The Secret of Good Dialogue

Fictional characters communicate mostly with dialogue to further the plot of a novel. Good dialogue is cherished by intelligent readers because it convinces them that they are observing the story rather than being told by the author. Good dialogue can quickly define characters and further the plot with little or no description. It sounds real--we feel we are there. And yet if we examine how close to reality the aspects of a good novel are, we would discover that although characters and plot may be hugging reality, good dialogue is almost always far away!

Reader, you'd probably think I've gone bananas. You know that most of last century's important writers, people like Hemingway and J D Salinger, listened in on various characters to get things right. So how can good dialogue in fiction be further from reality than both plot and characters? I know it sounds absurd, but it is true. If you want to see this for yourself, take the trouble to record with your cellphone a few everyday conversations. When you play them back, you will discover that they consist mostly of unnecessary words, incomplete sentences, a drifting subject, and echoes of questions or words. Real dialogue lacks interest.

Even if you remove the echoes, rambles and unnecessary words from real dialogue, most readers would still find it boring. Sol Stein, in his masterful Stein on Writing (1995) says that the basic difference between real and fictional dialogue is that real dialogue is “direct” whereas good fictional dialogue is “oblique”. In other words in real conversation we directly answer questions whereas in fiction, characters obliquely answer them to arouse interest.

How to "Create" Characters

An author writes a novel to tell a story but it's the people in the novel that must make the story happen. For example, if a theft is going to take place, one of the characters must be the thief. Most novels have two or three basic characters and perhaps half a dozen secondary ones. So the author must bring into existence thieves and murderers, nuns and adulterers, post-office clerks or bank managers to breathe life into his story. Notice I said “bring into existence” and not “create”. The difference is subtle, but it's what separates the great works of literature from the trash that eventually finds its way to the recycle bin.

Good authors don't create characters. They observe them in every day life and copy them. How else could it be? How would they know how thieves behave and interact with others if they haven't met any? If they created a thief and gave him characteristics that they think a thief should have, readers who have met actual thieves in their lives would not believe in him. Sooner or later word would get around and the book would be forgotten. Authors write fiction but we can only enjoy the story if we feel that the characters are real, if we can believe in them. And if the author has not copied his characters from life but created them, he might as well send them to Mars!

Now reader you probably think that I am putting you on. Isn't everyone saying that authors “create” characters? I mean the first thing we read in any novel, usually under the copyright statement, is that the characters are the product of the author's imagination and that they bear no relation to any living persons. Right? Hogwash!