
“I’m going to talk about this in show-and-tell,” Jeannie-Lynn said. “Can we take a picture?”
The best way to get a feel for realistic dialogue is by listening to people talk. Listen to people on the bus, in the elevator, on the radio; pay attention to their speech patterns and the content of their conversations. Imagine writing their words down. Maybe even try writing them down. This will help develop your ear for dialogue. Being able to listen and mimic is the best preparation for writing realistic dialogue.
Two little tips for realistic dialogue. Contractions are good. Only a very formal person will say: I do not think this is the best idea. Most folks would say: I don’t think this is the best idea. And though writers are instructed to avoid clichés, characters often use hackneyed phrasing. As a description, hot as hell doesn’t do very much. But it would be perfectly acceptable for certain characters to use this phrase in dialogue.
But simply capturing the sound of lifelike dialogue isn’t enough. Actually, the realism of good dialogue is something of an illusion. Readers of fiction have a higher expectation for dialogue than the conversations of real life. Fictional dialogue needs to have more impact, focus, relevance, than ordinary conversation. The truth is most real-life conversations are dull, or at least they would come off as dull on paper. Try transcribing a conversation that you overhear. Or tape one and then type it onto the computer. It probably won’t make any sense. If it does, it will most likely be tedious. The dialogue will probably take a long time to get to the point.
Let’s look at a clip of lifelike conversation:
“Hey. Um, hey.”
“Oh, hey.”
“Hey, Dana. It’s Gina.”
“Oh, hi. Wait, can you hold on? Okay, hi.”
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Good. I mean, nothing. How’re you doing?”
“Good. Where are you?”
“On my cell.”
“I mean, where.”
“Oh, on my way after work, like, in the street.”
“Yeah?”
“Um, yeah.”
The above selection is dull and would do absolutely nothing for a story, because it mimics real speech too closely. Now, were it fictionalized, it might sound more like this:
“Hey, Dana. It’s Gina.”
“Hi. What’s up?”
“Good. I mean, nothing. How’re you doing?”
Here we get to the point much more quickly. But this still isn’t quality dialogue because there’s no real significance to the conversation. Take a look at what happens when the dialogue is transformed to this:
“Hey, Dana, it’s Gina.”
“Hi. Was I supposed to call you?”
“Yeah, it’s Wednesday. Are you still up for seeing a movie?”
“I have to wait to see what Matt is doing.”
In this dialogue, you get a real sense of the characters and the tension between them. Gina’s tone is a little challenging, as if she’s used to Dana blowing her off. And we see that Dana has an avoidance of making concrete plans, due to her reliance on Matt. With just a few lines, this dialogue gives us a wealth of valuable information.
So, you see, dialogue has to seem real and yet not be too real and also do something important.
YOUR TURN:
Recall a dialogue exchange you had in the past few days. Do your best to write it down being faithful to what was actually said. Don’t airbrush out the boring parts or make the dialogue snappy. Pretend you’re transcribing a conversation from a tape recorder. Just write each character’s name, then put the dialogue beside the name. (Jack: Hey, what’s going on, man?) Then rewrite the dialogue exchange, this time making it concise and dramatically interesting. Why don’t you fictionalize the names this time and feel free to embellish a bit.
DIALOGUE CONVENTION
Convention is the fulfillment of an established expectation. There are certain things our society has grown to expect because that’s the way certain things are usually done. We expect a bride to wear white; we expect to be given a speech about wearing seat belts low and tight across our laps on airplanes. Dialogue too follows convention. The reader is used to dialogue looking and performing a certain way. Let’s examine some of the conventions of dialogue.
Double quotation marks signal to the reader that someone is speaking:
“Dude, you seen my left shoe?” “Dude, check your right foot.”
Occasionally, authors break with convention, foregoing double quotation marks for single ones, dashes, brackets, or even nothing:
—Dude, you seen my left shoe?—Dude, check your right foot.
But unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise, stick with double quotes.
Usually dialogue dedicates one paragraph per speaker, no matter how short the speech:
I sidled up to the bars of the drunk tank, resting my forehead on the cool steel. The keys to the jail dangled from the guard’s belt.
“Hot enough for you, mate?” I asked the guard.
“Shut up,” he said.
“Okay, okay.” I sat back down on the wooden bench and tried to close my eyes.
The fact that each line of dialogue gets its own paragraph highlights the importance and makes it easier to follow the flow of the conversation. Sometimes writers put different speakers in the same paragraph. While it’s not wrong do to so, it can look confusing or intimidate the reader.
One of the major conventions of dialogue is the use of tags. In dialogue, most writers add speech tags, also known as attributions, so that the reader can follow who’s saying what. Said is the most frequently used tag. In fact, you could use nothing but said and probably no one would notice. It may feel tedious to you to keep writing he said, she said, the dog said, but the reader is trained to look at speech tags only to gather his bearings, the way commas signal pauses. Readers don’t even notice that you’ve used the word said 507 times. Said becomes invisible:
“You gonna drink that?” she said.
“Yes, I am,” he said.
You can use verbs other than said, but you want to make sure they don’t seem forced or get distracting.
“You gonna drink that?” she asked.
“Yes, I am,” he replied.
However, it can be dangerous to veer too far from the said paradigm. It’s tempting to get out the thesaurus and have your characters utter, express, state, announce, articulate, voice, etc., but overuse will provide a trampoline effect, making it seem as though all of your characters are springing five feet in the air when they speak:
“You gonna drink that?” she sputtered.
“Yes, I am,” he proclaimed.
These tags are a little strong for such a banal statement. You proclaim emancipation from tyranny, but you say that you had a good night’s sleep.
Similarly, adverbs in speech tags tend to make the author seem amateurish. Let what the character is saying tell the reader the tone of voice; don’t have your characters speak coquettishly or snidely or sarcastically. Occasionally, adverbs are useful, but use them sparingly; they can draw attention to themselves in the wrong way, like an eighties hairdo. And more often than not they are just plain unnecessary, as seen here:
“DON’T YELL AT ME!!!!” she screamed stridently.
Also, exclamation points in dialogue tend to make statements sound like lovesick teenage e-mail. Try at all costs to avoid using them!
When you attribute speech, make sure you place the tags in a logical or effective place. The following is jerky and awkward:
“I don’t,” she said, “love you anymore.”
While this is appropriately devastating:
“I don’t love you anymore,” she said.
But if the phrase is long, you might want to put the tag in the middle, so that the reader knows who is speaking. Tags in the middle should follow a natural “breath,” or break, in the sentence. Like so:
“I don’t love you anymore,” she said, “even though you still write me poems every day and shower me with gifts and tell me that I’m the most beautiful woman alive.”
Tags aren’t the only way of indicating who is speaking. You can let the reader know who is talking to whom by having a character say someone’s name, like so:
“Hey, Pete, you got a light?”
Be aware, though, that people don’t usually call others by their names when they speak to them. Use this technique sparingly, as it can sound forced:
“Bonnie Marie McGee, please pass the carrots.”
“I’d be glad to, Aunt Fiona.”
Another effective way to attribute speech is to link an action with the dialogue, like so:
“I don’t think I believe in God.” Bert put down his coffee cup to stare out the window.
Or a thought:
“Get me a half-pound of that salami.” Marsha wondered if she’d been a little harsh. “Please,” she added.
Attribution for every single line of dialogue is not strictly necessary, as long as it’s perfectly clear who is speaking when. Here’s a passage from Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” where a man and a girl are sitting in a bar in Spain:
The girl looked at the bead curtain. “They’ve painted something on it,” she said. “What does it say?”
“Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”
“Could we try it?”
The man called “Listen” through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.
“Four reales.”
“We want two Anis del Toro.”
“With water?”
“Do you want it with water?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said. “Is it good with water?”
“It’s all right.”
“You want them with water?” asked the woman.
“Yes, with water.”
With a sparing but skillful use of tags, we have no trouble knowing who is speaking when, despite the fact that there are three characters and none of these characters seems to have a name.
STAGE DIRECTIONS
Adding physical action to dialogue can help bring a scene to life. Take a look around you the next time you’re at a party. You can tell someone’s personality by how they interact with others. Gregarious people talk with their hands; seductive people run their fingers through their hair. Anal people gather all the toothpicks from the ashtrays and throw them away. Nervous people laugh too loud; attention seekers act outrageously to try to get others to notice them. All of these gestures, interspersed with dialogue, give a much more subtle and imaginative idea of the character than just She tried to seduce him, or Aiden was nervous.
If the author gives the reader no clue as to whether the characters are sitting or standing, eating lunch or driving a car, the scene can sound like floating heads reciting words. By mixing in narration details with your dialogue, you can shed light on your characters and give the scene a real physical presence. In a play or film, we have the actors to interpret the dialogue, through their gestures, movements, expressions, and tone of voice. This extra dimension can be achieved in fiction too with the skillful use of “stage directions.”
Notice how physical action enlivens this scene from Denis Johnson’s “Emergency.” The drifter main character is talking to his friend and fellow orderly from the hospital, Georgie, who “often stole pills from the cabinets.”
He was running over the tiled floor of the operating room with a mop. “Are you still doing that?” I said.
“Jesus, there’s a lot of blood here,” he complained.
“Where?” The floor looked clean enough to me.
“What the hell were they doing in here?” he asked me.
“They were performing surgery, Georgie,” I told him.
“There’s so much goop inside of us, man,” he said, “and it all wants to get out.” He leaned his mop against a cabinet.
“What are you crying for?” I didn’t understand.
He stood still, raised both arms slowly behind his head, and tightened his ponytail. Then he grabbed the mop and started making broad random arcs with it, trembling and weeping and moving all around the place really fast. “What am I crying for?” he said. “Jesus. Wow, oh boy, perfect.”
The actions are important in that they show the drug-induced insanity of the characters, an integral element of the book’s bizarre tone.
Similarly, thoughts can be used in stage directions, giving us an extra dimension, as in this clip from “Emergency”:
Georgie opened his arms and cried out, “It’s the drive-in, man!” “The drive-in . . .” I wasn’t sure what these words meant.
Stage directions are especially useful when there is a conflict between what a character says and what a character feels or thinks. If a character says she’s not hurt and yet starts to cry, the reader knows that really she does feel injured. Like so:
“Nothing you say can hurt me,” she said, fighting back tears.
Also add action or thought if the tone of the words spoken needs to be explained. “I hate you,” she said slamming the front door is a very different sentence from “I hate you,” she said, hitting him playfully on the arm.
On the flip side, there is such a thing as too many stage directions. The reader doesn’t really need to know every single time the character shifts his weight or scratches behind his ears or thinks about doing the laundry. The scene can sound “overacted.” Like so:
She took the Brita pitcher out of the refrigerator. Did I drink that much, she wondered, or did I forget to refill it? She tilted the pitcher, pouring the clear, cold liquid into the glass. The condensation immediately began to bead down the sides. She returned the pitcher to the refrigerator, placing it next to the kiwi and an unopened jar of olives. “Oh,” she said, “did you want a glass of water, too, Mom?”
In this instance, the reader probably wouldn’t even get to the dialogue.
YOUR TURN:
Take the second version of the dialogue exchange you did for the previous exercise (the fictionalized one). Using the same dialogue that you wrote, rewrite the exchange, this time adding in tags and stage directions. Your tags should make it clear who is speaking and your stage directions should offer an added dash of nuance or meaning. Hint: it may help if one or both of the characters are engaged in a physical action. Then marvel at how well you’ve transformed real life into an interesting clip of fictional dialogue.
INDIRECT DIALOGUE
So far, we’ve been discussing direct dialogue—where the actual lines spoken are given. But there’s another option and that’s indirect dialogue—where the dialogue is summarized rather than quoted, appearing in summary rather than scene. Indirect dialogue can come in handy when the gist of what was said is more important than the actual dialogue.
Look at this passage from Tobias Wolff’s “Smokers.” Here the narrator is accosted by an annoying boy traveling by train to the same boarding school:
He started to talk almost the moment he sat down, and he didn’t stop until we reached Wallingford. Was I going to Choate? What a coincidence—so was he. My first year? His too. Where was I from? Oregon? No shit? Way the hell and gone up in the boondocks, eh? He was from Indiana—Gary, Indiana. I knew the song, didn’t I? I did, but he sang it for me anyway, all the way through, including the tricky ending.
By just summarizing the annoying boy’s questions, we are spared a monotonous conversation but get the most important information—the boy’s desperate appeal for friendship and the narrator’s annoyance at him—and we get it in a most economical fashion. In this instance, the reader doesn’t really need the back-and-forth of the actual conversation.
Let’s look at another example from “Smokers,” where Wolff mixes both direct and indirect dialogue:
As it happened, the courts were full. Talbot and I sat on the grass and I asked him questions I already knew the answers to, like where was he from and where had he been going to school the year before and who did he have for English. At this question he came to life. “English? Parker, the bald one. I got A’s all through school and now Parker tells me I can’t write.”
Here we get the gist of the conversation, but then, on an especially significant line, we get the actual quote.
So, in addition to asking yourself if a moment should be dialogued or not, you can also ask yourself if direct or indirect dialogue is the best choice for that particular moment.
YOUR TURN:
Return to the dialogue exchange you wrote in the previous exercise. This time convey the gist of it with just a few sentences of summarized dialogue. In addition to conveying the facts, hint at the character personalities and/or tension in the exchange. If you wish to include a line or two of the actual words spoken, do so. The determine if this particular exchange would be better served by dialogue or summarized dialogue in a work of fiction—a choice you will always have.
DIALOGUE AND CHARACTER
Perhaps the best thing about dialogue is that it allows characters to speak for themselves. You don’t really know someone in real life until you’ve talked to them and heard them talk to you; the same principle applies to fiction. Unless you’re superficial, a person’s outside appearance doesn’t matter nearly as much as what he has to say. It’s on the basis of what comes out of his mouth that you decide whether you like the person and want to spend more time with him. Okay, sometimes on dates we get superficial at first, but you know what I mean.
For example, rather than being told that Mr. Jackson is a highly educated and rather stuffy man who has an interest in German opera, let’s hear him speak:
“I am emotionally attracted to Ms. Mason. She has a Wagnerian formality that begs to be breeched.”
We get it, quite effectively.
Every person in life speaks in a somewhat unique fashion, and the same should be true for fictional characters. Just as you look for unique traits in your characters, look for the uniqueness in how they speak. Avoid having all your characters talk exactly the same way, or even having all of them talk just like you. Seek out the distinctive ways that characters express themselves when they open their mouths.
You should think about the plentitude of a character’s speech. You might create characters who speak in never-ending segments that travel over hill and dale and try the patience of everyone in the room or characters who only grunt monosyllabic responses, which could be equally trying to those in the conversation. If you find yourself on a date with either of these habits, you’re in trouble, but, fortunately, there are many variations in between.
People often have pet expressions that they use over and over again in dialogue. Oh, my head! instead of Oh, my God! or Don’t piss in my Cheerios instead of Don’t rain on my parade. Jay Gatsby, for example, is fond of the term “ol’ sport,” and Bartleby in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” would utter the phrase “I prefer not to” in response to just about anything, even when his employer insists he leave his job.
Ask yourself questions about how your characters might talk. Do they use incorrect grammar and colloquialisms, or do they speak “perfectly”?Does their background and social status affect the way they talk? Do they tend to beat around the bush or get to the point quickly?
Here’s an example from J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, where Holden Caulfield is conversing with a New York City cab driver:
“Hey, Horwitz,” I said. “You ever pass by the lagoon in Central Park? Down by Central Park South?”
“The what?”
“The lagoon. That little lake, like, there. Where the ducks are. You know.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, you know the ducks that swim around in it? In the springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime, by any chance?”
“Where who goes?”
These two characters clearly have different backgrounds and we hear it in the way they speak. We also hear the difference in their personalities. Holden is chatty, curious, even a bit nervous. The cabbie just wants to drive in peace without worrying about the damn ducks.
In Ethan Canin’s “The Accountant,” an accountant is at an adult baseball fantasy camp chatting with the legendary Willie Mays:
Willie Mays said, “Shoot, you hit the ball, brother.”
I ventured, “Shoot, yes.”
Willie Mays said, “You creamed that sucker.”
I said, “Say, I bet they sock you at tax time.”
Here it’s humorous watching the accountant trying to sound loose and cool talking to Willie Mays. Though the two men are speaking a similar lingo, it’s clear that the accountant is much less at home with it. Perhaps it’s because he says “Shoot, yes,” instead of the more natural “Shoot, yeah.” When it comes to dialogue, such minute nuances make a world of difference.
Here’s an example from Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, where a Jewish mother is conversing with her adolescent son:
“I don’t believe in God.”
“Get out of those dungarees, Alex, and put on some decent clothes.”
“They’re not dungarees, they’re Levi’s.”
“It’s Rosh Hashanah, Alex, and to me you’re wearing overalls! Get in there and put a tie on and a jacket on and a pair of trousers and a clean shirt, and come out looking like a human being. And shoes, Mister, hard shoes.”
“My shirt is clean.”
“Oh, you’re riding for a fall, Mr. Big. You’re fourteen years old, and believe me, you don’t know everything there is to know. Get out of those moccasins! What the hell are you supposed to be, some kind of Indian?”
Here both characters are from the same family but they clearly have different methods of expressing themselves. Notice that no tags are used, although the mother calls the boy by his name a few times. When characters speak this distinctively, tags become superfluous.
Now notice how different all the characters above sound from these two servants in an English manor in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day:
Miss Kenton had entered and said from the door:
“Mr. Stevens, I have just noticed something outside which puzzles me.”
“What is that, Miss Kenton?”
“Was it his lordship’s wish that the Chinaman on the upstairs landing should be exchanged with the one outside this door?”
“The Chinaman, Miss Kenton?”
“Yes, Mr. Stevens. The Chinaman normally on the landing you will now find outside this door.”
“I fear, Miss Kenton, that you are a little confused.”
“I do not believe I am confused at all, Mr. Stevens. I make it my business to acquaint myself with where the objects properly belong in a house. The Chinamen, I would suppose, were polished by someone then replaced incorrectly. If you are skeptical, Mr. Stevens, perhaps you will care to step out here and observe for yourself.”
“Miss Kenton, I am occupied at present.”
“But, Mr. Stevens, you do not appear to believe what I am saying. I am thus asking you to step outside this door and see for yourself”
“Miss Kenton, I am busy just now and will attend to the matter shortly. It is hardly one of urgency.”
“You accept then, Mr. Stevens, that I am not in error on this point.”
“I will accept nothing of the sort, Miss Kenton, until I have had a chance to deal with the matter. However, I am occupied at present.”
Not only do these characters speak in a formalized manner, but they become disturbed in a formalized manner. And though Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton both strive for the propriety demanded by their setting, Miss Kenton has more trouble than Mr. Stevens with keeping her emotions in check. The interesting thing about Mr. Stevens is that, in the manner of the perfect English butler, he almost blends into the polished woodwork, and this is certainly reflected in his dialogue.
In addition to getting a sense of who characters are, dialogue can also convey a strong sense of the interaction between characters. Let’s return to the man and girl in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” Here’s what they say right after they get the Anis del Toro that they ordered:
“It tastes like licorice,” the girl said and put the glass down.
“That’s the way with everything.”
“Yes,” said the girl. “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”
“Oh, cut it out.”
“You started it,” the girl said. “I was being amused. I was having a fine time.”
“Well, let’s try and have a fine time.”
We don’t have to be told there’s tension between this couple. We can hear it. Almost as though we are sitting at the neighboring table. Here’s a tip: tension between characters will almost always notch up the interest level of your dialogue.
In “Cathedral,” look at the dialogue shortly after the blind man arrives.
“Did you have a good train ride?” I said. “Which side of the train did you sit on, by the way?”
“What a question, which side!” my wife said. “What’s it matter which side?” she said.
“I just asked,” I said.
“Right side,” the blind man said. “I hadn’t been on a train in nearly forty years. Not since I was a kid. With my folks. That’s been a long time. Yd nearly forgotten the sensation. I have winter in my beard now,” he said. “So I’ve been told, anyway. Do I look distinguished, my dear?” the blind man said to my wife.
Here we clearly see the tension between the narrator and his wife, a continuation of an earlier argument about the narrator’s unwillingness to welcome the blind man into their home. Despite the marital unrest before him, Robert, the blind man, seems remarkably at ease. We also see each character thrown into sharp relief through the words spoken. The narrator is being flip, even ornery, by asking the blind man on which side of the train he sat. The wife, poor woman, is trying to curtail her errant husband. And right off the bat Robert is demonstrating his relaxed friendliness and social ease. He even shows a touch of the poet by referring to “winter in my beard,” a significant point considering poetry is something shared by the wife and blind man and disliked by the narrator. A rather complex character triangle is revealed quite specifically in just this short passage.
YOUR TURN:
Jessica, a somewhat stuffy university professor (you pick her field), stops at a gas station in some backwater place. As she fills her tank, Aivin, the attendant, approaches her. He is an uneducated sort (though not necessarily dim) and, being both bored and friendly, he wants to chat. Jessica would rather not chat but she also doesn’t want to alienate Alvin because she would like directions to a nearby restaurant that won’t be too greasy or ghastly. Write a scene between Jessica and Alvin, using dialogue, tags, and stage directions. Your main goal is to capture the flavor of these two people through how they speak.
SUBTEXT
Check out the relationship section of a bookstore. There are thousands of books on communication between partners. Our society may be excellent at talking, but we have trouble communicating. People often don’t say what they mean. Sometimes they say the opposite of what they mean. They hide insults in sugary language (or sugary feelings in insults). They don’t listen. They mishear. They don’t answer. They remain silent.
Capitalizing on miscommunication improves fictional dialogue because it makes it more true to life. Misunderstandings can also add tension to the dialogue exchange. This tension results from the gap between what’s being said and the subtext—the meaning beneath the surface meaning. Dialogue with subtext has two levels of meaning.
A great illustration of subtext occurs in the film Annie Hall. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, who have recently met, are standing on a terrace carrying on a nervous conversation. She says: “Well, I-I-I would—I would like to take a serious photography course soon.” But what she’s really thinking appears in a subtitle: “He probably thinks I’m a yo-yo.” Then he says: “Photography’s interesting, ‘cause, you know, it’s-it’s a new art form, and a, uh, a set of aesthetic criteria have not emerged yet.” But his subtitle says: “I wonder what she looks like naked?” How much does this mirror real-life conversation? Probably more than any of us would like to admit.
Though you are unlikely to use subtitles with your dialogue, subtext can be enormously effective in fiction.
In The Good People of New York by Thisbe Nissen, Edwin, long divorced, asks his daughter about her mother’s live-in boyfriend.
Edwin is silent for a time. “You didn’t like Steven much, did you?” he finally asks.
Miranda shrugs. “He was my orthodontist.”
Miranda’s evasive answer contains much meaning. In the sullen manner of a teenager, she’s explaining how embarrassing it is to have her mother date the man who tightens her braces, and her further embarrassment at discussing it with her father. But her response wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or relevatory (or concise) if she were able to articulate her complicated feelings.
In The Great Gatsby, when Gatsby shows Daisy his exquisite collection of monogrammed shirts, this is how she reacts:
“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.”
Daisy is sobbing for many painful reasons but the shirts aren’t one of them. Her inability to express her feelings adds tremendous poignancy to the moment.
Finally, let’s look at another dialogue exchange from “Cathedral.” The narrator and his wife are arguing as they prepare for the blind man’s visit. As you read this, try to determine if the characters are speaking in subtext or not:
“Maybe I could take him bowling,” I said to my wife. She was at the draining board doing scalloped potatoes. She put down the knife she was using and turned around.
“If you love me,” she said, “you can do this for me. If you don’t love me, okay. But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, Yd make him feel comfortable.” She wiped her hands with the dish towel.
“I don’t have any blind friends,” I said.
“You don’t have any friends,” she said. “Period. Besides,” she said, “goddamn it, his wife’s just died! Don’t you understand that? The man’s lost his wife!”
If you answered yes, you’re right. If you answered no, you’re also right. The narrator is speaking in subtext. When he says, “I could take him bowling,” he’s really saying how ridiculous it is to be entertaining a blind man. When he says, “I don’t have any blind friends,” he’s really saying that a blind friend is worse than no friend. The wife, on the other hand, is saying exactly what’s on her mind. This is a very lifelike situation, where one person is more inclined to speak sideways than another.
Having thus emphasized that dialogue should not just be a representation of everyday speech, I should add that there is real pleasure to be had in the way people actually talk, their confusion, their circumlocution, their mistakes, misunderstandings, repetitions, and their small talk. There exists a fine line between actual and fictionalized dialogue. But in fictional dialogue you want to make sure the poor communication serves a dramatic purpose that is understood by the reader. When you achieve this, your dialogue will take on layers of realism and depth.
As the old Yiddish proverb goes, “A man hears one word but understands two.” Good advice for writing dialogue. A layered conversation is the difference between what seems to be a stage-set version of a house and a genuine lived-in home.
YOUR TURN:
Envision a husband and wife or any other kind of romantic pair. Give them names and think about who they are. One of these characters suspects the other of being unfaithful (in some way), and let’s say the other character is (in some way) guilty. Write a dialogue exchange between these two where the sore topic is never referred to directly but instead simmers beneath the words spoken. Don’t enter the thoughts of either character. And keep the conversation focused on tuna steak, which they are having for dinner at the moment. If you exhaust tuna steak, you can move on to politics or movies. Silly as this sounds, see if the finished product doesn’t have a ring of truth to it.
BAD DIALOGUE
Bad dialogue makes characters seem like puppets, mere creations of the author. Of course they are, but the reader will conveniently forget that if the dialogue is well rendered. Bad dialogue exposes the author, in much the same way that Toto exposes the Great and Powerful Oz when he tugs back the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. When you can see the machinations behind the writing, the entire illusion is lost.
You remember Mulder and Scully from the TV show The X-Files? They worked together for nine years and still, each week, Scully patronizingly explained simple medical terms to poor, brilliant Mulder. Why? So that the audience could figure it out. Lesson: dialogue is often not a good venue for exposition:
Scully: He’s exsanguinating from a laceration in his jugular.
Mulder: You mean he’s bleeding to death from his neck?
There’s no way that Mulder, expert in all things paranormal and disgusting, wouldn’t know what exsanguinating means. Find some other way to impart the information (the dying man’s wife wants to know what’s going on; or show us the gaping, bloody wound). I made up that exchange, but it could very well have been in one of the episodes. While these exchanges had a certain charm on the TV show, they would ring phony in fiction.
Though you’re not likely to be using the word exsanguinating, you may find yourself trying to sneak in some exposition through your dialogue, like so:
“Troy, you were six years old when your mother left you and your sister to join the circus as a high-wire acrobat.”
Presumably Troy hasn’t forgotten this odd fact, so why is he being told? Read your dialogue over. If it sounds forced in places, or unrealistic, see if you can turn the dialogue around so it’s not so obvious:
“Troy, grow up. It’s been twenty years since your mother left, and you’re still harping about how much you hate aerialists. Don’t you think it’s time you let go?”
Now there is a credible reason why the information is introduced. The speaker is making a point about “letting go,” and the exposition just happens to be included. If you can’t find a plausible way to get the exposition in the dialogue, then you’re better off just putting the exposition in the narration:
At the age of six, Troy and his sister had the misfortune to be abandoned by their mother, who fled to fulfill her lifelong ambition of performing as a circus acrobat.
Another thing to watch out for is preaching in dialogue. Some writers, once they gain your attention, use their stories as political platforms. Their characters expound the writer’s views on various social issues or prejudices. Don’t give your characters a podium from which to harangue the reader. If you want to write about the evils of corporate greed, draft a letter to the editor, but don’t make poor fictional Johnny argue at length with his basketball buddy about the pitfalls of capitalism:
“You may think the raffle is a good idea but I’m telling you it’s merely a capitalistic ploy to get rich. Capitalism, my friend, is the root of all evil. Today it’s a raffle. Tomorrow you’ll be paying Guatamalan families a penny a week to produce your goods so you can travel first-class and keep a summer house in East Hampton.”
If the reader feels that the author is making the character’s voice the author’s own opinion, the reader might feel manipulated and bored. That said, there are some authors who made a career of exactly this—Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Orwell, to name a few—but it’s extremely hard to pull off.
One last thing on bad dialogue. For reasons as yet undetermined by modern science, profanity on the page is much more alarming and vulgar than spoken profanity. Even foul-mouthed characters appear to overuse swear words when they are written down. If you don’t believe me, write a dialogue between rampant cussers, truck drivers or socialites, and you’ll see what I mean. A couple of well-chosen profanities work much better than a string of four-letter wonders, bringing all the flavor of X-rated speech without overdoing it.
DIALECT
Dialect is like walking on eggshells—tread carefully. It’s tough to do well, and even if it is done well it can be distracting.
If rendered carelessly, dialect runs the risk of sounding hackneyed, exaggerated, or even offensive, as in:
Moishe tripped over a piece of gefilte fish that was lying on the kitchen floor.
“Oy gevalt!” cried Sadie. “Bubbela, the scare you gave me.”
“What, are you meshugana, leaving this fish on the floor?”
We’re being clobbered on the head with Yiddishisms. Less is more, as in:
Moishe tripped over a piece of gefilte fish that was lying on the kitchen floor.
“Oy gevalt!” Sadie said. “The scare you gave me.”
“Well, I didn’t expect there should be fish on the floor,” Moishe said.
Here we get the flavor of the ethnicity without having it shoved down our throat.
Mark Twain is considered a master of dialect, but it’s important to remember how difficult it is to read the character of Jim, the escaped slave, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because the dialect is executed so faithfully:
“Well, you see, it ‘uz dis way. Ole missus—dat’s Miss Watson—she pecks on me all de time, en treats me potty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn’t sell me down to Orleans.”
But it is possible to make dialect work smoothly if you focus on just giving a flavor of it—with key words and speech patterns and rhythms. In Beloved—which deals with black characters living around the time of the Civil War, contemporaries of Twain’s Jim—Toni Morrison manages to capture the essence of her characters’ dialect without throwing it in the reader’s face:
“Wait here. Somebody be here directly. Don’t move. They’ll find you.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I wish I knew your name so I could remember you right.”
“Name’s Stamp,” he said. “Stamp Paid. Watch out for that there baby, you hear?”
“I hear, I hear,” she said, but she didn’t.
Nothing about the dialogue looks terribly foreign to the reader, but we get the sense of dialect through the little touches like “Somebody be here directly” and “Watch out for that there baby, you hear?” Morrison has found the proper balance.
Another alternative to dialect is simply to state that a character has an accent or a dialect, or have another character comment on this fact, then write dialogue as you normally would. This method gets your point across without confusing the reader.
A semirelated matter: make sure that you’re not making the reader experience the same speech difficulties as your characters. If you have a character who stutters, avoid showing it in this distracting fashion:
“I—I—I’m not sh-sure,” Joe said.
Go for the simpler:
“I’m not sure,” Joe stammered.
You also want to be fairly sparing with such circumlocutions as “uhm,” “uh,” “well,” and “you know.”
And, uh, well, I guess that’s what I’ve got to say on dialogue.