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by Gloria Kempton (mobi)

  "He doesn't think his father loves him. But you love him—you always have."

  Adam did not answer her.

  She went on quietly, "He's a strange boy. You have to know him — all rough shell, all anger until you know." She paused to cough, leaned down and coughed, and when the spell was over her cheeks were flushed and she was exhausted. "You have to know him," she repeated. "For a long time he has given me little presents, pretty things you wouldn't think he'd even notice. But he doesn't give them right out. He hides them where he knows I'll find them. And you can look at him for hours and he won't ever give the slightest sign he did it. You have to know him."

  I did mention above that you could slow a scene down by adding bits of narrative, description, and background to your dialogue scene. In the next chapter, we see Adam again, after spending four days in bed recovering from his brother's beating. This scene is very brief but shows how you can use narrative, description, and background to make a scene move more slowly, even though there's dialogue in the scene.

  Into the house, into Adam's bedroom, came a captain of cavalry and two sergeants in dress uniform of blue. In the dooryard their horses were held by two privates. Lying in his bed, Adam was enlisted in the army as a private in the cavalry. He signed the Articles of War and took the oath while his father and Alice looked on. And his father's eyes glistened with tears.

  After the soldiers had gone his father sat with him a long time. "I've put you in the cavalry for a reason," he said. "Barrack life is not a good life for long. But the cavalry has work to do. I made sure of that. You'll like going for the Indian country. There's action coming I can't tell you how I know. There's fighting on the way."

  Can you see how just a little bit of narrative, background, and description can make a scene of dialogue move more slowly? There's little emotion in the above scene, only the glistening of Adam's father's tears. But his words are matter-of-fact. We get the background first, then his father simply offers a half-baked explanation for why he's doing what he's doing, and the scene is over.

  gaining control

  Pacing your dialogue is about gaining control of your scenes so they don't run away from you or drag to the point that even you can't stay awake while writing them.

  What exactly causes us to lose control of our stories and therefore the pace of our dialogue?

  Losing control happens for a number of reasons and again, when we're conscious of this, it's easier to stay in control. Of course, the very act of losing control is an unconscious one. By definition, that's what losing control is, whether in real life or in storytelling. To lose control is to lose consciousness. During the act of writing a story, what causes us to lose consciousness so the dialogue suddenly begins to speed out of control or painfully drag along?

  I think we often underestimate the personal connection we have to the stories we write. We think we're writing about characters we've made up. After all, this is fiction, isn't it?

  Yes and no.

  When our dialogue begins to take our characters to places we hadn't intended faster than we intended to go there, we need to pay attention. Most writing books will tell you that when this happens, you need to go back to where you began to lose your way and fix the dialogue right there, to pick up the thread where you lost it and start over.

  This isn't necessarily true. Losing control of our dialogue at certain points simply means we're finally feeling the freedom to say those things we've always wanted to say to whomever we've wanted to say them. They're our words rather than our characters' words, and at this point, if we recognize what's going on, the story may turn out to be about something we hadn't intended at all. You may think you're writing about a young man landing his first job and then discover you're really writing about a young man thrust into adulthood before he feels ready. Maybe this is your story, after all, one you've never told. When you realize this, you have a choice. You can keep following the real story or you can go back to where you lost your way and get the dialogue back on track with the story you started out to tell. If you choose the second option, that's fine, but at some point you should

  consider writing the real story as well, because you can count on it being the most authentic one. The one that's inside of you crying to get out.

  A sudden change in pace when we're writing dialogue can signal to us that we need to pay closer attention to what the scene is bringing up for us personally. Sometimes the dialogue will speed up and we'll lose control because, yes, we've touched on a theme in our real life. But instead of going ahead and writing authentic dialogue, we become uncomfortable with the feelings connected to the dialogue and so quickly, go off on some tangent to get away from them. Again, awareness is what gets us back on track.

  When a dialogue scene slows way down so that it drags, and this doesn't happen as often, the reasons for it are the same as when it speeds up too fast. When our characters start talking to each other again, it can happen that we come upon a personal theme that we unconsciously decide to explore, and we have to slow down in order to fully follow where it seems to be leading us. We may start weighing it down with actions of the other characters or too many of the protagonist's thoughts. We're really into this before we realize it has nothing to do with the original topic of dialogue.

  We always have a choice. We can follow the tangent and see where it leads us or we can arrest the dialogue we're writing, set the real story aside for later, and continue.

  We always hear about how being a control freak is such a negative thing. But maybe, in the world of writing, our efforts to gain control of our dialogue, and therefore our stories, means that we're control freaks in a good way because we're trying to write the most authentic story possible.

  is it working?

  How do you know if your dialogue is paced well? This is often something you can't know until you've finished the story. When reading through the entire story, you'll be able to see where you need to speed a scene up here, slow a scene down there, add a bit of setting here to keep things steady, and a bit of narrative there to momentarily let the reader breathe again.

  You want a combination of slow and fast-paced scenes, alternating them so you don't either wear the reader out or put her to sleep. In Jack Bickham's book Scene & Structure, he instructs us to write both scenes and sequels. The scenes move more quickly while the sequels are often more nondramatic moments in the story where both character and reader catch

  up with themselves. There are no hard and fast rules. Certainly there will be times where you'll need two or three fast-paced scenes in a row to move your plot along. But just be conscious of when you're doing what so you stay in control of your story.

  Don't worry too much about pacing while you're writing. Just get the story down. Then put on your editor's hat and with a purple or green pen (it's a new day—no red pens anymore), go through the story and mark the places where you want to speed things up or slow them down. Following are some questions you can ask about your viewpoint character to try to discover if a dialogue scene is moving too slowly or too quickly.

  • Is he talking too fast, not giving the other characters time to answer?

  • Is he avoiding the subject and rambling on about nothing that has anything to do with what the story's been about so far?

  • Is he thinking too much and not talking enough? Or is it the other way around?

  • Are there too many tags and other identifying actions so his words become lost in the clutter?

  • Is he making speeches instead of interacting with the other charac-ter(s)? (You may want him to make speeches in order to slow things down; just be aware that you're doing it and make sure that the speeches further the plot.)

  • Is he too focused on observing the other characters in great detail or describing the setting to himself, sacrificing the kind of dialogue that would create tension and suspense in the scene?

  • Do you, as the author, keep intruding on the scene with your own observations and descriptions that i
nterrupt the flow of dialogue between the viewpoint and the other characters?

  You can never completely know when you're going over a hair into dialogue that moves too slowly or hanging back a hair with dialogue that doesn't move quite fast enough, but the above questions will get you close enough. As always, awareness of pacing your dialogue is what will eventually get and keep you on track.

  Seeing dialogue as either brakes or accelerator will help you stay in control of your story so it doesn't leave you in the dust like a runaway stagecoach or move at a snail's pace. You're the one who can press hard on the gas to propel the dialogue into motion or hard on the brakes to slow it way down. Every story has its own rhythm and motion, and pacing your dialogue to pace your story will give your reader an easy and smooth ride.

  The next chapter is closely connected to this one in that it, too, is about controlling your dialogue so it's always full of tension and suspense, ensuring that your reader will keep turning pages from beginning to end.

  Pacing your story. Focus on just one scene in a story you're writing. Now answer the following questions as honestly as you can:

  • Is this a slow-paced or a fast-paced scene? Or neither?

  • In relation to the entire story, what kind of pace do I want this scene to have?

  • What is making this scene move so slowly (or quickly)?

  • How much dialogue have I used in this scene, as compared to action and narrative?

  • Using more or less dialogue, how can I adjust the pacing of the scene.

  • Are the scenes on either side of this one slow or fast-paced?

  • How much dialogue have I used in the scenes on either side of this one? Do either one of them need more or less dialogue to make them move better, so they're in rhythm with this one?

  Now rewrite the scene so it moves at the pace you want it to.

  Creating momentum. Choose one or all three of the following scenarios. Start the scene out slowly and then, through dialogue, gather momentum as you write. You also may want to do this with a scene or scenes in your own story.

  • A father and his daughter are stuck in rush hour traffic. She's fiddling with the radio, and he's talking on his cell phone. Suddenly the phone goes dead and the girl's favorite radio station won't come in. They have to talk. Write this scene from either the father's or the daughter's viewpoint, or try one of each.

  • A man and woman are having an affair, but up until now, it's been only physical. One of the two decides the relationship needs to be taken to the next level. Write a sex scene that turns out to be more about talk than sex.

  • Two homeless men, strangers to each other, end up under the same freeway overpass for the night. They ignore each other at first, but then one of them starts to talk and can't seem to quit.

  Speeding up. Take the scene about Dolores under the subhead Speeding Up and rewrite it so it moves. You can add narrative or action or delete lines, anything that will make the scene move and contribute to a story that's going somewhere.

  Slowing down. Steve and Jennifer are a happily married couple, well, most of the time. Jennifer is a little uptight and anal, always needing to be on time wherever they go. Steve is just the opposite. He really doesn't get why everyone is in such a hurry all of the time, especially his wife. In the following scene, you'll find only the bare dialogue between Steve and Jennifer. When a scene includes only dialogue, it moves quickly. Your task is to slow this scene down by adding narrative, description, background, and bits of action here and there.

  "I'm ready to go, Steve."

  "Coming."

  "When?"

  "Right now, right now. I'll be right down."

  "It's 4:15, Steve."

  "Yeah, it sure is. I just looked at the clock."

  "Mom is going to be so upset if we're late to pick her up."

  "Yeah, she gets like that, all right."

  "Steve!"

  "Huh?"

  "C'mon!"

  "I'm coming, honey, just putting on my socks."

  "I'm going out to start the car."

  "Don't forget to open the garage door—don't want to asphyxiate yourself."

  "Are you coming?"

  "I'll be right down."

  [ tightening the tension and suspense — dialogue that intensifies the conflict ]

  "Please take one," I instructed my writing class as I passed a box of rubber bands around the room.

  Once everyone had a rubber band, I said, "Now, take your rubber band and stretch it a few times in your hand."

  I took my own rubber band and pulled it back and forth, across and under my fingers. The writers in the room followed my example.

  "This is tension," I told them. "Now, stretch it across your fingers and aim it at your neighbor."

  It took a moment, but soon everyone had a rubber band aimed at someone near them.

  "We've turned the tension up a notch," I said, smiling at the wincing and cringing individuals in front of me. "This is what you need a lot of in every scene of dialogue you write."

  The tension created by a rubber band is weak compared to the kind of tension you want to create in your scenes of dialogue. Tension, suspense, and conflict should be at the core of every one of your dialogue scenes. No, this doesn't mean the characters need to be shouting at one another, fighting and raging, throwing things and brandishing weapons. Not at all. If this kind of tension and conflict is what your story calls for, of course, go for it. But the kind of tension, suspense, and conflict we're talking about here can range from one character subtly disagreeing with another character to such tightly strung words in a character's mouth that if he lets go, the force will do a thousand times more damage than letting go of a wimpy rubber band.

  The horror writer Dean Koontz once wrote that most of the manuscripts he'd seen from new writers suffered from a lack of action more than anything else. I have always echoed that, but the more I coach writers, I'd have to now say that the absence of tension, suspense, and conflict is what I see manuscripts suffering from most. These are three different things, yet they can be lumped together because of their close association—they give movement to a scene. Dialogue without these three things is flat, one-dimensional, and boring. And as you know, no writer can afford to be boring. Not ever. Not even for one line of dialogue.

  tension — the key to effective dialogue

  Readers live vicariously through the characters you create for them. Some stories inform our lives to the degree that we have made life choices based on them. How many attorneys have been inspired by Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird? Mathematicians by John Nash in A Beautiful Mind? Prep school dropouts by Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye? Okay, let's hope not. But you get the idea. Storytellers throw their characters into external and internal conflicts, then throw impossible obstacles at them, and readers are inspired as they turn page after page to see how these characters resolve their conflicts. Conflict is what stories are all about, and dialogue is the expression of that conflict. Without conflict, there's no story. Without dialogue, there's no expression of that conflict. How interesting would it be to read an entire novel with a character simply thinking about his conflict? Or moving around by himself to try to resolve it without talking to anyone else?

  As things heat up for the viewpoint character in your dialogue scenes, you can present one, two, or three types of conflict, or all three at once: mental, verbal, or physical. The characters can play mind games with each other and harbor hateful or tormenting thoughts (mental). They can exchange heated and/or tense words (verbal). Or they can engage in violence or sex (physical). When conflict escalates to its peak, all three can take place in one scene. In this chapter, we'll give most of our attention to the verbal kinds of conflict where words are used as weapons.

  in scene openings

  When opening a scene, and especially when opening a story, you want to insert tension as soon as possible because tension is what will engage your

  reader most quickly.
Tension and dialogue are the perfect combination because you have people in conflict. Pit your characters against each other right away in some kind of tense scene of dialogue and reader interest is assured.

  In the opening scene of Phantom by Susan Kay, the author shows the viewpoint character delivering a baby, but not a normal baby. The story starts out with narrative that's tense, but the dialogue increases the tension even more as Madeleine begins to express her horror upon seeing her child for the first time. Here, Father Mansart is trying to comfort the new mother after her initial horror.

  "My dear child," he said compassionately. "Do not be deceived into believing that the Lord has abandoned you. Such tragedies as this are beyond all mortal understanding, but I ask you to remember that God does not create without purpose."

  I shivered. "It's still alive...isn't it?"

  He nodded, biting his full underlip and glancing sadly at the cradle.

  "Father" -I hesitated fearfully, trying to summon the courage to con-tinue—"if I don't touch it___if I don't feed it."

  He shook his head grimly. "The position of our Church is quite clear on such issues, Madeleine. What you are suggesting is murder."

  "But surely in this case it would be a kindness."

  "It would be a sin," he said severely, "a mortal sin! I urge you to put all thoughts of such wickedness from your mind. It is your duty to succor a human soul. You must nourish and care for this child as you would any other."

  It's tricky to open a scene with dialogue because the reader needs some idea of the setting and who the characters are as they start talking. Once all of that's established, the dialogue can take off and be the catalyst for all kinds of tension between the characters. Phantom begins with narrative. Madeleine, the viewpoint character, has just given birth to a freak of nature and is understandably upset.

  When you begin a scene, any scene, you want to establish your character's intention right up front. You can do this either through narrative, action, or dialogue. Clearly, the viewpoint character's intention in this scene is to separate herself from her freakish newborn as fast as she can, and the only way that immediately comes to her is to simply neglect "it" and let it die. She puts her thoughts into words, which horrifies the priest at her side. Things are already tense as she realizes what she's produced, but the tension accelerates as Father Mansart heaps guilt on her for even allowing herself to think such a thought. When the tension in the dialogue accelerates, the reader knows things are really going to take off.