Mastering dialogue

Originally posted: March 23, 2020

This is the fifth and last in a series of posts about writing dialogue. If you’ve missed the previous posts, start here.

Putting it altogether

So now you’ve got your three screwdrivers. You know how to use them. Let’s get to work. I’ve already beat this dead horse but  one more smack for good measure: direct dialogue is the most over-used, slow moving, and difficult type of speech to write well. On trick is to use it sparingly and nestle a few sparse sentences inside a passage of summary and/or indirect.

Here’s an example from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: 

“Ammu asked for the Station House Officer, and when she was shown into his office she told him that there had been a terrible mistake and that she wanted to make a statement. She asked to see Velutha. Inspector Thomas Matthew’s moustache bustled like the friendly Air India Maharajah’s, but his eyes were sly and greedy. ‘It’s a little too late for all this, don’t you think?’ he said. He spoke the coarse Kottayam dialect of Malayalam. He stared at Ammu’s breasts as he spoke. He said the police knew all they needed to know and that the Kottayam Police didn’t take statements from veshyas or their illegitimate children Ammu said she’d see about that. Inspector Thomas Matthew came around his desk and approached Ammu with his baton. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘I’d go home quietly.’ Then he tapped her breasts with his baton. Gently. Tap tap. As though he was choosing mangoes from a basket. Pointing out the ones he wanted packed and delivered.” — The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This scene is an important one. An innocent man is facing execution and Ammu must stop it. Here we have the highest stakes possible. Still, if the Inspector was polite and simply said: ‘Ma’am I can’t help you’ the scene would have fallen flat. Remember what I said in the first post: if Character A wants something, the tension is higher if Character B refuses the request.

This pace is quick here because the dialogue is mostly indirect. There are only two lines of direct dialogue and as a result they stand out. Can’t you hear the Inspector saying these words? The condescension drips. It makes the reader feel protective of Ammu and nervous for the innocent man on death row. The reader is stressed. Roy has saved up her direct dialogue for the lines that count, the ones that will elicit emotion.

In the first post, I said that the best dialogue is multi-tasking. Here, the dialogue is creating tension, evoking emotion, and conveying character. The Inspector’s dialect marks him out as lower class. But Roy isn’t just wielding the screwdrivers here. She’s reaching for other tools in her box. Through narration she reveals the Inspector’s bustling moustache, his greedy eyes (note the disconnect - this man pretends to be friendly but really he’s a snake in the grass). Through body language we see his eyes on Ammu’s breasts. Through action she shows the weaponized the baton.

When you are reading, pay attention to which tools the author is using and how they are being used. Then apply what you’ve learned to your own work.

But first!

Dialogue is the single most difficult thing to write well. Even experienced authors who write books full of beautiful prose and compelling drama, fall flat on dialogue. I’ve asked authors who do the job well for their secrets and they always say some version of the same unhelpful thing: it just comes to me/ I hear the characters in my head. To be honest, this is my experience too. In fact, I don’t like to write direct dialogue until it flows free and easy, until it strikes like lightning.

My theory is that poor dialogue is a symptom of a bigger issue, which is incomplete character development. You must do the work of building your character, of knowing them better than you know yourself. And once you have done this, created a Pinocchio so realistic he could be a real boy, he will come alive of his own volition and surprise you with what he says.

If that fails and you’re stuck and think the dialogue (and anything else) in your manuscript could benefit from professional feedback, I’m available for hire and taking bookings for the summer. Meantime, here’s a handy dialogue exercise and eight more technical tips.