The Other Half of the Dialogue Post

Why yes, honey, that dress DOES make you look fat.

Said no man, ever.

Why? Because people don’t often say exactly what they mean. I know it’s kind of an old joke, but think about it. When you prance across the living room in your purple passion pumps and ask your spouse or partner how your new outfit looks, what kind of response do you get? With my husband, it’s a squint to the eye, a slight shrug, and a frown stretching across his face that tells me perhaps I should revisit the mirror. If he really doesn’t like it, he may get wordy. “Well…”

It’s something to keep in mind when you’re trying to write dialogue.

A couple weeks ago I did a post here about keeping dialogue real. It’s basically the first half of my post on dialogue from SavvyAuthors.com. Now, in the interest of completeness – and because it’s Monday and I want to start the week off right – here’s the rest of my dialogue post, rearranged and enriched a bit.

In my first post, I suggested three ways of keeping dialogue real: use phrases you hear in real life, keep the characters from saying exactly what they mean, and assign a couple unique elements to each character’s voice. Now here are two more ways of keeping dialogue interesting.

First, skip the boring parts.



Hello. How are you?

Fine.

See? You knew that already. If your character’s cell phone is ringing, the reader knows she’s going to say “Hello” when she answers it. Save the word count and jump right into the conversation. Don’t tell your readers what they already know.

And don’t tell them stuff the characters already know, either. Dumping backstory into a conversation is almost always going to sound obvious and dull. An oblique hint here and there will work, but a wholesale rehash of past events will lose the reader.

An important – if more subtle – consideration for keeping dialogue interesting is to make sure that each character in the scene has an agenda, though they may not say it out loud.

For example, here’s a conversation between a mother and her teenage son, told from the mother’s POV:

Michael went straight to the computer in the basement after school. His mother hit ‘send’ on an email for work, then closed her laptop, debating whether she should chase him down. She made it as far as the top of the stairs. “Hey dude. What are you doing this afternoon?”

“Nothing.”

“You should start your homework.”

His only response was silence.

“Michael?”

More silence. She could have gone downstairs and forced the issue, but decided to let him be. Thirteen was a hard age. She’d give him an hour, then beat the homework drum.

Now here’s that same scene, but with each character’s agenda included in italics. It demonstrates how much gets left out of normal conversation.

Michael went straight to the computer in the basement after school. His mother hit ‘send’ on an email for work, then closed her laptop, debating whether she should chase him down. She made it as far as the top of the stairs. “Hey dude. What are you doing this afternoon?” She’s worried about the amount of time he spends on the computer and wants him to cut back.

“Nothing.” Michael wants some time to decompress after a hard day.

“You should start your homework.” She’s afraid playing computer games will interfere with his grades.

His only response was silence. Michael’s still feeling chapped after the girl he likes and her best friend laughed at him, and he knows he’ll feel better if he loses himself in a game for a while. Getting into it with his mother won’t help anything, so he stays quiet.

“Michael?” She wants to be a good mother, one who listens to her kid’s concerns, and she senses he might need some time to himself.

More silence. She could have gone downstairs and forced the issue, but decided to let him be. Thirteen was a hard age. She’d give him an hour, then beat the homework drum.

Depending on how you set up the scene, the reader will recognize what the underlying issues are. Neither character mentions the computer, the source of conflict, and if the mother had started out with, “I worry about how much time you spend on the computer,” the snippet would have felt preachy.

Also notice that the lines of dialogue are appropriate to the characters. Thirteen year old boys are expert at giving one-word answers and managing situations with silence, and policing homework is one of a mother’s main tasks. While it may not be the most scintillating example ever, the scene works because it’s true.

And that, my dear Rancourtesans, summarizes my approach to dialogue. Skip the boring parts, give each character an agenda, don’t let them say what they really mean, give them quirks that make their voice unique, and borrow what you hear in real life. And most importantly, have FUN with it. Dialogue is really my favorite part of writing.

Happy Monday!

Liv

And in case you want to sample my dialogue in real time, check out my new release, Forever and Ever, Amen, available from Crimson Romance, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and ARe.