Dialogue Read online

  Dialogue is conversation—nothing more, nothing less. How hard do we really think about the conversations in which we engage on a daily basis? How difficult do we make them? How much stress do we create for ourselves trying to make sure we pronounce every word correctly, say exactly what we mean, use the tone that reveals or hides our true feelings, arrange our body so it lines up with what we're saying, make sure we're giving the other person a chance to talk so we're not giving speeches... I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Of course we don't stress out this way when we're just standing on the sidewalk talking to a neighbor. But we do it when we're creating dialogue for our characters, which is what makes writing dialogue so very difficult.

  But it's not difficult. We make it difficult.

  That's my premise for this book. My goal is to break down the process of writing dialogue so it becomes more natural for writers, as natural as breathing and talking—two things we've been doing ever since we were born. Yes, we were talking as soon as we were breathing; we just didn't have the words. Just like we don't now breathe the way we naturally should (many of us walk around holding our breath), we also usually don't talk the way we'd like to be heard, so when we sit down to re-create dialogue we start thinking too hard about it and become paralyzed.

  Somewhere along the line, someone tried to teach us how we should talk and then we learned how. We were praised for talking correctly and criticized for talking incorrectly.

  "Mom, you don't have to yell, I can hear you."

  "Don't use that tone with me, young man."

  "Can I have more potatoes?"

  "No, Susie, it's may I have more potatoes?"

  "He's a dork, Mom."

  "Don't call people names—it's not nice."

  So here we are. We think we know how to talk correctly, so we don't worry about it so much in everyday conversation. But when we actually sit down to re-create dialogue on the page, suddenly we feel a lot of self-doubt and are faced with our own inadequacies. Maybe the real question we're asking at an unconscious level is not, "Can I write dialogue?" but "Am I talking correctly?" I don't know for sure, but I do know that we can make this process easier by doing something a little "zenny": When we're about to write a piece of dialogue, any dialogue, we must remember to forget.

  Forget what?

  That we're writing dialogue. We must slip inside of our characters and become them. From inside of our characters, we begin speaking. In the book Finding Your Writer's Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction, authors Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall tell us this: "Great impersonators throw aside their own way of talking and take on the voice of another. As you work with character, letting yourself become possessed by this person, you want to abandon the automatic voice in your head that offers dialogue as you would speak it, and become the voice of this other person." Okay, it sounds like channeling. We've gone from Zen to New Age. Call it what you want—it works.

  I've been writing dialogue for many years. I struggle with description, setting, and plot, but I seldom struggle with dialogue. I didn't know writers struggled with dialogue until I started coaching writers and heard them express their fears of not doing it "right."

  I'm here to tell you there is no "right" way—I don't care what you've heard from other writing instructors and read in other writing books. There is only your way. Yours is the "right" way. And your job as writer is to learn to access the voice inside of yourself that you need for a particular piece of dialogue, no matter who's speaking it. Sure, you can do research, read books like this one, watch movies, and listen to how folks on the street talk. But ultimately, our characters come from somewhere inside of us, and if we want to be true to ourselves and our characters, whether fictional or real, we have to start giving them a voice.

  As I prepared to write this book, I began to explore why dialogue has always come easily for me. I realized that it's because at a very early age,

  when I began to read fiction, I became the characters I was reading about. I slipped into their heads, only to emerge when I'd finished the story. When I started to write my own stories at the tender age of nine, I had formed a useful writing habit: I became my characters. I easily slipped into my characters, speaking from inside their heads. I was all of them —the sane to the insane, the kind to the brutal, the boring to the quirky.

  You may wonder, "But how do I do that? How do I slip inside of my characters? How does that work, practically speaking? I'll be answering these questions in the following pages. You see, once we understand that our characters are not outside of us but within us, it takes the mystery out of how to write dialogue for any character. If we pull our characters up from inside of us instead of approach them from the outside, writing dialogue becomes an organic process.

  Writing dialogue is simply giving a voice to the characters that live inside of us. I don't mean to make this sound spooky—you don't have to go into a dark room and turn around three times while repeating, "I love green eggs and ham."

  All you have to do is want to write authentic dialogue. And when you let yourself do that, you'll discover the satisfaction in writing the kind of dialogue that delivers your character's true voice to the reader.

  I have news for you. Not only is there no "right" way to write dialogue, and not only does writing dialogue not have to be as difficult as we like to make it, but writing dialogue can actually be fun.

  My twofold mission in this book is: (1) to equip you with specific literary tools that will help you remember to forget that you're writing dialogue, which in turn will cause you to relax so your character's dialogue will emerge from who that character is, rather than from your personal agenda for the story, and (2) to remind you over and over again that the art of writing dialogue can be a lot of fun and is learned by exercising your freedom to color outside of the lines.

  You'll find that this book will become your best friend on the journey to remember to forget you're writing dialogue and in your intention to no longer struggle but have fun learning to access the many voices inside of you.

  [ releasing the voice within — the purpose of dialogue ]

  You're at the bookstore browsing through the fiction section. You're perusing titles, grabbing books off the shelf and skimming the back cover copy, then finally leafing through the novels one by one. Whether it's conscious or unconscious, guess what you're looking for.

  Space. The eye is naturally drawn to space. Plenty of white space on each page. In a nonfiction book, that may mean text broken up with a subhead or sidebar here and there. In a novel that means dialogue.

  Do you remember those novels teachers made us read in high school? Great Expectations. Madame Bovary. Lord of the Flies. Page after page of blocks of text. Long passages of boring narrative.

  Dialogue not only creates space on the page, which is visually appealing, but it's also what brings characters to life in a story, which is emotionally appealing. We're much more interested in a story's setting when it comes through a scene of dialogue. Dialogue reveals the characters' motives and opposing agendas. Our characters' tense words let readers know where our characters are internally and create suspense for what's ahead in the story. The onset of a dialogue scene immediately propels the story into high gear. Through dialogue, we can give readers a very real sense of a story's setting. If done well, dialogue can even communicate the story's theme. Effective dialogue delivers all of these things to eager readers. This is the kind of dialogue we, as writers, want to create.

  How?

  In later chapters, we'll explore how to create the kind of dialogue that succeeds at all of the above, but for right now, it's enough to try to understand what we owe our readers when we engage them in a scene of dialogue.

  We need to understand what it looks like to create dialogue that delivers befo
re we can learn how to actually make it happen.

  Effective dialogue, the kind of dialogue that connects with readers and makes them care about our characters and their struggles, can accomplish many purposes simultaneously. Let's take a look at them one by one.

  characterizes/reveals motives

  We introduce our characters to our readers through dialogue. Dialogue combined with facial expressions and body language indicates to readers who our characters are. In real life, this is how we get to know one another. We start interacting. Sometimes this goes well, sometimes it doesn't. Through dialogue, we decide if we like someone or not. This is also how our readers decide if they like our characters. As they listen to them and watch them interact with each other, they decide if these are good guys or bad guys or a combination. It's in our power to evoke positive or negative feelings in our readers for our characters through the dialogue we create for them.

  When a character speaks in a controlled tone, every word clipped and enunciated clearly, it could be that he's right on the edge, momentarily suppressing a ton of internal rage. On the other hand, if a character's voice is warm and inviting, this could reveal an internal sense of security and well-being. A character who rattles off words faster than the speed of light could be running away from himself, and a character who talks painfully slow may be unsure of himself, experiencing depression, or lacking in social skills.

  Every one of your characters is driven by something—they all have agendas, motives, and reasons for what they want in your story. In some sense, motive is the most important element in a story because it drives the character from the inside to go after what he wants. It's the impetus behind and the reason for his goal. Without motive, there's no story. That's how important it is. Let's say you're writing a children's story. The protagonist's goal could be to win the spelling bee. The motive? To earn her father's approval. This could also be an adult story. The goal would be different, but the motive could be the same.

  The most effective way to reveal your characters' motives is through their own mouths. Again, in real life, we do this all the time. I remember a friend once telling me that another person had insinuated she had done something rude. "I don't want everyone to think I'm not nice," she told me.

  Right away I knew that it wasn't that my friend actually cared if she was nice or not; what she cared about was how others perceived her. What she cared about was her image. I'm not making a value judgment here. I don't have to. She opened her own mouth and revealed her motive herself—wanting others to think well of her. We do it all the time. Whenever your characters open their mouths, they start telling the truth about what's motivating them. This is what you want to do. This is good. You want your dialogue to deliver your characters' motives to your reader. Again, this is how your reader is signaled as to how to feel about your characters. Motives, even more than behavior, reveal whom our characters are deep down inside because behavior is external and motives are internal. Effective dialogue brings up who our characters are at their core. It's powerful stuff.

  The following scene of dialogue shows the motives of the antagonist, Sean Dillon, in Jack Higgins' novel Eye of the Storm. Dillon is a terrorist, has been one for twenty years, and "he hasn't seen the inside of a cell once," according to KGB agent Josef Makeev. After going undercover and trying unsuccessfully to catch Dillon, Makeev discusses the terrorist, who was also once an actor, with another KGB agent, Michael Aroun.

  "As I said, he's never been arrested, not once, and unlike many of his IRA friends, he never courted media publicity. I doubt if there's a photo of him anywhere except for the odd boyhood snap."

  "What about when he was an actor?"

  "Perhaps, but that was twenty years ago, Michael."

  "And you think he might undertake this business if I offer him enough money?"

  "No, money alone has never been enough for this man. It always has to be the job itself where Dillon is concerned. How can I put it? How interesting it is. This is a man to whom acting was everything. What we are offering him is a new part. The Theatre of the Street perhaps, but still acting." He smiled as the Mercedes joined the traffic moving around the Arc de Triomphe. "Let's wait and see. Wait until we hear from Rashid."

  A character won't always admit his own motives in conversation with others, usually because he doesn't even know himself why he does what he does. This is often especially true of the antagonist. So having other characters talk about the antagonist's motives is an effective way to show the antagonist's motivation.

  sets the mood in the story

  Every story, no matter what kind, evokes emotion in the reader. Or it should, if you want to hold your reader's attention. The story's emotional pull ultimately creates the story's mood. The mood, the emotion, is what keeps pulling at the reader, compelling her to keep turning the pages. The mood can be setting. It can be the characters and their motives. It can be how quickly or slowly the plot moves.

  Dialogue is a tool you can use to create your story's mood. In a mystery or horror story, the dialogue should evoke fear in the reader. In a romance, we're looking for that warm, fuzzy dialogue that budding love brings. In a mainstream or literary story, it may be one of any number of atmospheres we want to create and emotions we want to evoke as we go about creating a scene of dialogue. When characters are interacting, they're exchanging feelings. As the writer, you're in charge of creating the story's mood. Certainly, sometimes the mood just kind of evolves as our characters start talking, but you can also direct the dialogue so you're controlling the mood.

  In Anna Quindlen's first-person novel One True Thing, the relationship between the protagonist, Ellen Gulden, and her father, the antagonist, George Gulden, is a hostile one. He has convinced Ellen to come and be her mother's caretaker as she wastes away from cancer. Ellen grudgingly agrees, and her attitude toward this task quickly becomes the story's mood. In the following scene of dialogue, we begin to see just what her attitude is.

  "Ellen, there is no reason for the two of us to be at cross-purposes. Your mother needs help. You love her. So do I."

  "Show it," I said.

  "Pardon me!"

  "Show it. Show up. Do you grieve? Do you care? Do you ever cry? And how did you let her get to this point in the first place? When she first felt sick, why didn't you force her to go to the doctor?"

  "Your mother is a grown woman," he said.

  "Sure she is. But wasn't it really that you didn't want your little world disrupted, that you needed her around to keep everything running smoothly? Just like now you need me around because she can't. You bring me here and drop me down in the middle of this mess and expect me to turn into one kind of person when I'm a completely different kind and to be a nurse and a friend and a confidante and a housewife all rolled up in one."

  "Don't forget being a daughter. You could always be a daughter."

  "Oh, Papa, don't try to make me feel guilty."

  As the story progresses, we watch the plot events transform Ellen, and by the end of the story she's a different person. But this is the mood that permeates the story, and the author often uses dialogue to bring it out.

  intensifies the story conflict

  We can use dialogue to keep raising the stakes for our protagonist, to keep him in hot water, to keep propelling the story forward. Your character has a goal. He wants something—desperately. In the movie ET, we remember one line vividly: "ET phone home." This one line of dialogue—three words— contains the essence of what ET is all about. This little creature just wanted to go back home. Desperately.

  Now, it's up to you to keep throwing obstacles at your protagonist to keep him from easily getting what she wants. These obstacles come from within and without the character. The other characters come against your protagonist. The protagonist sabotages herself. This is called story conflict, and you can reveal it and keep intensifying it through dialogue. You want to use dialogue to keep reminding the reader just how desperate your character is to achieve her goal.


  Every scene of dialogue, in some way, needs to move the story conflict forward. We need to be in a different place at the end of a scene of dialogue than we were at the beginning. The situation should grow continually worse every time our characters open their mouths to talk to one another. Our protagonist is becoming more desperate. Our antagonist seems surer of victory; we know because of the confidence we give to his tone of voice. Our supporting characters keep reminding our protagonist of his goal, of where he's headed on the Hero's Journey. This is dialogue that does not stand still but moves the story forward with each scene.

  In Jude Deveraux's romantic suspense novel High Tide, the protagonist, Fiona, is being set up for murder. A businesswoman, she is visiting her wealthy client, Roy Hudson, on his boat, when he starts hitting on her. She fights him off, eventually falling into an exhausted sleep on the boat and waking up in the middle of the night with his body on top of hers—his very dead body. The hero, Ace Montgomery, and Ellen are talking about the murder in the following scene of dialogue.

  She took a deep breath. "I want to know what's going on," she said as calmly as she could. "I am wanted for murder. The newspaper—"

  "No, we are wanted for murder." He'd put the frozen packages back into the freezer and was now looking in the cupboards. "You know how to make pancakes?"

  At that Fiona put her arms straight down to her sides, her hands in fists, opened her mouth, and let out a scream.

  Ace had his hand over her mouth before she'd let an ounce of air escape her lungs. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "If someone heard you, they might investigate." Slowly, he removed his hand and nodded toward the countertop in the kitchen. "Now sit down while I make breakfast."

  She didn't move. "So help me, if you don't tell me what's going on, I'll scream my head off."

  "You really do have trouble with anger, don't you? Have you thought of seeing a counselor?"

  At that Fiona opened her mouth again, but this time he didn't move. Instead, he just looked at her speculatively.