Writing Dialogue

Elizabeth Rose

Part two

To continue our discussion on dialogue, in part two I’d like to add to the five methods of using dialogue I’ve mentioned earlier. Two other ways to use dialogue with a purpose would be to:

*Creating a mood, or tone of the story

*Give the reader a sense of setting

Creating the Mood

Lissa Michaels creates the tone of her story, Captive Hearts, by using her characters’ dialogue in the beginning of the story to convey a message.

Morgan walked over to the desk and flipped on the viewscreen. His brother’s smiling face appeared.

“Where in the three phases of hell have you been?”

Galen sputtered, his face flushing. “We delivered all the missives, then picked up the trade goods we’d ordered, Morg, it was great! The broker got everything we requested. I managed to get two cases of Folian brandy for you and a water crib for Sabina and Boyan’s baby, and –“

“Galen!”

He flinched. “We were so close to Pleasara, and Hastin said we had time to –“

“Hastin!” Morgan swore. “I should have known. Here I’ve been worried sick you were taken by the Jotnar, and you were rolling around in some whore’s bed.”

“Morgan-“

“I didn’t send you out on a pleasure cruise, blast it. Don’t you know how dangerous it is for us? You get in, do your business, and get out. There’s no time for anything else.”

“I know, but – “

Morgan turned his back on his brother, effectively cutting off Galen’s excuses. “I shouldn’t have let you go.”

Here, Ms. Michaels has set the tone of urgency and danger of the mission. Morgan’s anger, as well as concern for his brother shows that family ties run deep, a great setup to possibly be used against him later. While Galen is triumphant of his little shopping trip and trying to impress his brother, Morgan’s dominance sets the tone to let the reader know he is the boss. We feel danger through his words, anxiousness, intrigue with a sense of fear at his mention of the Jotnar, and we know that this story will hold action, suspense, and an obvious encounter with the dreaded Jotnar later on.

Dialogue that is cut off, as we’ve just seen conveys a sense of urgency. Morgan felt the need to speak before his brother was finished. Action speeds up with the shorter dialogue, and will slow down with long passages. To keep it believable, watch that your dialogue conveys your tone through its length as well.

Sense of Time and Setting

Use your dialogue to remind readers of which time and place your story is set. Every time period has its slang, but be careful to use it correctly. Normally, the farther back in date you go, the more formal the speech was. Contractions are seen more in modern day novels. Make sure you do your research to insure proper words for proper times.

Dialogue can convey if your story is a pirate novel, a medieval set in England, or a western.

In this passage of Rawhide Surrender, by Elysa Hendricks, the dialogue gives you no doubt this is a western.

Disgust thickened KC’s words. “Red Buffalo is a slimy snake who’d slit your throat as quick as he’d swat a fly.”

“But such a pretty snake, so lean, so tall, so strong.” Carmelita gave an exaggerated sigh of longing. “He could make Carmelita’s heart beat fast.”

“He could make Carmelita’s heart stop beating.,” KC muttered, never taking her eyes off the riders. They stopped at the cantina, the logical place if they had it in mind to do some trading.. . .

“This Red Buffalo, I think I might be available if he wants a woman.” Carmelita stepped out of the barn.

KC snagged the woman by the arm and hauled her back.

“You’re crazy as a coot. Look at them, woman, they’re savages, fresh off the warpath. They’d eat you alive.”

Here we get a feel of the setting, just by the characters and the words they use.

When trying to convey a thought – such as someone asking another what is bothering them, make sure it sounds convincing. While modern day dialogue may say “what’s up?” a medieval may read “what takes your concern, my lord?”

If you want to find out if a word was in use for the time period you’re writing in, you can use references such as Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary or The Dictionary of Etymology: The origins of American English words.

What NOT To Do

When writing dialogue, there are ways to use it that can actually backfire on your work.. You may want to avoid these, as they can only weaken a story.

*Redundancy

*Idle Chatter

*Forecasting

Redundancy

By being redundant, you not only aggravate the reader, but slow down the flow of the story. If we know there are only two people in a scene, you don’t need to tag every bit of dialogue. That’s why we start a new paragraph each time a new person speaks.

Let me give an example:

“Listen,” said Maria. “I think I hear something.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” John grumbled.

“Don’t call me ridiculous, Maria snapped. “If you just listen, you’ll hear the noise too.”

“Maria,” John said with a grin, “you are still afraid of the dark after all these years, aren’t you?”

After the first two sentences, we know who is speaking. We really don’t need the tags in the last two sentences, nor do we need to have John say Maria’s name. We already know he’s speaking to her.

A better way to write it would be:

“Listen.” Maria stilled John with her hand on his arm. (Here’s an action, mentioning both characters, instead of a tag.) “I think I hear something.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” John brushed her hand away with a laugh.

“I’m not!” (No need to repeat the word ridiculous again)

“You’re still afraid of the dark after all these years, aren’t you?”

Idle Chatter

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a conversation goes nowhere and says nothing. Make sure you use all your dialogue for a purpose. Avoid small chat such as introductions that take up pages, or telephone calls that say:

“Hello?” said Susie, speaking into the receiver.

“Hello,” answered her good friend, Mable.

“How are you?” Susie’s voice perked up at hearing the voice of her friend she hadn’t seen in a while.

“I’m good, how about you?” answered Mable.

“I’m doing okay,” sighed Susie, “ but I’ve been a bit tired.”

“Yeah, I think this weather has everyone tired and depressed,” Mable agreed.

Get to the point quickly, and try to keep the reader’s interest in the plot at hand. Do you really need to go through small talk that no reader cares about? Ask yourself this, and cut to the chase, while keeping the pace of the story.

In other words, instead of the above passage, why not just simplify it?

Tired and depressed, Susie picked up the phone, surprised to hear the voice of her good friend Mable.

“Mable, it’s been so long since we’ve talked.”

“Yes, I know. But I just had to call to let you know I’m getting married.”

This corrected version cuts to the chase, and still lets us know with a few simple lines that they are old friends who haven’t seen each other in awhile. We know Mable’s reason for calling, and we aren’t bogged down with idle chatter that doesn’t move the story forward.

Forecasting

By forecasting in the narration, we lose the impact of hearing something through dialogue. A simple example:

Ginny jumped in surprise when a man stepped out from behind the bushes. She was so scared that she bit her tongue. Fear was the only thing keeping her from running, until she recognized Mark.

“You scared me to death, Mark. I even bit my tongue! Don’t ever do that again.”

We don’t need to hear her relate something we’ve already had forecast in the previous line. Instead, a better version would be:

Ginny’s heart leaped into her throat at the site of a man in the bushes. The taste of blood kept her frozen to the spot. Then she recognized the dark figure. (We don’t need to say it’s Mark here – save that for the dialogue. We mention the taste of blood, and that’s enough for now.)

“Mark!” she gasped. “You scared me and made me bite my tongue. Don’t ever do that again.”

Also, you’ll want to avoid telling backstory through dialogue in a way that sounds like it’s only put there for the reader.

“You remember Roxy, don’t you?” asked Jill.

“Roxy,” repeated Tess. “Isn’t she the one who ran away with her best friend’s husband?”

“Right after she was the maid of honor at Debbie and Jake’s wedding,” added Jill.

“And then she jumped off a cliff because she was so ashamed of what she did?”

“Exactly. Only she survived, and her best friend Debbie was the doctor who saved he life..”

Instead, we can weave the information into the conversation without sounding as if we’re trying to fill the reader in on something.

Like this:

“Roxy isn’t easy to forget,” said Jill.

Tess nodded her head. “If she was my best friend, I never would have saved her from her fall the way Debbie stepped in as if she hadn’t betrayed her.”

“Debbie is a doctor. She puts her job above personal problems, that’s what I always liked about her.”

“True,” agreed Tess. “Any woman who could put aside the fact her patient stole her husband, and go about saving her patient’s life anyway deserves a reward.”

Hopefully, with these tips you can make your dialogue sparkle and work for you, not against you.

Next month, I’ll be talking about Naming Your Characters, and what is in a name.

Elizabeth Rose

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