Technique Tuesday #4: On Dialogue (Or, Pass the Salt...)

Tricks, Templates, & Tools

I’m going to leave the intro from TT #1 pinned here for new readers. For today’s new post, scroll down below the photo:

These should be fairly self-explanatory. They’re not formulas or, God knows, rules. They’re exercises to try, and ways of framing, and maybe challenges that will lead you to solutions to the individual problems your writing projects are already plotting to hurl at you. All of these are things I’ve developed (or borrowed and augmented) over the last quarter-century, and that at least some people have found useful.

If you find these helpful, and want to show appreciation or encouragement, please do tell friends, or say so somewhere. And/or click the little purple button below, if you’re able and so inclined. Many thanks.

Technique Tuesday #4

In theory, it should be the most devastating tool in your box. All of our boxes.

One good line of dialogue can advance plot, reveal character, transform or establish or turbocharge rhythm, layer relationships, heighten or release tension, not just terraform dead paragraphs but trigger life in them.

One line. Actually—used deftly, at the right moment—one word.

And yet. So often— more than with any other everyday technique writers employ— dialogue becomes the black hole into which stories collapse. The dead center from which no light or life or matter escapes.

Why should this be? Mostly, I think, because good dialogue is a machine built of many parts, only some of which have names. Yes, okay, diction; yeah, sure, conversational rhythm (which has to vary not just with each individual character but with each interaction); absolutely, situational awareness; dialect or idiomatic quirks, okay, of course, although almost every step down that path can lead to Cartoon Alley. But even getting those things right won’t ensure that your dialogue rings true, let alone proves memorable, or does any of the good things listed above, let alone all of them.

Don’t believe me? Try recording and then transcribing— exactly— any conversation you overhear. Then read it back. Chances are, without you adding or changing a single thing, the words will have ossified, somehow. Died on the page even as you type them. At best, become butterflies you pinned.

Why? I only know that it is.

There are also fewer exercises or tricks I know for sharpening dialogue skills. All of the above component parts can be parsed, played with, practiced, even mastered. But at least some of capturing conversation is an ear thing, and there, I think, is the rub:

You can’t invent it. You have to hear it.

I don’t have a formula for helping you do that. But I do have some challenges that may help you develop your own formulae or habits for hearing spoken words you’re creating as you create them.

Here’s one:

Put two characters (or actual people) you feel you know well in a room. Or on a bench somewhere. Make sure it’s a specific room, somewhere you’ve been or have already imagined, and can imagine these characters being.

Each of these characters should want something from the other. Probably, it’s not going to be the same thing, because how often do we want exactly the same thing as the person we’re talking to at exactly the same time? And even if we have the same wants, we probably don’t have the same reasons for wanting. Or the same intensity of want.

Now, here’s the first key bit: for reasons you determine, neither of these characters should be willing just to come out and say what he/she/they want from the other.

Why? Because you want this conversation to be the closest possible on-page reflection of every actual conversation human beings have. Think about it: if we actually just up and said what we wanted…well, for starters, there’d be no Jane Austen. No Dickens. No Toni Morrison or Shirley Jackson. No western lit, period.

Quite literally, we’d have nothing to talk about.

Here’s the second key bit:

Pick any four or five questions from the list below that are most appropriate for each of your characters, and make sure you know the answers:

Where did they just come from?

Where are they going next?

Are they in a rush?

Are they hungry?

Are they cold?

Who’s the last person they had a fight with? About what?

What’s the last thing they checked on their phone?

Who’s their boss?

Who did they wake up missing today?

What are they humming?

Good or bad hair day?

Dog or cat?

Worried about money?

How’d they sleep?

Current, right-this-second feelings about seeing this other person? Historical feelings about this person?

Looming obligations?

Something they’re looking forward to?

You get the idea. Feel free to amend, or add your own. But answer the questions for yourself before you set these people talking.

Here’s why this matters: every one of those answers will influence not just what this person says but the tone and rhythm of how they say it. That doesn’t mean the answers will come up in the conversation. But knowing them will help you hear how these specific people are saying what they want and need to.

Also, people— and even more than people, credible characters— are pretty much incapable of staying on exactly one subject for more than a few lines. No matter how serious the subject.

I call this cross-purpose dialogue. Which is my fancy name for all dialogue, period.

Because sometimes, maybe most of the time, the most explosive and revealing and impactful and believable response to one character’s “Are you going to sign our divorce papers today?” really might be, “Pass the salt.”

(Technique Tuesday will be off next week but will return 9/27)