Improvement in writing resembles that saying about a rising tide lifting all boats.
The writer who improves one element in their writing, let’s say characterization, will also improve narration, description, plotting, etc.
The thing about writing is the elements in storytelling we label and talk about separately are really amoebas in a microscope’s view: a bit formless with permeable borders, flowing over, around and through each other, and if you tug on one, they all move. It’s hard to tell where characterization stops and description begins, or where setting separates from mood, or when dialogue isn’t also plot.
But this is an aside. We were talking about words within the quotes.
When I started telling stories, my dialogue sucked (other parts sucked too, but I didn’t recognize it the way I could with dialogue). My characters sounded wooden, uninteresting and inhuman. I’d write sections like this:
The terrorist’s bomb in the train station detonated, “Run, the building is exploding!” Simon yelled.
It was embarrassing.
My turnaround came from an article entitled “On Dialogue” by Gregory McDonald in Mystery Writer’s Handbook. Because McDonald was known for effective dialogue (he wrote the Fletch novels) the editors asked him to contribute his thoughts. He struggled with a traditional essay for several drafts before throwing up his hands and writing a dialogue about writing dialogue instead. It’s brilliant.
For me, the key takeaway was that dialogue is not formal writing. It shouldn’t sound like sentences from an essay (unless you have a peculiar character).
His first line was, “Listen.”
If you can hunt down the essay, it’s worth reading.
Here’s what I learned about what goes between quote marks from him and others:
- Most people occasionally or frequently speak in fragments. All those years you carefully constructed grammatically complete sentences for red-pen wielding English teachers don’t help you write convincing dialogue.
- Most people use contractions.
- Dialogue often is informal. Slang and cliches can show up in dialogue.
- Good dialogue can be elliptical because people don’t say directly what they mean, or they’re not sure how to reply, so they are indirect or ambiguous, particularly when talking about sensitive subjects.
- Questions can be replied to with questions.
- Questions can be replied to with a change of subject. An unanswered question can be more powerful and meaningful than answering.
- People aren’t speaking in a vacuum. The world surrounds them, so they talk about the subject of their conversation and the world they’re in. McDonald’s second line in his essay was, “Right. You were going to tell me about dialogue. We’ll need three eggs.”
- Dialogue reveals character. By word choice we get hints about characters’ education, social class, mood, and personality.
- Dialogue can show action. Two people in a car might be discussing whether God exists, but they’re also driving, so you might get this, “If God is all-powerful and loving, then why do people suffer? Turn right here.”
- People interrupt each other. Sometimes they interrupt themselves, like, “I was going to . . . look, personal relationships are hard.”
- People will trail off and not finish sentences.
- People will repeat part of what was said to them, which can look silly at times:
-
- “I’m headed to Best Buy for batteries.”
- “Best Buy?”
- “Yeah, Best Buy.”
- “For batteries?”
- “Then to Taco Bell. I’m jonesing for a Cheesy Gordita Crunch.”
- The most effective dialogue is seldom one character telling another one directly what’s on their mind. What they say may be ironic or freighted with unstated meaning. This is why “I love you” can be so powerful at the end of a romance. The character may have been saying “I love you” all through the story in a dozen ways without saying those exact words. I really like the climactic speech in When Harry Met Sally where Harry finally tells Sally directly what he thinks. It goes like this:
- “I love that you get cold when it’s seventy-one degrees out, I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich, I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts, I love that after I spend a day with you I can still smell your perfume on my clothes and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
It’s a great speech. It’s clever, specific, totally within character, calls back key moments in the story, and lays his emotions bare.
It only took an entire movie to set up, and it happened in dialogue.
A dialogue exercise that can be helpful is to compose a conversation between a married couple who are angry because one thinks their spouse is irresponsible and spends too much money, while the other thinks their partner is a boring skinflint. Put them in the kitchen making lunch together, but in the dialogue, neither can say anything about money. The entire argument has to take place through implication. The argument doesn’t need to resolve (in real life, disagreements between couples can last their entire relationship!).
If you want a model of how to do this, read Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “The Hills Like White Elephants,” which is completely about a problematic pregnancy but never says anything directly about pregnancy or abortion.
I’m over a thousand words into this discussion and I haven’t mentioned the art of the long speech, clever banter, call and response, or shared the many great stories filled with wonderful examples. I haven’t mentioned how I’d sacrifice a body part to write lines of dialogue as satisfying as “The flower goes in the front, big guy,” from Bull Durham or “He was leaning,” from While You Were Sleeping, or “Cue the sun” from The Truman Show, or “I didn’t know the meaning of fear until I kissed Becky,” from Invasion of the Body Snatchers or “Cut a wide swath, pussy,” from Roxanne.
What are your favorite lines of dialogue? Wouldn’t you love to write lines that are memorable?
Dialogue’s scope and interconnectedness to storytelling is huge, as I said at the beginning. All narrative elements influence the rest.
And here is my last thought on dialogue: Have you ever had an unsatisfying conversation where an hour after it’s over you think, “Oh, I should have said . . .” and it was the perfect counter or clever riposte or crushing blow? When you are writing dialogue, you have the chance to do that. You have the hours.
Let your characters speak, and remember Gregory McDonald’s advice. Dialogue surrounds you. It happens all the time.
“Listen.”
James Van Pelt has been selling short fiction to many of the major venues since 1989. Recently he retired from teaching high school English after thirty-seven years in the classroom. He has been a finalist for the Nebula, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, Locus Awards, and Analog and Asimov’s Reader’s Choice awards. Years and years ago he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He still feels “new.” Fairwood Press recently released a huge, limited-edition, signed, and numbered collection of his work, THE BEST OF JAMES VAN PELT. He can be found online at his website or on Facebook.
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