Dialogue The Essential Ingredient

One of my favorite old films is the 1951 version of “The Thing From Another World,” which was most likely directed by the famous Howard Hawks, even though Christian Nyby is the credited director. One aspect of the film I enjoy most is the crisp, natural sounding dialogue. Here’s what the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) says regarding Hawks and dialogue:

Hawks' genius as a director also manifested itself in his direction of his actors, his molding of their line-readings going a long way toward making his films outstanding. The dialog in his films often was delivered at a staccato pace, and characters' lines frequently overlapped, a Hawks trademark. The spontaneous feeling of his films and the naturalness of the interrelationships between characters were enhanced by his habit of encouraging his actors to improvise.

Alan Sorkin (“West Wing,” “The American President,” etc) is the modern master of rapid dialogue, although Late Night with Seth Meyers once did a great skit skewering his tropes. Hey, we all have tropes, right?

Now Hawks and Sorkin dealt with performed dialogue in movies and TV, whereas I’m writing words on the page that the reader will have to ‘hear’ my characters speak. Luckily my editors taught me early to write the way we’d like to talk, without all the hesitations, ums, likes, repetitions, etc.

The dialog for my science fiction is different than the dialog for my ancient Egyptian fantasy romances. I don’t, as a rule, try to mimic the way the Egyptians actually spoke, partly because I’ve never been in 1550 BCE Egypt, so I’ve never heard the cadences. I try for dialogue that gives the impression of another time and a different set of ground rules, however.  Here’s a short snippet of dialog from Ghost of the Nile, between a warrior and the goddess Ma’at:

          “Excellent, my warrior, you’ve wasted no time. I see you understand the situation to some extent, even though the entire scroll of problems has yet to reveal itself to you. What assistance do you require from me?”

            He swallowed hard and shifted into parade rest stance, relying on his military discipline to handle the shock of a goddess coming at his request. “I remember a pond here, fed by a cold spring from deep within the ground, my lady. I would see the spring restored, enabling the people of my ancestral home to irrigate the fields and water the beasts more easily while I work to solve the issues.”

            Eyebrows raised, Ma’at gazed at her surroundings. “I’m hardly a goddess of the Nile or of water. You might need help from my sister Anuket or the Crocodile God Sobek himself perhaps.”

            Wondering what sort of help Ma’at had anticipated he’d ask for during this assignment, he said, “I wasn’t aware the Great One Sobek concerns himself with any water but the Nile. We’ve no special ties to him in this province, unfortunately. A small temple in the city, but nothing of note.”

And here’s a snippet from my latest scifi, Star Cruise: Marooned. The conversation is between the heroine, a cruise ship staffer, and the hero, an ex-Special Forces operator:

          “We’re marooned now, so there is no crew versus passenger,” she said. “All consumables are

share and share alike at my discretion.”

            “All right then, as long as no one is docking my pay.” He took the mug with a laugh. “I’ve missed the real stuff since I left the Teams. Special Forces gets their own allotment. Too pricey to drink much in my new civilian life.”

            She acknowledged the shared joke from yesterday with a raised eyebrow, and sipped her coffee, but refused to be distracted. “Talk to me. Why are you urging me to move these people somewhere else? And where would we go?”

            He leaned against the counter. “We can assume whatever reason the TDJ captain had for leaving was compelling.”

            She nodded.

            “And no sign of Drewson returning.” He sipped the hot drink. “The two facts together suggest to me our ship is gone.”

            “Gone? You mean jumped into hyperspace?”

            “Could be.” He paused. Meg thought he seemed to be struggling with some inner decision whether to share more of his concerns, so she waited. After a moment, Red said, “The Far Horizon could have been destroyed by hostiles.”

            “An enemy incursion in this Sector?” Meg blinked, trying to assimilate the concept. “Last time I heard any news, the Mawreg were at least two Sectors away, and being pushed back all along the front.”

            “I don’t have any current intel, been out of the Teams too long, but the government never tells civilians the full story about anything.” He shook his head. “The fact that the rangers were pulled out of here says a lot to me….”

Some of the most fun I’ve ever had was listening to the two talented actors who narrated the audiobook version of Escape from Zulaire, reading scenes where the two characters they were ‘playing’ had conversation. It was nearly as good as watching a movie of the book, the way they took my words off the pages and interacted.

Dialogue – the essential ingredient, appropriately tuned for the story you’re trying to tell!

OK, here's the Late Night Sorkin skit:

Dialogue: Choosing Your Weapon

Happy Friday the 13th!

 

We're chatting about dialogue this week. And let me say I have had more than my fair share of truly crappy advice regarding dialogue - the worst? "It should sound real!"

Took me a long time to figure out that's the worst move, ever. Dialogue in fiction is not about replicating the natural speech patterns we hear in day to day life. Mainly because most of us would want to gouge out our eyes after the third sentence that began, “And *I* was like . . .”

Dialogue isn’t meant to be a faithful representation of an entire conversation, either. It’s a weapon that each character in your story must choose and then wield to his or her best advantage. Words spoken in the text have several jobs to do: render the internal life of the character, put emotion and conflict on display, and place the story, characters and conflict in time and space.

Example from a WIP – I’ve removed almost all of the business, tags and stage direction. See if you can place the time and location based solely on what’s said and how it’s said. If I’ve done my job, you can.

----------------------------------------------- 

“Whoa. Whoa, there, Brutus!” a man called into the heated afternoon. “Silas!”

            “Henry.”
            “Look there. What do you see?” Henry asked.
            “It ain't what I see you got to worry about,” Silas finally said. “It's what I smell.”
            “Death,” Henry said.
            “Aye.”
            “Damnation.”
            “What is it? What's wrong?” a woman demanded.
            “Sally,” Henry said. “Looks like we've run across another damned massacre. Break out the shovels, boys. Celeste?”
            A slender woman riding a black and white paint with wicked eyes pulled up beside the lead wagon.
            “Town’s no more than a few miles,” Henry said. “Ride on ahead and fetch the sheriff. And a preacher, if they got one.”
----------------------------------------------------------- 

If this works the way I imagine it does, it’s the sound of these people talking that puts you in their time and place. Notice that in this dialogue set there’s not a single ‘that’ – it’s a modern addition to speech patterns that isn’t appropriate here. Then there are word choices: ain’t, preacher, damnation – all words that aren’t often used in modern speech. (So yes, this should say American West circa late 1800’s)

Contrast it with this bit from another book:

------------------------------------------------------------
“Dad. Status.”
“Screwed six ways to Sunday. The ship’s been commandeered. The four of them caught us unaware. No one takes science ships. We . . .”
“Casualties?”
“None.”
“Repairs?”
“Complete. Except that someone’s scrambled my command codes. What in the Three Hells were you thinking, locking me out of my own ship, Alex?”
“SOP, Dad,” she growled. “Could we put a cap on the trade secrets, please?”
The captain’s voice cut off anything her father might have said. “You know what I want you to know, now. So how about we talk trade?”
-------------------------------------------------------------------

 This should sound far more modern than the first example – if only because it’s from a science fiction novel. It’s terser. Faster. A more rapid fire query and response set designed to extract maximum information while giving away as little as possible (from the main character’s point of view – this dialogue was written entirely with her goal in mind – find out as much as she can without tipping off the bad guys.) While there’s a bit of military-ish jargon, there’s really nothing here in the dialogue to tell you that this is scifi, but you do get some hint of the conflict between Alex and her father with his comment about his command codes having been scrambled.

 

The last example I’ll offer should sound different yet again:

------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

“Hey. Ice,” he wheezed. “You’re looking good as always, babe, though I hear they make clothes in colors other than black these days. Ole Zoog was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”

“I don’t want any crap, Zoog. What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Did your new boss put a guy on my front door, a line into my computer, and then somehow divine my unlisted cell number? There’s a message being delivered. Care to guess what it is?”

“He doesn’t want you to help me,” he croaked. “Should have known he could reach this far. I told him you couldn’t be corrupted. Not like me.”

“Read a certain way, this could look like the grandmother of all set ups, Zoog. Look me in the eye and tell me it isn’t.”

“I don’t know, Ice. If it is, I’m not in on it. Honest,” he groaned as I hesitated. “I’m in big trouble, babe. I didn’t know where else to go.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

This is meant to place you in a city on the west coast of the US. Maybe the day after tomorrow. The dialogue is supposed to sound modern without being pigeon-holed by a bunch of idiomatic expressions that would date the speakers. At least, that was the idea. Longer arcs of thought and speech here are intended to give you the impression that these people are speaking everything that enters their heads – that this stuff is pouring out unchecked because the scene is starting to go pear-shaped. I don’t know that the dialogue actually does that all by itself. It would have been a more skillfully crafted scene if it did, but hey. Learn by doing, right?

 

So how do you shape dialogue to convey all you want?

1.     Each of your characters wants something in each scene.

a.      Only one character can win his or her objective

b.     They will each do their damnedest to win

c.      Let the fight begin

2.     LISTEN

a.      Your ear is your best friend when it comes to dialogue

b.     Read someone who writes in the time period and genre you’re writing (Shakespeare sounds totally different than William Congreve and Richard Sheridan, who sound different from the dime novels of the American west, which are different from scifi . . .)

c.      Movies with some modicum of verisimilitude totally count as research. Listen to how different characters pursue their goals via dialogue

d.     In the editing process, read your dialogue aloud. You’ll hear where it doesn’t work and where it does.

3.     Write

a.      Write more

b.     No, more

c.      Keep going

 

Dialogue on dialogue

"So, I got a question for you."
"Go ahead."
"Dialogue."
"That's not a question."
"The question's implicit."
"No, it isn't.  That's an absurd statement."
"Fine.  How does one write good dialogue?"
"You're asking me?"
"You are the professional writer."
"That's true."
"Some would say you've got a good ear for it."
"That is the term of art used."
"Term of art?"
"Term of art.  Because, that's right... The yard for the boy."
"Yard for the boy?"
"Well, that's the whole..."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're supposed to ask, 'What is a 'term of art'?"
"Why?"
"That's the dialogue."
"Are we doing Mamet or something?"
"Actually..."
"Fuck that, I'm not doing Mamet."
"Maybe you should."
"Do Mamet?"
"Look at the theatre, if nothing else.  You want to write dialogue, listen to people, listen to the rhythm of how they talk.  But also pay attention to playwrights.  Their craft is almost entirely dialogue."
"You were a playwright."
"I've written plays, yes."
"And that's helped you write dialogue?"
"I think it was crucial in developing my craft.  In my development of my craft.  Same with being an actor.  I had to take those words and put them through my mouth.  When I write dialogue, I'm constantly thinking about what it would be like to say them."
"And that helps?"
"Absolutely it helps.  If it sounds right being spoken, if you can get that in your ear-- see, there's the term of art--"
"Please don't start that again."
"But if you can get it in your ear, then it rings true on the page.  They hear it.  They hear the voice of the character.  Sometimes so well, you don't even have to attribute the dialogue."
"For real?"
"Hell, yes.  Check out Rules for Werewolves by Kirk Lynn.  It's a novel that's only unattributed dialogue.  And Lynn?  Playwright."
"Worth checking out?"
"Completely.  So, again:  watch, read, listen, then write.  Got it?"
"Got."
"Good."

Speech! Speech!

Let's talk about dialogue, but let's do it via blog so it's written. {Yes, I'm smugly amused with my witty self right now. Yes, please join me in the giggles.}

We know that in most cases we should avoid the opening pleasantries as they are wasted space when something like ‘after the formal introductions, I said…’ can skip us ahead to more active and engaging things.

EXAMPLE A  74 words

     The phone rang. I answered. “Hello?”

     “Hello Jack, it’s Barry. How are you?”

     “Fine, and you?”

     “Good, good. Thanks for asking. How’s Mary and the kids?”

     “Well, Matthew's in track this year. Does a mile in three minutes and works weekends at the grocery. Mark is in gifted classes for science and chemistry and works for old Mac at the tractor supply. Mary...she's a moody bitch anymore but she's healthy as a horse.”

There is nothing technically wrong with this. Aesthetically, though…it’s flat and boring as information conveyance goes. (Except that last line, right?) If you're showing a flat and boring character, this could do it, but there are surely better ways to do that as well.

EXAMPLE B   43 better words

The phone rang. It was my old friend Barry. He didn’t call often and when he did it was never just to shoot the shit. After the usual droll conversation starters, a silence lingered. It wasn't like him. I dug in. “What’s wrong?”

You know more from Example B than you do from A, and in fewer words.

TRUTH: 

The common scripts 

we recite to each other 

on a regular basis are 

beyond boring in our fiction.

That above section aims to minimize unnecessary words. The flip side, below, is dialogue that maximizes each word to become more than the sum of it's parts.

“Oh, I think not,” Varys said, swirling the wine in his cup. “Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?”

“It has crossed my mind a time or two,” Tyrion admitted. “The king, the priest, the rich man—who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It’s a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword.”

“And yet he is no one,” Varys said. “He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel.”

“That piece of steel is the power of life and death.”

“Just so… yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?”

“Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords.”

“Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they?” Varys smiled. “Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor’s Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-so-knowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark, do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or… another?”

Tyrion cocked his head sideways. “Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?”

Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”

“So power is a mummer’s trick?”

“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

Tyrion smiled. “Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.”

“I will take that as high praise.”

--A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin

Now there is dialogue that makes you pay attention, makes you think, and gives you cause to worry. Dialogue that is rich. Engaging. Conveying not only information, but sentiment, character, and a sense of place.

This sharpness is not achieved in a first draft. The gist of the conversation, yes. The mood, bits of setting, too, perhaps. But this kind of discussion is honed on the whetstone of understanding that the author has for the motives of these two characters {far deeper than pals checking in...} and crafts those words to achieve the purpose of the scene.

I humbly submit the following excerpt from my novel Vicious Circle (Persephone Alcmedi #1) for you to judge the dialogue:

My gut was twisting with guilt and realizations I didn’t want. Realizations I had to face, regardless. “I agreed to take Vivian’s money and dole out the justice that other humans won’t.”

Silence. Then, “Your hands are shaking.”

“I think my victim may be a Council member. A High Elder or maybe someone protected by one.”

Amenemhab cocked his head. “Victim? Don’t you mean ‘target’ or ‘mark’?”

Wasn’t he going to lecture me about the Rede? “Whatever. I may be writing my own death warrant.”

“Your fear, at least, is justified. Your pain, however, confuses me. It is not all pain for Lorrie’s death and Beverley’s loss. You also feel pain for yourself.”

I stood, wiped my damp palms on my jeans, and wrapped my arms around myself. “Nana has a saying: ‘Once is a mistake, but twice is a habit.’ I’ve never had much use for most of her sayings, but this one . . . this one hurts.”

“Why?”

He knew I’d killed a man before. On accident. This was different. I stared across the field, not wanting to face him. “I’m mentally trying to justify this, but I know that worming my way around the Rede is wrong.”

“Persephone. You are overthinking. If all this is true, if he has killed, then he has already broken the Rede.”

“Me breaking it back in retaliation isn’t right.”

“And what if you are not acting out of vengeance, as the word ‘retaliate’ suggests, but as an instrument of justice?”

I squinted. “Mind-set does not change the action.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No matter how much I validate this situation, no matter how much this guy deserves it, I’ve allowed myself to become an assassin. Even before the deed is done, the intent to do it brands me.” My hands fell limp and empty at my sides. “That’s not who I ever wanted to be.”

The jackal rose too. “The flower sprouts up from the ground when the sun and the rain give the seeds cause to grow. In the right environment, the stem will grow strong and produce a bud that will bloom when the time is right. A rose is a rose, Persephone, and a lily is a lily. They do not choose what color they are or what their petals will look like; they are what their roots have made them. And they can be nothing else.”

Dialogue: Don't Overthink It

Dialogue is one part of writing a novel for which overthinking is the death-knell. Overthinking leads to wooden, unnatural conversations on the page. It's okay if See Spot Run statements are a trait of one character. It's not okay when everybody converses that way. Same goes for impeccable grammar; most natural speech is not flawless speech.

Dialogue tags, on the other hand, should be carefully considered, reviewed, and reconsidered. Tag with action when possible. Never let more than two statements pass without indicating who is speaking. Don't be afraid of the simple "said." Use adverbs to signify sarcasm.

There's also such a thing as too much dialogue in a scene. It's opposite, too little dialogue, is also out there. Where's the balance? Depends on your story. Depends on what's happening in the scene. There is no hard-fast rule for "the right amount of dialogue."  As with most Rules of Writing, the point is to be aware. Aka, look for the balance during editing rounds.

The trickiest bit of writing dialogue is trying to convey tones, manners, and beliefs unique to the individual character. During bouts of editing (not drafting...don't overthink drafting either, it'll cripple you), "he wouldn't say that," "she wouldn't say it like that," "he'd never be so direct," or "she would never soften the blow," these are all character-determined things your editor-brain should see, note, judge, and fix if necessary.

Monkey said, what?

Here are three examples from two stories on which I am working. One story is a Second World/High Fantasy. The other is a Contemporary/Urban Fantasy. Can you tell which bit of dialogue belongs with which book? Are they all from the same book, spoken by different characters? Or, same book, same character? Eh, eh? Tricksie. Tricksie, I am; I am.

A) “These days, if we need a bulk burn we task fire-breathers to our team.” She examined the vial under the light. “Securing the scene was on me. The guys with guns out there were my guys. My team.”

B) “Souls look nothing like the bodies they inhabited whilst living.” she shook her head. “Additionally, without a contract struck between Rosmar and me while she was living—even if her soul still lingered—I would not be able to learn what she knows.”

C) “You have armies of minions possessing any number of magics. Why free me? Disinformation isn’t my specialty.” She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders. For the first time in years, her insides didn’t writhe with a billion toxic maggots feasting on her.

Go ahead, give me your best guess in the comments!

Conversations and Twelve Kingdoms Sneak Peeks

We're talking about dialogue this week in the Bordello.

Now, I spent the last couple of days doing stuff with LERA, my local RWA chapter, as it was the weekend of our biannual Enchanting the Page conference. Alexandra Sokoloff gave her excellent workshop on Screenwriting Tricks for Authors. So, my head is chalk full of ideas about structure and set pieces, not about dialogue at all.

Ironic, considering screenwriting is hugely about dialogue.

At any rate, dialogue is fun for me. I love revealing how the characters interact through dialogue. One really fun thing about writing THE TALON OF THE HAWK was transcribing the conversations between Ursula and Harlan, with all their banter and verbal fencing. Their love affair truly deepens first through conversation, largely because physical expression is out of the question.

(In the upcoming THE PAGES OF THE MIND, the situation is reversed, with conversation impossible. *That* was a bear to write!)

At any rate, I thought I'd share some of my favorite bits of Ursula and Harlan's ongoing conversation. Along with a few glimpses of as yet unpublished conversations. :D

* * *

“Addressing me as ‘Your Highness’ can become cumbersome. You may call me Princess Ursula.”

            “The former has two less syllables than the latter.” His face did not move from its stern lines, but I received the distinct impression of amusement from him—along with the recognition that he had surprised me indeed. He had to know that no one expected a man who looked like the side of a cliff to be articulate or clever.

            “As you wish—either is appropriate,” I replied, deliberately casting a bored-seeming eye over the assembly as I lent half an ear to Uorsin’s conversation.

            “No dispensation for a less formal accolade in conversation, then, Your Highness? What do your men call you?”

            I turned and met his eye, allowed a slight smile. “Captain.”

            He laughed, as resonant and booming as his voice. “Touché, Captain.”

            “Are we fencing, then?”

            “I witnessed your practice today, as you know, Your Highness. It would be interesting indeed to match blades with you.”

            “And yet we are allies, it seems, so such a scenario is unlikely to occur.”

            “You do not spar?”

            “Rarely. Only to teach.” Only with my Hawks. “Are you asking for lessons, Captain Harlan of the Vervaldr?”

            He grinned, and it belatedly occurred to me that the remark, which I’d intended as mildly insulting, had possibly sounded salacious.

   * * *

“You didn’t tell me I could call you Captain,” the mercenary said quietly, folding those massive arms to watch. 

                “Maybe I like it when you call me Your Highness.”

* * *

 

“You’re worried,” Harlan commented quietly to me after we’d ridden for a time, still unrested and fed only from our much-reduced provisions.

            I gave him a sidelong glance. “Being worried would imply that I lack confidence in our forces. I am…thinking.”

            He made a snorting sound. “Not much of a distinction. How’s the head?”

            “Fine.”

            “You’ve lost color. You need to rest.”

            “Thank you, Mother.”

            Harlan raised his brows at me. “Shall I cuddle you on my lap and sing you a baby-sparrow song?”

            My turn to snort. “What in the Twelve is a ‘baby-sparrow song’?”

            “Eh, not in the Twelve. I don’t know your word for it. A soothing tune, usually with a lot of silliness, that you sing to infants to make them sleep.”

            “A lullaby, we call it.”

            He nodded, once, filing that away. Truly his command of our Common Tongue was excellent. He showed flexibility in substituting phrases for words he couldn’t translate. An admirable skill. “Sing me one of your lullabies.”

            I had to laugh. “Danu, no. You do not want to hear me sing. Unless we’re attacked by wolves—then it might serve to drive them off.”

            “Perhaps sometime I’ll convince you to sing for me when we’re alone, then.”

            “Not happening. And before you ask, I mean both that we’ll ever be alone and that I’ll ever sing.”

*  *  *

from THE CROWN OF THE QUEEN

“Are you managing me, librarian?” Ursula asked mildly. A tone that didn’t fool me for a moment.

“Somebody needs to,” Harlan commented in the same tone.

“Don’t start with me.” She shot him a glare over my head. “Just when I was feeling all sentimental over missing you.”

He grinned at her. “I love you, too, my fierce hawk.”

*  *  *

from THE PAGES OF THE MIND

“Dafne is right,” Harlan inserted before Ursula could vent the angry words she had ready. “He’ll be looking for weakness. And I’m sorry to say it, but he’ll assume that of a woman.”

“Then he’ll be in for a surprise,” she snapped. 

“Yes. He will. I’m actually looking forward to witnessing that.”