We
all cherish good dialogue. Not only is it easy to read but it can
convincingly further the plot and breathe life into the characters.
It allows the individual reader to have her personal take on what is
happening on stage. And it provides a social life to the reader who
is usually reading alone. Dialogue is so easy to read and it's such
an effective page turner that the reader altogether misses the most
important aspect of good dialogue: It is hard to write.
For
example, when I say: Mary
is shorter than John,
I have written a simple and precise statement. It is also a very dull
statement. So, let's put this in dialogue to make it exciting:
“Hi
Mary.”
“I
am shorter than you, John.”
Not
exciting, is it? Unfortunately most of our real, daily dialogue is of
this form, direct question and answer and hence boring. That's why we
turn to novels! Good
fictional dialogue is interesting because it's “oblique” or
“indirect”. In fiction, characters answer questions obliquely or
they talk about one thing while the reader understands something
else. To
say the same thing with oblique or indirect dialogue, I must create a
conversation that will in effect cipher my simple statement (“Mary
is shorter than John”) in such a way that the reader is sure to
decipher it correctly. This deciphering requires intelligence and
it's what makes dialogue exciting to the reader. I may write:
