Dialogue (11 page)

Shadowy. Two characters, a father and son, are sleeping in the backyard in a tent when suddenly the father feels an unnatural presence, something he's felt before, more than once, but always when he's been alone. He knows he has to protect his son. Write two pages of shadowy dialogue between this character and his son as the presence becomes more real and darker with every moment that passes. Remember that the emphasis is on the tone in this kind of dialogue. There needs to be an ever-present threat in the dialogue, something the father or son or both can feel but don't know whether or not is real.

Breathless. One character, a female, is calling 911 to report someone breaking into her house. Write two pages of breathless dialogue from this character's viewpoint and make sure we hear both sides of the conversation as well as this character's thoughts as the action and suspense accelerates. What you want to emphasize in this kind of dialogue is the pace and the emotion, whether it's fear, anger, or sadness. Let the short bursts of dialogue carry the scene.

cussing the sexual behaviors of young people today. They've overheard some of the chat between both male and female students and the female teacher, especially, is troubled by the cavalier attitude she's observed in her students. The male teacher is less troubled with more of a boy-will-be-boys-and-girls-like-it kind of attitude. Write a three-page scene of provocative dialogue that challenges both characters and the reader. In this type of dialogue, what's important are the words themselves. This is where the story's message, the theme, what the story is
about
comes through.

Uncensored. Three girls are walking home from school chatting about boys, and two of them suddenly realize they have their eyes on the same boy. They each have stories about his singling them out with some attention, too. The tension starts to mount as each becomes threatened by the other. Use one girl's viewpoint and write three pages of uncensored dialogue, revealing her increasing anxiety. Remember—what you're after in uncensored dialogue is the truth. Let each girl speak from her gut, not her head, because in her gut is where her emotions are, and we all know how close to her emotions the teenage girl is.

[ wheels of motion-dialogue that propels the story forward ]

I sighed and put the novel manuscript down. How could this fiction writer really think she was engaging the reader? The two characters were simply sitting at the breakfast table, chatting about their daily to-do lists while eating bowls of cereal. The viewpoint character was crunching her corn flakes and staring out into the field behind her house while saying such profound things as, "I wonder if we should take Ginger in for her distemper shot," and "Do you think
Law &Order
will be a rerun tonight?" Crunch, crunch. How did I nicely tell this writer that her dialogue needed a bit of help?

I decided to ask the students in my weekly novel class what would make this dialogue spark.

"Well, if while the lady is staring into the backyard, a spaceship lands," one student suggested.

"If the lady is rambling on and on about nothing and the husband calmly tells her he's having an affair or wants a divorce or is a cross-dresser. She keeps talking and doesn't even hear him."

"If the lady is talking, taking the day for granted, and doesn't notice that her husband's face is in his breakfast cereal. He's just died of a heart attack."

These were pretty good ideas. I was proud of my class. They understood that dialogue should be
about
something. The dialogue needs to move the plot forward in some way or it's useless.

As a writing coach, I see pointless and useless dialogue all the time. It feels harsh to continually point it out, and writers don't always
understand
why their dialogue doesn't work, but unless it connects to the theme and plot and includes tension and suspense while moving the story forward (a tall order), why bother? Why write a story at all?

dialogue that moves

Writing a story that stands still will risk your reputation as a writer of artistic fiction. I can't overemphasize the importance of making sure your dialogue moves the plot forward. Dialogue is only a means to an end—it's not the end itself. Dialogue, in and of itself, is simply a fiction element, a tool to be used to move the story forward. That means engaging your characters in conflict and using dialogue to increase their struggle.

As you will see in the examples in this chapter, your characters' struggles are revealed through both your theme and your plot. The first is internal and the second is external. Writers in my classes will often say to me, "Why do I have to have a theme? Can't I just write a nice little story?" Sometimes they even ask that question about plot. "Plot? Why do we need a plot?"

Woe be it unto me to try to convince you that stories need both a theme and a plot. Sure, you can just skip these two elements of fiction—if you want to write stories for yourself, that is. I could be wrong, but I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that if you're reading this book, you most likely are thinking aboutsubmitting your short stories and novels for publication at some point. If that's true, then you need both a theme and a plot in your stories.

Dialogue is one of the fiction elements you can use to propel your plot forward and integrate your theme into each scene. The way you do this is to set your characters up in an animated discussion scene that does any one of a number of things: provides new information to the characters about the conflict, reveals new obstacles that the viewpoint character must overcome to achieve his goal, creates the kind of dynamic between the scene characters that furthers the story's theme, introduces a pivotal moment in the plot that transforms the character(s), sets up the discussion so the character (and reader) are reminded of his scene and story goals, and/or accelerates the emotion and story movement to increase the suspense and make the situation more urgent for the characters.

Yes, this sounds like a tall order—how can you possibly use dialogue to do all of this, and in every single scene? It's not that difficult once you become aware of all of the purposes of dialogue and keep reminding yourself that your dialogue scenes must accomplish something and keep the story moving.

provides new information

Recently, I called up a couple of friends of twelve years to thank them for a birthday gift and to ask them when they might like to get together, but before the words were barely out of my mouth, Ellen was saying, "We won't be able to get together. We're breaking up."

Have you ever found yourself relaxed and talking to someone and then suddenly that person inserted something into the conversation that completely threw you, maybe even changed your life in some way?

This is the kind of opening you want to look for in your dialogue passages, those seemingly innocuous moments when you can throw a zinger into the dialogue and completely take the plot in another direction. The viewpoint character receives some new information that causes him to see all of the other characters in a new light or to get a different perspective of the story situation. In Albert Zuckerman's book
Writing the Blockbuster Novel,
he calls this a pivotal scene and says we need at least twelve of them in an average novel. They don't all have to be dialogue scenes, but making a dialogue scene pivotal will ensure that the dialogue is moving the story forward.

In John Grisham's
The Chamber,
the author includes a pivotal passage of dialogue that momentarily upends the protagonist's world. Adam is a young, inexperienced, naive lawyer who is just learning the ropes, and in his inexperience he's always doing things that threaten the older, more experienced lawyers in his firm. In this passage of dialogue, Adam receives a bit of new information that definitely moves the story forward, creating a crisis that could be a serious obstacle thwarting his goal to get his grandfather a reprieve from his scheduled execution.