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:
“Mary,
bring me the sugar bowl from the shelf.”
“I
can't reach that high, John.”
They
talk about the sugar bowl but we understand indirectly that Mary
can't reach that high. Of course there is no indication on how high
the shelf is so Mary is not necessarily short, much less shorter than
John. Also John's statement is an order and I have inadvertently
characterized John as being bossy to Mary which was not my intention.
So let me try again:
“Mary,
can you bring me the sugar bowl from the cupboard?”
“I
can't reach it, John.”
John
is no longer bossy (he asks her) and Mary must be short as cupboards
are made to be reached by people of average height (whereas shelves
can be of any height). Still, it is not apparent that Mary is shorter
than John. Here's something better:
“Mary,
can you bring the sugar bowl I've just put up on the shelf?”
“I
can't reach it, John.”
If
we agree that John doesn't have extremely long arms, this
establishes that Mary is shorter than John. But it also implies that
John hasn't noticed just how much shorter Mary is. Does this matter
in the story? If it does, I must do more editing.
In
these 4 samples you have seen the difficulty of converting a simple
statement to dialogue and how dependent characterization is on a
single phrase. One wrong word is sometimes sufficient for the reader
to misinterpret a character or his emotions from what the author
intended. But dialogue is also good fun. Authors are authors because
they like playing with words. Readers enjoy good dialogue because
they like to use their intelligence to discover characters for
themselves. Furthermore dialogue may help the novel to survive. Plays
cater only to dialogue and have managed to survive for over 2.500
years.
Here
is some dialogue from the novel I am writing now. I wanted to say
that Mary
(a diplomat) is shorter than John and although it doesn't matter to
John, her height bothers her way too much:
(Mary)
“My height doesn't bother you?”
(John)
“I am not that tall myself.”
(Mary)
“But you can't deny that I am short.”
(John)
“Not short, just shorter.”
(Mary)
“Not tall, shorter, however you say it, I am still short.”
(John)
“They also say that my nose is a little larger than normal. You
want to write an essay about it?”
(Mary)
“So you say. But you are a man. A woman can't really run away from
her appearance quibbles because she knows appearance really matters
to you guys.”
(John)
“Of course it matters. Why do you think I ran hands over heels to
attend here tonight? To see Ming dynasty vases?”
(Mary)
“But I was sitting down when you first saw me and when I stood up I
was alone and you were far away.”
(John)
“Enough. Let's just say that you have a problem with your height. I
don't.”
We
note that even though John tells Mary immediately that he doesn't
care about her height, she behaves like an old record. Four
consecutive times she cuts-off all the outs he gives her. But that
alone doesn't signify that she has a problem. If she was a gasbag, it
would mean nothing. But Mary is a diplomat, and diplomats speak in
understatements. So the intelligent reader will understand that her
height problem is in fact far worse than the dialogue implies.
That's
why good dialogue is hard to write. Not only do the very first words
someone uses define her as a character, but once her character is
defined in some way, the words she uses from then on have a unique
significance.
If
the reader deciphers from the dialogue something other than what the
author had intended then the two aren't communicating: The sure sign
of a poor novel.
Read
my previous articles on dialogue:
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