Dialogue (34 page)

[ whoops! dialogue that doesn't deliver — the most common mistakes ]

"John, I'd like you to meet Steve," Paul said.

"Hi Steve." John expostulated and reached out to shake Steve's hand.

"Hi John. Nice to meet you." Steve shook John's hand.

John wondered where Steve was from. "Where are you from, Steve?" John asked.

"Originally from Alaska, John," Steve orated, "but I now reside in Montana."

"Why Steve, I have an uncle who lives in Alaska!" John exclaimed. "Do you know him?"

There are a number of mistakes here; maybe you can find them. Wink. This reminds me of those pictures of forests we had to study as kids and find the animals hidden there. We thought we were smart if we could find all the animals, but I remember them being in plain sight. The elephant was usually hanging upside down in the tree, and you could recognize him by his trunk, and you could spot the zebra over in the water by his stripes. Anyway, I made the mistakes pretty obvious in the above scene, and you should have no trouble finding them.

We're going to deal with each mistake one by one because I have seen some of the most talented writers make every single one of these mistakes and not even know they're doing it. They're subtle and sneak into our writing style without our even knowing it. Unless we know we're making a mistake, we can't correct it. The purpose of this chapter is to help you learn specifically what weakens your dialogue so you can watch out for these little buggers when they sneak in. I've named each mistake for the sake of convenience and to help you remember.

the john-marsha syndrome

There was a silly skit during the sixties about a couple of characters named John and Marsha. I can't even remember who performed it originally, but it went like this:

"John."

"Marsha."

"John!"

"Marsha!"

"Jooooooohn..."

"Maaaaaarsha..."

"John?"

"Marsha?"

And so on
ad nauseum.
It sounds stupid now, but it was really pretty funny performed by the right comedians.

It's not so funny when it happens in our fiction. And speaking of stupid, guess who sounds stupid when it happens? The author, yes, but especially the characters.

"Ron, I heard about the party the other night." "Oh yeah, Karen? What did you hear?" "Ron, I heard you were drunk." "Drunk? Karen, you know me better than that." "Do I? I thought I did, Ron. Now I'm not so sure." "Karen, I don't even drink—I mean, not much."

Blah, blah, blah. The dialogue, which could easily occur between two people, isn't all that bad without the names. It has some tension and that's good. It has some emotion and it makes you kind of wonder what's going to happen between these two. But the constant direct references ruin it because it just doesn't sound natural.

In real life, when you're talking to your husband, child, sister, or whomever, how often do you really refer to them by their names? Listen to people talk. Written dialogue needs to reflect real conversation. We don't talk like this to each other. I don't even know if they do this in soap operas. Maybe, but do we want our stories to sound like soap operas?

There are exceptions to every rule. One very excellent example of an exception can be found in John Grisham's novel
The Chamber.
Detective Ivy knows

or at least suspects that Sam Cayhall is the one who blew up the building with the five-year-old twin boys in it. This is a part of the dialogue between them:

"Really, really sad, Sam. You see, Mr. Kramer had two little boys, Josh and John, and, as fate would have it, they were in the office with their daddy when the bomb went off."

Sam breathed deeply and looked at Ivy. Tell me the rest of it, his eyes

said.

"And these two little boys, twins, five years old, just cute as can be, got blown to bits, Sam. Deader than hell, Sam."

Sam slowly lowered his head until his chin was an inch off his chest. He was beaten. Murder, two counts. Lawyers, trials, judges, juries, prison, everything hit at once, and he closed his eyes.

"Their daddy might get lucky. He's at the hospital now in surgery. The little boys are at the funeral home. A real tragedy, Sam. Don't suppose you know anything about the bomb, do you, Sam?"

"No. I'd like to see a lawyer."

"Of course." Ivy slowly stood and left the room.

The reason this is the exception is because Ivy is using Sam's name for effect. The detective is in a position of power, and he's using that for all it's worth in this scene. He wants Sam to know he's onto him, and using his name like this over and over lets Sam know that his gig is up. But most often, doing this makes a piece of dialogue sound very artificial.

If you're guilty of this dialogue crime, there's no need to go to confession or anything. Simply ask yourself why you're doing it. Sometimes it's because we're trying to make our dialogue between characters very intense. We think that if they keep using each other's names, the reader will know that this is an important conversation and pay attention. The problem is when we keep doing it over and over, it has the opposite effect. Every piece of dialogue in the story is weakened because it sounds so false.

Another possible reason is because we want to identify the characters as they speak, and we think this is the way to do it. There are many ways to tag characters in dialogue, as we'll see in chapter thirteen, but this isn't one of them.

After you've written your first draft, go through your story with a red pen (yes, this calls for a
red
pen) and delete all direct references except maybe a couple—only when they would naturally be used. Your characters will thank you for making them sound just a little bit more intelligent.

the adjective, adverb, and inappropriate tag addiction

Remember how John
expostulated
at the opening of this chapter? Gag.

"Oh Elizabeth," Kenneth harkened as he danced her around the room, "will you marry me?"

Harkened?!

Joseph's face gradually turned the brightest shade of red, matching the lampshade under which shone a 300-watt bulb. He glared at Dolores. "Get out," he said ragingly. Or hotly, or angrily—it doesn't matter. What does matter is that we already know he's standing there turning red under the collar and he's glaring at the other character. Do we really think he's in a good mood? Do we need the author to tell us exactly how the words are spoken—ragingly?

You know the answer. The funny thing about the adverb addiction is that the words chosen are often made up and look ridiculous when written down. Ragingly? But I see them all the time. And laughingly, I edit them out. I see words like disapprovingly, amazingly, and alarmingly. Maniacally, stupidly, surreptitiously. Smilingly—that's one of my favorites. But even more common adverbs, like sweetly, leisurely, and assiduously, are unnecessary if you are working hard on your dialogue so it communicates the emotion and intensity you want it to have.

That's right—it's your job as the writer to make sure your dialogue communicates accurately (whoops). Sometimes you need a couple of assistants—narrative and action. Action does it every time. If a character is a little upset, have him throw a dish or punch a wall, which is better than having him speak ragingly. If he's happy, resist the adverb gleefully and have him grab another character, lift her off the ground, and spin her around.

In the following dialogue from
The Accidental Tourist,
author Anne Tyler throws in a couple of lines of narrative action that show how the character's words are being said:

"When I was a little girl," Muriel said, "I didn't like dogs at all or any other kinds of animals either. I thought they could read my mind. My folks gave me a puppy for my birthday and he would, like, cock his head, you know how they do? Cock his head and fix me with these bright round eyes and I said, 'Ooh! Get him away from me! You know I can't stand to be stared at.' "

She had a voice that wandered too far in all directions. It screeched

upward; then it dropped to a raspy growl. "They had to take him back. Had to give him to a neighbor boy and buy me a whole different present, a beauty-parlor permanent which is what I'd set my heart on all along."

These two sentences of narrative are enough to show us how Muriel talks. Much better than if she were to say the words
screechingly
or
growlingly.

I like what the successful horror writer Dean Koontz has to say on this subject in his book
How to Write Best-Selling Fiction.
He says:

You can find published novels in which authors use one flashy dialogue tag after another. Don't send me a list of those authors, please. I didn't tell you that the frequent use of such tags would prevent you from being published. I only said that they indicate that the author is an amateur or that he lacks the sensitivity to appreciate the musical qualities of language. Books full of inept dialogue tags get published all the time. Of course they do. Not all published writers are good writers.

Readers aren't stupid. If you've offered your reader a clear sense of who the characters are and what they're experiencing, the reader will hear the tone of voice in which they're speaking. Verbs and adverbs can stop the flow of the immediate moment in dialogue if you're always stopping to explain how something is being said.

If you find yourself addicted to adjectives and/or adverbs in your dialogue, what you want to work on is getting inside of your character's skin just as an actor does. Ask yourself, "What is motivating me in this scene? What am I feeling as I speak these lines? What do I want more than anything else right now?" Then write the kind of powerful dialogue that needs no adjective or adverb to give it its oomph. The dialogue should speak for itself.

"Sarah, did I hear you right?" I cocked the trigger and held it to my left temple. Did it matter—left or right? "Did you say you never wanted to see me again?"

Do I need to tell you how this character is speaking these words?

the disconnect

A conversation between two or more people has a flow to it. There's give and take—or at least there should be. Of course, so much depends on the characters' personalities and what they want in the scene you've created for

them. It's your job, to understand fully what you want to accomplish with the scene, which means being sure of what the viewpoint character wants. So how do you achieve a flow?

The flow of the scene comes from many of the things we've discussed in other chapters: weaving dialogue, narrative, and action, establishing the setting and referring to it throughout the scene, moving your characters steadily forward—externally and internally.

The nuts and bolts part of this is to make sure that each line of one character's dialogue responds to the previous line of the other character's, as well as sets up the one to follow. It really is like playing a game of pool. You hit the balls that were set up for you and when your shot is over, you've set up the balls for the next player.

Real life conversations aren't that smooth, but dialogue captures the essence of real life conversations, so it's okay. We're creating art here. And having fun.

In the following scene, John and Steve are visiting Randy, who owes John some money. John has come to collect on the debt. There's a disconnect between the first and last line.

"What time do you have to be back at work?" John asked. "Hey, look, I know you don't have any money. I've heard that too many times. I didn't come over here because I thought you had money. I came over here because you happen to owe me. I think we're up to two hundred bucks by now." John lifted a vase from an end table. "Hmmmm, bet you could get at least fifty bucks for this at a pawn shop. Hey, Sue said you took her out to dinner last week, that the bottle of wine alone was forty-five bucks. Not bad for someone—"

"Let's get out of here." Steve looked around nervously. "I don't like—" "Shut up!" John ordered. "We're here now." He eyed Randy with interest. "And we're going to get what's coming to us." "Nine o'clock. I'm on the second shift."

Huh? Nine o'clock? What's Randy talking about? Oh yeah, John asked what time he had to be back work—ten sentences ago.

This is definitely a violation of flow. Every speech needs to connect to the one before it, unless there's a very good reason: the character is scattered, trying to change the subject,
or
the writer has lost his place in the dialogue.

Let's hope it's not the latter.

the as-you-know-bob tendency

We know that dialogue is often the most effective and interesting way to convey background information, setting details, and description, so we want to use it to do that kind of work whenever possible. But let's not get carried away because, while it's a cardinal sin to bore our readers, there's something else that's equally important—that our characters sound authentic, like our neighbors, family members, or co-workers. Let me give you an example of a time when dialogue is
not
the best way to dispense story background to the reader.