Dialog

Dialog is the primary way most of us communicate with each other, so it’s also the main way our characters communicate with each other. It’s really hard to write a satisfactory short story that has no dialogue at all, and the longer this story, the harder it is to tell without ever having one character talk to another.

But dialog in fiction isn’t a transcription of actual speech. It’s not even an imitation of real speech. It’s a model of the way real people talk to each other, a model that’s both simplified and exaggerated so that it can be clear and read easily while still sounding “real.” Real conversation is full of ums and ers and other placeholders. It digresses and repeats as the speaker tries to order his thoughts and find the right way to phrase them. We’re willing to put up with that in person because we have no choice…and besides, most of us do it ourselves. In fiction, though, most of us won’t put up with the rambling way we talk in real life.

On the other hand, dialog is still speech, not narrative. It is therefore a lot less formal. This means the writer has a lot more leeway to use things like sentence fragments, improper syntax, unusual punctuation, and phonetic spelling. Sentences tend to be shorter and less complex. Contractions are welcome. The rhythm of the sentences is much more important; it’s a large part of what makes dialog feel like real speech. When I was writing “Roses by Moonlight,” I used the same Shakespearian trick I’d first learned writing Snow White and Rose Red, and marked all the rhythms of the Faerie Queen’s dialog to make sure she spoke in iambic pentameter. Even though, for that short story, I kept her word choices modern, the Shakespearian rhythm gave her just enough of a different feel from the other characters (I thought) to make her stand a little apart the way I wanted.

Dialog isn’t just what the characters say; it’s how they say it. A lot of the difficulty people have in writing dialog comes in trying to get the delivery across. The first, most obvious, and usually easiest way is to just tell the reader how the line is being said by adding an adverb to the speech tag:  “Nice job,” he said smoothly. Unfortunately, this method is so obvious and so easy that it has been overused to the point where one of the common “rules” for writing has become “Never use adverbs in speech tags.”

I, of course, wouldn’t say “never.” Adverbs have their place in speech tags, and one of them is to indicate when the character’s tone of voice and/or demeanor is at odds with what he/she is saying: “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said admiringly. What you really don’t want are adverbs that don’t actually add any new information: “You’re out!” he shouted loudly is redundant; “You’re out!” he shouted hoarsely isn’t.

Sentence fragments, punctuation, syntax, etc. are all tools the writer can use to convey the way a line of dialog is delivered. So is the placement of the speech tag and/or stage business. Consider the following:

“What have you done? I don’t believe you. You’ve ruined everything!” he said, taking the report and staring down at it.

He took the report and stared down at it. “What have you done, I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you, I don’t – you’ve ruined everything!”

“What have you done ?” he said, taking the report. “I-I don’t believe you.” He stared down at the pages. “You’ve…you’ve ruined everything!”

“What have you done?” He took the report and stared down at it. “I don’t believe you. You’ve ruined everything!” he said with a grin.

The first line groups all the dialog together, with speech tag and stage business at the end. It implies some simultaneity of action and dialog, because “he” is presumably taking the report at the same time as he’s speaking, but that’s about all. In the second line, with the stage business first as a separate sentence, it’s clear that first he takes the report and looks at it, then he panics and speaks. The panic is conveyed by stringing all the dialog sentences together with commas as a run-on sentence and repeating the middle one; it gives the feeling that the speaker isn’t pausing for breath during his denials.

The third line builds slowly, and the speaker comes off as stunned, rather than panicked.  First the speaker is worried (indicated by the emphasis on “done”). Then he takes the report and is in denial (that stammering – obviously, this is bad news). Then he stares down at the pages and it slowly sinks in (the elipses indicate more of a pause between the repeated words, compared to the n-dash in “I-I don’t believe you” earlier). The last line manages to completely reverse the implication of the first three (that this is someone getting bad news) by emphasizing “believe” and adding that grin at the end – obviously, this is someone who agrees that everything should be ruined. (And in context, in a story where we already know who is talking to whom and what is being ruined and why, it might not even need the grin to be clear.)

In all three of the last lines, the pacing of the dialog is conveyed by the way in which it is punctuated and broken up. Emphasizing different words by italicizing them, repeating words, deliberately using run-on sentences, breaking up the dialog with speech tags or stage business in different places – each one changes the implied delivery.