Dialogue (31 page)

Both boys looked away, shocked that their mother's voice was so weak.

"In other words, you're going to remember that you love me," Emma said.

"I imagine you'll wish you could tell me that you've changed your mind, but you won't be able to, so I'm telling you now I already know you love me, just so you won't be in doubt about that later. Okay?"

"Okay," Tommy said quickly, a little gratefully.

Nobody's crying in this scene, and there's even some anger being expressed. But it's incredibly sad because this mother is dying and trying to redeem in this one last encounter with her sons every moment she's been a less than perfect mom. When your dialogue is poignant and honest enough, you don't need to get your characters crying to indicate just how sad they are. I remember how moved I was when I first read these words from a mother to her son:
"... I'm telling you now I already know you love me, just so you won't be in doubt about that later."
What incredible love—that she would contain her son's love for her when he couldn't speak the words himself. This would protect him from later guilt and shame over not being able to say the words himself when he had the opportunity. In that sense there is both amazing love and incredible sorrow in the same passage of dialogue. What an emotional ride for the reader.

peace

Showing a character at peace with himself is to show a state of being, but it's also to show an emotion in that it's a calmness exhibited by a character who has resolved or is resolving the issues in his life that have caused him so much confusion and stress. The challenge is to put him in a scene of dialogue that includes tension, because a character at peace isn't often a character with much drama. And drama is what readers require.

In the following scene from
The Prince of Tides
by Pat Conroy, Tom Wingo is telling his mistress (and therapist, but that's beside the point), Susan Lowenstein, that he's finally decided to go back to his wife. He's at peace with his decision, but you can imagine how she feels.

Over wine I asked, "What do you feel like eating tonight, Lowenstein?"

In silence, she watched me for a moment, then said, "I plan to order a perfectly lousy meal. I don't want to have anything like a wonderful meal on the night you say goodbye to me forever."

"I'm going back to South Carolina, Lowenstein," I said, reaching over and squeezing her hand. "That's where I belong."

"What happened?"

"My character rose to the surface," I said. "I didn't have the courage to leave my wife and children to make a new life with you. It's just not in me. You'll have to forgive me, Lowenstein. One part of me wants you more than anything else in the world. The other part of me is terrified of any major change in my life. That's the strongest part."

"But you love me, Tom," she said.

"I didn't know it was possible to be in love with two women at the same time."

"Yet you chose Sallie."

"I chose to honor my own history," I said. "If I were a braver man, I could do it."

"I've got to try to make something out of the ruins, Lowenstein," I said, looking into her eyes. "I don't know if I'll succeed, but I've got to try."

"Have you told Sallie about us, Tom?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then you used me, Tom," she said.

"Yes," I said. "I used you, Susan, but not before I started loving you."

"If you liked me enough, Tom."

"No, Lowenstein. I adore you. You've changed my life. I've felt like a whole man again. An attractive man. A sensual one. You've made me face it all and you made me think I was doing it to help my sister."

"So this is how the story ends," she said.

"I believe so, Lowenstein," I answered.

"Then let's make our last night perfect," she said, kissing my hand, then slowly kissing each one of my fingers as the building swayed in a strong wind from the north.

Some of the tension in this scene comes from Tom and Susan being in two different places. He's going back to his wife and she's having a difficult time letting go of him.

The other part of the tension is Tom's admission that he's torn. He cares about Susan and wants her, but he also wants his wife. And he knows he's a man of character and so he could never leave his wife and kids

without tremendous guilt, which would be toxic to his relationship with Susan anyway.

In this scene, Lowenstein continues, making sure that he's sure:
".on the night you say good-bye to me forever." "But you love me, Tom." "Yet you chose Sallie." "Then you used me, Tom." "If you liked me enough, Tom."

He continues to answer her, confident in his decision, although he's still able to acknowledge what he's losing:

"That's where I belong."

"My character rose to the surface." "I chose to honor my own history." "I've got to make something out of the ruins."

The above lines of dialogue reveal where both of these characters are. As the protagonist, Tom is at peace about his decision, but the other emotion that comes through here is sadness, although no one ever uses the word, and Conroy himself doesn't use it in the narrative. But the dialogue creates the sad feeling in us because we're watching two people who love each other but can't be together.

compassion

Like peace, the emotion of compassion, sympathy, or empathy is often a fairly nondramatic one, so it's your job to find a way to bring some drama to it. I honestly had a difficult time finding a published passage where compassion was the prevalent emotion, leading me to believe that maybe compassion doesn't make good drama.

Anne Tyler is one of my favorite writers because she's so good at creating all kinds of emotion in her characters, but in a subtle, matter-of-fact kind of way, it kind of hits you in the gut. The following is a scene from her novel
Breathing Lessons.
The protagonist, Maggie, is sitting in a hospital waiting room with two strangers—another woman and a man in coveralls. Suddenly, from a nearby room comes a nurse's voice as she talks to a patient.

"Now, Mr. Plum, I'm giving you this jar for urine."

"My what?"

"Urine."

"How's that?"

"It's for urine."

"Speak up—I can't hear you."

"Urine,
I said. You take this jar home! You collect all your urine! For twenty-four hours! You bring the jar back!"

In the chair across from Maggie, the wife gave an embarrassed titter. "He's deaf as a doorknob," she told Maggie. "Has to have everything shouted out for all and sundry to hear."

Maggie smiled and shook her head, not knowing how else to respond. Then the man in coveralls stirred. He placed his great, furry fist on his knees. He cleared his throat. "You know," he said, "it's the funniest thing. I can catch that nurse's voice all right but I don't understand a single word she's saying."

Maggie's eyes filled with tears. She dropped her magazine and groped in her purse for a Kleenex, and the man said, "Lady? You okay?"

She couldn't tell him it was his kindness that had undone her—such delicacy, in such an unlikely looking person.

Maggie is so moved by this man's compassion as he pretends not to hear what the nurse is saying, in order to save a complete stranger, the patient's wife, from humiliation. Now, the man in coveralls isn't the viewpoint character so we can't feel the compassion from inside of the character speaking, but we can certainly feel it through his dialogue and Maggie's fearful response. One line:
"I can catch that nurse's voice all right but I don't understand a single word she's saying."

Sometimes it doesn't take much. One line.

Setting a mood and conveying a character's emotions through dialogue is one of the most effective ways to bring your story to life on the page. Creating tense dialogue is one thing, but creating tense dialogue that is also full of a character's fear, or sorrow, or joy is another. This is the stuff that moves readers so that they engage with your characters on an emotional level. And once you are able to accomplish that, you're home free. The reader will stay with you until the last page.

Now that you know how to show a character expressing emotion, it's time to consider those characters who talk just a little bit differently than the rest of us. How can we use dialogue to characterize them so that their speech mannerisms sound real?

Love. Following are some scenarios in which characters find themselves wanting to express their love for someone but are scared of their intense feelings. Not just scared of expressing the feeling but scared of the feeling itself. Put the words in their mouths, halting though they might be, in a one-page scene of dialogue.

• Sixteen-year-old Carl's father has terminal cancer. Carl knows his father's days are numbered. He's watching him waste away before his eyes. On a rare occasion, his mother is out for dinner with friends and has left Carl alone in the house with his father. Carl is looking for something in the attic and comes across a box full of childhood items: his first baseball mitt, an old tackle box, a bunch of snapshots of Carl and his father—wrestling in the backyard, climbing a tree, taking the boat out. Carl is overcome with feelings of love and gratitude for his father. He was a good dad. Always. He runs upstairs to tell his father. Something. Anything. What?

• The nurse has just placed Susan's newborn daughter in her arms. Her first baby. Susan isn't prepared for the feelings that wash over her. She begins to talk to her baby.

• Twenty-year-old Eli has been going out with Marisa for over a year. Recently, he has been feeling an unusual warmth in his heart whenever he's with her. And he can't seem to get enough of her. He's never been in love before, so has no frame of reference. One night as they're sitting on her front porch, he's overcome with that warm feeling again, and it's too much for him. He turns to her.

Anger. Have you ever felt betrayed? Or betrayed someone? Write a dialogue scene where one character confronts the other about the betrayal. Write two pages of dialogue from the betrayer's point of view and then rewrite the same scene from the viewpoint of the character who was betrayed.

Fear. Write a two-page scene of dialogue that shows a viewpoint character whose fear is accelerating as the action progresses. This could mean the other character giving the protagonist new information or making immediate threats against the protagonist.