But it’s when [the characters] start talking to one another that their real problems begin.
After Lady Anne announces that she’s got tickets for the theater, her son gushes: “‘Macbeth’! Oh, Mummy, I love you! It’s the one I’ve always wanted to see.” Later, Sir Peter declares: “I’ll never be free again. You killed her, Greta. And then you made me part of what you’d done. You and your psychopath.” The psychopath in question soon remarks: “Yeah, DNA. The scientists have got the better of us…Just grab a blood sample, send it off to the lab, and hey presto, Johnny Burglar gets 10 years.”
—GEOFF NICHOLSON, reviewing Simon Tolkien’s
Final Witness in The New York Times
As Nicholson’s review suggests, the problem with dialogue is, more often than not, with the dialogue itself rather than with the mechanics. The creation of character voice—writing dialogue that reflects your characters’ vocabularies, histories, and emotions—is one of your greatest challenges as a writer. Professional mechanics can make good dialogue dazzling, but what do you do if your dialogue is weak to begin with?
Contrary to popular wisdom, you can be taught to write better dialogue, but that subject would take a book of its own. In the meantime, there are some mechanical techniques you can use when self-editing that will cure one of the most common reasons for flat, voiceless dialogue: formality.
The difficulty is that all dialogue is formal to some extent. If dialogue were an accurate representation of the way most people actually talk most of the time, it would read like this:
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” she said.
“How was the weekend?”
“Oh, fine, fine. Got some stuff done.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah. Cut the lawn, trimmed the hedges, you know, things like that.”
“Umm-humm.”
“How about yourself?”
“Me? Uh, pretty much the same, I guess. Cut back the lilacs.”
“Yeah, the lilacs. Grow like weeds, don’t they?”
“Yeah.”
If you were to write dialogue like this at novel length, your readers would nod off before they finished your first chapter. The dialogue you’re trying to create has to be much more compressed, much more focused than real speech. In effect, dialogue is an artificial creation that sounds natural when you read it.
Most writers go overboard, creating dialogue so artificial that it becomes stilted and formal—again, it doesn’t sound like anything anyone on this planet, in this century, would actually say. As a result, all the characters sound alike. Stilted speech is stilted speech no matter who speaks it.
The simplest way to make your dialogue less formal is to use more contractions. “I would not do that if I were you” sounds made up, where “I wouldn’t do that if I were you” sounds like something a person would actually say. You use contractions, and so should your characters. And if you want to convey that a character is stiff—that he’s pompous or his first language isn’t English, or she’s prissy—then dispensing with the contractions is an elegant way to go. “Is it not wonderful?” just has that continental flair.
Another helpful technique is to use sentence fragments. Consider this exchange:
“Is she pregnant?”
“It doesn’t matter whether she is or not. She’s not going to marry him.”
It sounds much less formal—and more like real speech—if you edit it to read:
“Is she pregnant?”
“Doesn’t matter whether she is or not, she’s not going to marry him.”
In the second exchange, the writer has used another technique (in addition to the sentence fragment) to good effect: the two sentences in the answer to the question are strung together with a comma instead of the (grammatically correct) period. If not overused, this technique captures the rhythms of real speech remarkably well.
If your dialogue seems formal, also check to make sure you aren’t trying to shoehorn information into the dialogue that doesn’t belong there. We’ve already suggested in chapter 2 that you be wary of disguising your exposition as dialogue, lest it make your characters speak out of character. It also tends to make dialogue stilted, as in:
“Dear,” she said, “I realize it seems unfair of me to tell you this now, after eleven years of marriage and three children, but I’m not the woman I’ve led you to believe.”
Again, you don’t want your characters to speak more fully formed thoughts than they normally would, just so you can get some information to your readers. This doesn’t mean you should never use dialogue for exposition, of course. Dialogue can be an excellent means of putting facts across. Just make sure your characters have a reason for saying the lines you give them, and that the lines themselves are in character.
Another way to make your dialogue more natural is to weed out fancy polysyllabic words unless the use of them is right for the character. “Have you considered the consequences?” sounds like something you read in a book. “Have you thought about what might happen?” sounds like something somebody might actually say. So have your characters “think” rather than “conclude,” “give up” rather than “surrender,” and “get” rather than “retrieve.” What you’re going for is short words packed full of consonants rather than longer, vowel-heavy words.
Another technique for loosening up your dialogue—one well known to successful screenwriters—is misdirection. In formal dialogue, questions are always clearly understood and answers are complete and responsive. Real life is rarely that neat. Consider the difference between:
“I don’t know what you were thinking about, going into a place like that. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, I really am.”
and
“What did you think you were doing, going into a place like that?”
“I’m all right. Really.”
The first version is clear enough, but the bit of misdirection in the second version gives the dialogue a little extra snap.
So have your characters misunderstand one another once in a while. Have them answer the unspoken question rather than the one asked out loud. Have them talk at cross-purposes. Have them hedge. Disagree. Lie. It will go a long way toward making them sound human.
For a striking example, notice the way Armand studiously ignores the questions Richie asks in this passage from Elmore Leonard’s Killshot:
“Armand,” Richie said, “you’re not married, are you?”
“No way.”
“You ever live with a woman? I mean outside your family?”
“What’s the point?”
“Armand, lemme tell you something. You’re always telling me something, now it’s my turn. Okay, Armand.” If he kept saying the name it would get easier. “You might have shot a woman or two in your line or work…Have you?”
“Go on what you’re gonna tell me.”
“Let’s say you have. But shooting a woman and understanding a woman are two entirely different things, man.”
Had Armand simply answered Richie’s question or told Richie to shut up, the dialogue wouldn’t have the subtle tension and sense of authenticity it does.
Take a look at the following passage of dialogue from a workshop submission:
“I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow,” Anne said.
“I thought it would be a nice idea to drop in.”
“Stan, I just got in about five minutes ago. I’m fixing myself something to eat and then I’m going to get some rest.”
“So, what you’re trying to tell me is that I’m not wanted. Right?”
“Yes.”
If you simply read it silently, this passage probably seems fine. The mechanics are transparent, and Anne’s exasperation with Stan is clear without being explained through speaker attributions. But try reading the example aloud. We did, and this is the result:
“I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow,” Anne said.
“I just thought it would be nice to drop in, that’s all.”
“Stan, I just got in five minutes ago myself. All I want to do is fix something to eat and get some rest.”
“Are you trying to tell me I’m not wanted?”
“You got it.”
The changes we made were subtle, but if you read both examples aloud, you can see the difference they make. The second example reads more like real speech.
Again, good dialogue isn’t an exact transcription of the way people talk but is more an artifice, a literary device that mimics real speech. This means that even the best dialogue is by nature slightly formal. And because most of the dialogue we read has this touch of formality, our eyes are trained to see slightly formal speech as normal. So if your dialogue is stiff or unnatural, your eye may pass right over the stiffness as you reread.
The answer of course is to bring your ear into play when you’re editing yourself. After all, we’re used to hearing relaxed, normal speech in real life. Much of the stiffness in a passage of dialogue that doesn’t show up when you read your work silently (such as the “Yes” in the example above) will spring right out at you when you read out loud. You may find yourself making little changes as you read. If so, pay attention to these changes—your ear is telling you how your dialogue should sound. The eye can be fooled, but the ear knows.
In addition to helping you overcome stiffness, reading a passage aloud can help you find the rhythm of your dialogue. Speaker attributions, when to insert a beat, when to let the dialogue push ahead—all of this becomes clearer when you hear your dialogue being spoken.
Some writers find it helpful to have a friend read through their dialogue with them, as if it were a screenplay. Others read their dialogue into a tape recorder and then play it back—more of the stiffness shows up when they listen than when they read. However you decide to do it, reading your dialogue aloud will almost always lead you to changes that make it sound more natural.
Reading dialogue aloud can help you develop your characters’ unique voices as well. Select a scene in which two or three characters speak, then go through it two or three times—reading aloud, in turn, all the lines spoken by a single character. As you read the first character’s lines aloud, you may get a sense of his or her particular speech rhythms, vocabulary, conversational style (self-interruptive or self-contained, enthusiastic or rigid), speech mannerisms, and so forth. Then read the next character’s lines aloud, and if the speech style is the same, you know you’ve got some rethinking to do. As always when reading aloud, be alert for any “mistake” or change you make in the process of reading. It may be an improvement.
Everything we‘ve just said about dialogue applies to narration and description as well. Consider the following:
It had been Carl’s rather desperate willingness to put himself and his home on display for the membership committee that finally convinced me that something would have to be done about the longtime erosion of our marriage. The thought of joining such a group had never occurred to me, and I realized that Carl and I not only no longer thought the same way about things, we didn’t even think about the same things.
Once again, the passage looks perfectly fine, but if you read it aloud, you will probably find yourself tripping over the wording from time to time—the “Carl and I not only no longer thought,” for instance. As edited, the passage reads:
Actually, it had been Carl’s eagerness to put himself and his home (and his wife) on display for the membership committee that finally convinced me something specific would have to be done about the longtime erosion of our marriage. The thought of joining such a group had never occurred to me. I realized then that not only did Carl and I no longer think the same way about things, we didn’t even think about the same things.
Even writing that was never intended to be (and probably never will be) read aloud can be improved if you read aloud as you revise. Every word of this book was read aloud several times in the course of revision. Passages of narration and description will read better once they have the sense of rhythm and flow you edit in while (or after) reading them aloud.
A century ago, Mark Twain could write a novel full of passages like this one—
“Why, Huck, doan’ de French people talk de same way we does?”
“No, Jim; you couldn’t understand a word they said—not a single word.”
“Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?”
“I don’t know; but it’s so. I got some of their jabber out a book. Spose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?”
“I wouldn’ think nuff’n; I’d take en bust him over de head.”
—and get away with it.
Times have changed, and few writers today would write dialogue as hard to follow as Twain’s. But beginning novelists even today are often tempted to write dialect—whether it be southern black or Bronx Italian or Locust Valley lock-jaw—using a lot of trick spellings and lexical gimmicks. It’s the easy way out.
And like most easy ways, it’s not the best way. When you use an unusual spelling, you are bound to draw the reader’s attention away from the dialogue and onto the means of getting it across. If the dialect gets thick enough, it isn’t read so much as translated—as any modern reader of Huckleberry Finn can tell you. The occasional dialectical spelling won’t get you into trouble with your readers, but it doesn’t take much to make too much.
So how do you get a character’s geographical or educational or social background across? The best way is through word choice, cadence, and grammar. If you can capture the particular rhythm, the music in, say, a New England Yankee’s way of speaking, you’ll have put your character across with great effectiveness.
Consider this example, taken from Ed McBain’s review of The Secret Pilgrim by John le Carré:
It comes as no surprise that le Carré’s tone-perfect ear can recreate in English even the cadences and styles of people speaking in foreign tongues. Listen, for example, to the German girl Britta, a prisoner of the Israelis, talking to Ned in her native tongue, transcribed as English:
“Are you inadequate, Mr. Nobody? I think perhaps you are. In your occupation, that is normal. You should join us, Mr. Nobody. You should take lessons with us, and we shall convert you to our cause. Then you will be adequate.”
Isn’t that German we’re reading?
And then there is the following example, from Catherine Cottle’s The Price of Milk and Honey:
“I didn’t stay up to fight,” she said. “But I got to find out what it is keeping us here. What it is keeping my children from being somebody.”
“They already be somebody. They born somebodies.”
“Somebody to do what? Work the cane field? All I want is what’s good for us and the children.”
“You making me crazy, that’s what you doing. I used to could forget about the cane field at night. I used to not remember about my papa and my mama so much. Now—”
“If we left here, you wouldn’t see the cane field no more. You wouldn’t have nightmares about your papa and your mama, neither. I can’t understand why you stay.”
“Why I got to give you a reason? Reason ain’t no pain killer. Reason ain’t no free-feeling good world.”
Notice that the writer never changes a spelling, never even drops a g. There are no explanations, no adverbs, and no speaker attributions beyond the first one. There is one interruption, one bit of misdirection, and neither of the characters speaks more than three sentences in a row.
But read the passage aloud. When you do, you can feel how right the words are, how well they fit the mouths of the writer’s southern black characters. It takes courage to write a line like, “Reason ain’t no free-feeling good world.” But the results are worth the risk. You can imagine real, live people saying these words.
That’s what you should strive for in all your dialogue—to give a sense that the words you write are words real people would actually speak. Explanations, -ly adverbs, oddball verbs of speech, trick spellings—these can’t really help your dialogue because they don’t really change the dialogue. They take the place of good dialogue rather than help create it.
And if you’re serious about writing fiction well, you will accept no substitutes.
Checklist
Exercises
As they sat quietly catching their breath, Getz said, “We’ve all been diving together for a long time and are very comfortable with each other. I understand you’re experienced but you are new to us, so I wonder if you would mind my giving you a quick quiz, just to satisfy ourselves of your basic competence?”
“Go ahead, sir.”
“Okay, this is easy. What is your maximum no-decompress bottom time at three atmospheres?”
“The U.S. Navy tables allow sixty minutes at sixty feet with a standard rate of ascent.”
“Good work, Mr. Wheeler. Welcome aboard. You see, we try not to take chances. We are frequently more than ten hours from a competent physician and there is no recompression chamber in the country. We don’t ‘push the tables.’”
Lou grinned boyishly, speaking with a cigarette in his mouth. “You mean we don’t regularly ‘push the tables.’”
I peered through the front window of the garage, which did me no good, since light hadn’t been able to penetrate that window since man walked on the moon. “Anybody here?” I tapped on the door.
A man came out from the shop wearing greasy, half-unzipped coveralls with the name “Lester” stitched over the pocket. I hoped he took those off before he got into my car.
“Yeah, wha’ can I do for youse?” he grumbled as he took his cigar stub out of his mouth and spat near my feet.
“Well, my name is Mr. Baumgarten. I’m here to pick up my car. Is it ready?” I said sweetly. Truth is, I was ready to get the car away from him whether it was ready or not.
“Hang onna sec.” He stepped back into the shop and picked up a greasy clipboard with a thick wad of forms under the clip. “Wha’ wuzza name again, Bumgarden?”
“BAUMgarten,” I said. You cretin, I thought.
“Yeah, right,” he said, pawing through the forms. “Don’t see youse here, Mr. BAUMgarden. Sorry.”
“What do you mean, sorry? You have my car in there. Either it’s fixed or it’s not.” I’m a patient man, but my blood was beginning to boil.
“Loo’, mistah, whaddya think—I got time to get, like, intimit wid all my clientele?” Oh, I bet you get intimate if they’re pretty enough, I thought. “You could be BAUMgarden, you could be his cousin, you could be Governor Pataki for all I know,” he went on. “But I ain’t givin you no car ’less you got papers and I got matchin’ papers. Far as I’m concerned, you ain’t on this clipboard, you don’t exist.”