"Then I said, 'No, I won't have it ready. Not when you want it.' That's what I told him. My life is a mess. I'm behind in everything, the reports pile up faster than I can get them out and I just hate the new payroll system. I hold everything in, too. I mean I really bury it. I hate it all. I look at everything on my desk and I just want to start fresh."
The sentence in italics represents what was literally said; what follows is interpretation for the intended audience. Maybe you recognize interpolation now. Within the frame of a story, it is tempting to allow the flow of dialogue to take over your pace and treatment of scene. Once again, it is important to think about the way we tell jokes, stories, related memories. Stating what literally happened is often less important than the interpretation of those events. Hitting the dialogue right is a matter of seeing where the tension is in the character's life.
Still, don't overexplain. Go back to real life. Some writers do this sort of interpreting incessantly. Don't they wear you out? Let that serve as your warning. Don't fall into a pattern of interrupting and interpreting every snatch of dialogue. Interpolated dialogue is difficult, and when poorly done can sink your work. Use this tool wisely. A good rule is if you find yourself explaining only for the reader's benefit, then stop. If you are discovering things for yourself, press on.
MISDIRECTED DIALOGUE
What about dialogue where the movement seems random? People don't answer one another. Subjects change without warning. Characters respond to stray thoughts and show no interest in a progression of tensions. Call this type of dialogue misdirected. Misdirected dialogue brings in so many strands of existence that its direction resists diagnosis. It appears to operate without direction, in open defiance of the whole notion. It sounds, quite often, more like real conversations.
Lorrie Moore uses this approach in the following scene from her novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Here the narrator and her husband are lying in bed talking. The novel takes place in Paris, where the narrator has come to sort out her life and where her husband has an academic engagement. Read the dialogue below and look for all the different directions presented; the first line appears rather direct, but within moments, the two are speaking in metaphors.
"I'm not really looking forward to going home," I say now.
"Really?"
"I feel disconnected these days, in the house, in town. The neighbors say, 'Hello, how are you?' and sometimes I say, 'Oh, I'm feeling a little empty today. How about you?' "
"You should get a puppy," he says sleepily.
"A puppy?"
"Yeah. It's not like the cat. A puppy you can take for walks around the neighborhood, and people will stop and smile and say, 'Ooooh, look—what's wrong with your puppy?' "
"What is wrong with my puppy?"
"Worms, I think. I don't know. You should have taken him to the vet's weeks ago."
'You're so mean."
"I'm sorry I'm not what you bargained for," Daniel murmurs.
I stop and think about this. "Well, I'm not what you bargained for, either, so we're even."
"No," he says faintly, "you are. You're what I bargained for."
But then he has fallen over the cliff of sleep and is snoring, his adenoids a kind of engine in his face, a motorized unit, a security system like a white flag going up.
The movement here works in waves. The tension between the two characters is high. Just when one character is being direct, the other evades and dances away. The lack of direct response is a sign of intimacy, ironically. There is a code to their language which makes the exchange, with its blend of quiet revelation and gentle chiding, something recognizable and at the same time foreign. Such is the case with misdirected dialogue.
Misdirected dialogue is the type of dialogue that most naturally takes advantage of the rhythms and cadences of language I have been encouraging you to look for. It relies on the fact that life does not always shape itself to the needs of plot, and it turns the mirror on the clamor of voices that surround us, on the natural tendency to leave tensions hanging, rather than march toward resolution. This sort of dialogue sounds more natural and allows tension to build more slowly than in dialogue that's shaped with a heavy sense of direction. It's more surprising, more challenging, and sounds more like the sort of stuff we hear in the world around us. Misdirection is a tool for surprise to be sure, but it brings complexity and ambiguity to our conception of the world within our fiction. Listen for it in the world around you. Use it in the fiction you craft. Its elements include:
• changing the subject
• directing the dialogue "offstage"
• answering questions with answers that aren't quite answers but
sound like them
• allowing characters to speak to themselves, for themselves
• carrying on more than one conversation at the same time
Crafting Misdirection
Start with three people in a restaurant. Rather than starting with a tension, begin by hearing them speak. You've had lots of practice with this by now. Push them to reveal their tensions. This is the key to creating misdirected dialogue. Allow them to speak in random order, but do not force it.
1: I need a beer. Could I have a beer?
2: I saw Mamie today.
1: Beer, please.
3: Where did you see her?
1: You know. By the fire station.
3: No kidding.
1: Her hair has grown.
3: I would imagine. How do you know?
1: I'm not blind.
2: Arc you eating?
3: Did you see her too?
1: You see her everywhere. She's like That Girl! Those hats!
2: I'm eating. I'm starving.
3: I'm just asking.
1: I saw her last week. As a matter of fact I remarked on her hair.
2: The TV show?
3: You talked to her?
2: Who?
1: Marnie.
3: Marnie.
2: You're kidding. I just saw her today myself.
Not brilliant. But it does follow the rules I suggested. What occurs is that the dialogue moves in different directions as each character starts to respond to the others. Notice the techniques: changing the subject (when speaker 1 brings up the hair); part of it is directing the dialogue "offstage" (when speaker 1 calls for beer); part of it is answering questions with answers that aren't quite answers but sound like them ("How do you know?" followed by "I'm not blind."); another part is allowing characters to speak to themselves, for themselves ("I'm eating. I'm starving."); part of it involves carrying on more than one conversation at the same time.
If you found the conversation difficult to follow, that probably had much to do with the fact that I gave the characters no names, that I attached scenic details and I paced the exchanges to be quick and somewhat sharp. There is, however, a literal direction to this, one that can be better imagined by rewriting the dialogue in columns.
Draw arrows from one line to the line that evoked that response and you'll start to see how the patterning works here. Still, it's no parlor trick. Misdirected dialogue often balances tensions against one another in the most explicit fashion. Not for one minute do more voices mean a less diffuse tension. Indeed more voices mean more characters, more characters mean more needs. The key with misdirection is to recognize that it's easy to confuse the reader with evasion and patterning, but you do more to capture a reader when she starts to recognize these unnamable patterns even as the characters continue to speak.
MODULATED DIALOGUE
A fourth type of dialogue, modulated dialogue, uses narrative commentary and scenic detail to extend the complexity of expression.
Here the movement is not from one character to another (as in directed dialogue) nor into the life of one character in particular (as in interpolated dialogue). The movement is not particularly between characters either (as in misdirected dialogue). In modulated dialogue, each piece of dialogue becomes a point of entry for the writ
er to drift toward other details. Memory can be modulated into a dialogue easily and clearly. A character's words call up a forgotten moment, a flashback ensues and at its close, the dialogue begins again. The narrator can comment openly on the "meaning" of the words passing before us on the page.
If all of that sounds pretty bloodless and technical, keep in mind that when memory and place work their way into your dialogues to their fullest measure, your fiction is doing its finest, truest work. You can use modulated dialogue as a means of exploring the tensions more explicitly, of complicating the present, or for advancing the current plot line with a key flashback.
Rich in Love, by Josephine Humphreys, is a novel that explores many of these same connections through the voice and consciousness of a sixteen-year-old narrator named Lucille Odom, who witnesses the breakup of her parents' marriage and the dissolution of their family with a mixture of fear, wisdom and desire. Many of the dialogues in this book stretch over pages and are interrupted by memory, place and revelation. A good modulated dialogue takes place when she goes to lunch with her erstwhile boyfriend, Wayne Frobiness and his father, who puts Wayne on the spot about money.
"... and I want you to guess how much I have to pay for liability insurance. Guess."
"I couldn't begin to."
"No, just take a wild guess. What do you think I have to cough up?"
"I don't know." Wayne was stubborn. I knew he wouldn't guess.
"Take a guess, son," Dr. Frobiness insisted.
"A million dollars," I said.
"Heh, no, little lady, not quite that much. No, I'm ponying up twenty-one thousand dollars a year for insurance." He pronounced the first syllable of "thousand" with a wide open mouth, and made his eyes big.
"Holy smoke," 1 said, to be polite. In truth, I thought that was a pretty good bargain. Suppose he botched a liposuction or misaligned an implant? If I were the insurance company, I would not have insured Dr. Frobiness for any amount.
He went on to say that some fathers, himself and Ronald Reagan included, had a lot at stake in the careers of their sons. It wasn't as if the sons of such fathers were free agents. "My heart aches for the President," he said.
"Excuse me," I said. I wanted seconds before they wheeled the roast beef away. It was already three o'clock, and the steamboat round was carved down the middle like a saddle. The waiter in charge of slicing meat was standing over by the aquarium with two other waiters. I waited politely by the meat, plate in hand, but they were engaged in an argument, and a partially melted seahorse made of ice stood between me and them. They didn't notice me. One said, "Maitre d' said, get that mother out." Another said, "Get him out how?" "I don't know, but get him out." "Shit, man, I ain't reaching my hand in there. It's crabs in there." "He ain't dead yet anyhow." "Sure he is." "Naw, he ain't. His gills is opening and closing, that's his breathing." "Any fish that is upside down is dead in my book." "Said get him out fast before a member sees him." "Get him out, James." "Go for it, James." "All right, James."
There are two types of modulation going on here. The first occurs when the narrator allows the dialogue to fall away and replaces it with the speculation about Dr. Frobiness. In the "present" of our narration, time is passing, yet the dialogue, merely related here, does not reflect that. A similar sort of modulation occurs when Lucille stands and moves to the carving table. In this instance, place, including the fine example of an untagged dialogue (lines that appear without "he said" or specific indication of speaker), takes over, and expands. When the girl returns to the table moments later, more than a page and a half of description has risen to fill up the moments. The dialogue between father and son, to which our narrator is primarily a witness, marches on after the digression, and nothing is lost for the reader in terms of time of understanding.
Writing Dialogue and the exercises within it press you toward modulation. I believe it is the bread and butter of good fiction. A well-modulated dialogue captures scene, tension and an element of the background consciousness in the story and allows the story to rise above the constraints of our artless lives. It allows for the insinuation of beauty and irony. Those things that make a dialogue the backbone of a scene. It is a chance for the narrative consciousness to work in tension with the character's consciousness. Here, unlike interpolated dialogue, the emphasis is not on interpretation but on the collision of details and the art that rises out of it.
THE DANGER OF CLASSIFYING
The danger here is that by defining and classifying these types of dialogue, I have tempted you to think about them as distinctly separate forms of writing, as if one day you will be working with interpolation whereas the next should be saved for directed dialogue only. These forms are not mutually exclusive. When a dialogue is "directed" by a particular need or emotion, that does not mean that scene has to disappear, that memory cannot be modulated into it or that evasion and misdirection cannot be used. Classifications are for biologists, God bless them. Just be aware that dialogue operates around energy and direction. As you write, tune in to the elements. Be aware of the pitfalls of explaining too much and of not explaining at all. Tread a line between too much scene and too little, between too few voices and too many. But know the line first.
The key is to read self-consciously, to watch what the writer is doing. Accept nothing as a pure reflection of "real life," as you know by now that dialogue is always shaped. As you read, draw arrows, make charts, watch for patterning. Don't feel the need to ape these patterns straight out, but don't be afraid to either. Soon they will become your signature, as you layer and modulate the voices you create and the world they inhabit in your own distinctive fashion.
EXERCISES
1. Using the example from the chapter as a model, write a dialogue between three or more people in columns. Or find an existing dialogue, and chart it in that fashion. Pause after one page. Assess the flow and direction of the dialogue. At what points is the direction too predictable? Mark these moments, then begin again. This time, let no two characters speak back and forth more than once. Incorporate more voices. Add a column. Have one character speak to someone we can't see. Allow them to speak to one another by interrupting. Reconsider and vary the length of these lines. Now write the dialogue in a "straight fashion," modulating scene and memory as appropriate. In what ways is the dialogue "misdirected" and what do these movements reveal?
2. Try writing the same dialogue in the four different styles men-tioned in this chapter: directed, interpolated, misdirected and modulated. Choose one that's long enough to provide plenty of material and clearly set within the context of a larger story.
Some watchwords:
Directed dialogue: Be sure to strip away as much of the outside world as possible. Place the tension on the surface. Allow the words of the characters to bear the weight of moving the plot and tension of the scene. In directed dialogue, emotion is often quite near the surface. Keep description to a minimum.
Interpolated dialogue: Take a line or two from the dialogue you create and allow the narrative to subsume the rest of the conversation. Interpolative dialogue is about interpreting. Pull the tensions into an interpretation of the significance of the given line. The line that triggers the moment of realization can be small, but the realization should be grand. Shoot out of the moment toward the heart and soul of the character.
Misdirected dialogue: Here remember the list of techniques I gave you. Try them out. They include
• changing the subject
• directing the dialogue "offstage"
• answering questions with answers that aren't quite answers but sound like them
• allowing characters to speak to themselves, for themselves
• carrying on more than one conversation at the same time
Pattern the dialogue so answers come late, or don't come at all.
Allow characters to speak suddenly, to interrupt, to evade. Pull in details to jar the scene, rather than to reinforce the theme at play. Allow many people to speak up, in man
y ways.
Modulated dialogue: Pull out all the stops. Force scene or memory to become a new and surprising part of the existing dialogue. Look around! Look back! Allow each line of dialogue to become a window
into some other element of the story: Place. Character. Tension. Allow your narration to comment on what is being said and why.
If, when starting either of these exercises, you are stuck for an idea for a scenario, you might try one of these:
Two couples on a hotel balcony in Cairo, at night, drinks in hand
Two men ice fishing
Two women painting an old church pew
Three children who discover a shoe box full of human teeth
The way people speak defines who they are. Think of the people you know. Everyone knows people who are uncomfortable in a room with even one stranger in it. They clam up, setting their faces calmly and firmly against the unfamiliar circumstances. Or people babble, despite their best intentions, trying to poke in something to say at every turn, keeping the conversation under their control, where the unfamiliar person is kept at a distance. Two rhythms, one circumstance, two entirely different characters.
Run with me on this. With the first character, the silent one, don't you automatically get your own sense of the character details? Gender? Clothes? Position in the room? All that and more, without a word. The same probably holds true about the babbler. She might laugh at her own jokes, or repeat herself, or interrupt repeatedly. We begin to see who she is without hearing anything particular from her.
Dialogue feeds through, and grows from, character. Voice, as an element of dialogue, is a product of the writer's understanding of an individual character.
PARTICULARS OF CHARACTER
There is a lot of talk in fiction writing about finding your voice. It is, in most senses, a search every writer undertakes, finding out what she wants to say by discovering how she should say it. It is an issue of craft, a question of talent, work habit and common sense. But it is important to recognize that finding your voice as a writer is an issue of narrative control rather than of shaping the voice of your characters.
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