Dialogue

by Robert McKee

  Daisy’s insult throws marriage/divorce sharply to the negative, while in the subtext, excitement for Gatsby conquers her boredom.

  BEAT 8

  ACTION: Daisy attacking him a second time.

  REACTION: Tom retreating in silence.

  Daisy climaxes the scene by defying her husband’s order and repeating the hated word with emphasis. In reaction, Tom once more falls silent.

  Daisy wins her marital power struggle in six beats and humiliates Tom. This duel between husband and wife, Tom’s defeat and Daisy’s victory, would not be lost on her audience of the very sensitive, observant Nick and the gossipy Jordan Baker. Daisy knows this. Now she hopes that they’ll carry the news to Gatsby. Daisy has embarrassed her husband, and it has had the effect she wants.

  As Daisy chooses Gatsby over Tom, her marriage ends in all but name while her excitement about the future peaks.

  DIALOGUE VERSUS DESCRIPTION IN PROSE

  As mentioned previously, prose writers (with exceptions) tend to keep their dramatized dialogue economical, simple, and plainspoken. Of the scene’s 123 spoken words, 107 are of one syllable, 14 of two syllables, and just 2 of three syllables. None of the scene’s characters uses metaphors or similes when they speak.

  Fitzgerald, on the other hand, enriches his descriptions with figurative language such as “Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square” and “… Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.” When he uses polysyllabic words, they tend to be adverbs that describe tones of voice (contemptuously, accusingly, crossly) and actions (slenderly, languidly, radiantly).

  The scene’s power comes from Daisy’s actions in the subtext, actions that Nick, limited by his first-person point of view, cannot know. Instead, Fitzgerald encourages the reader to see through Daisy’s veil of innocence by dropping hints along the way such as Daisy’s “demand” to know “What Gatsby?”

  TURNING POINT/SCENE CLIMAX

  The scene arcs the Buchanan marriage dynamically from positive to negative in eight beats. In the first beat, their marriage seems respectful and faithful. By the last beat, Daisy’s actions reveal a marriage filled with hatred and disrespect as she plots her path back to Gatsby. At the same time, each negative action against the marriage becomes a positive beat for Daisy’s desire for the adventure that Gatsby brings to her life. Daisy’s tactic works: She wins the war against her husband and gives Jordan and Nick the message they will carry to Gatsby.

  The eight beat progression takes this shape:

  BEAT 1: Revealing/Concealing

  BEAT 2: Walking/Planning

  BEAT 3: Destroying/Concealing

  BEAT 4: Opening a subject/Turning the subject to herself

  BEAT 5: Wondering aloud/Turning attention to herself

  BEAT 6: Accusing/Hiding

  BEAT 7: Insulting/Ordering

  BEAT 8: Attacking/Retreating

  Each beat tops the previous beat, progressing to the turning point when Daisy defies her husband’s order and humiliates him—each beat, that is, except Beats 4 and 5. They seem to be a hole in the dialogue’s progression because they are not aimed at Daisy’s scene intention. Indeed they’re not, because Fitzgerald uses them for another, larger purpose related to the novel’s spine of action.

  Notice the pattern in Beats 4 and 5: Daisy asks a question that opens up a general topic for the others, but then without pause, before anyone can answer, she instantly draws their interest back to her. Fitzgerald repeats this pattern in Daisy’s dialogue throughout the book. In ways that are amusing, sympathetic, or mysterious, Daisy constantly steers all talk back to herself. In other words, Fitzgerald wants us to understand that Daisy is a very beautiful, very charming narcissist.

  What is the real reason she creates this scene? Why can’t she defy her husband, break social convention, and visit Gatsby herself? Why must she send a veiled message through Jordan and Nick? Because narcissists call attention to themselves, never others. For Daisy, it is critical that Gatsby seek her out. Gatsby must come to her. Fitzgerald uses those beats and many others elsewhere to express the dueling spines of action that drive The Great Gatsby: Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy and Daisy’s obsession with Daisy.

  17

  REFLEXIVE CONFLICT

  INTRODUCTION TO THE SELF

  Chapter One defined dialogue as any words said by any character to anyone. This traffic of talk runs along three distinct avenues: said to others, said to a reader or audience, and said to oneself. The chapter that follows focuses on the latter two tracks: direct address to the reader and inner dialogue between selves. Although the stage and screen limit the use of these two modes, for the novelist and short-story writer, they are the stuff of first-person prose.

  When characters talk directly to the reader, the topic tends to be past events and their impact on themselves (e.g., The Museum of Innocence), whereas when characters talk to themselves, their inner dialogue acts out intra-dynamic events in the now. These dramatizations of self versus self carry psychological nuance into the depths of the unsayable (e.g., Fräulein Else). Once again, it’s the difference between telling and showing.

  In the former, a character with less than perfect self-awareness tells us about past inner conflicts and describes their effects; in the latter, a character puts her deep psychology into action in front of us and unknowingly dramatizes inner complexities she could never describe. Needless to say, telling and showing call upon two very different dialogue techniques.

  An ancient literary convention grants us the godlike power to overhear a character’s thoughts, all the while knowing that she is not talking to us. If so, then to whom is she speaking? Dialogue, by definition, is a two-sided exchange between a speaker and a listener. Who besides us is listening to her? If she’s talking to another self within herself, her mind must be dual. If dual or even multiple, how does her mind divide itself into selves? Exactly how many are there? Who are they? How do they link?

  These questions are neither new nor unique to storytelling. Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Buddha taught his followers to ignore all such wonderings because they flow from the false premise that the self exists, when in fact it does not. The sense of “me,” he believed, is an illusionary side effect of uncountable, ever-shifting physical and sensory forces.

  About the same time, Socrates argued the opposite view. He taught his students that the self not only exists, but you cannot live a meaningful, civilized life without making every effort to know who you are. In the centuries since, this debate over the nature of intrapersonal communication has swung back and forth between these two philosophical extremes and remains unsettled at best.

  Science, on the other hand, has taken a stand.1 Like Socrates, modern science strives to know the hidden nature of consciousness, but at the same time, like Buddha, it feels misled by intuition. While our sixth sense tells us we have a core of consciousness located behind our eyes, brain scan researchers report that several different mental processes, mediated by different brain regions, collaborate to create this illusion. No single, central, physical, all-controlling self exists; “me” is indeed a side effect. On the so-called “hard question” of consciousness, neuroscience now favors Buddha over Socrates but without a clear conclusion.2

  Although science cannot ground consciousness in the physical, and philosophy cannot locate it in the metaphysical, artists know exactly where to find the self. When art whistles, the self comes running like a bounding dog. For the storyteller, the self makes its home in the same subjective reaches where it has always lived and thrived.

  Delusional or not, consciousness of self is the essence of our humanity. If, as science tells us, the self is not confined to a specific lobe of the brain but emerges out of a composite of sources, so what? It’s my composite and I like it. If, as philosophy claims, the unreliable self shifts and changes from one day to the next and, therefore, cannot be known absolutely, so what? It’s my changing s
elf and I enjoy watching it evolve, hopefully into a better person.

  For prose writers striving to express the inner life, philosophy’s deductive logic and science’s inductive logic dull aesthetic insight. Neither leverages the inside-out power of the subjective; neither creates the meaningful emotional experience of the self that every major work of story art since Homer inspires. Story doesn’t answer the “hard question”; it dramatizes it.

  I think the best approach to creating inner dialogue is simply this: Treat your character’s mind like a setting, a world populated with a cast of characters called selves. Let the mindscape sprawl like a cityscape, landscape, or battleground, a mental mise-en-scène for the staging of a story. Then move into that world yourself and take up residence in the protagonist’s center of consciousness. From this point of view, create inner dialogues that dramatize an answer to the question “What is it to be this particular human being?”

  To return to the question that started this introduction: When a character talks to herself, who besides the reader is listening? To whom is she speaking? Answer: the silent self. As we listen to a character talk to herself, we instinctively know that another side, a quiet side of herself, is listening. In fact, we know this so instinctively that we never think about it. We don’t have to because we know, without thinking, that we talk to our personal silent self constantly.

  Inside every mind, it seems to me, a separate, silent core of being sits back, watching, listening, evaluating, storing memories. If you meditate, you know this self very well. It floats behind you, so to speak, watching you do everything you do, including meditation. If you try to meditate toward this self, it instantly swings around behind you again. You cannot face yourself within yourself, but you always know that your silent self is there and aware, listening to everything you have to say.

  As inner dialogues of prose cycle between the talking self and the silent self, they generate reflexivity.

  REFLEXIVE CONFLICT

  In the physical sciences, reflexivity refers to a circular or bidirectional relationship between cause and effect. An action triggers a reaction that impacts the action so fast the two seem simultaneous. (Some theories of quantum physics argue that at the subatomic level cause and effect are in fact simultaneous.) Action and reaction then lock together, whirling in a gyre. The cause becomes the effect, the effect becomes the cause, and neither can be clearly identified as either.

  In the social sciences, reflexivity signals a kind of codependency between individuals, or within groups, institutions, and societies. Once the reflexive spiral begins, neither the action nor its reaction can be assigned as the cause or the effect. The two so intra-influence each other, they seem to happen instantaneously, without the need for decisions or even thought.

  In the art of story, reflexive conflict refers to those inner battles that begin when a character’s effort to resolve an inherent dilemma boomerangs back on herself. By taking her impasse inward, her effort to deal with her crisis becomes a cause that only worsens the effect. Self-contradictions generate ever-more complex sources of antagonism as causes become effects and effects become causes in an ever-deepening whorl until the conflict itself becomes the reason it cannot be solved.

  Reflexive conflict translates into dialogue the moment a troubled character starts talking to herself. As I pointed out in Chapter One, the mind, by its very nature, can step back within itself to observe itself as if it were an object. A person temporarily splits in two to develop a relationship, often critical, between her core self and other sides or aspects of herself. She can project images of her past self, her unattractive self, her better self, her future self. She can feel the presence of her conscience, her subconscious, and, above all, her silent, listening self.

  At times these relationships may be conflictless as, for example, when we comfort ourselves with excuses, self-deceptions, or blame placed on others. But more often than not, our inner selves strike opposing sides in the struggle to make choices, do the right thing, sacrifice for another, bring a troubled self under control—any of the tumultuous contrarieties of the inner life.3

  Reflexive conflicts can be acted out in the present tense directly or related indirectly in the past tense. Onstage and onscreen, a character can perform the former in soliloquy and the latter in either dialogue spoken to another character or in direct address to the audience. On page, the protagonist can talk to her other self and act out her inner conflicts in the present tense (Fräulein Else), or talk to the reader and describe previous episodes of reflexive conflict in the past tense (The Museum of Innocence).

  FRÄULEIN ELSE

  Arthur Schnitzler, the Austrian novelist and playwright, experimented with stream of consciousness throughout his career, beginning in 1901 with the short story, “Lieutenant Gustl.” In the 1924 novella Fräulein Else, he invited readers to eavesdrop on the troubled thoughts of its eponymous protagonist by writing exclusively in first-person inner dialogue.

  SETUP

  Else, a beautiful nineteen-year-old Viennese debutante, on holiday with her aunt at an Austrian mountain resort, receives a letter from her mother telling her that her father, a lawyer, has been caught stealing tens of thousands from a client’s account. He faces prison or suicide if he can’t pay the money back in two days.

  Else’s mother begs her to save her father by asking Herr von Dorsday, a rich art dealer staying at the spa, for a loan to cover the theft. Else, despite her suffocating shame, asks the old man for help. He says he will telegraph the funds to cancel her father’s debt the next morning, but only if she repays him in sexual currency that night.

  These three events—her father’s theft, her mother’s scheme, Dorsday’s proposition—trigger the story’s inciting incident and throw Else’s life radically and negatively out of balance. Two contradictory desires immediately flood her mind: to save her parents and sacrifice herself versus to save herself and sacrifice her parents. Either way she chooses, a great price must be paid, because when I say “save herself,” I mean that literally. Else’s identity is tied to her morality. If she saves her family, she loses her morality; if she loses her morality, she loses her identity.

  Trapped by this double bind of irreconcilable goods/lesser of two evils, Else’s only path of action runs between her inner selves. So for the rest of the afternoon and evening, Else wanders the resort alone, her mind in reflexive chaos: At first, she tells herself to give in, save her family, and endure the disgrace; then she contradicts herself, choosing instead to reject Dorsday, and force her family to pay for its ignominy. At one point, she tries to cheer herself up, imagining that surrendering to Dorsday could launch a luxurious career as mistress to rich men, but then her conscience urges her to defend her moral self and accept poverty with honor.

  Moral dilemmas like this, played out on a protagonist’s mindscape, often spiral into reflexive conflict. For example, as the moment to meet Dorsday nears, Else says to herself:

  How huge the hotel is. Like a monstrous, illuminated magic castle. Everything is gigantic. The mountains, too. Terrifyingly gigantic. They’ve never been so black before. The moon hasn’t risen yet. It will rise just in time for the performance, the great performance in the meadow, when Herr von Dorsday makes his female slave dance naked. What’s Herr von Dorsday to me? Now, Mademoiselle Else, what are you making such a fuss about? You were ready to go off and be the mistress of strange men, one after the other. And you boggle at the trifle which Herr von Dorsday asks of you? You were ready to sell yourself for a pearl necklace, for beautiful clothes, for a villa by the sea? And your father’s life isn’t worth as much as that?”

  Reflexive Dialogue

  Fourteen thoughts ricochet through this passage of inner dialogue. In the first seven (from “How huge” to “hasn’t risen yet”) Else’s imagination projects her terror and sense of frailty onto the frightening, enormous, almost unreal world around her. The word “magic” gives away her childlike state.

  Then her mind grabs t
he last word of the seventh sentence, “yet,” and free-associates to an image of her future self, naked and dancing in the moonlight. With the rhetorical question “What’s Herr von Dorsday to me?” she tries to shrug off the insinuations in the word “slave” and feign indifference.

  But suddenly, her mind seems to segue into another self, armed with a sharp, critical voice. For the next five lines this critical self whiplashes Else’s core self with a series of “Damned if you do/damned if you don’t” insults. The critical self calls her a hypocrite, “such a fuss” (damned if you don’t); then a slut, “mistress of strange men” (damned if you do); then a coward, “you boggle” (damned if you don’t); then a slut again, “sell yourself” (damned if you do); and finally an ingrate, “your father’s life” (damned if you don’t).

  Else’s mind spins in reflexive conflict: “Which do I want to be? A jewel-decked whore or a cowardly ingrate?” She dreads both and wants neither, but question mark after question mark paralyzes her until the passage ends in mental gridlock. Spoiler alert: At the climax of the novel, Else’s impasse explodes into an act of wild exhibitionism and a drug overdose.

  As we have seen in previous examples, emotions tend to shorten lines, while rationality tends to lengthen them. As fear races through Else, her first seven thoughts average 4.1 words each. But then the critical self takes charge and the next seven lines average 14.5 words.