Dialogue (30 page)

• Denial.

"We have that appointment with the mortgage broker tomorrow, remember."

Carie spooned some mashed potatoes on her plate.

"Why bother? The money's gone." Matt's voice was flat.

"You couldn't possibly gamble away that much money—that was more than $20,000. You wouldn't do that. We've been saving for five years." Matt wouldn't do that. He must have been drinking and it felt like he was spending it all. How could he even get access to all of their savings in one night? "It's just not possible, that's all." Carie shook her head. "It can't be gone, not all of it. We've been saving. All of these years we've been putting away money every single week—out of our paychecks. Going without things we really needed. No, I know you like to gamble, but you must have figured wrong."

Matt just sat there staring at his plate. The silence in the room was deafening.

• The slow burn.

"You what?" Carie spooned some mashed potatoes on her plate. "You didn't say what I just thought you said."

"You heard right." He ducked his head. "The money's gone. That weekend I went to Vegas for that business trip? I was winning... I started off the night winning and well, before I knew it—"

"Get out." Carie stared at her plate. "Get out right now before I throw you

out."

"Huh? What do you mean get out? This is my home, too—" "Not any more it's not." Her voice sounded far away, even to her. "This is the last time. I'm filing for divorce tomorrow. You'll never do this to me again."

• The explosion.

"We have that appointment with the mortgage broker tomorrow, honey. This is it. We're finally going to be able to do it. After all these years of saving. I'm so excited — " "It's gone."

"What?" Carie stared at Matt, her forkful of mashed potatoes halfway to her mouth. She let it clatter to her plate. "What did you say? What's gone?"

"The money. That night in Vegas—that business trip I took. I started out winning. I don't know what happened. Before I knew it—"

"What?" she cried. "You're telling me all of our money, twenty thousand dollars, is gone?"

"That's what I'm saying. You catch on quick."

"No! Omigod! Are you out of your mind? How could you do that?" She was standing now, towering over him, grabbing her fork, raising it above her head.

He looked up at her with that sheepish grin she used to love. "This is how it's going to end? Our marriage? You're going to stab me with a fork?"

She looked up at her fork, then slumped back into her chair and dissolved into tears.

Matt rose and stood beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Honey—"

"Don't touch me!" she said, shaking off his hand. "I hate you! I can't believe I married such a loser. You've always been a loser, I just couldn't see it." She was screaming now. "Leave! Now!" She stood to face him, his face inches from hers. "Get out of this house and out of my life!"

fear

Showing the emotion of fear in a character is again a matter of knowing your character so you know what she'll do and say when scared. I remember standing in the airport with a bunch of my friends on the day of my very first airplane ride. I couldn't even talk, I was that scared. It's funny because other times when I'm scared, I chatter on endlessly. So it also depends on the situation. One thing for sure in a passage of dialogue where you want to indicate a character's fear—there's tension. Fear creates tension, not just in the person who's afraid, but also in everyone in that person's energy field.

Mystery and suspense thriller writers must become masters of revealing this emotion in their characters because that's what readers of this kind of story are looking for. Mary Higgins Clark has written a large number of novels with the emotion of fear at the core of each story. Following is a passage from
While My Pretty One Sleeps.
Note especially the pace of the scene.

The door to Sal's showroom was open. She ran in and closed it behind her. The room was empty. "Sal!" she called, almost panicked. "Uncle Sal!"

He hurried from his private office. "Neeve, what's the matter?"

"Sal, I think someone is following me." Neeve grasped his arm. "Lock the door, please."

Sal stared at her. "Neeve, are you sure?"

"Yes. I've seen him three or four times."

Those dark deep-set eyes, the sallow skin. Neeve felt the color run from her face. "Sal," she whispered, "I know who it is. He works in the coffee shop."

"Why would he be following you?"

"I don't know." Neeve stared at Sal. "Unless Myles was right all along. Is it possible Nicky Sepetti wanted me dead?"
The author weaves the dialogue and action so you get a picture of a scared character. Read the scene again and pull out the actions: She's running into the room, grasping his arm, and the color is draining from her face. She uses short sentences, which always make a scene speed up:

"I think someone is following me." "Lock the door, please." "I know who it is."

"Is it possible Nicholas Sepetti wanted me dead?"

The emotion of fear speeds everything up and makes it all stand still at the same time. The protagonist's thoughts, words, and actions are accelerated while the story stops for just a moment as the reader assimilates what's going on in the scene and feels the danger, whatever it is.

joy

For a new writer, getting something published is a big deal. I know of no writer who would dispute that. Over the years I've seen a variety of joyful responses. One writer might happen to mention to a friend, "Oh, my story came out in
The Atlantic Monthly
last week," while another might make twenty-five phone calls and carry her published story around in her purse to show everyone. I spotted my very first published article in a magazine on the newsstand, grabbed it and ran around to all the store clerks, holding it up and shrieking like a crazy woman.

Joy, like fear and anger, shows itself in a variety of ways. A character who's normally introverted and quiet may simply share her joy in a few brief sentences of peaceful contentment, while the more extroverted character may shriek and cry out her excitement while jumping up and down, eyes lighting up and hands flailing—like I did when I saw my article in the magazine. What do you do when feeling joy?

In the following passage from Iris Ranier Dart's novel
Beaches,
you'll find a combination of emotions. It's especially effective when you can combine positive and painful emotions in the same passage of dialogue, giving the reader one wild emotional roller coaster ride. The author does this so well in this passage as Cee Cee and Bertie, two best friends, are sharing an incredible moment—a very happy event for Bertie while the same event is destroying Cee Cee.

They walked silently again for a long time until Bertie broke the silence again.

"Cee Cee," she said. "I did it."

Later, when she thought about the conversation, Cee Cee remembered that the minute Bertie said those words, she knew exactly what Bertie had done and with whom, but she was hoping (God, are you listening?) she was wrong.

"Did what?" Cee Cee asked, and she stopped walking.

"Got laid. By John."

Cee Cee couldn't speak. It was a joke. Now Bertie would say, "It's a joke, Cee. You didn't believe me, did you?"

"Oh, boy, I didn't mean to blurt it out like that," she said instead. "To say I got laid—which is really an awful way to put it, because it wasn't like that. We made love. I mean, we really made love, and it was so neat, Cee Cee, not like it probably would be with someone my own age. He was so gentle and sweet.

And you want to know the funny thing?"

"Yes," Cee Cee managed to say. Oh, God, yes, she wanted to know the funny thing. Let the funny thing be that this was a lie, and that everything she was picturing now that was making her feel weak wasn't true.

"The funny thing is that I don't feel guilty, and I don't feel dirty, and I'm not the least bit in love with him. You know the old myth about the man you give your virginity to being the first man you fall in love with. Well, I'm not. And I think that's really great."

But I am! Cee Cee screamed inside. Outside, she just stood there, looking at the ocean, unable to look at Bertie. Beautiful Bertie. With John Perry.

"I'd never tell another soul, Cee," Bertie said hastily. "I mean, I'm not embarrassed or ashamed, because he's a wonderful person and everything, and I'm glad it could be with him my first time, but I had to tell you."

A chill came over Cee Cee and she wished she'd brought a shawl.

Because we're in Cee Cee's point of view, this passage may feel like it's more about sadness and jealousy than it is about joy. But Bertie's pretty thrilled about what just happened. She's excitedly telling her friend about something that she's been wanting for a long time. When showing a character's happiness or excitement through dialogue, you don't want to rely on the exclamation point to convey the emotion. You'll notice there are no exclamation points in the above passage. The dialogue is worded in such a way that we can feel Bertie's thrill about her news as well as Cee Cee's sadness. This scene would have been interesting in Bertie's point of view, too, but there's more suspense with Cee Cee's viewpoint as she's thinking a lot of sad thoughts she can't possibly say out loud.

What makes this scene work so well is the way the author alternated Bertie's words and Cee Cee's thoughts so we get the feeling of both happiness and sadness simultaneously.

sadness

The emotion of sadness is often the most difficult to show in a scene of dialogue only because it's so easy to slip into melodrama. I once read that "if your character cries, your reader doesn't have to," and it seems to be true. Once characters start shedding tears, for some reason the reader seems to want to resist the emotion. So you want to try to show your characters' sorrow using something besides tears. Dialogue is good just because a character

can talk about what's going on in his life in a way that moves the reader, but without melodrama, because the truth is, when it comes time for most of us real folks (as compared to fictional characters) to emote about our lives, we tend to hold back rather than to break forth with tears or angry words or even admit that we're scared of something. We just don't want to make ourselves that vulnerable to others.

In the following scene from the novel
Terms of Endearment
by Larry McMurtry, the prevailing emotion is sadness. These two little boys, Tommy and Teddy, are losing their mother, who is dying of cancer. Everyone is trying to remain strong, and they all have their own way of doing so. But we can feel the intense sadness in the way they talk to each other.

Teddy had meant to be reserved, but he couldn't manage. His feelings rushed up, became words. "Oh, I really don't want you to die," he said. He had a husky little voice. "I want you to come home."

Tommy said nothing.

"Well, both of you better make some friends,' Emma said. "I'm sorry about this, but I can't help it. I can't talk to you too much longer either, or I'll get too upset. Fortunately we had ten or twelve years and we did a lot of talking, and that's more than a lot of people get. Make some friends and be good to them. Don't be afraid of girls, either."

"We're not afraid of girls," Tommy said. "What makes you think that?"

"You might get to be later," Emma said.

"I doubt it," Tommy said, very tense.

When they came to hug her Teddy fell apart and Tommy remained stiff.

"Tommy, be sweet," Emma said. "Be sweet, please. Don't keep pretending you dislike me. That's silly."

"I like you," Tommy said, shrugging tightly.

"I know that, but for the last year or two you've been pretending you hate me," Emma said. "I know I love you more than anybody in the world except your brother and sister, and I'm not going to be around long enough to change my mind about you. But you're going to live a long time, and in a year or two when I'm not around to irritate you you're going to change your mind and remember that I read you a lot of stories and made you a lot of milkshakes and allowed you to goof off a lot when I could have been forcing you to mow the lawn."