Kate Myers Hanson
AS AN EXPERIMENT AND PART OF OUR EXPLORATION INTO what makes good dialogue, a handful of graduate students gave me permission to record their dialogue as we discussed Tobias Wolff's short story “Bullet in the Brain.” We recorded every sound, the interruptions and odd pauses in “real” speech, complete with ums and ahs and you knows and uh-huhs and expletives. Keep in mind that what these students had to say about Wolff's story was insightful and reflected a sound knowledge of the foundations of writing fiction, in particular how well-crafted dialogue characterizes through precise language, syntax, and sentence rhythms, how it creates a specific atmosphere or mood, and with an eyedropper gives the reader an immediate sense of the conflict and theme, what Edgar Allan Poe calls the single effect. “You know on so many levels that someone is going to kill this guy,” one of my students said, referring to Anders, the central character. In addition, they discussed how the dialogue works in concert with setting, the confined space in the bank, to create tension, advance the action, and even, with references to Vietnam and the killing of villagers, fore-shadow. As William Sloane, in The Craft of Writing, says, “Dialogue must do more than one thing at a time or it is too inert for the purposes of fiction.” Wolff's story more than satisfies that dictum.
But back to the recording of our discussion of “Bullet in the Brain.” When we read aloud our transcribed dialogue, it was confusing, interruptive, and at times barely intelligible. This was “real” dialogue, wasn't it? Why did it seem so clunky? The truth is, as fiction writers our goal is not to record or reproduce actual speech, with all of its clumsiness, dissonance, and rhythmic missteps. Dialogue has its own reality, but it is not “real” speech. It should be used for a specific purpose and therefore crafted to meet that purpose. Consider “The Cutting Edge,” a short story by James Purdy. A son reluctantly returns home to see his parents after a long absence. The mother argues with her husband over their son's beard, his rudeness, but the father is reluctant to become involved. As readers we wonder what is really going on. Our allegiances are divided at the beginning of the story, but as the story progresses dialogue unravels the past and deepens the characterization. We begin to ask questions. Is the son really the victim here? Why doesn't the husband stand up to his wife? What's at stake? With sleight of hand their dialogue becomes revelatory, and we eventually learn that the wife holds currency in the relationship—the father's infidelity—which she uses to control both her son and her husband. Dialogue, the master of multitasking and sleight of hand, again serves the story, revealing a truth that works against the expectations of the reader.
Develop the beginning of a story, no more than one page. Establish a setting that you believe might work in terms of conflict and theme. Place in that setting two characters who have known each other for a long time and give one a secret that will change their lives. Give them room to talk and act, but don't allow the character with the secret to reveal it; only allow the reader to intuit it from their dialogue.
Write a page of dialogue between two students who come from very different backgrounds. For example, one grew up in a wealthy suburb in Atlanta and the other grew up on a farm in Iowa. Do not state where they are from, what their experiences have been, or what each of them wants. Use only dialogue (language and level of diction, sentence rhythms, and you can also include syntax; characters' gestures) to reveal and to differentiate the voices of these characters. Use an objective point of view, without sinking into either character's consciousness. Read Hemingway's stories “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Killers” as examples of an objective point of view.
The following is an example of “packed” dialogue, an effort to give the reader too much information. Therefore, the focus of the story is unclear and this overload disengages the reader. At this point, the dialogue is trying to do too much.
“Oh, Shirley, it's so nice to finally meet you. Of course I've seen you getting off the downtown bus at five every weekday. You always look so tired.”
“You're right about that, Linda. I have a boss who has me running all day at the Grinder, a new coffee shop near the Greyhound bus station, and then I have to come home to this run-down apartment building and deal with my mother. It's depressing.”
“You don't sound like you're from around here, Shirley.”
“No, I'm from Texas, down around Brownsville.”
“I thought I detected an accent. Well, maybe you'd like to come up and have a drink with me and my husband, who just got promoted to foreman over at Westwind Industries. We could have some wine. What do you think, Shirley?”
“That would be nice, but first I have to check up on my mother, though that might take a while since she's a real hypochondriac. Yesterday she said she couldn't stand up because the bottoms of her feet were too hot, called me at work in the middle of the day and insisted I bring home a bag of ice so she could soak her feet in the bathtub.”
“You seem to have a lot on your plate, Shirley.”
“You have no idea, Linda.”
Write a page of dialogue between these characters. Consider adding other elements to work in concert with the dialogue to move the story forward, but allow dialogue to drive the story.