• Anxiety - Put a character in a scene that creates such anxiety for her that she begins to feel out of control on the inside and the more she talks about it, the more anxiety she feels.
• Strategic tagging - Rewrite the following sentences so as to string them out and increase the tension; put the tag in the middle of the sentence:
"I'm not sure I can do the job unless there's something in it for me," he said.
She looked at him and said, "I love you, but I'm not free to start another relationship right now."
"If you do it quickly and carefully, they'll never hear a sound," she said.
• Pacing - Put a character in a situation that is increasing in tension and let his dialogue match the increasing tension.
• Suspense - Put a character in a scene of dialogue in which she's trying to find a
ries you're in the middle of writing and see if you can write more compelling scene openings using dialogue.
way to tell another character about something that's going to happen in the future.
Scene endings. Now go through the novels on your bookshelf—again, preferably the ones you've read — and study the scene and chapter endings. How hard did the author work to write dialogue endings, or even narrative endings, that were tense and suspense-ful? Choose at least five weak endings and rewrite them, ending each with one final line of startling dialogue. Then, if you're in the middle of writing a short story or novel, check out your scene endings and see if there's a line of dialogue you can tack on that will startle the reader and compel her to read on, even though she has to get up early the next morning.
[ it was a dark and stormy night—using dialogue to set the mood and facilitate the emotion ]
"I'd rather be working at Taco Bell!" I told my friend as I climbed out other car after a heated discussion about my current editorial job. Nothing wrong with Taco Bell, you understand—that's not the point. The point is I was over-the-top tired, angry, frustrated, disappointed, and done with my job. I spoke those words with so much emotion that they haunted me for days and I eventually quit my job.
The words that you say, scream, or whisper to others with the most emotion are the ones you remember. The words that others say, scream, or whisper to you with the most emotion are the ones you remember.
We want our stories to be memorable for our readers. We want to create characters who are unforgettable. In order to do this, we must write dialogue that is full of emotion. It doesn't matter whether the emotion is fear, sadness, joy, or anger. What matters is that our characters are emotionally engaged with the situations and conflicts we've created for them, and that they're conveying their feelings to one another through dialogue that is charged with emotion. Charged and super-charged. Turbo-charged. The more emotion, the better.
I didn't say melodrama, I said emotion. There's a difference. We're not writing soap operas. The emotion in a scene of dialogue is what draws your reader into your characters' situational conflict and makes her care about the problems facing the character. Every bit of dialogue in your story must convey some kind of emotion. What you have to decide is what kind. This is determined by the kind of story you're writing and what is going on for the characters in any one particular scene.
I see new writers make a lot of mistakes when it comes to writing emotional dialogue. This usually comes from trying too hard:
• characters cracking jokes and laughing uproariously when the jokes aren't funny
• characters crying and sobbing all over each other to the point that the reader is watching, going, "Yeah, yeah, get on with it."
• characters who are full of fury when the situation amounts to something like a stubbed toe or a broken fingernail
We create characters that go over the top and are inappropriate in the expression of their emotions because we (1) are not able to access our own emotions and therefore act inappropriately ourselves, or (2) we're trying to make a point in our story and think extreme emotion is the way to do it.
More often, I see the other extreme. Writers that underplay the emotion:
• A character loses her husband, whether to an affair or death, and goes to her Bridge Club the next night, the main concern on her mind getting the recipe for the cranberry cucumber salad.
• A female character hears a noise, and with no fear, grabs a baseball bat and runs down the dark basement stairs to confront the burglar.
• A character loses his job only to tell his wife when he gets home that he knows he deserved to be fired—no anger, just acceptance.
We create characters who deny and repress their emotions because we deny and repress our own.
As a writing coach, I'm often frustrated that I can't help writers with this aspect of their storytelling. I joke that writers need therapy to be able to write well, but somewhere down deep, I think I really believe that.
Whether or not you get therapy is up to you. In the meantime, there are some practical things you can do to make sure your dialogue is full of the kind of emotion that grabs readers and makes your characters memorable. In this chapter, we'll take a few common emotions and see how dialogue can be used to show these emotions through your characters. But first, let's talk about how the use of emotion can establish your story's mood.
setting the mood
"I hate you!"
"I don't want to live..."
"I won!"
"Don't you dare move—"
These are strong statements. When we, as real-life people, are emoting, we express ourselves in a variety of physical ways. We may punch a wall, grit our teeth, or clap our hands—any number of physical movements. But at some point, we talk. To ourselves or someone else. One of the most effective ways to reveal our characters' emotions is to let them talk. Out loud, whether whispering or yelling. Interwoven with action and narrative.
Cartoonists have it made. They can simply draw a mad, sad, happy, or scared face on their cartoon figures and we know immediately what's going on with the characters in the present moment. Likewise, scriptwriters have real actors to work with. The audience will see the frowns, the tears, the smiles, and the eyes wide with fear.
Writers don't have these luxuries. Our only tool is words and we must put those words in our characters' mouths so our reader will know what our characters' emotional states are at each present moment. The only way to connect with our reader on an emotional level is to first connect with our characters. The way we do this is to make sure our characters connect with themselves.
This isn't a self-help book on the psychology of human emotions, but many of us don't slow down enough to feel our feelings on a moment-by-moment basis. However, whether or not we know how we feel, we are continually giving off signals to others. The same is true of our characters. While they may not be able to tell you how they feel unless another character asks them, their behavior and words will give them away. You'll know, no matter how they try to hide their feelings. We can only hide our real feelings for so long.
The feelings of anger, sadness, joy, and fear are primary, although we might have a range of other more minor feelings that come and go: jealousy, confusion, frustration, etc. These other minor feelings are more states of being, so in this chapter we'll deal with the primary feelings and learn how we can use dialogue to set a mood in our story.
love
Regardless of what you think of The Bridges of Madison County (some read-
Just for Fun
Do you want your reader to know what your character is feeling? Use dialogue. When your character opens her mouth and speaks, she immediately reveals her emotional state of being, which is very powerful and very effective. You can use the following exercises to practice using dialogue to show your character expressing emotion. They all involve at least two characters so you can use dialogue as the primary vehicle to show the specific emotion. Write a one-page scene of dialogue for each scenario. Feel free to modify any of the scenes to fit your own needs.
[ 1 ] Your character and h
is best friend are driving down the freeway minding their own business when an older vehicle sideswipes your character's brand-new SUV and then keeps driving. What are the first angry words out of his mouth?
[ 2 ] Your character and her boyfriend are out to dinner at an upscale restaurant. The boyfriend has just told your viewpoint character that he wants to break up, that he doesn't love her anymore. Without using tears, let your character express her shock and sadness through dialogue.
[ 3 ] Your character has just landed his dream job. He will be doing work he loves and getting paid more than he ever imagined. He's sitting in the office of his future employer. He can hardly contain himself, he's so excited. He blurts out how he feels.
[ 4 ] Your character and her boyfriend have been hiking since early in the morning. It's now dusk and they realize they are hopelessly lost. Your viewpoint character is growing increasingly anxious on the inside. Suddenly she's terrified and expresses it out loud.
[ 5 ] Your character has just learned that his emotionally unavailable father has died. He's in his therapist's office, and feeling numb. When he asks him what he'll miss most about his father, suddenly he's no longer numb and has a lot to say.
ers loved it, many hated it; personally, I'm a sucker for mushy love stories), there's an effective bit of dialogue in the middle of a love scene between Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid. I even heard Oprah read this bit of
dialogue on her show when the author, Robert James Waller, was her guest.
The story is about a man who waltzes into a woman's life for four days and waltzes back out again, taking her heart with him and leaving behind a part of his own. That's basically it. Well, I doubt that's the synopsis Waller turned into his agent or editor, but it's pretty close. The following line of dialogue was spoken as Francesca tried to get Robert to understand why she couldn't just leave her husband and kids to follow him across the backcoun-try roads of Iowa and off into the sunset. It was about responsibility.
Robert Kincaid was silent. He knew what she was saying about the road and responsibilities and how the guilt could transform her. He knew she was right, in a way. Looking out the window, he fought within himself, fought to understand her feelings. She began to cry.
Then they held each other for a long time. And he whispered to her: "I have one thing to say, one thing only, I'll never say it another time, to anyone, and I ask you to remember it. In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live."
Women readers swooned over this line in the book. Is there a woman anywhere in the world who wouldn't give anything to hear that special someone say those words to her? To be thought of as that special?
But what specifically makes these words connect with readers so effectively? And how can you create the kind of emotional dialogue that can convey a character's feelings of love in a tone that's both genuine and authentic?
You might be writing a love scene or coming to that point in your story where your character is full of feelings of love—for another character, an animal, a setting. How can she express herself without sounding corny, melodramatic, or like a character in a novel, which, of course, is exactly what she is?
One reason the above passage works so well is because there is both conflict and resolution. These two people want what they can't have, what they can't make happen. So they're both torn, even though deep down they both know that Francesca will do the right thing because that's who she is. It's all right there in those two paragraphs. And we can identify with the certainty that Robert is talking about. We've felt that way.
As human beings, we are afraid of intimacy with other human beings. And love is very intimate. So what's important to remember when creating a
love scene between two characters, whether it leads to sex or not, is that your character is simultaneously feeling both fear and love. To make the scene feel authentic, you have to capture both feelings at once in the same character—sometimes in both characters, since it takes two to tango, or tangle, as the case may be in a love scene that leads to sex.
How is this done? By practicing. The more comfortable you are with real love scenes, the more comfortable your characters will be. You may have to put your characters in a number of love scenes and various settings to come up with one that works. Keep in mind that a love scene doesn't always mean a sex scene. What we're after is a feeling of love. That could be between parent and child or between friends just as easily as it could be a romantic feeling between a man and a woman. Sometimes jumping to sex between a man and woman is to actually short circuit the feeling of love that is surfacing for the couple. If you really want to develop a love relationship between two characters, take your time and reveal it gradually through the dialogue as they grow closer.
anger
The emotion of anger expresses itself in many different ways. Watch what makes you angry so you can access your anger and authentically use it in your dialogue scenes. You also want to watch what makes others angry and how they express it, which will often be very different than how you do.
Let's look at a passage from Michael Dorris' novel A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Here we have a character whose mother abandoned her ten years before, leaving her with her grandmother. She's just a little upset about that. Her mother, who doesn't quite have her head on straight, is also angry. When people are angry, they blame, defend, say things they don't mean, and say things they do mean. The words usually rush out without much thought given to them. Here, the viewpoint character, Rayona, is finally taking advantage of the opportunity to blast her mother for abandoning her so many years before.
I'm so used to being Mom's daughter, I defend myself.
"I meant to get in touch," I say.
"You meant to, you meant to!" Mom pulls the sash of her robe tight and ties it in a knot. "That's just great. Here I am, sick as a dog, and you're off™"
"I was working at Bearpaw Lake State Park."
"Having fun!" Mom shouts. "At some park."
"But you left first."
"That's right, blame me." Mom turns to Dayton. "It's my fault she walked out on her grandmother. Of course."
"Now don't get yourself all upset," he says. "When you calm down, you're going to be glad to see Ray."
"I thought something happened to you!" Mom screams at me. It's the worst thing yet she's said.
"A lot you cared." I've got my second wind. "You could come for your box of pills from Charlene, but not for me."
That stops her. "How did you know it was pills?"
"And all that time, here you are, not ten miles away. Don't tell me about leaving."
"She has no heart!" Mom appeals to Dayton. "She wants to hurt me, sick as I am."
"You tried that on Dad and it didn't work." I'm mad beyond the bounds of what's fair. "You're not sick."
But of course she is. I see it the minute the words are out of my mouth. In some part of my brain it has been registering every since the car stopped. She's ragged, pale. There are new wrinkles in the skin of her forehead, thin lines that stretch like threads above her eyebrows. Her cheeks are hollow but her waist has thickened.
"You're just like him," she says to me in a voice tied to a rock. "In every way."
What makes this dialogue scene work so well is that it feels so real. Angry people in conversation don't often make a lot of sense, and the train of thought in a conversation can't often be followed because there really isn't one. They're just throwing out whatever they can to hurt each other and to defend their own position, all the while not wanting the other to see their raw underbelly.
Most often, when your characters become engaged in anger, you want to speed the scene up. Use shorter sentences and paragraphs, less narrative. An angry slower-paced scene works, too, and is often even scarier because it could mean an explosion is on the horizon. See the second bullet below, the slow burn. Carie is holding it together, but if this scene was to continue, and Matt was to keep arguing wi
th her, this character would inevitably erupt in angry threats and accusations.
For example, the words "I hate you" may be spoken loudly and with one's body shaking. The words "I hate you" may also be spoken softly and coldly and with one's body tense. Hatred is not a feeling—it's a state of being. Anger is the feeling. And we get angry for a myriad of reasons, less often as we grow older, I've been pleased to discover. How much anger we hold inside of us all depends on how much we work on ourselves during our lives, expressing that anger and dealing with the root causes. This is one reason it's important to create a character chart before writing your story so you know your character well enough to know what will make her angry. As I mentioned above, the same things do not make the same people angry. You know how we tell each other not to talk about religion or politics because of the strong feelings these subjects evoke in us. Well, the truth is, you can talk politics all you want, and I won't even feel one tense muscle. But if you start in on religion, you'll be taking your life in your hands talking to me. This is the kind of thing you want to know about your character. What causes her anger—at every level? What frustrates her? What peeves her? What can create the kind of internal rage that causes her to lose control of herself in a matter of moments? Do you know?
This is one step toward knowing your character from the inside out. But you must also know your character from the outside in. Once feeling that anger, how does she express it physically and verbally? Some of us become unnaturally quiet. Others of us immediately vent our anger on whoever happens to be nearby. Few of us, it seems, understand how to be angry and take responsibility for that anger without blaming someone for the cause of the anger. Many of us try to deny we're even angry because we're not comfortable with this feeling. Which is it for your character? You'll want to know this about her before putting her in a situation in which her buttons are pushed. Let's look at three different ways a fictional character might express his anger in the exact same situation. As a young couple, Matt and Carie are saving for their first home so they can start a family, and Carie has just learned that Matt has gambled away their savings.
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