Dialogue (41 page)

When you've just come off a fast-paced action scene, you might want to create a scene of interaction between your characters for the purpose of reflecting on what just happened. Whatever your story needs, you want to be conscious enough of how dialogue works in pacing so you can accelerate or brake at will. This will make your dialogue more effective because it will contribute to the story's overall rhythm, making the entire story a smoother ride for your reader.

• Do write functional dialogue.
Functional dialogue is dialogue that goes somewhere, that has a destination and propels the story forward. It's dialogue with a purpose. As we've read throughout this book, dialogue needs to do a lot of things for the story, sometimes all at once. How can we possibly stay aware of all that dialogue has to do while we're putting words in our characters' mouths?

The answer to this question is:
Don't think.
About anything. You write dialogue from a place in your gut, not your head. The sooner you learn how to do this, the better you'll become at dialogue.

"Right," I can hear you saying. "You've told me a hundred things I need to think about while I'm writing dialogue. That's what this book has been all about from the first page. Now you're telling me, 'Don't think'? Are you nuts?"

Actually, learning the lessons in this book is important so they'll become second nature to you. But while applying them, you don't want to be thinking about them. When learning to ride a motorcycle a couple of years ago, I only thought about the "rules" for the first few months. Now I never think about them because I know what they are. I don't
have
to think about them. They're a part of me. Okay, you can think about the rules in this book because they're new to you, but eventually you have to

let go and surrender to the process of writing dialogue. It's as easy as riding a motorcycle; you only need to learn and then let go. There is one way you know if you've learned or not—if the ride is still a bumpy one, you're not quite there. When it's smooth, it's because you've let go. And the result is functional dialogue—authentic dialogue, suspenseful dialogue, purposeful dialogue.

• Do honor your character's journey.
Your character is going somewhere. You may have had a destination in mind, but now he's happily on his way, not the least bit concerned about your original plan for him. Again, if you want your story to be organic, you need to honor your character and put words in his mouth that are intricately connected to his internal and external journey, which is your story.

Of course, in order to honor your character's journey, you have to know what it is. Be sure to spend time pondering your character's journey before you begin to write. Then, when he speaks, he will know where he's going and can talk about it with intelligence and integrity. For example, in chapter three we looked at a passage of Atticus Finch's dialogue in
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Here's a man who was very aware of his journey, his stand against racism, from the very beginning of the novel. His words indicate just how aware he was. Let's look at a paragraph of his speech once more:

"What was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was her daily reminder of what she did. What did she do? She tempted a Negro."

Harper Lee had a destination for Atticus Finch and in a focused way took him toward that destination in much of the dialogue that he spoke throughout the novel. Not to preach but to speak out what would become his destiny at the end of the story and change an entire town. That's how powerful dialogue can be and how important it is that you commit to honoring your character's journey while writing dialogue.

• Do search for the essence.
In
How to Write Best-Selling Fiction,
Dean Koontz tells us,

Many writers think—erroneously—that fiction should be a mirror of reality. Actually, it should act as a sifter to
refine
reality until only the essence is before the reader. This is nowhere more evident than in fictional dialogue. In real life, conversation is often roundabout, filled with general commentary and polite rituals. In fiction, the characters must always get right to the point when they talk.

Every scene of dialogue has an essence, and that's what the writer is responsible for re-creating. The goal is to always write authentic dialogue while writing only the dialogue that matters in the current scene as it connects to the overall story problem. There are nuggets in all dialogue, and if we want those nuggets to shine, we have to cut away all of the extraneous words that distract from the essence of the nuggets.

My personal opinion is that most of us write too many words. We would do well to write far less than we do. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that probably 75 percent of the writers I work with in a coaching capacity regularly complain about the word limits imposed on them in their writing assignments. They haven't learned to appreciate that word limits are a gift to teach them to write and make every word count for something. When learning to write with word limits, when being open to the process instead of resisting it, certain writers emerge as champions because they embrace the lessons and discover the essence of each scene as they write it.

If you want to get in the habit of searching for the essence in your story dialogue, comb through your characters' words until you find the ones they
have
to say, the ones that without, the story would be lost on the reader. I guarantee you, there are very few of those. Oh, yes, we need the words that characterize and create suspense and tighten the tension, but to find the essence means to tie even these words into the story's theme so every word in every scene connects in some way to the big picture.

I don't believe that you always have to know up front what the dialogue's essence is while writing each scene of your story, but if your intention is to find it and cut away everything around it so it can come forth, then this is what will happen. All it takes is a willingness on your part to find it, to not be satisfied until everything but the essence is cut away.

So these are just a few of the dos and don'ts, guidelines to help you with what's really important in writing dialogue. And back to the writing frenzy my student mentioned in the beginning of this chapter. The creation of the first draft of a story is not the time to be thinking about the guidelines, worrying about whether you're following them, thinking about the rightness or the wrongness of style, voice, form, or anything else. But when you've written the first draft and are into your revisions, using the left side of your brain, these guidelines will come in handy as they will give you something tangible with which to measure the quality of your writing.

Our final chapter addresses our relationship with our readers. This is the most important relationship we have after the one with our characters. If we can understand what dialogue can do for our readers, we'll get more excited about writing the kind of dialogue that delivers substance and connects in ways that sometimes can even change a reader's life.

Don't try too hard. If you want to ease into your character's persona before you write a scene, the following exercises might help:

• Put on a hat that your character would wear when writing his dialogue. (You might want to go out and invest in a few hats for this exercise.)

• Put on music that your character would listen to.

• Rent a movie that includes a character that your character reminds you of and watch it right before your writing time.

• Write up to five e-mails in your character's voice to the other characters in the story to prime the pump before you work on your story.

• Cut a photo out of a magazine that looks like your character and post it nearby while you're writing his dialogue.

• If you can't get into any of the above, you need to do more work on your character's development.

Don't betray your character or reader. Think about what it would mean to write the kind of dialogue that would betray the characters in your story. Pondering this will ultimately indicate how well you know your characters. Write one paragraph for each character. In this paragraph, come up with a subject that would betray that character's basic personality and the goals you have for that character in the story.

Don't use your characters to preach your personal agenda. Take any or all of the following issues and write one paragraph of a character's dialogue that preaches and one that simply shares an opinion. (Of course, there are certain characters who preach because that's who they are, in which case preaching is okay—but they're not usually characters your reader will have a lot of respect for.) If these issues don't light you up, choose different ones.

• abortion • the environment • euthanasia

• homelessness • war • child abuse

Don't try to be cute or clever. If you're unaware of when you may be writing cute or clever dialogue, this exercise may help you. The goal is for you to become aware of this tendency, so try to answer the following questions as honestly as you can about any of the dialogue you suspect may be too cute or clever.

• Does this line of dialogue ring true for this character?

• Am I trying to lighten things up too much by having my character laughing too hard and too often in this scene?

• Is this line of dialogue necessary or have I just thrown it in, hoping to entertain the reader?

• Do I understand my character's sense of humor and am I being true to it in every scene in my story?