Bruce Nauman, Double Poke in the Eye II, Tate Modern. Photo credit: Karen Kao
A while ago, a student asked me to talk about writing dialogue. She
felt that her own dialogue was stilted, created solely for the purpose
of completing her writing exercise for the week.
I said something vague and probably wholly unsatisfactory, although
this student was too polite to say so. I think I mumbled something like:
use dialogue when it’s the most efficient way to convey your
information. When the reader needs to hear the words coming out of the
mouth of one of your characters.
After class, I went home and started looking at my writing books. As I
had hoped, there were plenty of better answers than my flubbed attempt.
So here’s what I learned about writing dialogue.
Legend has it that Truman Capote could eavesdrop on a conversation on
the street, rush back to his hotel room, and transcribe that
conversation verbatim. If true, that transcript would have been littered
with stammering,grammatical errors, and the cliches and banalities that constitute so much of our everyday conversation.
Francine Prose is an author and creative writing teacher. She recalls
being taught to avoid actual speech. Instead, her characters should
speak in fluent, economic and certain terms.
The idea, presumably, is that
fictional dialogue should be an “improved,” cleaned-up, and smoothed-out
version of the way people talk. Better than “real” dialogue.
Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (Harper Perennial 2007)
So how do you write this new and improved dialogue?
Bad Dialogue
First, you need to know what bad dialogue looks like. John Gardner
would be happy to say. He’s an academic and a novelist as well known
for Grendel, a re-imagining of the Beowulf saga from the monster’s side, as for The Art of the Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers.
Gardner must have been a fearsome teacher. He gets quite grumpy in The Art of Fiction complaining about the common errors that newbie novelists make.
I mean things like, in dialogue,
“um, uh . . .” — sometimes used by good writers in ways that don’t stand
out and distract from the fictional dream, but usually used by amateurs
in ways that make the reader tear his hair.
John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (Vintage Books 1991)
Francine Prose’s pet peeve is exposition framed by quotation marks. That is to say, an obvious and awkward attempt by the author to convey information in the form of stiff, unlikely, artificial conversation. Here is one hilarious example.
“Hi, Joe,”
“Nice to see you again, Sally.”
“What have you been doing, Joe?”
“Well,
Sally, as you know, I’m an insurance investigator. I’m twenty-six years
old. I’ve lived in Philadelphia for twelve years. I’m unmarried and
very lonely. I come to this bar twice a week, on average, but so far
have failed to meet anyone I particularly like.”
Prose
This is backstory disguised as dialogue. Imagine the real-life Joe.
Not even the biggest loser would describe himself in such a bald-faced
fashion.
Multitasking
We humans are devious creatures. When we talk, it’s often with more
than a simple message in mind. We may be trying to make an impression,
extract information, achieve some goal or all of the above. Rather than
come straight out and say what we want, we sidle and whisper and nudge.
Think also about how we listen (if at all) to what another is saying.
Body language, an abrupt switch of topic, and a pregnant silence are
also part of the conversation. When we talk, we send and receive a vast
array of signals, not all of which are verbal.
If you want to know how 5 year olds talk, go to a playground. To create the patois of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead listened to archival recordings of ex-slaves. Actual speech is pretty complex.
Once I assigned a class to
eavesdrop on strangers and transcribe the results. I decided to try it
myself, in a university coffee shop. Within moments I overheard a young
woman telling her male companion about a dream in which she saw Liza
Minnelli arrayed in white robes and a starry crown, dressed as the Queen
of Heaven. What made the conversation doubly engaging was that the girl
seemed to be romantically attracted to her friend, and was using her
story as a means of seduction, unaware that he was, insofar as I could
tell, gay. This fact was not unrelated to his lively interest in Liza
Minnelli, yet another connection that his companion was preferring not
to make.
Prose
The best sort of conversation involves communication and
miscommunication at multiple levels. So, too, is dialogue a form of
multitasking.
Good Dialogue
What are these various tasks that dialogue can achieve? Think first
about setting. Most works of fiction start with some form of
description, say, of the main character.
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever,
and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite
some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one
years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Jane Austen, Emma
You can also open a fictional work with action, the way every James Bond movie starts with an explosion or a free-fall.
It’s rare to find a story, short or long, that opens with dialogue. But this presents no obstacle for a master storyteller.
Last Stories by William Trevor. Photo credit: Karen Kao
‘The Brahms?” she said. ‘Shall we struggle through the Brahms?’
The
boy, whose first lesson with Miss Nightingale this was, said nothing.
But gazing at the silent metronome, he smiled a little, as if the
silence pleased him. Then his fingers touched the piano keys and when
the first notes sounded Miss Nightingale knew that she was in the
presence of genius.
William Trevor, “The Piano Teacher’s Pupil” in Last Stories (Viking 2018)
This is not, strictly speaking, a dialogue because the student
doesn’t respond. But no answer is expected nor is any required. The
smile is enough. As Gardner notes, gesture is a part of any real
dialogue.
Characterization
Dialogue and action can be one and the same (“I do.”). It can and
often does advance the plot (“Let’s kill him.” “OK, you do it.”) William Trevor is a master of idiomatic dialogue, the kind that manages to define a setting and a character all in one go.
‘Well, there’s that if you’d want
it,’ the crippled man said. ‘It’s a long time waiting for attention.
You’d need tend the mortar.’
The two men who had come to the
farmhouse consulted one another, not saying anything, only nodding and
gesturing. Then they gave a price for painting the outside walls of the
house and the crippled man said it was too much. He quoted a lesser
figure, saying that had been the cost the last time. The men who had
come looking for work said nothing. The tall one hitched up his
trousers.
‘We’ll split the difference if that’s the way of it,’ the crippled man said.
Still not speaking, the two men shook their heads.
‘Be off with you in that case,’ the crippled man said.
William Trevor, “The Crippled Man”
Through his speech, we get an immediate sense of the crippled man.
Impatient, irascible, penny-pinching. We don’t get every line of speech
the man gives, just the parts we need. And through their silence, we get
an impression of the two men who’ve come in hope of work. They’ve
learned
to pretend not to understand, to
frown and simulate confusion because, in any conversation, it was
convenient sometimes to appear to be at a loss.
Idem
There, in a nutshell, the art of dialogue.
Note: Talk to Me was first published by Karen Kao on her blog Shanghai Noir.
Some nutshell: full of meaty tips! Thanks for this checklist of critical, dialog dos and don't. I find it useful to read final drafts of dialog passages aloud to let my ears - and those of patient friends - be the final arbiters.
This is SO useful. Lots of examples of the different things dialogue does in stories - first of all yes, crucially, what it is NOT designed to do. I love the illustration of 'exposition contained within speech marks' - hilarious! The trick is to make your dialogue sound as if lifted straight from real life but craft it carefully to omit, as you say, all the hesitations, repetitions and cliches (unless the cliches are important to the character). As with all writing, what looks most natural will only have got there through subtle artifice. Ironic, eh. And what about swear words? My characters are 11 - 13 year olds and anyone with that age in the house will tell you that using bad language in exclamations is completely natural to them. But if you reflect that in a middle grade book it doesn't work - a 4 letter word on the page has far more shock value that in real life. Interestingly, dropping the bad words doesn't weaken what the character is saying; often the opposite. (Yes, I worked that out eventually!)
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And what about swear words? My characters are 11 - 13 year olds and anyone with that age in the house will tell you that using bad language in exclamations is completely natural to them. But if you reflect that in a middle grade book it doesn't work - a 4 letter word on the page has far more shock value that in real life. Interestingly, dropping the bad words doesn't weaken what the character is saying; often the opposite. (Yes, I worked that out eventually!)