Did I Say That Out Loud? Dialogue Revision

Dialogue may do more heavy lifting these days than at any other time in the history of the English-language novel. Readers stand in bookstores fanning pages and assessing a potential purchase based on the distribution of white space in your story. Big blocks of type without indentation suggest heavy, dense prose, while interesting choppy patterns of black and white promise a fast-paced, hip, page-turner. In Last Call, Tim Powers splits his text by starting new chapters, with both numbers and titles, mid-page. Annie Proulx puts diagrams of knots in her Shipping News scene breaks, increasing white space and interest. I Don't Know How She Does It by Alison Pearson uses emails and lists to prevent monotonous rows of type. However, nothing breaks up a page as reliably as snappy dialogue.

Most of us, in real life, think of a clever retort or witty opening line three days after we really needed it. The same thing happens to us as writers. During the discovery draft, the down draft, the icky first draft--whatever you call the first time the story flows from your fingers onto the computer screen--dialogue is likely to be as tongue-tied as you were standing at the last cocktail party surrounded by beautiful people. Unlike your party fiasco, dialogue in your short story or novel can be revisited and revised as often as necessary to make it sound completely natural and tons better than anything you could have come up with off-the-cuff.

For the efficient writer, dialogue revision happens only after the foundation of your story has been completed. You know exactly what is going to happen and why. You know the arc your character will travel. You know who will help him and who will oppose him--and why. You will have lived with your characters long enough that you can hear the sound of their voices echoing in your ears as you fall asleep. You know which ones drop the last letter on gerunds; you know who uses blue language and who wouldn’t if they had a mouthful. You know who uses run-on sentences and who answers in monosyllables. Once all of those things are firmly gelled, it’s time to look over your story and consider the dialogue line by line to make sure it is carrying its full load.

Start with the big stuff
So, how to start? House building is a useful metaphor for writing, or, in this case, revision. So, let’s say you’re remodeling your living room. Would you paint the trim first and then tear out the drywall? Probably not. Likewise, in dialogue, look for the change that will cause the greatest disruption to your project and tackle that first.

Presumably, the slices of your story that are told in scene, rather than summary narrative, have been selected because two or more characters want something deeply, passionately, and, at the end of the scene, their mutually exclusive agendas guarantee that only one, and possibly neither, of the characters will have gotten the thing they _knew_ they needed just a few pages earlier.

Don’t show your hand too soon
Good dialogue is like a card game. Characters will lead with the lowest card they think is likely to be a winner, saving their trumps and aces to the end. So, take a look at your dialogue in a given scene. Does each character want something? Does each start with the simplest, lowest–risk gambit to get what he or she wants? As they meet resistance, does each risk more to try to win? Does he reveal more of his true self, whether whiney, or cool or arrogant? If not, you have missed an opportunity to display the layers of your character’s inner being.

In The Hunt Club by Brett Lott, 15-year-old Huger Dillard acts as the eyes for his blind uncle, doing chores at Hungry Neck, Unc's Low Country property. Huger helps run the hunt club favored by professional men from Charleston and chauffeurs Unc around in an old beater truck. The two have never discussed the disability or the incident that led to Unc's loss of sight. When a murder occurs at Hungry Neck, both Unc and Huger have strong ideas about what should happen next. Unc wants to keep Huger and his mother safe, Huger wants to be in on the excitement and help Unc out of whatever mysterious events are unfolding. The two verbally spar in the hospital room where Huger is under observation after a minor concussion.

Unc opens with a rational, reasonable statement intended to keep Huger out of a dicey situation he's not prepared to disclose. He invokes Huger's mother as authority for his claim, risking nothing of his own thought or emotion. "What she's saying is that you ought not be out there any more. You ought to stay home for a while. Till things get settled."

The last thing Huger wants is to stay in town with his mother, but he starts with a low-risk response, "No way."

Unc ups the ante, suggesting that there is danger to Huger's mother if the boy persists. "There's no way I want you or your momma involved in any of this."

Huger knows that the wife of the murdered man had called his uncle the week before the discovery of the body. He deflects his uncle's reasonable warning by challenging him, trying to get information, probing what he knows is a tender spot. "What's this?" he asks. "What do you know? You said she called you."

Rather than to even acknowledge the questions, Unc blatantly changes the subject. Referring to the doctor's earlier advice that Huger stay awake and watch TV, Unc makes a show of finding the television buttons on the hospital bed and offering his opinion that there ought to be a couple dozen football games to chose from.

Huger, of course, isn't sidetracked. In an attempt to be included, to be entrusted with information--to push his agenda--he timidly reminds his uncle of his disability, something that's probably not been mentioned since the earliest days of Unc's recuperation, if even then.

Unc takes the situation to the next level by pulling off his sunglasses to reveal, not lifelike glass eyes, but the white marbles that fill his orbital rims.

At this point there is sufficient tension that Lott is able to devote several paragraphs to backstory about the house fire and explosion that killed Unc's wife and took his sight. Later the reader will learn this is a crucial episode in this family's history, but presented here it appears to simply strengthen the subtext of the characters' opposing agendas. Unc replies to Huger's challenge, "If I can't handle something like this on my own, then I might as well up and die. Because—"

Huger interrupts Unc, his voice raised, and lists all the mundane things he has to do because Unc can't see. He talks about having to rewash dishes because Unc hasn't cleaned them properly, something he's never revealed before because it would embarrass Unc. But to get what he wants, he's now willing to sacrifice Unc's pride, risk his anger, make him face the truth of his limitations. One interchange before, he could barely get out the unequivocal statement of Unc's blindness. Huger didn't open the salvo with the risky stuff; he started with a simple, "No way."

The right order makes all the difference
If you notice a situation where tension falls rather than rises, check to see if the dialogue is in the right order. If the evil one threatens to cut off your protagonist’s little finger to find out where the treasure is buried, and your hero says, “cut away,” an offer of ten dollars does not increase the stakes unless you are writing a bumbling-character comedy.

Sometimes the agendas will meet head on. Unc wants to keep Huger from Hungry Neck and Huger wants to be there. But even in this case, their underlying motives are different; what success or failure means to each is different. So as you write your story remember that both characters in a scene can yearn for the last chocolate chip cookie on the plate, but it’s always more interesting if that cookie represents an issue between them. What if Bill craves chocolate and Sara is sworn to keep him on a clear liquid diet until his operation? Or Lisa wants to take the cookie to a hungry child and Claudia needs a ride to the airport five minutes ago. When characters' agendas are mutually exclusive, but represent something more tantalizing than each wanting to possess or achieve the exact same thing, sparks can fly in interesting directions.

Evasive? Why would you think that?
Also be aware that your characters are under no obligation to respond directly, completely, or honestly. In fact, much of their power in the card game of dialogue comes from dissembling. Much of the subtext of the relationship between any two, in fact, the entire story, comes from what isn’t said, often in response to a straight-forward question. As in real life, a simple, “No,” to the question, “Is there any more toilet paper in the house?” will usually end the conversation between your characters.

However, a retort such as, “Am I your mother?” or "As the queen of toilets, I refuse to answer that on the grounds it may incriminate me,” is likely to take your characters into a deeper level of conflict and reveal more of their underlying tensions and often dysfunctional way of dealing with one another.

Allison Pearson's novel, I Don't Know How She Does It tells the story of a 30-something British woman trying to juggle career, marriage, and children, but finding the balls bouncing out of her hands more and more often. At 11:19 P.M. she arrives home to find the place a wreck and complains. She wants relief from the chaos corroding every part of her life and making her feel incompetent on all fronts. He wants his wife to be home and pleasant. It's not likely either will get what they want, but both apparently feel it's still worth engaging.

"Ah, the great She returns. Is it that time of month already?"

"Are you accusing me of having PMT?"

"God, Kate, I look back to your premenstrual tension with nostalgia. These days, we have postmenstrual tension, intermenstrual tension. We have 24/7 tension. Can you switch off when you eventually come to bed or will you be issuing instructions in your sleep?"

"It may have escaped your notice, Rich, but I have a major presentation—"

"For it to have escaped my notice, I would have to have been embalmed in Ulan Bator."

"I do this for us, you know."

"What us, Kate? The kids haven't seen you since we got back from Wales. Maybe you should become a TV presenter. At least they'd catch you once a day on screen."

At this point in the scene, with a trip to the States scheduled in the morning, Kate decides to use the ultimate method of marital communication, or perhaps in this case, weapon. After a little conjugal bliss, when he is in a more receptive frame of mind, Kate says, "Please be on my side, Rich. It's me by myself in the office, against them: I can't be on my own at home as well."

End of scene.

Each has used different, and escalating, dialogue to try to maneuver into a position to get what they want. Notice how the tension within the scene rises as the tactics change from blaming biology, to invoking work demands, to claimed sacrifice for the good of the family, to involving the children, to sex, and finally to vulnerability. And neither ever directly answers the statement or question the other has lobbed. It's not giving too much away to say that subsequent scenes prove that neither has won their objective in this skirmish.

Beware of informational dialogue
Once you have the correct order of the dialogue in place, make sure you're cautious about using dialogue to deliver information to the reader. Remember, snappy dialogue is about revealing character, not providing a shortcut for the writer. Any place a character utters a bit of data the other character does or should know, strike it out with the thickest, blackest Sharpie in your pen cup. In the above example, Huger might have said something like, "You're just bitter because you couldn't save Aunt Sarah from that house fire you found burning after your shift at the police station. You tried to save her, but the exploding glass ruined your eyes for good. But Unc, it doesn't mean you have to take it out on me."

Instead, Lott delivered all of that, and more, in Huger's consciousness. By doing so, the reader gets the information, we see that Huger knows his next words will be hurtful, and we understand what's at risk between the two if the long-unspoken is said aloud. Beware of terms like as you know and don’t you remember?

Some writers like to answer the question directly and then toss in the snappy retort. Again, use your Sharpie to take out the first sentence because it only weakens what comes next. “Is there any toilet paper in the house?” “No. What do I look like, your mother?” By removing that short sentence or phrase over many lines of dialogue, you can decrease your word count and increase the pace of your story without losing a thing.

Use the full palette
So, back to our remodeling metaphor—the drywall is in, taped, and textured. Now for color. If you want your "room" to as distinctive and interesting as possible, consider a different shade for each character. Make them identifiable without attributions or tags. It doesn't take much. One person says, "Gotcha," to let other characters know she has heard and understood. One says "I see." Another one says, "And I care because. . . ?" Of course, if you're modeling a character after my husband, he doesn't say anything at all and is surprised and annoyed when you make your statement for the third time—every single time you have an interchange.

In addition to favored words and phrases, think about the diction your character brings to the page. Try to think of diction that is appropriate to your character's education, social stratum, and profession, but remember that very few Harvard professors actually grew up at Harvard. Some of them came from steel towns originally, or farms, or big cities that weren't Boston. In I Don't Know How She Does It Kate has worked very hard to take the Industrial North out of her accent and phraseology. Sometimes she sounds more blue blood than the poshest person in her office, but when she gets tired or stressed, she might sound a little bit blue collar.

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem features a protagonist at one extreme of dialogue. Lionel has Tourette's Syndrome and yells inappropriate things at inopportune times. Hunt Club's Tabitha is mute and writes all her dialogue. But each significant character in the two books is distinctive in his/her own way. Minna, Lionel's boss calls his "men" by affectionately disparaging nicknames. Matricardi and Rockaforte always use odd sentence construction as if English was not their first language. A line like, "Have you got for us what we want?" or "Results—now those we truly cherish," could only have been uttered by one of the two old men. All the characters in The Hunt Club speak according to their social station in South Carolina—old-money graciousness, new-money crass, redneck, Low Country, or domestic.

The dialect dilemma
A word of caution: be wary writing dialect. Today, Stephen Crane and Mark Twain would never get away with the funky spelling they used to denote speech patterns or dialects in their stories. Editors wouldn't stand for it and readers would complain. Anyone reading a novel in America has been exposed to accents, slang, and many different speech patterns on television and the movies for their entire life. It only takes a subtle shading to recall the sound in the readers imagination. Something as simple as a working-class boy referring to a gentleman as "Guv'nor" in Tracey Chavelier's Falling Angels will help the reader "hear" him as working class for the rest of the novel. Support that effort with appropriate Anglo-Saxon word selection, and you've created dialect without abandoning standard English spelling.

You can always redecorate
Dialogue is one aspect of craft that can really work for your story. Even before it's read, it shapes the appearance of your page. It builds tension and reveals character. It can make the reader wish they'd said something as clever or insightful as your hero. It contributes to the sound of your story. But try to avoid worrying about it too much in the drafting process. Dialogue is a room you can tear apart and rebuild, patch and paint, to your heart's content after the foundation has set and the roof nailed down.