The Art of Dialogue: Character Conflict

“But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.”

—Matthew 15:18 ESV

When I speak about conflict in story, beginning writers default to fight scenes and the direct opposition between protagonist and antagonist. If I ask them to show me conflict through dialogue, I might get a shouting match or two people arguing about the right course of action. But in story, the most engaging conflict punches a hole right through plot-driven external goals and lands with a thud on the jawline of the characters’ internal motivation. The core of conflict comes out not through the climactic, scene-exploding battles but through the small skirmishes of will through dialogue.

Dialogue Pits Perspective against Perspective

Dialogue must, of course, move the plot forward; good dialogue does so by consistently pitting characters and their internal drives against one another. Competing drives are why it’s possible to have gripping stories with few action scenes. Even in a high-action thriller, what ultimately determines success or failure in the story is frame of mind, not finding the treasure or escaping the natural disaster. The arc of change we want to see in the characters of a story is a psychological change. We don’t care that Bobby changes from wimpy victim to buff weight lifter; we care what Bobby thinks about going from wimpy to buff and how it revises his perspective and his wisdom.

The perspectives revealed by dialogue—and, yes, also by how characters behave—shape the literary argument of the story in concert with or even in contrast to the overt plot. Each major character represents a competing viewpoint for the argument, and the story outcome tells the reader whose perspective the author wants us to identify with.

Many times the hero succeeds in his internal and external goals, and we learn that his perspective or moral values comprise the main argument of the story. Other story forms, and especially tragedies, assert a more sophisticated or complex rendering of the literary argument. A tragic hero may gain what she seeks only to discover she sought the wrong goal. Another hero may fail to gain the goal and discover, as another character probably suggested all along, that his failure in that venture proved a blessing in disguise. The author directs us to identify with a particular character’s perspective to see an outcome as good or bad whether or not the initial goal is reached.

Thus, internal conflict between characters, unlike overt external hostility, maintains story tension with subtlety. Their verbal sparring, often posed as amiable conversation, continually presents the possible sides to the theme the author is exploring, giving each a fair chance at being right. The conflict smolders and sparks rather than bursts into flames, burning itself out too soon.

This verbal interplay forms the entire conflict in stories such as Ernest Hemingway’s highly dramatic short story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” The vast majority of the story exists as third-person dramatic point-of-view, where we hear dialogue and see some action, but are privy to few internal thoughts. No physical battles or barriers arise to thwart the characters’ goals. No shouting matches lock the characters in combat. Yet the friendly dialogue reveals and pits perspective against perspective; the conflict is carried along entirely by speech.

Late at night in a café of a Spanish-speaking town around the late 1920s, two café waiters discuss the recent suicide attempt of their one remaining customer of the evening, an old regular who drinks too much and stays too late. Immediately, in the first exchange between the waiters, we sense a distinction between the values and perspectives of the younger waiter, who knew about the suicide attempt, and the older waiter, who has more life experience and empathy:

“Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.

“Why?”

“He was in despair.”

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“How do you know it was nothing?”

“He has plenty of money.” (29)

The younger waiter assigns only simple causes to a desire to end life, while the older waiter questions that conclusion, himself knowing—as we will learn— a deep sense of despair over a perceived meaninglessness to life. Near the end of their exchange, prior to Hemingway breaking from his dramatic point of view to give us more insight into the older waiter’s empathy for the old drunk, we discover through dialogue the crux of the two workers’ conflict:

“You have youth, confidence, and a job,” the older waiter said. “You have everything.”

“And what do you lack?”

“Everything but work.” (32)

The younger man, with cordial familial relationships and a hopeful outlook for the future, views the old man’s situation as an annoyance; the older waiter, alone and without meaningful purpose, views the old man’s plight as his future.

In story, dialogue requires a difference in perspective to be effective and engaging. As with the exchanges above, those viewpoints perhaps give helpful information for the storyline (for example, that the old man tried to commit suicide) but reveal more about the character speaking than the character/subject spoken about (the reason for despair). If two characters in a story share a perspective too similar to differentiate, one character is redundant and both are probably shallow or flat.

Dialogue Creates Conflict between Team Members

Beginners know to create conflict between antagonist and protagonist, but what about developing conflict between members of the same team? In the Harry Potter series, we see the three main characters—Harry, Hermione, and Ron—collaborating tightly on the same exterior goals. They are a team, yet each has different strengths, weaknesses, and inner drives that create engaging conflict between the trio and enhance the outcome of their joint efforts. Harry uniquely suffers the loneliness of orphan folk hero, Hermione suffers the distinction of being an outsider as well as extols the power of knowledge and perseverance, and Ron understands the inside of the wizarding world yet is foiled by his environment-bred lack of confidence. On the surface, the trio want the same thing, but all three are motivated by different internal goals, creating delightful friction as they try to assert themselves in the relationship.

One of my favorite resources on writing dialogue is Sol Stein’s How to Grow a Novel. In it, Stein remind us that “dialogue is not an exchange of information but a kind of game in which the opponents try to gain an advantage over each other” (99). He uses as an analogy the game of baseball, where we most often think of the opponents as the opposing teams, the pitcher against the batter. But what if, Stein muses, the batter steps out of the batting box and returns to the dugout, as happens in scenes where the antagonist is offstage?

Let’s take our imaginations to a baseball game in which there is no batter, therefore no adversary. The onlookers would quickly get bored watching the pitcher doing his fancy stuff and the catcher returning the ball lackadaisically. Now let’s imagine a different scenario. The catcher doesn’t like the first pitch that comes to him. He throws the ball back just as hard as it came to him. The pitcher is surprised. He decides to make the next pitch even harder. The catcher almost drops the ball. What’s the pitcher trying to do? Has he forgotten that the catcher is on the same team? The catcher throws the ball back even harder at the pitcher’s ungloved hand. The ball stings the pitcher’s hand. Furious, he throws a wild pitch. The catcher misses it, and loses his balance. What’s going on here? What’s going on is that the pitcher and the catcher have become adversaries, and their rivalry becomes interesting to watch. That’s exactly what enhances exchanges in dialogue. (97)

“Before you begin writing any new dialogue,” Stein says, “know the purpose of the exchange. How will you orchestrate it to make it adversarial?” (96). In Hemingway’s short story, the two characters differ over whether they should run the old drunk out of the café so they can get home and to bed. But what their words reveal is far more than what they want to do or why they say they want to do it; their words expose their core truths about what gives life meaning and joy. What they mean is far more important than what they say.

Stein describes narrative dialogue’s necessary departure from common conversation in this way:

In life, the intention of the speaker is to answer questions that are asked. Dialogue often postpones the answer to create suspense. We compliment a speaker by acknowledging that he is direct. Dialogue, to the contrary, is indirect. The most important key to understanding this new language is that dialogue involves oblique responses as often as possible. Non sequiturs, words that don’t follow from what came before, are bothersome in talk, but add flavor in dialogue. In dialogue, logic goes out the window, followed by grammar. Dialogue is a highly crafted language with a grammar of its own. (91)

The smoldering flame of suspense that we hope for in story requires indirect interactions. Authors ignore this tool for developing the subtle arguments of the story at great cost. Oblique responses are what create and reveal the subtext, allowing the reader to surmise what characters are thinking beneath their words.

In Marianne Wiggins’s poetic novel about the power of love, Evidence of Things Unseen, set among the World Wars, a friendship forms between the main trio: Foster (Fos), Flash, and Foster’s wife Opal (“ditto” or “dit”). At times, Flash and Opal jockey for position as Foster’s favorite. And unlike Foster, who loves each of the others seemingly without reservation or condition, Opal and Flash continue to test the waters with each other, to discover who the other is and whether he or she is trustworthy.

In one scene, directly after Foster has confided his and Opal’s inability to conceive a child to the more worldly Flash, Flash tries engage Opal on this delicate subject:

Oblique as dawn’s first rays, he took a stab when they were alone in the boat to ask Opal how things were. In general, he suggested.

Same, she said.

—how was the funeral?

How wuz it?

Lots of people?

Well the deceased hadn’t hada lotta time t’ make a lotta friends, she told him. An’ country folk ain’t long on pomp.

You in a bad mood over somethin, ditto?

—nope.

Anything you wanta talk about, especially?

Whydja ask?

No reason. You fishin today or merely dreamin?

She stared at him, not taking kindly to this line of questioning.

Because if you ever need to talk to anybody about anything you know I have a high threshold for tolerating other peoples’ misery, Flash said. Not that I think you’re miserable. But if you were.

Fos’s said something to ya, hasn’t he.

No ma’am. Fos and I hardly ever speak. I haven’t heard from Fos for decades. (126)

As readers, we understand what both sides are hiding from each other, and it creates delight. Flash can keep Opal engaged in the conversation as long as he keeps his remarks on the slant. But like a board hanging over a cliff, as soon as he tips the balance too far toward directness, he falls and no longer has the higher ground in the conversation:

All I’m saying is if you ever need advice, this is my backyard. Not only just this here river the whole stinking town. I grew up here. I know a lotta people. ’Case you ever need to talk to a professional. You know. Doctor. Lawyer. Indian chief. Doctor, he said again.

Opal turned her face from him and stared at something in the bottom of the boat.

I don’t think you need to see a doctor yet, dit, but if the situation ever—

You’re one t’ talk. I can think of plenty reasons you could use a doctor’s help. (126)

As soon as Flash speaks too directly, Opal shuts down the topic and gains the advantage. Even though they are on the same team and Flash is trying to help, we see the sparks fly.

Good Dialogue Builds

Dialogue reveals perceptions, motivations, and identity along with personality and social/geographical backgrounds. Dialogue is discovery, and readers discover most of these components simultaneously, but one component of dialogue we discover step by step. Stein writes:

It is important to understand that the reader perceives thoughts serially, one at a time, which is why dialogue that builds is so effective when sentences are flung one after another, and each adds to the force of the whole. … Dialogue that is short, snappy, punchy, engages other characters as well as the reader. (92)

In the exchange that continues the above scene of Evidence of Things Unseen, Opal’s upper hand turns into a punchy volley of her prying into Flash’s privacy, as he has hers:

She shot a smile his way, regaining her composure.

You still have family here?

Is this a change of subject, dit? Or do you always think of family—daddy, and the like—when you think of government?

Family here? Or not.

Family here, he said without committal.

He settled back, began to fish.

She tilted her head and said, I’ve never thought of you as someone with family.

Everybody’s got a family. So I’ve heard.

Only child?

If only.

Brothers?

If you call a snake a brother.

Sisters?

Regretfully not.

Mother?—father?

Rumor has it they’re alive.

Where are they?

—where?

How come we never see them?

Oh you see them, baby sister. All the time. (127)

Notice the volleys and jabs and the landing on the resonating play on words, calling Opal Flash’s “family” while at the same time indirectly hinting at a plot point I won’t give away. The fast rhythm builds on itself, increasing tension and the excitement of the confrontation. We learn much about Flash in this exchange, but the dialogue moves so fast we fail to comprehend all the building details in one fell swoop. Instead, they go off as timed grenades in the scenes to follow.

Silence Speaks Louder Than Words

Humans were created with an innate need to be heard and understood. Even as we give slanted answers and hide our most vulnerable thoughts, we are crying for someone to see who we really are. This need gives silence power both as an instigator and as a response.

Dialogue engages readers emotionally with the unspoken subtext and agendas of the characters. As in real-life conversation, our pattern brains connect the dots between words, actions, and nonverbal cues to determine meaning. Invoking the power of silence through subtext is so powerful that writers use it to communicate the deepest parts of story. Literature analysis requires looking just as much at what is left unsaid as what is said because a good literary argument will never be spelled out in so many words for all to see.

But just as silence can be a powerful weapon for communicating deep meaning, it can also be a powerful weapon for destruction. Silence as a response to human need erases parts of our humanity.

In Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, a character-driven coming-of-age tale set in the late 1920s, old Mrs. Bentley has moved into the community in recent years. A widow, she strikes up a friendship with some neighbor children. Delighting in the memories of her own childhood—we are told that, as a defining characteristic, she is a collector and saver of all things from her past—she attempts to engage them as one privy to the secrets of childhood rather than as one dismissive of children (as many adults are).

The arrival of an ice-cream truck on a hot summer day as they play near her yard yields the opportunity for her to buy them a cool treat and invite them onto her porch. The oldest girl introduces the three children:

“I’m Alice, she’s Jane, and that’s Tom Spaulding.”

“How nice. And I’m Mrs. Bentley. They called me Helen.”

They stared at her.

“Don’t you believe they called me Helen?” said the old lady.

“I didn’t know old ladies had first names,” said Tom, blinking.

Mrs. Bentley laughed dryly.

“You never hear them used, he means,” said Jane.

“My dear, when you are as old as I, they won’t call you Jane, either. Old age is dreadfully formal.” (70)

The children’s silence at the woman’s announcement of her first name bespeaks not only their surprise but also, as we see in the next exchange, their refusal to accept any idea contrary to their own perspective.

“I don’t feel any different now than when I was your age,” said the old lady.

“Our age?”

“Yes. Once I was a pretty little girl just like you, Jane, and you, Alice.”

They did not speak.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Jane got up.

“Oh, you don’t have to go so soon, I hope. You haven’t finished eating. . . . Is something the matter?”

“My mother says it isn’t nice to fib,” said Jane.

“Of course it isn’t. It’s very bad,” agreed Mrs. Bentley.

“And not to listen to fibs.”

“Who was fibbing to you, Jane?”

Jane looked at her and then glanced nervously away. “You were.”

“I?” Mrs. Bentley laughed and put her withered claw to her small bosom. “About what?”

“About your age. About being a little girl.”

Mrs. Bentley stiffened. “But I was, many years ago, a little girl just like you.” (70)

Not only do they not respond to Mrs. Bentley’s assertion of her youth, Jane recommends that they not even hear it. They essentially move to erase her words into invisible silence while they accuse her of inventing herself and her history out of thin air. Having now twice employed the eraser of silence, the lead child shames Mrs. Bentley with a definitive denial in response to her repeated claim:

“But how ridiculous! It’s perfectly obvious. Everyone was young once!”

“Not you,” whispered Jane, eyes down, almost to herself. Her empty ice stick had fallen in a vanilla puddle on the porch floor.” (70)

At the end of this exchange, Mrs. Bentley’s character and outlook deeply changes; she loses in the war of perspectives:

She could see the children racing off under the cavernous trees with her youth in their frosty fingers, invisible as air.

. . .

She may have been a girl once, but was not now. Her childhood was gone and nothing could fetch it back. (71, 75)

In story, as in life, silence is a challenging weapon to wield, subject as it is to the trajectory-changing winds of bias. We read into silence what we most fear and believe about ourselves and the world. We read into it prior experience rather than expecting a new discovery. That’s how inference works. We trust what we hear only when we see that speech reinforced by action, but we trust what we hear in silence implicitly. Silence is a powerful tool to communicate the deepest parts of character and dialogue.

A Parting Shot

The art of dialogue requires years of practice and observation, along with a fine-tuned ear. Just as with the use of quotation marks or not, simple speech tags or not, or dialect spellings against dialect rhythms, it seems every “rule” may be broken as long as it serves the interest of capturing the essence—the illusion—of speech. But I’m hard-pressed to think of a master of dialogue who breaks this principle of conflict and smoldering tension between characters. The result would be inane and snooze-worthy scenes. If you’re going to knock me out, I’d sure rather it be from a good-dialogue punch right to the kisser.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Dandelion Wine. Grand Master ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1957.

Hemingway, Ernest. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” in The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955. 29–33.

Stein, Sol. How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them. St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.

Wiggins, Marianne. Evidence of Things Unseen. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.