I'm not saying that's all bad. A story needs to be a story to be read and understood. Similarly, dialogue needs to be a dialogue for it to show character or propel action. But, sometimes, I think, in our quest to be commercially viable we may lose the truth of our story, of our dialogue.
Noam Chomsky said, "Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune."
We are writers and we write to communicate. Sometimes, we need to be willing to risk writing something that sounds like it's from Neptune.
“One of the primary ways we were given besides writing to express ourselves is talking,” Agent Edward Necarsulmer with McIntosh and Otis told me.
To write a book without dialogues he said, “Deprives people of one of the only ways we can interact with each other.”
Rita, you are one of the best writers of dialogue I've ever met. So, how do you do it? Do you hear it in your head when you write? Do you become the characters when you write? Do you act things out?
Dialogue comes from listening. Hearing how it sounds and trying to replicate it without the ums, ers, gaps and that whole issue of nothingness that real talk tends to cover. In my pre-school years, my mother played jazz records when it was just us two. The horns, piano, scat kings and queens would talk and she'd talk back. “Talk that talk.” “That cat’s sayin’ something.” “Catch the ‘trane goin’ to Frisco.” I’d always tried to hear it. What I gained was an ear for the rhythm, inflection, and energy between the two and three artists engaged in “sayin’ something.” So first and foremost, dialogue is an ear thing. I read my work aloud and start cutting. I listen for my characters while I'm first imagining them, or sometimes they shoot out of the gate faster than I can find a pen. They come as they are; say only what they can say and I follow it like I’m following a Miles or Ella solo. Where does that come from? Why did he/she say that? What did she mean by that? And then I delve into character. The more I understand, the more the voice is shaped. I give myself the freedom to withhold, which creates a better energy. The other players or characters’ voices become apparent. I play one off the other and hope they’re sayin’ something and not just yakking.
Are there certain decisions you make when you write dialogue? Any that you are proud of? Any that you regret?
Honestly, I listen and I write. I start with the purpose of the scene, but stay open to whatever Akilah, Leticia, Gayle and Delphine have in mind. The thing I’m most proud of is not resisting the force of character. They know best, so I often play catch-up to get there with them.
As for decisions, the real work of writing dialogue gets done with the blade of El Zorro. There is nothing like a good cutting to make your dialogue sing. My regrets are about concessions I make toward grammatical correctness during editing. Rosemary (editor) is good about this stuff and always asks, “Preserve for voice?” Correctness can read like the character has had an out-of-body experience with the scene. I also ditch the speech tags during a reading. They annoy me.
Do you think writers can learn to hear dialogue voices that aren't the same as their own voice? What I'm thinking about is how every once in awhile I'll pick up a book and every character no matter what their gender, socio-economic class, age, race or religion sound exactly the same. The poor white truck driver sounds just like the Haitian political science professor. How can writers avoid that trap?
Writers must hear dialogue voices that aren’t the same as their own. We can eat and identify different varieties of cheeses and chocolates. Even within a musical genre, we know Schubert from Wagner. Aretha from Mary J. Blige. Why can’t we hear voices outside the familiar? The trick is to delve into character. If you can wholly imagine a person outside of yourself, you can hear the voice. It’s about what you’re willing to invest in your characters, but also knowing what to withhold. The filling up of mind with character is for your writing benefit. I’m a firm believer in meditation. I spend a lot of quiet time with my characters that will never make it onto the page. But I research. I try to know a day-in-the-life as well as events from their parents’ early lives. These things never make it onto the page, but the characters resonate. There’s subtext to the words because they run deep, even if we don’t exactly know where they come from.
Ani DiFranco wrote:
“Life is a B Movie: it's stupid and it's strange, it's a directionless story, the dialogue is lame, but in the 'he said she said' sometimes there's some poetry, if you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally.”
I know you do a ton of research prior to writing, but is there ever a sense of turning your back and letting your characters speak during dialogue and then turning around, looking, and finding the poetry there?
You like Ani? I went out with a sound engineer who gave me two Ani DiFranco CDs. The guy is Black History but I’ve got my Righteous Babe CDs.
If you pay attention to the characters you imagine, they always speak their truth. They remain true to their own nature, even when you don’t realize the cool thing they’ve said. When you read your novel two years later, you’ll find streams of truth that while you didn’t consciously include, they’re present because you’ve stayed true to character. I’m finding connections between Leticia, Trina and Dominique (JUMPED), long after I’ve turned in the copyedited version. I’m learning now, just how true the dialogue is. Truth has such a long and deep reach. It extends beyond the writer. You’ll think you’ve found the poetry of your own work but it isn’t for you to find. You’ll get letters from students working on papers, citing your work to support their project because, “Aha! There it is,” in your characters’ words. During the imagining and writing you let the characters go and be who they are; you still have to shape, cut, direct. You, writer, are never excused from that.
This is Andrew. He is dressed up for Halloween. Hopefully, he won't pull all my books because I've posted this picture, which was originally posted on the Flux blog.
When you read dialogue on the page do you hear it in your head?
Dialogue tips:
- Be fast and easy. I know. It runs counter to your internal editor, that editor that tells you to make every line perfect. My internal editor is John Wayne. You can imagine how hard he is.
Still, I ignore him. I have to ignore him in order to write dialogue.
- Do not make it boring. What’s boring? Stuff like this:
“Doug, hey.”
“Carrie. Honey. Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You have a good day?”
“Yep.”
“Good.”
“You have a good day?”
”Decent. What’s for dinner?”
“Spaghetti.”
Why is this boring? There are lots of reasons. All we’ve learned is that Doug has come home and had a decent day and they’ll be eating spag for supper.
Dialogue that creates surprises is a lot more fun than dialogue that is filler.
Here. Let’s try it again:
“Dougie. Hey! You’re home. You have a good day?”
“Decent.”
“You going to ask me about my day…”
“Honey?”
“The dog ate the hamster.”
- It’s okay to be grammatically incorrect sometimes. The other day we talked about class and how it is reflected through dialogue. Well, not everyone talks in perfect complete sentences. Look at how the scene changes with perfect sentences.
“Dougie. You are home. Did you have a good day?”
“I had a decent day.”
“Are you going to ask me how my day was?”
“Honey. How was your day?”
“The dog digested and ingested the hamster today.”
Hhm… Sometimes this can work for humor, actually, but most of the time the stilted nature is dull and feels authorly.
- It’s okay to have people not react to the other person. Silence is powerful. Here are two examples:
“The dog ate the hamster.”
“I can’t believe the dog ate the hamster. That makes me want to vomit, just thinking about it.”
“I said that the dog ate the hamster.”
OR…
“The dog ate the hamster.”
Her foot touched a piece of cedar shaving. She bent down and picked it up afraid to break it. It rested beneath her fingertips, fragile.
He tried again. “I said that the dog ate the hamster.”
She put the cedar shaving in her pocket and looked at him.
One of my favorite dialogue quotes of all time is by Tim Wynne-Jones and it’s on his website. He wrote: “As readers, we want to be a fly on the wall, eavesdropping. When the dialogue is aimed at me, I feel like a fly that has been noticed and might get swatted!”
http://www.timwynne-jones.com/pages/tenthings.html
Micol has offered to send a signed book for one of the commenters. Yes. FREE BOOK! To enter, all you have to do is comment on a post this week. I'll be posting a great interview with her and Linda Urban tomorrow.
Also, I'm giving away two of my books and a surprise gift that is cuddly. So, if you comment you are also entered into that drawing.
