Writer's Craft Article
Fiction Fundamentals: Writing
Elbow Grease, Part 5B
Editing and Polishing Dialogue Tip Sheet
by Karen S. Wiesner
Based on Cohesive
Story Building, Volume
2: 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection
In this three month, in-depth series,
we're going to go over what could be considered the grunge work in building a
cohesive story. Revising, editing, and polishing require a little or a lot of
writing elbow grease to finish the job and bring forth a strong and beautiful
book.
In the previous part of this
series, we discussed editing and polishing tricks and covered description tips.
This time we'll go over editing and polishing dialogue tips.
Tip
Sheet: Dialogue
• Effective dialogue can transform a story
into something unforgettable. External
dialogue is everything characters say out loud, to themselves occasionally,
most often to other characters in the story. Dialogue is important in a story. Few writers would tell you otherwise,
but few realize just how essential it is. You'll most notice how effective
dialogue can be in fleshing out a story when you take it out of your writing.
For instance, take a look at this
passage written entirely without dialogue:
She told us there
was five hundred dollars in the envelope. That what she was about to ask us was
very unusual and we might not want to do it. If we did decide not to accept,
the five hundred dollars was for us to forget all about her.
I told her I'd
pretend she was my algebra lessons in high school.
Roger glared at me as if my sparkling wit
might scare her off, and asked what she wanted us to do.
She leaned forward confidentially. She
wanted us to dig up her husband's grave.
Roger and I simultaneously leaned
forward. I begged her pardon.
Her husband was buried last night, she
explained, and she wanted us to dig up the coffin.
It was clear from Roger's expression that
he considered this task quite a bit less appealing than wild kinky sex. He
asked her if she was kidding.
She shook her head, saying she was
completely serious.
Was this the kind of thing she usually
asked people in coffee shops? Maybe she walked in here by mistake thinking it
was Maude and Vinny's Discount Graverobbing Emporium.
Now read the same passage as it's actually published--with
effective and varied dialogue--in Jeff Strand's Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary):
"Inside this envelope is five
hundred dollars. What I'm going to ask is very unusual, and you may not want to
do it. If you decide not to accept, the five hundred dollars is for you to
forget all about me. Deal?"
"Sounds great," I said.
"I'll just pretend you were my algebra lessons in high school."
Roger glares at me as if my sparkling wit
might scare her off. "What do you want us to do?"
She leaned forward confidentially.
"I want you to dig up my husband's grave."
Roger and I simultaneously leaned
forward. "I beg your pardon?" I asked.
"My husband was buried last night,
and I want you to dig up the coffin."
It was clear from Roger's expression that
he considered this task quite a bit less appealing than wild kinky sex.
"You're kidding, right?"
She shook her head. "I'm completely
serious."
"Is this the kind of thing you
usually ask people in coffee shops?" I inquired. "Are you sure you
didn't walk in here by mistake thinking it was Maude and Vinny's Discount
Graverobbing Emporium?"
Undeniably, dialogue truly adds spice and impact to any
story, so use it effectively.
• Passages
or an entire chapter made up of nothing but dialogue can cause readers to lose focus on everything outside the
dialogue. You might laugh about
that because it's so obvious, but, in my many years of critiquing unpublished
contest entries, this is one of the most commonly made mistakes I've seen.
We discussed the importance of using dialogue effectively,
but let's turn it around this time. Instead of taking the dialogue completely
out of a passage to see how necessary it is, let's make the passage all
dialogue. Look at the next example:
"Will it come back today?" Ramo
asked.
"It may," I answered him.
"More likely it will come after many suns, for the country where it has
gone is far off."
"I do not care if the ship never
comes," he said.
"Why do you say this?" I asked
him.
"Why?" I asked again.
"Because I like it here with
you," he said. "It is more fun than when the others were here.
Tomorrow I am going to where the canoes are hidden and bring one back to Coral
Cove. We will use it to fish in and to go looking around the island."
"They are too heavy for you to put
into the water."
"You will see."
"You forget that I am the son of
Chowig," he said.
"I do not forget," I answered.
"But you are a small son. Someday you will be tall and strong and then you
will be able to handle a big canoe."
The passage is pure dialogue, and it reads like bullets firing
from a gun. (I call writing like this "dialogue bullets".) When
dialogue is used exclusively, you don't find out who's talking, and you lose
focus on the characters, their goals and motivations, and their emotions in the
scene.
Now read an effectively written version of the same passage
as it was published in Scott O'Dell's classic, Island of the Blue Dolphins:
The air was clear and we could look far
out to sea in the direction the ship had gone.
"Will it come back today?" Ramo
asked.
"It may," I answered him,
though I did not think so. "More likely it will come after many suns, for
the country where it has gone is far off."
Ramo looked up at me. His black eyes
shone.
"I do not care if the ship never
comes," he said.
"Why do you say this?" I asked him.
Ramo thought, making a hole in the earth
with the point of his spear.
"Why?" I asked again.
"Because I like it here with
you," he said. "It is more fun than when the others were here.
Tomorrow I am going to where the canoes are hidden and bring one back to Coral
Cove. We will use it to fish in and to go looking around the island."
"They are too heavy for you to put
into the water."
"You will see."
Ramo threw out his chest. Around his neck
was a string of sea-elephant teeth which someone had left behind. It was much
too large for him and the teeth were broken, but they rattled as he thrust the
spear down between us.
"You forget that I am the son of
Chowig," he said.
"I do not forget," I answered.
"But you are a small son. Someday you will be tall and strong and then you
will be able to handle a big canoe."
The scene now has focus and the text takes you right inside
the scene and the characters. You not only feel with them, you see what's
around them in the scene and get a glimpse of what they're doing physically.
The dialogue provides a catalyst to all this, advancing plot and
characterization.
As a general rule, only use "dialogue bullets"
when you need to create extreme tension. Here's an example, from Larry
McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, of how this can be done proficiently
without losing any of the texture:
"How's Maude Rainey?" he asked.
"She's in good health," Call
said. "She fed me twice."
"Good thing it was just twice,"
Augustus said. "If you'd stayed a week you'd have had to rent an ox to get
home on."
"She's anxious to sell you some more
pigs," Call said, taking the jug and rinsing his mouth with whiskey.
"If Joe was to get kilt I might
court her again," Augustus speculated.
"I hope you will," Call said.
"Them twelve young ones ought to have a good father. What are the horses
doing back here so soon?"
"Why, grazing, most likely,"
Augustus said.
"Didn't Pedro make a try?"
"No, he didn't, and for a very good
reason," Augustus said.
"What reason would that be?"
"Because he died," Augustus
said.
The dialogue in this passage effectively manages to convey
characters, emotions, goals and motivations, plot, even setting, all sprinkled
liberally with a good deal of humor.
• Effective
internal dialogue can flesh out your characters. Internal monologue
is everything the characters don't say out loud; these are essentially their
thoughts. Not everyone can write this type of dialogue effectively, so play
around with it for a while. There are two types of internal monologue, and you
can use whichever one is most effective for a particular scene. The following
example, from my novel Falling Star,
is fine as is:
He was smooth all right. Nate chided
himself as Rori disappeared into her father's house. With a little more
practice, he could apply to snake charming school.
Add internal monologue and it really turns the paragraph
into something personal and intriguing:
That
was smooth, Nate chided
himself as Rori disappeared into her father's house. Very smooth. You could apply to snake charming school with a little
more practice.
The second example brings the reader directly into the
character's thoughts and has much more impact. Effective dialogue always reveals character.
• Dialogue--what
a character says and how he says it--reveals the inner person, and more. The
manner in which a character speaks and the particular words she chooses say
something about her. Dialogue will and should reflect who the character is,
even what she does for a living.
On the other hand, the occasional character who doesn't fit
her stereotyped mold is always intriguing to a reader. Make a bad boy or a
cowboy philosophize about the poetic insight of Shakespeare. Make a wallflower
put on a vixen red dress and stiletto heels and temporarily act out of
character.
Take a look at this example of dialogue reflecting character
from Marilyn Pappano's A Dangerous Man:
A faint tinge of color accompanied her
next shrug. "The body. The muscles. The grace. You're obviously in very
good shape, and you move very gracefully but with a great deal of
control."
That control relaxed almost enough to
allow him to smile--almost. "I wasn't aware you'd noticed."
"You're the only observant
one." She went around to sit behind her desk and moved several items he'd
placed there an inch or so to one side.
He adjusted the blinds, stepping back to
avoid a shower of dust from the slats as they tilted, then warned, "Leave
these just like this."
"Yes, sir." She offered him a
mock salute. "You give orders very well. Did you get to do much of that in
the Army?"
The dialogue reveals what the hero has done for a living as
a retired Army master sergeant, and cleverly incorporates a bit of description.
Hero and heroine are star-crossed lovers who parted badly once upon a time and
have now been reunited by danger, which is hinted at here, in the dialogue that
also touches on their situation, emotions, and conflicts very effectively.
• Start
your story with dialogue. An old, very effective (and infrequently used)
trick of the writer's trade is to snag a reader with a fascinating morsel of
dialogue at the very beginning of a story. You can't lose. You begin with
immediate action and conflict, and the reader is brought into the scene from
that very first sentence. Look at these examples and judge for yourself. I'd be
shocked if you didn't want to read more of each:
"Why are you writing a stupid
parking ticket when there are killers running around loose?"
--Badge
of Honor, by Justine Davis
***
He
looks like a walking corpse,
Xizor thought.
--Shadows
of the Empire, by Steve Perry
***
"Death," the proprietor said
clearly, showing the stone.
--On
a Pale Horse, by Piers Anthony
***
"I had the dream again last
night."
--The
Seventh Night, by Amanda Stevens
***
"I want to meet my dad."
--Daniel's
Gift, by Barbara Freethy
***
"Ray Bans, a five o'clock shadow,
and a black leather jacket."
--Private
Dancer, by Suzanne Forster
• Vary
each character's dialogue. How do you make your characters sound different?
By making a conscious effort to do so. Make a list of your important characters.
If you know their personalities, you'll have a good idea about certain things
they would and wouldn't say, and ways they would and wouldn't say them. Are
they prone to the vernacular--in other words, do they use street language? I
know most writers have some kind of aversion to writing slang of any kind, but
they're not doing justice to their characters if they don't take into account
that many people do use slang--often, and as a habit and a choice.
Or do characters "sound" more like English professors?
And, again, this shouldn't be the writer's choice. Some writers use dialogue
that makes all their characters sound
like English professors, and the dialogue becomes monotonous because it's not
varied from character to character. That's not good or even effective writing.
Do characters use dialogue somewhere between slang and
uptight English professor? Do characters use a lot of internal dialogue? If you
don't know the answers to these questions, spend more time on this in the
editing and polishing stage.
Try creating dialogue worksheets for all your main
characters to keep track of their unique dialogue idiosyncrasies. Sometimes
dialogue comes easily and you won't need to map out or think about how a
certain character would talk. Other times, you'll have to sit down and map out
specific words or phrases certain characters would use. Create tags or
mannerisms for some of them. Once you've figured out who says what and how
she'll say it, go through your book from start to finish and mold her dialogue
to the specifics you've mapped out for her.
Dialogue
can be turned into a catalyst for a dynamic story during your editing and
polishing.
Next
week, I'll present an editing and polishing tip sheet for introspection.
Happy writing!
Karen S. Wiesner is the
author of Cohesive Story Building, Volume
2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection
http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/
https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html
Karen
Wiesner is an award-winning,
multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
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