Just like it's uncomfortable for most of us when someone does this, so is it uncomfortable for the reader when a character does it. So for the most part, rather than jumping into the water fully clothed, your characters should be just putting their toes into the water when it comes to baring their hearts and souls to other characters in your dialogue scene. Not only is this more real, but it also goes a long way in creating suspense. The less your character tells us about himself, while letting on that there's more to know, the more likely we'll be to keep turning the pages to find out the rest.
Just as it takes a lifetime of practice to become skilled as a writer, it takes many years to learn to write dialogue that works on every level and connects with readers. The more of the techniques in this chapter that you can incorporate into your dialogue skills, the more seriously the reader will take your dialogue.
Along these lines, a few dialogue dos and don'ts come to mind. While creating dialogue for our characters is largely intuitive, there are some definite things you can do or avoid doing that will help you write more authentic speech for your characters.
Constructing paragraphs. Break the following paragraph into three separate paragraphs.
Punctuating to achieve rhythm. All scenes of dialogue have a rhythm to them, and at least part of the rhythm comes from the punctuation. A period, a comma, an exclamation point—they all make a subtle difference and can make a dialogue scene soar or sink. Punctuate the following sentences to achieve the best rhythm.
• I've always loved you she told him and now I'm free to act on it
• He waved a hand in the air yelling Hey Dawn over here
• That's the dumbest thing I ever heard but right then John interrupted him
• Careful he warned you don't want to cut your thumb off
• What do you think I want she asked as she closed the gap between them
• I'll be happy to do that but my voice trailed off and I knew I couldn't finish
• It's over there she pointed a finger behind that car
• You think you know everything she screamed but you have no clue
"But I'm not ready to go home yet," Jennifer said as she kept walking straight past her house, picking up her pace as she went. Lisa followed, trying hard to keep up. "Won't your parents be mad if you're not home by nine o'clock?" They'd been through this before and Lisa remembered how Jennifer's dad had yelled. "Who cares if they're mad?" Jennifer slowed down just a bit. "It's my life, and I have to live it my way."
Using contractions. Rewrite the following passages of dialogue and use contractions where there aren't any. See the difference contractions make.
• "He cannot ride the horse as he has never had any riding lessons."
• "I will not run that fast because it is hard on my joints."
• "I have known him for years and he is my best friend."
Using tags. Write a two-page scene of dialogue between three characters without any saids at all. You may use action and your protagonist's thoughts and observations, but no saids.
Using italics. Write a two-page dialogue scene in which your protagonist is trying to make his boss understand that all of the evening overtime he's putting in is hurting his family, that he's not getting to see his kids before they go to bed, and his wife is angry most of the time when he gets home from work. He wants his evenings off. Insert into the dialogue italicized words that your protagonist needs to emphasize to his boss. In every scene of dialogue, the words we don't say are often the most important ones. In this scene, include at least three lines of internal thoughts that emphasize how he feels, words he knows he can't say out loud.
Avoiding inappropriate tags. Study the following sentences and put the word right or wrong beside each of them. Be sure to cover the answers in the parentheses at the end of this exercise before you start.
[ 1 ] He nodded, "Yeah, I think I'll go to the game, after all."
[ 2 ] "Hey Brenda," he said with a smirk, "how about meeting after work for a drink?"
[ 3 ] "You don't really think I'm going to answer that, do you?" she smiled.
[ 4 ] "I can't do that." Brenda laughed. "I might actually look like I know what I'm doing."
[ 5 ] "I can't do that," she said, laughing, "I might actually look like I know what I'm doing."
(Answers: 1. Wrong: period after nodded; 2. Right; 3. Wrong: capital S; 4. Right; 5. Right)
Understanding the importance of reticence. Two characters who met on the Internet dating site match.com are meeting for their first date at a coffee shop. They are definitely
Positioning tags. Go through a story you've written, focusing on where you positioned your tags. Change as many of them as you can to action or the protagonist's internal thoughts. If you have to use said, position it at the end of the first line of dialogue in most cases, though sometimes you may want to vary this, especially if you have a lot of lines where you choose to use said instead of an action or a thought.
Handling phone conversations. Write one page of telephone dialogue. Let there be something at stake, something the viewpoint character stands to gain or lose. Make sure we hear both sides of the conversation. Omit all hellos and goodbyes.
Humor. Write a two-page scene of dialogue where two elderly ladies are in conflict about which of them should "go" for the new gentleman, Henry, who just moved into their retirement home. The goal in this exercise is to "try" to write a funny scene. If this idea doesn't appeal to you, try another idea of your own.
attracted to each other, but each has a secret in his or her background that could affect the relationship in a negative way. Write two two-page scenes — one from each character's point of view. Concentrate on letting the characters reveal themselves gradually in the dialogue so it feels as natural as possible while being aware of moving the relationship forward.
[ dialogue dos and don'ts — some practical tips ]
"So that's just one of the rules of fiction," I said lightly, ending my instruction for that night.
"Rules?!" one of my students piped up. "What do you mean rules? You're kidding, right?"
"Er, no, well, not exactly."
"Forget that."
"Look, they're not really rules," I backpedaled, feeling horrible for ruining my student's evening. I hated discouraging writing students. That's the last thing I wanted to do. "You know, they're just like, well, stop or yield signs on the road. We have to—"
"No way. Who wants to stop or yield when you're in the middle of a writing frenzy? You know, when you're seriously writing some good stuff?"
He had a point. "Okay, they're not like stop or yield signs, but, well, we need, er, a few guidelines so we look like we know what we're doing."
He finally accepted that.
Look, I don't like "rules" any more than you do, but even more than that, I don't like looking like I don't know what I'm doing. I actually think looking like a dork is worse than having to follow the rules. At least for me, that's true. So I've learned the "rules" of fiction more to save my image than anything else, I suppose. Not that our images are worth a lot, but sometimes we're under the illusion that they are.
This chapter is not about "rules," but it is about providing you with some guidelines so you can be more conscious of the fiction writing process. It's true that knowledge is power. Following are some dos and don'ts that will empower you to write the best fiction that you're capable of writing. I've found that these guidelines also empower me to have a better answer for my students in the future who ask why we need "rules."
When dealing with dos and don'ts, we always start with the dos, but in this case we're starting with the don'ts so we can end with something positive—the dos.
• Don't try too hard. I've noticed lately that some stars are falling flat on their faces in their efforts to get their new television shows off the ground. It seems that it's possible to fail no matter how big the star. I have a theory about this, because with each new program I've thought to myself, Why isn't she
just being herself? She's trying too hard and the lines all feel contrived. I'm never surprised when the show goes down; I know it will from the very first attempt.
So, guess what happens when we try too hard to write dialogue? It shows. And because it shows, it doesn't work. As I've observed with the failed television programs, when a writer is trying too hard, the dialogue often feels contrived and forced.
Okay, so we know what not to do. But how do we not do that? How do we not try to write dialogue?
By simply relaxing into your character to the point that the dialogue is coming out of a place deep inside of you that is the character. And yes, since there are at least two, possibly more, characters in every scene of dialogue, it is a little schizophrenic, but who ever said writers were sane? You created these characters, and because you created them you should be able to speak out of the deepest part of who they are. We only distance ourselves from our characters when we don't like them and don't want to own them, and the result is forced, unnatural dialogue. I know some of this sounds like psychobabble, but that makes it no less true.
The next time you sit down to work on your story, try some of the exercises at the end of this chapter and see if they help you to write dialogue that is organic with each character.
• Don't betray your character or reader. To write bad dialogue is to betray both. How? By putting words in the characters' mouths that they'd never say. It's betraying the character because you're not being true to who he really is, and it's betraying the reader by not writing with integrity.
We have to let our characters tell their stories. In a sense, yes, these are our stories, but we've created characters to play the various parts, so we need to make sure we afford them their dignity and don't exploit them by putting words in their mouths that we want them to say.
To betray and exploit our characters is to:
• have them expressing strong feelings on subjects that might normally put them to sleep
• have them rambling on and on about some issue in which they really have no interest
• put reams of information in their mouths that they would never say out loud just because we need to educate the reader on the story background
• put reams of description in their mouths that they would never say out loud just because we need the reader to see the other characters and/or setting
• give them a voice at any point that isn't who they are
• use them to preach our own personal agenda. Which is our next don't.
• Don't use your characters to preach your personal agenda. I feel strongly about the death penalty, child abuse, and chocolate. Prison reform, religious fundamentalists, and weight loss. Road rage. But what kind of a writer would I be if, every chance I got, I was putting words in my characters' mouths about these issues and subjects? I wouldn't be walking in integrity, and I sure wouldn't be creating characters who did.
Okay, I'd be lying if I said I'm writing stories that don't include my personal pet peeves and issues I feel strongly about. I don't know of a writer who is so detached from his personal agenda that he isn't writing about it at all. We write about subjects that matter to us, that we feel passionately about. We're supposed to be doing that. But our characters will only be authentic if we allow them to have their personal issues, too, and to express their thoughts and feelings about those issues in a way that is very much in their own voice.
For example, I happen to be writing a novel about the death penalty. That's the subject, but the characters all come from different places, and when they make a philosophical statement, I better make sure it's their philosophical statement, not mine. One of the main characters has a lot of traits that I don't respect, and sometimes I don't like writing her scenes. She says things that make me so mad, yet I need her because she represents the opposing side of the death penalty (opposing in this case meaning the opposite side of my own) and is the catalyst for many discussions in the story that I want my characters to engage in on this subject that, yes, I feel so strongly about.
• Don't try to be cute or clever. This don't is in the same family as Don't try too hard. Writers who think every time their characters open their mouths they have to say something entertaining, amusing, or clever are in the same league as actual people who are forever trying to make the rest of us laugh. After a while, these folks are just annoying. You really don't want your characters to annoy your readers. This is not a good thing.
How do you know if you're trying to be cute or clever? Well, this is the difficult part. I have a sense that real people don't know when they're doing this, so I wonder if writers can know. I'm hoping that just pointing it out will be enough to alert you that it's possible so you'll watch for it and resist the tendency. One sign is if your characters are always laughing at each other. If you find yourself constantly writing, He laughed, She chuckled, He cracked up, They all laughed, They split a gut, you're probably doing a bit of this. It's better to underplay than overplay. Subtlety is always preferable to bowling the reader over with your characters' personalities.
• Don't let the dialogue drive the scene. I've read stories by writers (unpublished—an important distinction in this context) that were 80 percent to 90 percent dialogue, and unless you're very good at this or you're writing a specific kind of story in which this could be effective, an all- or mostly-dialogue story just doesn't work.
Dialogue is a vehicle for moving the plot forward, for characterization, for providing background information to the reader, for description of other characters, for creating suspense and building tension—all purposes we've talked about in this book so far. But dialogue is the means to an end, not the end in and of itself.
In a plot-driven story, the plot events are what drive the story forward, and in a character-driven story, the protagonist's internal transformation is what moves the story. The dialogue is simply a means of engaging the characters in a scene with each other so they can move— externally or internally, preferably both.
When you allow dialogue to drive a scene, unless you're an expert dialogue writer, your characters end up talking all over the place about the story events and the other characters, and so the action and narrative suffers. The characters come off as shallow because they're just talking. Not thinking or acting, just flapping their lips. And we know what we think of real people who are all hot air.
You want your story to be three-dimensional, to include action, narrative, and dialogue. Of course, there are exceptions—moments when the dialogue will take over a scene—just like there are moments when the action and narrative will take over. This is as it should be. But these are definitely exceptions. For the most part, you want to weave these three elements into each scene you write. In a three-dimensional scene, the dialogue affects the narrative and the narrative affects the action, which affects the dialogue, etc. You can mix all of this up many different ways because most of the time you need all three.
• Don't worry about perfection. Dialogue is the one element of fiction where you have to worry the least about getting it "right." By that I mean grammar and sentence structure. You can get by with more in dialogue than you can in any of the other elements of fiction because we want our characters to sound like real people having real live conversations. People talk in sentence fragments, phrases and half phrases, slang, and dialects. Most of us don't care how we sound or come off to one another when we're just hanging out, and our characters don't either. It's only the writer who gets uptight about this stuff.
There's no such thing as the perfect sentence in dialogue, unless it's "Help!" when a character is drowning or "No!" when a female character doesn't want to have sex. It's that simple. If you could get just this one point from this book, you could relax and never be afraid of dialogue again. Dialogue is just people talking.
To let go of your need to write perfect dialogue means you'll create dialogue that's more authentic because you'll let your characters be who they are and talk out of that real place inside of
them. We're hearing a lot about breathing these days, and sometimes I wonder if we would be less uptight as writers if we could just breathe with our characters when writing their dialogue. It's worth a try.
When feeling the need to write perfect dialogue, just remember:
• Your characters are human, definitely not perfect.
• Your characters aren't thinking nearly as hard about what they're saying as you are.
• Your characters have something to say and you need to listen instead of think so hard about what you want them to say or think they should be saying.
Now you know everything—almost—that you're not supposed to do when writing dialogue. But what works? When writing dialogue, what can you do that's effective and engages readers in your characters' conversations with each other?
• Do write dialogue that's worth eavesdropping on. It was Gary Provost who originally said it and I thought it was a great thing to remember: "There's no absolute rule about when you use dialogue and when you shouldn't, but here's a good generalization: If a stranger were nearby, would he try to eavesdrop on the conversation? If the answer is no, don't use the dialogue. If the answer is yes, use it."
That makes perfect sense to me. If we went through every story we wrote with this in mind, I bet we'd get rid of a lot of the ho-hum dialogue we write.
Every once in a while I take a pad and paper and sit in a restaurant and write. If there are other restaurant patrons nearby, and if they're talking about anything interesting at all, then I'm sunk. I simply can't concentrate. I once heard true crime writer Ann Rule talk about her friendship with horror writer John Saul. When they go out to lunch together, their conversation is often focused on who killed whom and with what kind of weapon. She says they get all kinds of looks from the people around them.
So the question to remember is: Would anyone want to eavesdrop on your characters' conversation? Why or why not?
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