Can you explain this to me?!?

Today, we’re going to take a look at how to effectively deliver the emotion context of dialogue in fiction.

Recently, I happened to glance at a German phrase of the day calendar. The phrase of the day was “Kannst du mir das erklären?” which translated to English, means “Can you explain this to me?”

Which, naturally enough, got me thinking about dialogue in fiction.

A common problem with text messages and emails, especially text messages, is that sometimes things get taken entirely the wrong way. You could write “please fix this problem” and simply mean it as a request to fix the problem when convenient, only for the recipient to become offended, thinking that you meant it sarcastically, or as an accusation of incompetence, or as an imperious command.

In that vein, “Can you explain this to me?” is one of those sentences that requires additional context to convey its full meaning, like:

“I keep seeing ERROR 47 when I try to mail merge. I am unfamiliar with the new software. Can you explain this to me?”

Or:

“You really messed this up! What on earth where you thinking? Can you explain this to me?”

Clarity and concision is important in business writing. I’ve mentioned before that one of the strength of Ulysses S Grant as a general during the US Civil War was his ability to write clear orders that conveyed exactly what he wanted to happen without room for misinterpretation. Hopefully most of us have less high-stakes jobs than commanding one side of a major industrial power’s civil war, but nevertheless learning to write in such a way that you convey your intent without accidentally offending your recipient is a valuable skill.

However, in fiction writing, specifically dialogue, we have tools for conveying the emotion of a statement.

Here is our first example:

“Can you explain this to me?” said Caina.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. Much of the time when writing a novel, you want to keep the story moving along and not get bogged down. However, sometimes you want to convey more emotion than “said” presents. For example, this:

“Can you explain this to me?” spat Caina angrily.

Or:

“Can you explain this to me?” sighed Caina. 

Or:

“Can you explain this to me?” sobbed Caina.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these. They get the job done. But the potential problem is one of repetition. If every bit of dialogue has “Caina said, Caina said”, or you constantly use more emotional language like “spat Caina angrily, growled Caina furiously, snarled Caina imperiously,” that can also create a repetition that will annoy the reader.

That said, it’s possible to convey emotional state in dialogue without using dialogue tags.

This requires understanding one particularly irritating quirk of human behavior: the actual meaning of a sentence is often entirely unrelated to the literal words that are actually being spoken. Or, as it’s more commonly known, subtext. Subtext in Real Life communication can cause all sorts of problems. Rather than simply stating what they intend to communicate, people will often say something else entirely. One of the most common examples is passive-aggressiveness, where a compliment is intended to be taken as an insult and so forth.

Subtext, and the many failures thereof, is one of those things that ensures therapists will never run short of business.

But that’s Real Life. We’re talking about fiction. One of the ways to convey emotion with dialogue in fiction is to let the surrounding description and action convey the emotion of the spoken words.

Let’s say that you want the reader to know that the character is angry. You could write something like this:

“Can you explain this to me?” spat Caina angrily. 

Or you could do it with a bit more flair like this:

Caina slammed the dagger into the table, the blade quivering a hair’s breadth from his fingers. Before he could respond, she dropped the empty vial next to the dagger, glaring into his eyes all the while. “Can you explain this to me?”

Even that is still directly aggressive. Caina could be subtler in expressing her anger.

Caina tapped the map with a finger. “It would take a least a hour to get from the docks to the Imperial Citadel. Yet you were there waiting when I arrived. Even though I remember telling you to watch for the ship.” She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Can you explain this to me?”

You could also use it as a simple request for information.

Caina looked at the half-assembled mechanism filling most of the locksmith’s work table. “Can you explain this to me?”

The same situation, with a bit of tweaking, can also express emotion.

Caina sighed, looked at the half-assembled mechanism filling most of the locksmith’s work table, and shook her head. “Can you explain this to me?”

The same sentence can also convey sadness:

Caina dropped into the chair, her hands going over her face. After a moment, she looked up, her eyes bloodshot with tears. “Can you explain this to me?”

So as we have seen, one simple bit of dialogue “can you explain this to me?” can have many different meanings depending on the context. The writer’s job is to shape that context appropriate so the dialogue delivers the right emotion.

-JM