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14 Dialogue
14 Dialogue
14 Dialogue
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HOW TO WRITE
The secret of
Dialogue
‘This is easy,’ he said. ‘Anyone can get it right.’ [he said at end of a sentence]
‘Just careful with the punctuation,’ she added, ‘because a lot of people get it wrong.’
[she added comes in the middle of a sentence]
Notice: Are you putting the he said / she said in the middle
of a complete sentence of dialogue or at the end?
The punctuation varies depending accordingly.
And always use a new paragraph for even
very short snippets of dialogue.
‘Why do Brits use single inverted commas?’ he asked, as he sipped a cup of Earl Grey tea
and admired a portrait of the Queen.
“I have no idea,” she said, as she sipped a whisky sour and watched her five-
year-old play with her first ever handgun. “Our American doubletons are much nicer.”
“Always get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing
to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big
slab of prose at the start.”
(PG Wodehouse, Interview, Paris Review, 1975)
Dialogue is immediate
It’s alive
It’s the ultimate example of show-don’t-tell
(the drama of the unfolding moment)
‘That’s why I don’t quit. One of the reasons. I was locked up yesterday
with two cigarettes. And spent half the night getting advice from a
cleaning woman named Ramona, who doesn’t smoke.’
Discussion of cigarettes and weight loss jumps sideways into a mention of Ramona
(totally irrelevant) and being locked up (the reason they’re talking)
The jumpiness actually makes you work to figure out what’s going on…
Which is the point!
That work means you are super-invested in understanding
the character – which is the core act of reading fiction.
©2018 Jericho Writers
Rule #4: the path to the real topic can
twist and loop
Max & Jackie talk more. Jackie is facing drug
possession charges and jail time
Here’s their first run at the ‘Whose drugs?’ question:
True, his writing is very taut – no surplus words - but his dialogue moves like this:
• Piano players
• Cigarettes
• Cigarettes and jail and Ramona
• First ‘where did the drugs come from’ dialogue [hard-boiled version]
• Then a bit about his life
• And a bit about hers
• Back to the piano player [but gentle now, not tough]
And the real question and the real revelation
©2018 Jericho Writers
You could just jump straight to
the point
A Scotsman
‘Ye might want to cook cold for a wee while. Only if it gets difficult, mind.’
A Russian
An Orkney man
Orcadian is pretty close to being a separate language from regular English, and stuffed
full of local terms. Here, you just have to go for it (but this kind of thing is rare!)
MacHaffie’s got a twinkly charm to him, a lightness. As though
he’s saying, in his heavily accented Orcadian, ‘Ah cin tale
thoo're a peedie lass wantin tae dae thee best, but we baith
ken thoo’d ower blether wi’ me than wipe yon teeble again.’
Do likewise!
©2018 Jericho Writers
Rules of thumb: ‘give characters their
own voice’…
…sounds better advice than it really is
Can you tell who’s who here? Answer no. Leonard’s characters
basically sound identical … but they’re different people so they
say and express different things.
©2018 Jericho Writers
Rules of thumb: humour in dialogue is
at your peril
I pull away from the mouth of the hole. Pull well away and say, ‘You’re closer.’
‘You’re smaller.’
‘You’re the senior officer. This is your investigation.’
He says, ‘Right. I’m senior. Exactly. So look, just … just bloody do it.’
I just bloody do it.
©2018 Jericho Writers
Same cave, a little later on
Example:
We both feel the pressure of the dark tunnel which snakes into the hillside behind us. Our duty will
require us to crawl that route. Not this morning. Not today even. But sometime soon.
Burnett shudders. Asks, ‘How are you with enclosed spaces?’
‘Fine.’
‘Really? The thought of that thing doesn’t creep you out?’
‘I’m fine with enclosed spaces, so long as they’re lit, heated and in possession of doors, windows and,
ideally, tea-making facilities. That thing creeps me out like all seven shades of fuck.’
Is that funny? Well, yes, kinda. But it’s not laugh out loud funny. And you
don’t have the sense of an author needing your applause.
• Keep it brief
• Stay close to character
• Oblique connections in dialogue are great
• Twisting paths through conversations are also fab
• Take care with dialect, speechifying & humour
• Use place & actions as beats to punctuate dialogue
• We do not love adverbs or suggestive postulating
©2018 Jericho Writers
With luck…