Dialogue
Dialogue is essential to a book. It lets the reader hear the characters, and it provides air (visual breaks) on a page. It should read naturally, but good, believable, dialogue is never a literal
transcription. Most people speak with lots of a’s,
um’s, repeated words, incomplete sentences, incomplete thoughts and jumps. Fortunately,
we don’t
hear them. When we
listen to people,
we tend to
weave
together
what is being said, dropping the linguistic garbage. We can suggest some of that, but with discretion:
a rare huh or a, an “I was just—” em dash to show an unfinished or interrupted statement; and
the “But I was thinking . . .” ellipsis points to show an unspoken alternative, a non-enumerated sequence,
a silence, or a trailing thought.
Contractions
are
not
only natural,
but without them your characters
will sound stiff.
Your
characters should
speak however they
want to as it seems appropriate
for
each
of them. However,
the omniscient author, whose
grammar
and
word
choice
should be
impeccable,
may
not.
Nevertheless, he should avoid
sounding
stuffy and
pedantic.
Dialect (or foreign speakers) is a trickier matter. Mark Twain handles most of his characters
well. Jim
in Huckleberry Finn is a different matter:
“Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf ’n. Well, I know what I’s gwyne to do:
I’s gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin. . . . What’s de use er makin’ up de camp fire
to cook strawbries
en sich truck? But you
got a gun, hain’t
you”? Den we kin git sumfn better
den strawbries.
Setting aside whether this is insulting or degrading, this much authenticity is simply hard reading. Today’s readers are likely to give up and some might send you threatening emails. Arguably, a few
contractions and dialectal words would have sufficed (perhaps in 1885 those examples were considerably easier to read) to suggest the dialect:
“Where is you? Dog my cats if I didn’ hear somethin’. Well, I know what I’s goin’ to do: I’s goin’ to set down here and listen ’til I hears it again. . . .”

“I think it’s important to be aware of pacing.” Bob paused and looked at the window. A light rain was falling. “But everything should seem natural.”
Now
the
reader
knows where
he is
in the
conversation,
and
has a little more detail. If
you
prefer
to give an
attribution with
each
line, please
do not follow
Miss
Whitehouse’s
admonish against repeating words. Repeating said draws far less attention to itself than what Fowler calls elegant variation: he said, she opined, he articulated, she replied, he enunciated, she averred, he
alleged: “Et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera,”
exclaimed
the
King
of Siam.
When you have your characters talk, make sure you have a reason, and they have something
to say.
Character
Many
people
get
an idea such as:
“a
bank is robbed
and
the police
. . . .”
It
could be
good, but
for
as important
as the
plot is, it
needs
characters to
bring it
to life, to
follow its trail,
to take the reader
with them. A good
character
has a beginning,
middle, and
now: that is, he
is real
and
complete,
with parents, a childhood, and
schooling before
we meet him
in your
book. Just as
a good
actor gives you that feeling that his character had a life before the
curtain
rose or
the movie
started, or
when
you
hear
a great singer, you feel there
is another
octave above and below his lowest
and
highest
notes:
your characters
must
be full and developed.
At the opposite
end are cardboard characters: two dimensional beings that have one purpose and have nothing that might deviate from that. Why should we avoid them? Because they are boring and not real.
Let’s get two types of characters labelled and out of the way. There is the protagonist, the main character (sometimes
characters) of
your
story; and the antagonist,
the
person
(persons, institutions, things) who opposes
the
protagonist.
Opposes?
Because there
has to be some conflict, two dogs fighting over
a bone, for there
to be
a story.
There is however,
an exception to the “no-cardboard-characters”
rule. Sometimes you want a character to
interact within
a scene
– to move things forward
– but you don’t want to
spend time developing someone who really
isn’t important.
If your character has
a flat tire and as
he pulls
off the road, he
sees
a murder take place in the park
just
past
the
road. You need something
sharp to pierce the tire, a nail or a screw, but does it matter if it’s a flat, round, or oval head, brass or galvanized 1½ inch
wood
screw? In
the
same way, if you need your character to
leave work
early, you could introduce
a jerk
of a boss who
threatens
your
protagonist,
who
then
leaves work early in a huff.
We’ve all had bosses like that, and as long as he is not much more than a nail
in your
hero’s
tire, that’s
fine.
Remember that
even
if you
see
your
character, your reader doesn’t,
not
without your help.
Ask
yourself if someone could read your work
and
pick
out your character
from
a group
of a hundred other people. Does your character have a twist of fate? Let the reader know. Make it interesting and bring
it back again, and again.
The remarkable thing about fully developed characters is that they are action and plot. They drive your story. They may also change it in ways you didn’t anticipate. They may rebel. They may move
in with you and make
your
life miserable.
But
if they are complete and full, your life
will be richer for it,
and
your
reader’s
too.
Description
Description can be long and rolling like a vast Western landscape. It can be short glimpses like
a quick slide show,
or the blur
of passing
countryside seen through a fast moving
train
window.
You need to paint the scene for your reader—not so completely that he sees every blade of grass or knows the name of every book in your character’s library. You need to show enough that your reader enters the dream and becomes part of the story unfolding before him. It is part of pacing. It inhabits your narrative, characters, and dialogue. Think of a beautiful drawing: it rarely shows everything, but it shows enough. Often, lines aren’t complete; shading is suggested here and thick there.
You
use
description to
show
the
characters, places, and things that
make up
your
story.
You
have five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and seeing. Most of us learn in school to add colour: the red wagon. But good description includes more:
The wagon abandoned in the front yard, half
buried by the fallen mouldering leaves and the patches of snow that hadn’t melted away yet, isn’t just
red. It has rough, rusty-brown scabs where the paint had chipped off when it was pulled carelessly
past the jagged rocks in the back yard by the compost pile. It’s wheels squeaked and sighed along with Mrs. Jackson when she pulled it about the garden last summer. The black metal handle curves
awkwardly like a broken limb from when it was run over by the UPS truck. It’s
not
just red.
Taste and smell are evocative. We
remember
smells and tastes
from
our childhoods
in ways that immediately transport us,
more
than by
what we
see, although sight is
the
most
common descriptive element. At first glance, English might have more visual descriptors than for sight or smell, but I think that
it
is lazy thinking that keeps us trapped into thinking about
the red wagon. One word separates our wagon from all those
of
different colours and it does bring to mind the ubiquitous
red wagon. That one word is effective and efficient,
but
is thin. If pacing permits,
its description should
be longer,
assuming it has some significance in our story.
Use
description to
create
distance
between
the
beginning of
a scene,
the
red
wagon in the front
yard, and the climatic action,
Mrs.
Jackson
tripping over the handle.
Use
description to
break
up dialogue and identify
who
is speaking.
In
the example above,
we could have
broken
up the description,
expanding
the
sensory information, and spreading it out over a longer scene.
Don’t try to get all five senses into every description
though, in fact, sometimes just one is
right.
Exposition (Narrative)
Narrative is
telling your story. You will
start
with some
sort of
introduction;
the
action will
rise towards a climax; there may be a falling action followed by resolution, or just the resolution.
This arc includes the conflict, characterization, the setting, sequencing and transitions. In a
broad sense it includes dialogue, description, and characters. We
are using the word here narrowly to
suggest
that aspect of
your
book
where you,
the
omniscient
author or
whoever
is telling
the
story,
is doing just
that, telling
the
reader: John went to the grocery store for cat food.
Just
as you can’t show every
blade
of grass, you cannot tell everything
that happens
in your
story.
You
should summarize those
portions
of the action
or story
that aren’t as
important, to
move from scene to
scene.
You
don’t need to
describe
how
John
parked the car,
opened
the
door, put his left foot on the pavement, and then
got out of the car. You don’t need to show the order
of
his footsteps, right-left-right,
or
right-right-left if he skipped. But if it’s important that the
reader knows he went to the grocery store, say it. If something happens in the parking lot, then
slow down, and flesh
out
the scene with details, description, action, dialogue—whatever you
need.
There is a good reason for the omniscient author to sometimes state things in a straight forward
declarative manner. In the book of Job, we need to know that Job is a good man. In the style of the Bible there wasn’t time to develop and show Job’s goodness through a few fully fleshed out scenes.
We
are told,
“There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.”
Without more, we believe it unquestioningly.
And when he is
tested,
we are told “In
all this Job sinned not, nor charged
God foolishly.” Admittedly, few authors come to mind with the omniscience and authority of the Bible, but this demonstrates how it
is both
possible
and
sometimes desirable to make a simple, forceful summary.
What you want to avoid are long pages, one after the other summarizing the story, unless for example,
much time
has passed,
and
you need to fill
the reader in.
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