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Tag Archives: Dialogue
How to write the stuff around the dialogue
Flip open any book, and you’re sure to find them: dialogue attribution using verbs other than “said.” Breathed, whispered, inveighed, called, shouted, yelled, extrapolated, interdicted, translated, interpreted—there are literally hundreds of verbs for speech.
But despite that, “said” is still the default dialogue tag. Yes, every book on the market contains speech verbs other than said—but that’s a big reason why “said” is the default dialogue tag: because other tags are so noticeable. “Said” is practically invisible; we read it without really noticing it, while other dialogue tags call attention to themselves.
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Posted in Mechanics
Tagged Dialogue, dialogue and narration, dialogue tag, good dialogue, speech attribution
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February Thinky Links!
Over the month of January, I collected the stories I found on Twitter and in my feeds that were just too good to miss and put them together for you! Welcome to “Thinky Links“!
Author Janice Hardy offers some good advice on how to cut a scene without hurting your story
Kristen Lamb gives a really good example of how to start in medias res.
The Editors’ Blog looks at the use of coincidence in fiction, why it’s bad—and how to fix it.
I’ve been working hard on revising my Nano novel, so I’m really far behind on my feeds, but I did happen to see two good posts on EditTorrent recently, the kind that make me want to run around telling people “I’ve been vindicated” in an imaginary battle I was having with no one. The first covers showing versus telling in an interesting way (i.e. not writing 101), including that was is not always bad and is not the same thing as passive voice, and the role of telling in exposition.
The second is how to avoid that obnoxious “As you know, Bob” (or Alphonse) dialogue by slipping in backstory, characterization and other information through subtle cues. I LOVE working on this, and Alicia gives great examples!
Although I’m now with a traditional, regional publisher, I still find self-publishing very interesting. So for two different perspectives on that this month, Daniel J. Friedman takes a hard look at the numbers behind self publishing: what they make, what they’re worth, and what they’re selling. On the other hand, Joanna Penn interviewed Adam Croft on How To Sell 130,000 Books Without A Publisher. And for some perspective on both sides, Future Book looks at Why Amanda Hocking Switched, with some interesting notes on how her publishers are working for her.
And to close, here are a few of my favorite posts on this blog from Januaries past:
- A perennial favorite of mine, how to spot and avoid the most common (empty) gestures in writing
- Another one I still use extensively, creating and editing with a scene chart
- And a few from the series on tension, suspense and surprise:
- Choosing whether plot elements should be set up strongly to create suspense, or should remain a surprise
- One I should probably study a little more: creating suspense in Act I
- What creates tension and suspense?
What’s the best writing/marketing/publishing advice you‘ve read lately?
Photo by Karola Riegler
H is for Homo fictus
In fiction, we strive for realism. Even if our characters are using wands or warp drives, we still want them to sound and act like real people.
You know, sort of.
In How to Write a Damn Good Novel, James N. Frey points out that fictional characters aren’t quite the same as real people:
Ficitonal characters—homo fictus—are not . . . identical to flesh-and-blood human beings—homo sapiens. One reason for this is that readers wish to read about the exceptional rather than the mundane. Readers demand that homo fictus be more handsome or ugly, ruthless or noble, vengeful or forgiving, brave or cowardly, and so on, than real people are. . . .
Homo fictus is an abstraction meant to project the essence, but not the totality, of homo sapiens. (1-2)
One of the chief ways homo fictus differs from homo sapiens is that homo fictus must make sense. Says Frey, “Homo fictus . . . may be complex, may be volatile, even mysterious, but he’s always fathomable. When he isn’t, the reader closes the book, and that’s that” (2) .
Another big turn off is unrealistic dialogue—dialogue that doesn’t sound natural at all, or dialogue that sounds too much like real life (i.e. boring!).
We all fall prey to these sins sometimes. And sometimes we try to justify them with the argument that they’re not just realistic, they’re real. That’s not a good enough excuse. As Nathan Bransford puts it,
Occasionally I’ll point out dialogue or events that aren’t working, and someone will protest, "But this is how people actually talk," or "This actually happened."
Writing isn’t about capturing real life as it actually happens. We have, well, real life for that.
Instead, writers have to elevate life and add spices and all the rest. Writers interpret real life, elevate it, reorder events, and serve up something perfectly balanced and ready for public consumption.
While we want to have the appearance of reality, we don’t really want an exact copy of it in our fiction. In real life, things don’t make sense, people do crazy things, conversations meander and fizzle out without saying much, and causation and purpose in the events of the world elude us. “Fixing” those things is one of the big benefits of reading fiction.
What do you think? How else are fiction and reality different?
Photo by Nadia
Subtext: it goes without saying
Subtext is one technique I consider more advanced in dialogue and storytelling. The basic definition is an element that carries a second level of meaning. A symbol might be considered a type of subtext.
In dialogue, it’s when a character says one thing, but the reader can infer another layer of meaning. Maybe the character doth protest too much; maybe his gestures show her anger despite his reassurances that he’s okay; maybe the reader 
knows this character acts like he’s the one when she’s with her friends, but plays hard to get when he’s around.
As editor Alicia Rasley puts it (emphasis mine):
Subtext is like a gift to the astute reader, an additional layer of meaning implied by the text but not accessible without a bit of thinking. And it gives a chance for the writer to deepen the theme and characters in a subversive way, inviting the reader to interact and thus become more involved in the story. . .
Subtext exists all the time in real life, and so to do justice to our characters, we can create the opportunity for the reader to find shadings of deeper meaning in our stories.
You’re probably already doing this- I think subtext is nearly inevitable once you accept that characters have inner lives.
So, how can we use subtext in our dialogue? A few ideas:
- Use the character’s body language to clue the reader in that something’s off. Some little tell in the character’s behavior shows us that he or she is shifty and untrustworthy when reporting a fact, covering insecurity when bragging, aggressive when saying something passive.
- Use dramatic irony. The readers saw the hero pacing as he worked up his fragile ego to call the heroine. When we switch to her POV for the call itself, she doesn’t know that his cockiness (a major turn off for her) is all for show. This can also be applied on a “macro level,” as Alicia Rasley calls it. She cites the example of Casablanca being set just before Pearl Harbor. The audience knows the events that are coming though the characters don’t, and that adds another layer of meaning for the reader.
- Dance around a topic. Make it clear there’s something the characters aren’t saying or won’t think about.
- Carefully craft the dialogue. (I know: duh. Easier said than done.) Choose words or build phrases that can carry more weight. Split hairs. Have other characters misinterpret, seeing only through their own particular filter.
Alicia’s article on subtext goes in depth on these and other ways to craft more subtext into your dialogue and your story.
What do you think? How else do you convey another level of meaning in dialogue?
Photo by Ludovic Hirlimann
What dialogue can (and should!) do
Okay, this totally almost qualifies as a guest post. My friend, author Annette Lyon, mentioned the many purposes dialogue can serve in a comment here, and then on Monday, after a question from Kathleen, Annette posted about six things dialogue can/should do.
In a scene, dialogue isn’t just there to pass the time or fix the pace. Dialogue needs a purpose for the story, or it’s just fluff. Annette outlines six purposes dialogue can serve in a scene, to help us keep our writing (and the story) moving forward.
It’s hard to pick a favorite part of Annette’s post, but this is one paragraph that really made me think:
Sometimes, even the people we’re with affect how we say things. I know I’ve lapsed into an almost teenage-style of talking around friends I know from that era, while I’ll use a more formal register with, say, the school principal. When I’m talking with my sisters, I sound very different than when I’m talking to my kids. And so on.
Annette also gives good advice on what to do and what not to do when writing dialogue, and how to portray each of her six purposes in your dialogue. So check it out!
Indirect dialogue
Sometimes the ability to write good dialogue becomes a crutch. We feel like we should show all possible dialogue—but it’s just not the case.
Sometimes, the story—the pacing, the conflict, and most of all the reader—is better served by summarizing dialogue. This seems to be the case in stories where one character is telling another about actions the reader has already seen. Most of the time (unless we’re going for a Rashomon effect), the reader stands to gain nothing from rehashing an event that the other character needs to hear about.
It’s really not a sin to write something along the lines of “She related the whole story of X” or “He caught her up on the status of the battle.” If the POV character is the one telling the story, the reader probably needs very little cues. If the current POV character is listening to the story (i.e. we saw the scene from another character’s POV before this), we might get into some more detail with the POV character’s reactions and interpretations.
This might also work well if the readers haven’t seen the event in question—but they’ve already heard about it. For example, in a mystery, a detective or PI might interview half a dozen witnesses who all saw essentially the same thing. We definitely don’t need to see every single full conversation—the pertinent parts (like the details only one person saw, or the red herrings, or whatever) are all we need.
On the other hand, if the readers haven’t already seen the events being described, it might be better—and often less confusing and simpler—to write out the character’s full run down. If it turns into a speech, break it up into a conversation, or at least add reactions from the POV character. (I can’t think of a time the POV character would give one of these speeches. Maybe for backstory? Ack.)
Now for the third hand. I haven’t decided if I like this technique, but every so often, I see something like this:
Billy and I moved on to the next painting.
“That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” He curled his lip in disgust.
Well, I thought he was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, and told him so. “And also, you stink. But most of all, your taste in art stinks.”
Now, this would never work for me if the second paragraph said Well, I thought he was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. “You’re the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. And also, you stink. But most of all, your taste in art stinks.”
But for me the jury’s still out on the first version. I’m a dialogue lover, so I would tend toward just putting it in dialogue, and cutting the “Well, I thought . . .” part—I mean, if you say it, the reader’s going to figure out that they’re thinking it, right?
What do you think? How does that example of indirect dialogue work for you? How else might we use non-dialogue for dialogue?
Photo by the Michigan Municipal League
Posted in Technique
Tagged Dialogue, dialogue and narration, good dialogue, indirect dialogue, realistic dialogue
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Enter late and exit early in dialogue
I’m not even going to pretend to point fingers. I’ve fallen into this trap myself. “Hey,” I think, “I’m good at dialogue. Dialogue makes scenes go faster. Dialogue is a great way to show conflict and characterize and keep things moving. We’re supposed to show not tell, right? And readers like dialogue. So I’m going to show the entire conversation.”
And two thirds of the conversation is the exact sort of boring warm up we talked about last week.
Just like we need to do in our overall stories and in our scenes, we need to enter a lot of dialogue late and leave early. Skip the greetings and the small talk, and get out of there before the conversation dies out.
I found one way to avoid this in Don’t Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden. I’ve mentioned it before:
Flat-out editing can help—especially for phone calls. (Eesh. I hate those!) Roerden uses the example of a phone call from a novel where the protagonist is in her car, realizing she needs to get a clue from her husband. She’s already thought about the context—when they heard it, what bit of information it is exactly—so why show that in a phone conversation? Indeed, after the words “she called him,” the author skips right to the husband’s answer: “‘Yeah, I’ve got it right here. . . ‘”
We can do this in other types of conversations as well—jump into the scene once the dialogue gets to the good part. Like Elmore Leonard, we want to leave the boring parts out!
What do you think? Do you try to enter late and exit early in dialogue? When would you not do this?
Photo by Trevor Devine
Dialogue and what goes outside the quotes
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
