Okay, I’m still firmly of the belief that a class on dialogue should focus mainly on what goes inside the quotation marks. But that doesn’t mean that what goes outside the quotation marks doesn’t matter. It still does—especially since what goes outside the quotation marks can (and will) impact the dialogue’s effect on the reader.

For example:

“So, how are you doing?”

Jenna weighed the question. Did Brian really care? Sure, he leaned forward and lowered his tone, but with a question like that, it was a bit of a stretch to assume that it was sincere.

Then again, maybe he did care. He couldn’t have known how she felt, especially after the stresses of these last few weeks. Her grandmother’s beloved poodle had passed away at the beginning of the month and it had been a steady downward spiral since then: paying for the funeral, moving with Grandma to a new pet-free apartment, selling her old house, changing her address at the bank, transferring the utilities, and so on and so forth.

It was too much of a strain to put on a 17-year-old, or a 70-year-old, for that matter. Grandma’s memory had grown dimmer every day since her move. What if she couldn’t take convince a court she was a fit guardian at the end of the month?

“Been better,” Jenna finally said.

Okay, did you give up before we got to Jenna’s answer? When she finally got out of her head and back into the real world, did you even remember what the question was? At that point, Brian was probably thinking she wasn’t going to answer at all. (In fact, I envision him wandering off somewhere around the time the poodle comes in.)

This is a case of narration undermining dialogue. The dialogue isn’t actually important here (boooring), but the narration makes a bad situation even worse. Even the characters aren’t interested enough to keep up the conversation.

Contrast:

“How have you been?” Brian leaned forward. Was that a glimmer of concern she saw in his eyes?

He couldn’t know—and she wasn’t about to let him. Jenna gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Been better.”

We have to work to balance narration—be it description, internal monologue or action—and dialogue. That’s not to say they have to be equal—most of the time they won’t be. One element is going to be more important: the interaction between the characters or what’s going on outside the quotation marks.

And yes, sometimes the narrative is more important 😉 . In an action scene, for example, we don’t need a full conversation between punches. Here, extensive dialogue slows the scene down. In a verbal argument, however, excessive focus on the character’s thoughts or actions can have the same effect. On the other hand, we’ll probably need at least a little insight into the POV character’s thoughts as s/he argues, or the character will look like a psychopath, incapable of emotional connections and reaction. We also need to ground the characters in the setting and in general, so we don’t devolve into talking heads. And of course, gesture can be an important way to convey subtext (which we’ll talk about later this week!).

What do you think? How do you manage what goes outside the quotation marks?

Photo by buhreee