Nuts & Bolts: Dialogue

Dialogue

One mistake new writers often make is devaluing dialogue. They think that the story is in the setting, the scene descriptions, etc., and dialogue is simply a placeholder, a means to an end. The opposite is much closer to the truth. Dialogue can include setting information, characterization, etc. Dialogue can move a story and make it real in ways no other element can really accomplish. Dialogue lets you show rather than tell. When characters speak and act/react, they become real to the reader. Dialogue builds tension and drama and furthers the plot. Dialogue reveals character through what’s said, or what isn’t said. And dialogue breaks up a story and helps it flow. A good rule of thumb is that dialogue needs to begin fairly quickly into a story, say by the bottom of the first page in a longer piece. So let’s explore it to see how it does all these wonderful things (and even makes toast!).

First off, what is it? Dialogue is a verbal exchange between characters. (A monologue occurs when one character speaks to her/himself or addresses the audience, which, in playwriting, is called an aside.) What is the purpose of dialogue? Here’s the kicker, because dialogue is a Jack of All Trades. The main purpose fledgling writers see for dialogue is delivering information, either about a character or a scene, basically to propel the plot forward in an explicative sense. Let’s examine that. I challenge you to find any random book or short story (preferably a good one). Pick a page and read the dialogue. How many lines of dialogue do you see that actually explicate the plot or setting or even character descriptions? Not many. (Probably more about character descriptions or setting and none or very few about plot.) Why is that? Well, because it’s boring and clunky to read. Imagine reading a horror story and seeing a character say, “Gosh, don’t go into that abandoned house, Maurice; I heard that it’s haunted by the ghost of a murder victim.” Even something as simple as sharing a character’s name in dialogue can be clunky. Think about how many times, in real life, we address people we know by their names. Not that often unless there’s some extenuating circumstance. The reader sees these kinds of information dumps as lazy and even insulting. The writer is saying that s/he doesn’t trust the reader enough to pick up on any subtler clues or just doesn’t know how to share this info in a smoother way.

So dialogue needs to give information to the reader without actually explicitly stating it. Dialogue should also perform several tasks simultaneously, and if it doesn’t, it needs to be cut or revised (because it’s clunky, boring, and taking up space). Probably the biggest thing dialogue does is characterize the speaker. This can be through speech patterns, accents, word choice, or all sorts of ways. It should share some information about plot, setting, character, etc. but not explicitly. Let us not forget the importance of mystery and allowing the reader to play the game of figuring things out for themselves. Think about it like this: imagine having a conversation with someone who restates obvious ideas and information. Soon, you will begin to think this person is mentally deficient. Another danger of poorly constructed dialogue is the “tennis match” effect. I like to think of this as dialogue that gets away from the writer. It goes back and forth between characters without actually accomplishing anything. Here’s an example:
“Hey, Jill,” Del said, smiling.
“Hey, Del,” Jill replied, smiling back. “How are you?”
“I’m good. How are you?” Del asked.
“I’m okay. I’m just a little worried that I’m an alien,” Jill said nervously.
“I don’t think you’re an alien. I just think you need to eat more fruit,” Del said, patting her on the head.

Much of this could be cut because it accomplishes so little and is clunky. Also, the dialogue is mostly unconnected to a scene; there aren’t a lot of physical descriptions to really round out the scene. Here’s a better version:

“Hey.” Jill looked up from her desk to see Del approach across the faded carpet. “So, um, how are you?” The concern in Del’s eyes was a comfort to Jill.
“I, um…” Jill looked around. No one else in the office seemed to be paying attention. “I think, you know.” She laughed and looked into Del’s eyes. “I’m a little worried that I’m an alien.”
Del laughed. “I don’t think you’re an alien.” She put her hand on the other woman’s shoulder and squeezed. “You just need to eat more fruit.”

Of course, on the flipside we have the monologue. This occurs when a character goes on and on, usually dumping info of some type. It’s unrealistic because if a person monologued like this for realz, we’d all turn and walk away from them.

One of the real keys, here, is the idea of economy. When writing dialogue, don’t start at the beginning. Start where something important is said. And end the same way.

(But dialogue can relate conflict without it being an info dump. This is because conflict reflects some fairly broad-stroke emotions, and it’s easy to relate big emotions through dialogue without boring the reader. This is good, because without these kinds of emotions, dialogue can end up being pretty boring and seem unfocused. )

Dialogue should also flow. There are all sorts of tricks to help write believable dialogue and only a few of them border on misdemeanors. But the thing to realize about realistic dialogue is that it isn’t. We are boring and often annoying when we talk. Really. Think about it. We speak in incomplete sentences all the time. We make inside jokes and half-references that would confuse most readers. We pause and stumble, stutter and make all sorts of mistakes when we speak, and we communicate nonverbally much more than we realize. The key to writing good, believable dialogue isn’t so much about capturing real conversations as cleaning them up, giving them some structure and more pleasing cadences, while implying realism enough to fool the reader without annoying them. This is tricky, because this is only a little piece of what dialogue requires.

Let’s talk about identifiers. Most writers agree on this: the purpose of an identifier (s/he said) is to identify who is talking. That’s it. Identifiers shouldn’t add any more information to the mix. Identifiers, also, become practically invisible, in the way a period does. So that means don’t get fancy. Identifiers that stop the reader slow down dialogue, and the pacing and rhythm of dialogue is so important that this is a real no-no.

So when do we use dialogue? Getting characters moving and interacting, specifically talking, is pretty much the best way to give readers a feel for who the characters are. And dialogue tends to be interesting to read, especially if it’s well-done, not only because it tends to characterize and give info, but because dialogue can really help with pacing (it’s a nice respite from descriptions). Dialogue can share a lot of information, but something you might’ve realized with all this talk of subtlety is that it takes a while to get things across when you’re avoiding info dumps. Explication is quick, but playing out ideas in scene, especially dialogue, can take a while.

Some warnings: phonetic spellings can be a good characterization device but they can also annoy the hell out of people. Theoretically, if you craft your character’s diction well enough, the accent should be apparent without all that fancy spelling, or misspelling. Basically, less is more. This is true of accents or vocal tics. (My overly elaborate example: I had a playwriting class with a guy who wrote a 2-page phonetic monologue from the POV of a schizophrenic stutterer. The prof. made the guy read the thing aloud to us. It was torture, and by the end of it, we all understood several things completely. He had captured the tone and milieu of the character, sure, but it was also interminable.) Vocal tics like a stutter or an accent can do a lot of work, but if overdone, they can also come off as forced.

Having said this, characters should be differentiated through dialogue. A child speaks differently from an elderly person. A southerner speaks differently from a northerner. Again, if handled well, these differences, not only in cadence, but in word choice, can be extremely effective. (Also, watch out for clichés!)

-CL Bledsoe

Nuts and Bolts: What We Talk About When We Talk About Setting

I grew up on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, in the Mississippi River Delta, one of the poorest places in the country, in the 80s, when family farms were growing scarce as ivory billed woodpeckers. It was all rice fields and mosquitoes, flat land stretching further than you could squint. The state was ranked 50th in the country in education and first in crystal meth labs. My father and most of his friends were war veterans, hard men who drank and swore and spent much of their time playing practical jokes on each other. My childhood friends grew up to be drug dealers, criminals, or generally shiftless because of the scarcity of opportunities, except for a handful who left the state as soon as they graduated high school and never looked back. No matter how far I travel, geographically or socioeconomically, even though I now live and work at an east coast boarding school, I am still tethered to the milieu of the place of my birth and childhood. My wife, on the other hand, grew up in the suburbs of DC. Her father was a pipe organ builder from German stock with big hands that could seemingly crush a brick, but whose delicate disposition leaned more towards arpeggio runs and the tedium of building and repairing complex and ancient machinery. Whereas mine was a childhood of seclusion and ruralness, hers was one of exploration, namely of the international culture unique to DC city life. In a similar way, she was shaped by aspects of the locale of her childhood which will forever color any reaction she has to any situation. We both live in the same place, now, but our interpretations and reactions to even innocuous things are often wildly different because of our vastly different backgrounds.

In an interview with Tamler Sommers (collected in A Very Bad Wizard) the philosopher Galen Strawsen argues that freewill, as we popularly consider it, is an illusion. The crux of his quite convincing argument is that even though we are usually free to choose whichever direction or option we’d prefer in a given situation, the choice we will make is based on qualities, characteristics, preconceptions, experiences, etc. which have all been borne of a certain set of circumstances (where we come from, when we grew up, how we were raised, etc.). This set of circumstances, which is quite complex, mind you, determines how we will react/choose in any given situation. And even though we’ve left one situation behind, our reactions and preconceptions are still colored by our experiences, even in new situations.

To put it simply, we are the sum of our experiences. When it comes to writing characters, they are, likewise, the sum of their experiences (since they do represent human beings) and these experiences are tied in to location. Therefore, in fiction, setting isn’t just a location, though it is also a location. Or rather, location is complex because a lot of details come with the location. Though it may seem like I’ve moved beyond “setting” I would argue that all of these details I’ve referenced (and probably more) are all necessary to create a strong setting. Geographical location, historical period, cultural aspects, and socioeconomic details are all important elements of setting, and there are more details we could include. Family history could be linked to setting if it’s linked to a place. (This can get pretty complicated.)

So this seems like an awful lot of trouble, and you might be saying; why should I bother? Well, a strong setting helps establish the mood (an upbeat setting can frame an upbeat story or a downbeat story that’s at odds with the setting, adding a bit of tension) and gives context to the story, since setting influences the characters so much. Setting can also tell the readers a lot about who the characters are. A really strong setting can act as a character itself, which adds another level to the story. Since setting has so much influence on characters’ motivations, a strong setting helps characterize and also adds believability to the story. This adds to the reader’s enjoyment of the story because the lushness helps them get inside the story.

Creating a strong setting involves using specific details, details which give the illusion of familiarity. As we discussed with characterization, setting can be related by stating it directly (i.e. “He lived in the wilds of northern Montana.”) or by sharing details indirectly, more like hinting at things (tell me what a moose smells like up close). As with characterization, direct setting can be necessary sometimes, but indirect setting tends to be much more effective.

So let’s go back to that idea of the specific details that give the illusion of familiarity. How does a writer get these details to add them to a story? Research? (I googled moose and Montana before I typed that bit above because I didn’t even know if moose lived in Montana.) Sometimes, but one of the mistakes some writers make is over researching setting and throwing in all these details which make the setting believable but also overpower the actual story (Michael Chabon’s Cavalier and Clay comes to mind. Chabon describes advertisements in magazines of the time with very specific details that are totally irrelevant, for example). Also, these can be tedious to read. So research can be good, sure, but you’ll find that most writers research more to give themselves a feel for a particular setting rather than to find a lot of details to incorporate into a story. It’s all about finding the few choice details that map out a setting without becoming tedious. (That’s good because it’s easier to fake.) I like to think of it as something like sketching. When sketching a human face, for example, an artist doesn’t try to capture each and every detail; rather, s/he might only add a few strategically placed details to give the illusion of having captured every detail. The eye fills in the rest once it’s been convinced of the illusion of the face by those few details. This is an important idea because a writer can research for months and not ever find those choice details which create the illusion of familiarity. Another analogy would be to consider the establishing shot in film. When a director wants to show that this particular scene is in Paris, how does he do it? He shows a shot of the Eiffel Tower. Everyone knows the Eiffel Tower is in Paris. Done. Print. Move on. This is a bit clichéd, but the idea is sound. In writing, that choice detail is very effective and also sometimes very difficult.

Some people will say the only way to really discover these details is to have firsthand experience with a particular setting. Those people don’t really understand the whole “writing” thing (as in “making stuff up”). It takes a trained eye to recognize these details. And it is difficult. But the right few details really do mean the difference between a rich, evocative setting and just a description of where a story takes place. Think about how you might describe your house, for example. Is it one story tall? Ranch style? An apartment? How many windows on the front? What’s the square footage? Now think about how many stories you’ve read that include any of this information in a description of a house. I’m betting none or almost none, or these details are given incidentally but quickly forgotten. The real description is the cobweb in the corner on the peeling paint of the porch or the oak tree in the front yard—not so much what kind of tree it as, but the fact that a pigeon nested in it ten years ago but was chased from the nest by crows and your daughter tried to rescue the eggs, leaving them under a lamp in her room, but none of them hatched. The reader doesn’t know the dimensions of the house but knows it was a home, now. (And the reader doesn’t really care about the dimensions, to be honest.)

*Something else you might notice is that these descriptions I just gave do multiple jobs. They relate specific pertinent details (an oak tree, peeling paint) but they also share an emotional inventory of the place and hint at certain behaviors of the characters. It’s a good rule of thumb that any element in a story should serve multiple purposes. A bit of dialogue should not only relate some piece of information but also characterize the speaker and maybe give some setting info as well (an accent can tell us we’re in a certain region of the country or world, for example). The same is true for setting. Each detail in a story should serve at least two functions, preferably three or more. This is true of characterization, dialogue, and any other element. If it doesn’t, if it’s only serving one purpose, it probably can be cut or needs to be tweaked to make it carry its fair share.

-CL Bledsoe