Dynamic Characters (10 page)

GOOD DIALOGUE IS ARTIFICIALLY CONCISE

In natural speech, nearly all people repeat themselves, interrupt themselves, start over midway, stutter, use an inexact word and then spend four sentences explaining what they really meant. But when you reproduce all this on the page, the character will sound (depending on the content) boring, scatterbrained or under great stress.

If you want that effect, fine. (To see it done to perfection, read any speech by Miss Bates in Jane Austen's novel Emma.) But if your character is supposed to sound like a person of substance who is not in emotional crisis, you will have to edit his speech to a concision most people can't achieve in unrehearsed spoken communication (which is, after all, usually a first draft).

Here, for instance, is an actual phone call between friends, both writers. This is an unedited transcript of the recording:

FRIEND: Nancy? Have you got a second? I just got a letter from Rick [her agent] about—where is it, I had it right here, where
is
that. . . here it is. I just got this letter from him about electronic rights. [Publishing Company Z] is interested—he says they've ''expressed interest''— in electronic rights to my first two novels. I'm not sure.

NANCY: Not sure they're really interested?

FRIEND: No, I'm not sure ... I don't really know too much about electronic rights, I wasn't paying attention when it was being discussed so much, when everybody was talking about it . . .

NANCY: Last year? No, that big flap was—

FRIEND: I don't remember. But anyway, Rick says they're interested, and I'm not sure what's involved or—but, oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to ask! How did it go yesterday?

NANCY: A disaster.

FRIEND: Oh, I'm sorry. Again?

NANCY: The electronic rights thing—

FRIEND: I just should have been paying more attention when that big flap was going on.

If you can read this stuff with interest, you should consider going into phone tapping. This dialogue is repetitious, long-winded, and elliptical. It doesn't tell anything of interest.
(What
disaster happened again yesterday?) It doesn't make information clear. (What
was
the big flap about electronic rights?) Worse, it gives the impression that both people are twits, unable to organize their thoughts or complete a coherent sentence. This is not true. In fact, in real life, the phone conversation was completely satisfactory: The friends settled the issue of electronic rights to one's novels; they both understood what yesterday's disaster was; the whole conversation took only a few minutes. It's only
on the page
that the dialogue lacks concision.

So how should this dialogue appear on the page, if it were part of a story about two writers? Perhaps like this:

FRIEND: Nancy? I just heard from my agent. Company Z is interested in electronic rights for my first two novels. I don't actually know much about electronic rights. Should I be interested?

NANCY: You should be if you're interested in the future. That's where it lies. Have you heard about the Readerman that Sony is developing? It will be like a Walkman, but for books on disk.

FRIEND: That does sound interesting. Better—it sounds profitable. I'll tell Rick to talk more with them. And oh, by the way, how was the latest go-round with the insurance company?

NANCY: A disaster. But believe me, you don't want to hear about it.

FRIEND: (laughs) Sure I do. But maybe another time.

Of course, if this were part of a story, both the friend's electronic rights and Nancy's fight with the insurance company would have to be part of the plot. Maybe the insurance is life insurance on someone who turns up mysteriously dead, and the electronic clues . . . all right, all right, we won't get carried away here. But you see the point.

Edited dialogue is not ''natural.'' Instead, it is more informative, concise and detailed than natural speech. People may speak in near epigrams (''If you're interested in the future, you're interested in electronic rights''). Characters get to sound the way you wished you'd sounded when you couldn't think of the right thing to say until the next morning.

However, even a competent character may sound repetitious and disorganized when under great stress. Save the ''natural'' dialogue for those moments.

BUT GOOD DIALOGUE IS NOT
TOO
ARTIFICIAL

However, neither do you want to go to the other extreme: dialogue so edited and revised that the reader rejects it as implausible. Following are several categories of overly artificial dialogue.

Too Concise

You
can
overdo a good thing. If your character always speaks in precise, perfect epigrams, he is either Shakespeare reincarnated or Joe Friday from
Dragnet.
Everybody else's speech should include a few extra phrases, words not strictly necessary on topics not very consequential, to keep spoken dialogue from sounding like Western Union.

Here, for instance, are FBI agent Robert Hart and Department of Justice investigator Elizabeth Waring, in Thomas Perry's award-winning novel
The Butcher's Boy.
The two have just arrived in Denver because a United States senator has been killed.

''I suppose all we can do tonight is wait for the forensics people to work their way through the other rooms, then.'' ''That and wait for our replacements to arrive,'' said Hart. ''As of an hour ago we're no longer here just to establish presence.''

''So they'll send in the first team?'' said Elizabeth. ''We haven't done so badly, considering we've hardly had time to begin.''

''No, we haven't,'' said Hart. ''But just the same, I'm not going to do much unpacking.''

''Speaking of that, has anybody told you where we're supposed to be staying?''

This is not epigrammatic dialogue. There are phrases with little information content (''I suppose,'' ''Speaking of that''). There are phrases with more words than strictly necessary (''That and wait for our replacements to arrive'' could be shortened to ''And wait for our replacements''). The subject matter (which hotel?) is unimportant to the plot. But by including some of this—by being less concise than he could be—Perry has made his investigators seem more like real people.

Too Stilted

The native-born character who never uses contractions, the uneducated man whose diction is all multisyllable Latinate words, the woman who sounds as if she's addressing a joint session of Congress rather than her bridge club—these characters' dialogue is too artificial. The woman at the bridge club, for instance, should not have her dialogue edited to ''I do not think, even when taking all factors into account, that Jim's entrepreneurial venture is viable at this time.'' Instead, have her say, ''Well, in
my
opinion, Jim's new business just won't work.'' Then another character can ask, "Why?" and you're off and running.

Too Informative

This is called the ''As You Know, Bob'' Syndrome. The author attempts to make dialogue informative and detailed so that he can slip information to the reader. But this must be done with a very light hand, because people do not commonly tell each other things they both already know. If you aren't careful, you get dialogue like this:

''As you know, Bob, after Mom died we were very poor.'' "Yes, Martin. I had to leave school and take a job at the mall. And you had a paper route and grew rutabagas to sell at the farmer's market.''

''And then after Marie got in trouble with the law, nobody would hire us, so we moved away and didn't return to this town for ten years.''

At this point, your reader won't return, either. Find another way to convey background information besides artificially sticking it into dialogue. But... just to complete the picture, I should add that there are some

times—a very few some times—when ''As You Know, Bob'' dialogue is indeed effective. It all depends on the emotional tone of the characters' exchange. People who are angry, patronizing, sarcastic or self-absorbed often do tell things to others of which both are already perfectly aware, although the reader may not be. Here is Tess Barnwell, from May Frampton's story ''White Wine,'' furious at her husband:

"You ask me to buy pot roast. Fine; I buy pot roast. Three days later you ask for German vinegar gravy on the pot roast. Fine; I buy all the ingredients for German vinegar gravy. Then you ask if we can have the pot roast and German vinegar gravy on Thursday night. Fine; I leave work early, rush home, and make the roast with German vinegar gravy. And then you're two hours late and don't even call! Ethan, what are you trying to do to me?''

Whatever Ethan may be trying to do, what the author is trying to do is have one character fling at another a long list of already-known grievances. And Frampton succeeds.

A PLEASURE TO READ: GOOD DIALOGUE FLOWS WELL

When you have a good exchange of dialogue going between charac-ters—a nice rat-a-tat-tat of give-and-take—should you interrupt it with sentences of description? If you do, won't you break the flow? If you don't, will your novel start to seem as if it should have just been a play?

Again, there is (surprise!) no simple answer to this. There are options, choices, stylistic considerations. Some writers naturally use a lot of uninterrupted dialogue (Raymond Carver, Irwin Shaw, Anne Tyler). Others' style runs more to dialogue interwoven with large blocks of narrative (Toni Morrison, Eudora Welty). You shouldn't alter your natural voice, even if you could. Rather, become aware of the options
within
your preferred style.

So what are they?

With infinite variations, you have three basic choices: (1) mostly uninterrupted dialogue; (2) dialogue slowed down but not really stopped by bits of narrative; and (3) dialogue brought to a dead halt for judiciously placed chunks of narrative.

LET 'ER RIP: THE VIRTUES OF UNINTERRUPTED DIALOGUE

The following passage, from Irwin Shaw's
Bread Upon the Waters,
illustrates the two pluses of dialogue that is mostly uninterrupted: fast pace and readability. Almost no narrative details slow down the rapid-fire exchange of comments between protagonist Allen Strand and his eighteen-year-old son Jimmy. This is especially important in this scene because nothing much is happening. Shaw is building background for the story to come, setting up his characters. There is little tension, and so a sluggish pace or fragmented presentation might very well lose reader interest. Strand and his son are having breakfast together:

''You look positively gaunt. People will think we never feed you. Have you eaten anything today?''

''I only just got up a couple of hours ago. I'll do justice to Mom's dinner.''

''What time did you get in this morning?'' Jimmy shrugged. ''What difference does it make? Four, five. Who keeps track?''

''Sometimes, Jimmy,'' Strand said, a touch of irony in his voice, ''you must tell your old man what you do until five o'clock in the morning.''

''I'm searching for the new sound,'' Jimmy said. ''I play or I listen to music.''

''I understand they stop the music at Carnegie Hall well before five o'clock in the morning.''

Jimmy laughed, stretched____''Carnegie Hall isn't where

it's at this year. Haven't you heard?''

''You have purple rings under your eyes down to your shoulders.''

''The girls love it.''

And so on, for another two pages. Swift and easily read. When that's what you want, let the dialogue flow without distraction.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS:

DIALOGUE BALANCED WITH NARRATIVE

Your second option is to intersperse narrative throughout the dialogue. If you do this well, you can keep the pace almost as fast as uninterrupted dialogue,
plus
add bits of narrative that visualize the characters and action. Two gains for the price of one.
Do this well
means choose dialogue and narrative that reinforce each other, not compete with each other.

Reinforce each other
doesn't mean that dialogue and narrative both say the same thing (''Damn you!'' he shouted angrily.) Rather, both add new information, but both kinds of information carry equal weight in moving the story forward. Here are Quill and John, from Claudia Bishop's mystery novel
A Taste for Murder,
breaking into a suspicious warehouse:

Moonlight leaked through the open ventilation shafts in the roof, picking out the cab of a semi truck and four Thermo King refrigeration units. John took her hand, and they made their way carefully across the floor.

''If anyone comes in,'' John said very quietly, ''roll under the cab and stay there.''

Quill nodded. ''These things are locked, aren't they? How are you going to get in?''

''There's a maintenance door under the roof. Give me a leg up.''