What the heck can we say about dialogue?
Exert from "Tools Not Rules" what to write and how to write it. Information and workbook for beginning writers. Coming November 2020
Dialogue
is a conversation
between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie. It is the
conversation between your characters, the discourse by officials, and arguments
when characters disagree. This is sometimes referred to as “external dialogue.”
•
Dialogue can accomplish almost anything
for your story and often with greater immediacy and freshness than narration.
•
It can crate mood, describe setting, fill
in background, reveal motivation and plot, heighten emotion, and add
characterization.
•
Dialogue is comprised of words, and the
tags and actions that identify the speaker and is harder to write than
narration.
•
Dialogue must have a purpose in the plot
or story. If it doesn’t add something new, it isn’t needed.
Dialogue in Your Book
Tags
These are
used to correctly identify speakers. Simple is always better. Use only
sufficient dialogue tags to clearly indicate who is speaking. Remember these tips when using
dialogue tags.
- Keep them unobtrusive. The dialogue
itself is what's important. The only function of a tag is to let the
reader know who is speaking.
- Therefore, use a tag whenever it's
unclear who's speaking.
- Vary the position of your dialogue
tags.
- Simple is always better. Said,
Asked, answered are often all you need for a tag. They tend to be almost
invisible to the reader.
- When
using said, asked, answered, put the character’s name before the
tag, not after
NOT – “I invited four people to
Saturday dinner,” said Susan.
BUT - “I invited four people to
Saturday dinner,” Susan said.
OR – Susan said, “I invited four
people to Saturday dinner.
Beats
“A beat is usually
a minor action that breaks up dialogue when a pause is needed to keep the scene
visual.” Sol Stein, How to Grow a
Novel, p131
Beats can also be used to identify speakers.
Here
you put the dialogue beside a sentence or phrase in which the speaker is
mentioned. The phrase or sentence is the ‘beat.’
“Oh no.” Jade glanced over her
shoulder. “Are you sure they are following us?”
Gestures,
body language and character action can all be used as beats. But don’t get
carried away. Limited use is recommended. And watch out for redundancies. In
the two examples below, the action and the words do the same job. Use one or
the other.
She shook her head. “No.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Beats
me.”
Beats
and tags are used to break up exchanges that might otherwise cause confusion.
Having a character ask two questions and then the other person answer them both
muddles the information. Break them up.
NOT
John rushed into the room “What is he doing with the medal? Where did he put
it?”
BUT
John rushed into the room. “What is he doing with the medal?” He glared at her
and she shrugged. “And where did he put it?”
A
new paragraph is used when there is a new speaker. This is especially important
when you are omitting dialogue tags and writing several lines of conversation.
Make a new paragraph even if the speaker has had only one line.
In
this example it’s easy to know it was Sam who asked the question and Edie who
answered it.
Edie
turned to greet Sam. “Thought you might want food.”
“That
smells delicious. What is it?”
“Beef stew, fresh
rolls, and rice crispy squares for dessert.”
Know
when to summarize dialogue:
When
the exact words don’t matter to the story.
Jane waved her hand at the kitchen.
“That darn expresso maker is terrible to use.” (no need to
explain what it does to make it terrible.)
When
dialogue is mundane.
“Boy, it rained all day and I got wet.”
When
a character says something routine – like ordering in a restaurant. Just say “they
ordered salads.” Don’t have them actually say all the needed words.
Summarize
when one character tells another one what the reader already heard elsewhere.
“As gently as he could Jake told Sarah
what the doctor had said.”
