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by Gloria Kempton (mobi)

  Dialogue is one of the fiction elements you can use to propel your plot forward and integrate your theme into each scene. The way you do this is to set your characters up in an animated discussion scene that does any one of a number of things: provides new information to the characters about the conflict, reveals new obstacles that the viewpoint character must overcome to achieve his goal, creates the kind of dynamic between the scene characters that furthers the story's theme, introduces a pivotal moment in the plot that transforms the character(s), sets up the discussion so the character (and reader) are reminded of his scene and story goals, and/or accelerates the emotion and story movement to increase the suspense and make the situation more urgent for the characters.

  Yes, this sounds like a tall order—how can you possibly use dialogue to do all of this, and in every single scene? It's not that difficult once you become aware of all of the purposes of dialogue and keep reminding yourself that your dialogue scenes must accomplish something and keep the story moving.

  provides new information

  Recently, I called up a couple of friends of twelve years to thank them for a birthday gift and to ask them when they might like to get together, but before the words were barely out of my mouth, Ellen was saying, "We won't be able to get together. We're breaking up."

  Have you ever found yourself relaxed and talking to someone and then suddenly that person inserted something into the conversation that completely threw you, maybe even changed your life in some way?

  This is the kind of opening you want to look for in your dialogue passages, those seemingly innocuous moments when you can throw a zinger into the dialogue and completely take the plot in another direction. The viewpoint character receives some new information that causes him to see all of the other characters in a new light or to get a different perspective of the story situation. In Albert Zuckerman's book Writing the Blockbuster Novel, he calls this a pivotal scene and says we need at least twelve of them in an average novel. They don't all have to be dialogue scenes, but making a dialogue scene pivotal will ensure that the dialogue is moving the story forward.

  In John Grisham's The Chamber, the author includes a pivotal passage of dialogue that momentarily upends the protagonist's world. Adam is a young, inexperienced, naive lawyer who is just learning the ropes, and in his inexperience he's always doing things that threaten the older, more experienced lawyers in his firm. In this passage of dialogue, Adam receives a bit of new information that definitely moves the story forward, creating a crisis that could be a serious obstacle thwarting his goal to get his grandfather a reprieve from his scheduled execution.

  "Come in, come in," Goodman said, closing the door as he invited Adam into his own office. He hadn't smiled yet.

  "What are you doing here?" Adam asked, throwing his briefcase on the floor and walking to his desk. They faced each other.

  Goodman stroked his neat gray beard, then adjusted his bow tie. "There's a bit of an emergency, I'm afraid. Could be bad news."

  "What?"

  "Sit down, sit down. This might take a minute."

  "No, I'm fine. What is it?" It had to be horrible if he needed to take it sitting down.

  Goodman tinkered with his bow tie, rubbed his beard, then said, "Well, it happened at nine this morning. You see, the Personnel Committee is made up of fifteen partners, almost all are younger guys. The full committee has several subcommittees, of course, one for recruiting, hiring, one for discipline, one for disputes and on and on. And as you might guess, there's one for terminations. The Termination Subcommittee met this morning and guess who was there to orchestrate everything."

  "Daniel Rosen."

  "Daniel Rosen. Evidently, he's been working the Termination Subcommittee for ten days trying to line up enough votes for your dismissal."

  One character has just announced something to another character that has the potential to short circuit everything he has been working so hard for, which moves the story forward. If his firm terminates him, he loses his power to do anything to save his grandfather's life. It literally is a matter of life and death.

  Grisham excels at this kind of thing—throwing obstacles at protagonists in the middle of scenes of dialogue to make their goals more difficult to achieve. If you haven't already, you might want to read some of his novels and study how he does this.

  reveals new obstacles

  In dialogue, an obstacle to a character's goal works the same as new information by stopping the viewpoint character in his tracks and creating immediate conflict for him. He may express his discomfort verbally, he may not, but he has to do something, so the story is moved forward. If he chooses to express his discomfort verbally, you can create immediate conflict in the scene with the other character who presented him with the obstacle. Whether or not the viewpoint character likes the other character doesn't really matter—he won't like that the other character has presented him with an obstacle to his goal.

  In the scene from The Chamber, Grisham decides to develop a conflict right in the middle of the dialogue. Adam grows more upset as the scene continues, and his perception of the obstacles begins to increase. Goodman is the voice of reason. When presenting a protagonist with obstacles in the middle of a scene, it's his perception of them that's important. The obstacles may or may not be insurmountable, but if the protagonist thinks they're insurmountable, they are, at least momentarily. This is where you want to keep your protagonist much of the time he's in dialogue with other characters because it creates suspense and tension and moves the story forward.

  Now, every character will react differently when presented with an obstacle. One character will burst into tears while another character will see the obstacle as a challenge, roll up her sleeves, and get to work solving the problem. Another character will start delegating and another conniving.

  Another will start considering the options right out loud in the middle of the dialogue and then look at them forever. Still another character will get scared and want to run away from the problem while still another will get discouraged and give up. Then there's always the character who will get mad and start blaming his mother and father and anyone else who was around when he was being potty trained. As you can see, this is why it's absolutely crucial that you know your characters. It's only in knowing your characters that you'll know how each one will react when presented with an obstacle in a scene of dialogue, which then determines the direction the story will move.

  increases suspense

  As your story is moving forward, you need to keep increasing the suspense for the reader by making everything look worse for the characters. Dialogue works well for this because the characters are in the immediate moment and are suddenly hanging suspended in time while the reader watches the stakes being raised right before the characters' eyes. It's clear to us, and sometimes it's clear to the characters.

  Margaret Atwood does this well all through her novel The Robber Bride. The main character is Tony, and the antagonist, Zenia, is a very bright and manipulative character who is always catching the other characters off guard with her conniving and scheming. She's always up to something, and it's never good. This is a very character-driven story, and the reader is able to closely watch Zenia's every move. The other characters are only mildly aware of it, as this type of person always acts like she's your best friend, and you don't want to believe you've been taken for a very long ride and she's your worst enemy. Here's one passage of dialogue, which is very typical for Zenia, as she moves forward in her manipulative ways.

  "What would cause you to kill yourself?" says Zenia.

  "Kill myself?" says Tony wonderingly, as if she's never thought of such a thing. "I don't know. I don't think I would."

  "What if you had cancer?" Zenia says. "What if you knew you were going to die slowly, in unbearable pain? What if you knew where the microfilm was, and the other side knew you knew, and they were going to torture you to get it out of you and then kill you anyway? What if you had a cyanide tooth? Woul
d you use it?"

  When Tony finally realizes that Zenia has just stolen her boyfriend out from under her nose, she remembers another conversation she had with her "friend."

  She recalls a conversation she had with Zenia, early on, in the days when they were drinking coffee at Christie's and Zenia was such a friend.

  "Which would you rather have?" said Zenia. "From other people. Love, respect or fear?"

  "Respect," said Tony. "No. Love."

  "Not me," said Zenia. "I'd choose fear."

  "Why?" said Tony.

  "It works better," said Zenia. "It's the only thing that works."

  Look at how much is accomplished in a brief flashback scene. What Zenia is saying is that she wants others to fear her, and if she can get others to fear her she'll be able to manipulate them to get what she wants. This is really what the story is about, how one person is able to do this to many other people and have power over all of them. As long as they don't wake up to what she's doing, she's queen. Because this is a character-driven story, Atwood uses dialogue scenes over and over to create the kind of suspense that shows Zenia's increasing realm of power, moving the story forward with each of these scenes. Tony will eventually wake up, but not until Zenia has done some incredible damage. What I like about the way Atwood does this is that Tony doesn't analyze Zenia after every scene, which would dilute the creepiness of it. She just observes it, wonders about it a bit, feels uneasy, and goes on—until Zenia's next weird question.

  Suspense is achieved in dialogue when the viewpoint character gets "that feeling" about the other character in the scene. Or suddenly realizes that things are not as they seem. Or gets some new information which means he isn't going to get what he wants. He may learn that someone else's agenda is different than what he originally thought. He may make a decision right in the middle of the scene that lets us know the plot is now going to turn in a different direction. He may think something in the middle of a dialogue scene that he knows he can't say out loud. Suspense is created in a scene whenever characters are surprised, feel threatened or attacked (it doesn't even matter if the threat is real; if they feel it is real), lose something, interpret events to be unjust—there are a hundred ways to create suspense. As long as the moment of suspense is intricately connected to the plot and theme, you're moving the story forward with the dialogue.

  furthers the theme

  "Sometimes the right course demands an act of piracy." These are the words spoken by Geoffrey Rush's character in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

  It's not that I amuse myself by going to movies looking for themes and boring my friends by pointing them out in the middle of a crowded movie theater, but I get kind of excited when I hear a character speak a line that is clearly the movie's theme. As a storyteller myself, I get a kick out of observing how other writers do it, whether a novelist or a screenwriter.

  When a character announces the story's theme in the middle of a passage of dialogue, it gives the other characters the opportunity to respond and move the action in one direction or another. This can be very effective, because while the reader may not necessarily be able to recognize the theme as the "a-ha" moment in the story as I did in Pirates of the Caribbean, subconsciously it registers as a pivotal moment and the reader holds her breath, waiting to see how the other characters will respond.

  In Nicholas Sparks' novel The Notebook, the author uses a minor character to bring home the theme of enduring love in a character's twilight years. These characters are living in a home for the elderly, and Noah's wife, Allie, has Alzheimer's. Even though his beloved no longer even recognizes him, he keeps going to sit with her. The last time he did, she freaked out and started screaming at him to leave. Immediately, the staff appeared and let him know that the visits to his wife are now over. Here the night nurse catches him sneaking down the hall to Allie's room.

  "Noah," she says, "what are you doing?"

  "I'm taking a walk," I say. "I can't sleep."

  "You know you're not supposed to do this."

  "I know."

  I don't move, though. I am determined.

  " You're not really going for a walk, are you? You're going to see Allie."

  "Yes," I answer.

  "Noah, you know what happened the last time you saw her at night."

  "I remember."

  "Then you know you shouldn't be doing this."

  I don't answer directly. Instead I say, "I miss her."

  "I know you do, but I can't let you see her."

  "It's our anniversary," I say. This is true. It is one year before gold. Forty-nine years today.

  "I see."

  "Then I can go?"

  She looks away for a moment, and her voice changes. Her voice is softer now, and I am surprised. She has never struck me as the sentimental type.

  "Noah, I've worked here for five years and I worked at another home before that. I've seen hundreds of couples struggle with grief and sadness, but I've never seen anyone handle it like you do. No one around here, not the doctors, not the nurses, has ever seen anything like it."

  She pauses for just a moment, and strangely, her eyes begin to fill with tears. She wipes them with her finger and goes on:

  "I try to think what it's like for you, how you keep going day after day, but I can't even imagine it. I don't know how you do it. You even beat her disease sometimes. Even though the doctors don't understand it, we nurses do. It's love, it's as simple as that. It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen."

  How does this dialogue move the story forward? It's not terribly profound, but this minor character, a nurse, has observed in Noah his deep abiding love for his wife of forty-nine years, and this scene brings it home to the reader. The novel ends only a few pages later. We've seen this before, certainly, but the nurse puts words to it and is able to turn her back while Noah goes to his wife. The dialogue is a brief summation of the theme— enduring love—and moves the scene and story forward to its final conclusion.

  shows character transformation

  Our characters should be changing, at least in subtle ways, all the way through the story. This is one reason we write fiction—to show how characters become better people. Or worse. I don't think it's particularly easy to create a scene of dialogue that is so transformative that our characters are changed forever and our reader knows it. Our characters have to speak some profound words to each other to make this happen. In the following scene in The Great Santini by Pat Conroy, it's more the action rather than the dialogue that really changes Ben Meecham, but the dialogue that follows the action reveals just how big the transformation is. It has truly changed all of the characters in the Meecham family, not just Ben. In this scene, Bull Meecham challenges his son to a game of basketball, planning to easily beat

  and humiliate Ben in front of the other family members. This is a typical way Bull keeps himself amused on a daily basis, by humiliating others; there's nothing unusual here. What is unusual is that this time Bull doesn't win, causing all of the characters, especially his wife Lillian, to stand up to him. And we know that he will never have the same power over any of them ever again.

  Then Bull shouted at Ben, "Hey, jocko, you gotta win by two baskets."

  The backyard became quiet again. Ben looked at his father and said, "You said by one."

  "I changed my mind; let's go," Bull said, picking up the basketball.

  "Oh, no, Bull," Lillian said, marching toward her husband. "You're not going to cheat the boy out of his victory."

  "Who in the hell asked you anything?" Bull said, glaring at his wife.

  "I don't care if anybody asked me or not. He beat your fair and square and I'm not going to let you take that away from him."

  "Get over here, mama's boy," Bull said, motioning to Ben, "and let's you and me finish this game."

  Ben moved forward until he heard his mother shout at him, "You stay right there, Ben Meecham. Don't you dare move."

  "Why don't you go hide
under your mother's skirts, mama's boy?" Bull said.

  He was gaining control of the situation again and was entering a phase of malevolent calm that Lillian was having difficulty translating.

  "Mama, I'm gonna play him," Ben said.

  "No, you're not," his mother answered harshly, with finality, then speaking to her husband, she said, "He beat you, Big Marine. He beat the Big Marine where everybody could see it, right out in the open, and it was beautiful. It was just beautiful. Big Marine can't take it that his baby boy just beat him to death on the basketball court."

  "Get in the house, Lillian, before I kick you into the house."

  "Don't threaten me, Big Tough Marine. Does Big Tough Marine have to pick on his family the day his son becomes the better man?"

  This novel's theme is about a man growing smaller and his family growing larger—on the inside. Ultimately, it's about forgiveness. It's painful to watch, but something inside of the reader cheers when Bull missteps and Ben and the others are given the glorious opportunity to emerge as bigger people. In this basketball scene, Bull continues to taunt Ben, but we know something is

  different. We can feel it. This is a pivotal scene in the story and Conroy executes the character transformation so well, I think it's my favorite story scene of all time.

  reveals/reminds of goals

  The most important element of each scene that you create in a story is to know what your protagonist wants and be able to show it through the action and dialogue. The protagonist wants something in the overall story that in each scene he takes steps to achieve. You're moving the story forward in each scene by challenging the protagonist, throwing an obstacle at him, thereby reminding us of his goal and intention in the scene and in the story.

  In the following excerpt from Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler, Ian, the main character, is trying to confess a perceived horrible sin to his parents. His mother, however, is just not hearing him, choosing instead to focus on her role as a victim. Ian believes he is responsible for his brother Danny's suicide because of something Danny told him shortly before smashing his car against a concrete wall and killing himself. Now Ian has decided to drop out of college and learn to build furniture so he can help his mother with his brother's stepchildren after their mother also dies. He feels he needs to in some way pay for his sin. In this scene, we're reminded of Ian's goal, his intention—penance and forgiveness—and the story moves forward as we see once again what he's really all about.