Dialogue (16 page)

"She spoke French?"

"No. She could have, but she didn't. No, what she did was, she screamed."

"Wow."

"Yeah, the nun screamed in my face. I felt like."

"You felt like pretty bad, Mr. S. I can believe it. But you know, Mr. S, those were just candles. They weren't really souls. That's all superstition, that soul stuff."

"Oh, I know."

"No kidding, Mr. S, you shouldn't be so totally morbid. I thought when you were telling me about the worst thing you ever did, it'd be, like, beating up a blind guy and stealing his car."

"No, I never did that."

"Oscar did, once. You should get him to tell you about it."

"Okay."

"He was drunk, though." She prettily touches her perfect hair. "And the guy wasn't really blind. He just said he was, to take advantage of people. It was, like, a scam. Oscar saw through all that. It's nine o'clock now, Boss. We should open up."

"Right." And I unlock the curtain, and touch a switch, and slowly the curtain rises on the working day. The candles are nothing to Chloe; they're just candles. I feel instantly better. Bless her.

The scene wouldn't have had the same impact if the author had woven action and narrative throughout the dialogue. This is a neurotic character, and this fast-paced scene of dialogue shows the extent of his neurosis, especially compared to Chloe's explanation of the candles being just
candles.

Because this part of the scene is only dialogue, we get the full impact of his neurosis and how it expresses itself in his life. When you isolate a character's dialogue, if the reader is paying attention, he'll become privy to the character's personality and motives in a way that's not possible in the woven scene just because there's too much going on.

Pacing is probably the most common fiction element to pay attention to when considering when to and when not to weave dialogue, narrative, and action. If you're creating a fast-paced conflict scene between two or more people, you might do well to consider only dialogue, at least for parts of it. Maybe your characters have just entered into an argument and you want to speed up the scene. In Wally Lamb's
She's Come Undone,
the young viewpoint character, Dolores, is fed up with her mother, who has been grieving over the loss of her baby for over four years and acquired all kinds of obsessive-compulsive disorders, the most recent being an obsession with her new parakeet, Petey. Dolores has already been narrating a lot of this, but now it's time for her to act out her feelings. In a scene of dialogue only, the author quickly
shows
what Dolores has taken pages to
tell
us.

I hated Petey—fantasized about his flying accidentally out a window or into the electric fan so that his spell over Ma would be broken. My not kissing Ma anymore was a conscious decision reached one night at bedtime with the purpose of hurting her.

"Well, you're stingy tonight," she said when I turned my face away from her goodnight kiss.

"I'm not kissing you anymore, period," I told her. "All day long you kiss that bird right on its filthy beak."

"I do not."

"You do so. Maybe you want to catch bird diseases, but I don't."

"Petey's mouth is probably cleaner than my mouth and yours put together, Dolores" was her argument.

"That's a laugh."

"Well, it's true. I read it in my bird book."

"Next thing you know, you'll be French-kissing it."

"Never mind French-kissing. What do you know about that kind of stuff? You watch that mouth of yours, young lady."

"That's exactly what I'm doing," I said. I clamped my hand over my mouth and stuffed my whole face into the pillow.

As you can see, this passage is very effective without a bunch of narrative bogging down the moment. The dialogue
shows
Dolores' true attitude toward Petey, but more importantly, toward her mother. Whereas it can take the protagonist pages to tell us something in narrative, a scene of dialogue can quickly
show
us through that character's own words said out loud. Narrative explains and dialogue blurts out. We'll talk more about pacing in chapter eight.

Obviously, when a character is alone, you can't weave unless he's the kind of person who talks to himself a lot. As I mentioned above, you want to try to create scenes with more than one character in them. It's always more interesting for the reader when characters are interacting than when they're thinking and we're only reading their thoughts.

The same reasons not to weave hold true when writing scenes with only narrative or only action. You want to focus on something in your character's mind or describe something that would only sound contrived in dialogue, so you use straight narrative. Or the action needs to drive the scene forward because it's intense and emotional, and your characters just wouldn't be talking during this time (action). Sometimes, as in real life, there's just nothing to say at the moment. Always, always, always let your characters lead you.

striking a balance

I can't give you any hard and fast rules about when to and when not to weave. To weave well is to find your story's rhythm. There are a few questions you can ask yourself about your story, especially in the rewrite stage, that can help you know which elements are most effective for a particular scene.

• Is the story moving a little too slowly, and do I need to speed things up?
(Use dialogue.)

• Is it time to give the reader some background on the characters so they're more sympathetic?
(Use narrative, dialogue, or a combination of the two.)

• Do I have too many dialogue scenes in a row?
(Use action or narrative.)

• Are my characters constantly confiding in others about things they should only be pondering in their minds?
(Use narrative.)

• Likewise, are my characters alone in their heads when my characters in conversation would be more effective and lively?
(Use dialogue.)

• Is my story top-heavy in any way at all—too much dialogue, too much narrative, too much action?
(Insert more of the elements that are missing.)

• Are my characters providing too many background details as they're talking to each other?
(Use narrative.)

Whether we're using dialogue, action, or narrative to move the story forward, any or all three of these elements are doing double duty—revealing our characters' motives. To understand a character's motive is to understand the character. In the next chapter, we'll discover how our story's dialogue can reveal motive in a way that's natural and authentic, because whether we're aware of it or not, we reveal our own motives all the time in our everyday lives.

Dialogue into action. Following is a straight action scene with no dialogue or narrative-sort of like a cookie recipe without the sugar. Carson's an outgoing guy, but you'd never know it the way this scene is written. Weave appropriate dialogue that shows his extroverted personality into this scene:

Carson backed his bike up to the curb and climbed off, setting his helmet carefully on the left handlebar. Two muscular bikers in leathers stood by the door, making no effort to hide their disdain for his Honda 450. He ignored them and strode into the tavern, his hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his jeans. They followed.

He made his way up to the bar and ordered a beer. A blonde sitting by herself at the end of the bar motioned for him to join her. He sat down beside her, but then decided to grab an ashtray off one of the tables behind him. He got up and moved toward the table but suddenly found his way blocked by the bigger of the two bikers. He stepped to the biker's right. The biker stepped also.

Carson shrugged and turned around, then felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. Carson jerked away and before he knew what was happening, a small group of bikers approached him from the front.

He quickly sized up the situation, turned and threw his beer at the biker who had grabbed him, and ran out the door.

Narrative into dialogue. Following is a straight dialogue scene with no action or narrative. Using either of the two characters' viewpoints (but choose only one), weave some narrative into this scene. Watch how it becomes more three-dimensional as the reader has the opportunity to get inside of the viewpoint character's head.

"Hey, man, you got any spare change?"

"No, but I've got the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How about asking Jesus into your heart so you can get off the streets?"

"What? I asked Jesus into my heart one time. That's how I got here."

"I don't think so."

"I do. I'm a pastor, well, used to be. My wife ran off with one of the church deacons and eventually divorced me and I lost everything."

"That doesn't explain how you ended up on the streets. Jesus doesn't put his children on the streets."

"I think sometimes he does. It rains on the just and the unjust—there's a scripture like that."

"Did you turn your back on God when your wife divorced you?"

"Nope. I still go to church down here at the Union Gospel Mission."

"You're an alcoholic, drowning your sorrows in beer and whiskey."

"I buy a beer once in while when I have the money. Today I'd just like a cup of coffee."

Weaving dialogue, narrative, and action. Following are six situations in which a character might find himself. The sentences that follow each situation employ only one fiction element. Add the other two elements to each of the sentences to create a woven paragraph. You can add as many characters to each situation as you want.

Example Situation: In the airport, Sheila watches as a woman trips, dropping her briefcase, which spills out packages of $100 bills.

Action sentence:
Sheila's mouth fell open as the woman tripped and her briefcase went flying, spilling out packages of $100 bills.

Dialogue sentence:
"Oh my!" Sheila cried. "Let me help you—"
Narrative sentence:
Could this be the answer to Sheila's prayers, the miracle she'd been waiting for? What could it hurt? Just one of the packets? The lady would never miss it.

Situation: The dog runs into the ladder knocking it away from the house and Joe, cleaning the gutters, is stuck on the roof. Action sentence: Joe moved carefully to the edge of the roof and looked down.