Sunday, March 7, 2010

Writing Sharp Dialogue (Part 1)

            Of the many writing tools, the one I feel is the most important is dialogue.  By its very nature, dialogue creates conflict.  Jack and Jill are talking.  If there was no conflict, they would have no reason to talk.  Let’s say Jack wants to sleep with Jill.  Even if he talks about the weather, there is conflict.  If he struggles to say something, but clams up, there is still conflict.  In a previous entry, I suggested you try writing a scene using only dialogue, and then write the same scene using no dialogue and see which one is more compelling.  In this entry, we’re going to try to find the right balance between dialogue and narration.
            This balance can be dictated by your genre.  If you’re writing comedy, or a thriller, use as little narration as possible in order to quicken the pace.  The opposite of this would be a drama, or a romance novel, where the dialogue is nearly incidental to the description.  The larger the dialogue to narration ratio, the faster paced the piece will be.  My attitude is, if in doubt, use more dialogue.  I find that a faster pace is usually more appreciated than a slower one.
            So now that you’ve got an idea how much dialogue may be necessary for your piece, let’s talk about making it more compelling.  The standard rules apply (making it short and sweet, not going overboard trying to be “witty”), but we need to go deeper than that.  Asking yourself, “What would my character say?” isn’t quite deep enough, so here’s an exercise for you to try:
            Before writing ANY dialogue, open another document and write 5 pages of your character’s background.  Where did they come from?  What were their parents like?  What school did they go to?  What accent do they have (ALL characters have accents)?  What was the important “coming of age” incident in their life?  Write every detail you can think of, even if it’s more than 5 pages.  And don’t just jot notes, either.  Really write it out. 
            If you push yourself to do this for all of your characters, your dialogue will be much stronger.  You’ll find that their voices are more universal and your readers will respond to that.  You won’t be told, “I got Jack and Mike mixed up whenever they talked” because Jack and Mike are completely different people and your dialogue will reflect that.
            If your dialogue drags, amp up the energy a little.  In “Lives,” for example, I have a chapter where Thomas and Eva are in bed and he’s hypothesizing about how a hotel room could be decorated so badly.  In the first draft of this, it was after they had made love (low tension), and there was no action (boring).  They were just in bed and he was talking and she was listening.  I intended the scene to convey some important elements of Thomas’s character, but it wasn’t working.  The scene slowed the entire chapter. 
Instead of cutting it out, however, I made his monologue take place during their lovemaking (where tension is very high), and she does a bit more than just listen to him.  The improvement in pacing and readability was extraordinary and allowed me to keep the scene, and build not only Thomas’s character, but Eva’s as well.   

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