Much of fiction and story hinges on dialogue. For plays, dialogue is the story. Gaining good dialogue skills should be a lifelong endeavor for the narrative writer. But being a good conversationalist has no correlation to writing good dialogue. When it comes to story, we have to learn a few more rules about speech.
Consider the following, made-up passage. It has some problems (beyond only tolerable plot and characterization). Can you spot them?
“Do get some more TP from the store when you go, dear.” Marge looked at her shopping list.
Jack sighed, “You know they won’t have any left. Everyone is afraid of running out.”
“What I know is that I asked you nicely to look,” Marge answered. She used her quietest school-teacher voice, the one that made her students quiver and know they were about to go see the principle.
“Which store should I search first?” Jack responded. He picked up his keys. He decided shopping among all the alien zombies would be less life-threatening than disobeying his wife.
Without worrying much about the plot and characters in this little story, how can we immediately make improvements to the dialogue?
Maintain Accurate Behavior Process: Thought–Action–Speech
Consider how the behavior process works. Generally, thought precedes action, and the initiation of action precedes words. We look at our shopping lists first before telling someone what is on the list. We also think about how we want to respond to someone before moving toward that response in action and speech. So Jack would most likely concede in his mind to heading out to face the grocery store alien zombies before picking up his keys, an action showing both decision and intent, or asking for further instructions.
Hide Authorial Scene Direction with Correct Transmission Order
We must also consider how our readers hear and process what our characters say. We most importantly want to avoid pushing the readers out of our story world to remember they are reading, which is what happens when they have to, even subconsciously, back up and reread a line of dialogue. If Marge is going to use a threatening voice, readers need to know that fact before she begins speaking that way. If, as readers, we only receive this scene direction after the line is delivered, we have to go back and repeat the line to get it right.
Use Invisible, Verbal Speech Tags
Beginning writers are often afraid to keep repeating said as speech tags in their dialogue, but readers pay no notice to a repetition of said unless the writer uses a speech tag unnecessarily with every single line. When writers employ all kinds of synonyms for “said,” such as “opined,” “dialogued,” ‘responded,” “yelled,” “argued,” and so on, they draw attention to the speech tag. If readers are paying attention to the tags, they are missing the scene, seeing it as a creation on a page instead of immersing themselves in its action. The little word said on the other hand—and perhaps also asked or answered, occasionally—has an invisibility superpower. Like the commas and periods on the page, it helps direct the reading traffic without drawing attention to itself. It fades into the background.
Using said as the most common speech tag will also help writers avoid another problem—the problem of using a nonverbal verb as a speech tag. By definition, speech tags must be a verb of speech. Jack can sigh before he talks as an action beat, but it’s quite difficult for him to sigh words. Create the difference with punctuation. An action beat (nonverbal) preceding speech ends with a period. A speech tag introducing speech is followed by a comma.
Tolerable Dialogue with Better Mechanics
What happens if we apply those tips to our original passage?
Marge looked at her shopping list. “Do get some more TP from the store when you go, dear.”
Jack sighed. “You know they won’t have any left.”
Marge used her quietest teacher voice to answer, the one that made her students quiver and know they were about to go see the principle. “What I know is that I asked you nicely to look.”
Jack took one look at Marge’s right eyebrow and decided that shopping among all the alien zombies would be less life-threatening than disobeying his wife. He picked up his keys. “Which store should I search first?”
Now, in order to show you the tips this article discusses, I’ve created a new problem: preceding every line of dialogue with an action beat. Doing so slows down the action, and this little tense moment between Jack and Marge has many more revisions to go before it arrives at the level of good dialogue. But, for now, at least we’ve solved some of the basic problems.
We will continue to cover dialogue technique in future articles. In the meantime, here are a few more tips to consider from some of my favorite experts on the subject.
Beyond Mechanics
Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction, p. 119
“Dialogue is not a particularly good medium for exposition. If dialogue is forced to carry information that is known to the other characters, it sounds false.”
“When you use direct quotation you imply that what’s being said and how it’s said are important. If the characters talk on and on but they’re not talking about anything significant, nothing dramatic is happening, and the language isn’t distinctive, readers’ interest flags.”
“Arguments are most nerve-wracking when the characters imply what they feel instead of coming right out and saying it. In fact, the more intense the feelings, the more likely people are to say the opposite of what they really mean.”
Sol Stein, Stein on Writing, p. 114
“What counts is not what is said but the effect of what is meant.”
Robert Cohen, Writer’s Mind: Crafting Fiction, p. 64
“Dialogue does several things at once. It works on characterization and plot and theme. It slips us a note saying, ‘This character is not as heroic as he wants to seem, and he’s going to be killed later, and isn’t life tragic?’—and it does so by having the character make a seemingly unrelated comment about anything from humans to eggplants. This makes written dialogue compact, condensed, and concise, despite the fact that fictional characters sometimes wax eloquent.”