Luan The Ly

Reading Response 6.1

1. Dialogue as an advance to the story

Ron Carlson believes that dialogues serve a story like how wheels serve a car: “it is

simply meant to advance the story.” However, he believes that the story should also serve

the dialogue as well. Thus, dialogues need to be taken slowly and carefully, since “the

character can’t advance the story because they may not know it yet.” In Raymond

Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, we see a moment when a

character decides to pause the advance of the story, or at least slow the progress down.

After Terri recalled the bad memory with her ex-husband, Mel said “My God, don't be

silly. That's not love, and you know it. "I don't know what you'd call it, but I sure know

you wouldn't call it love." It tells the readers about Mel’s uncertainty about his

perspective regarding love, and that line is an attempt to delay the advance of the story.

Mel’s lines also tend to be shorter compared to his wife Terri, which provides little to no

new information to advance and progress into the story.

2. Dialogue and the character’s mind

Later in the chapter, Ron Carlson claims that “Writing dialogues is about observing

closely what is on each character’s mind and how willing and how able he or she is to

share it.” Through the dialogue delivered, the readers can easily determine what the

character has in mind (and from there the dialogue is like thinking out loud), what bothers

them in their mind, and from there readers can tell what type of character they are. Terri

in the story shows how she’s still haunted by her ex-husband Ed and his abusive behavior

to her through the way she describes everything in a very detailed way. Even when she
 already married Mel, Terri can not wipe out the influence of Ed from her mind just yet, as

she claims “He did love me though, Mel. Grant me that. That's all I'm asking. He didn’t

love me the way you love me. I'm not saying that. But he loved me. You can grant me

that, can't you?” Terri can not get over Ed, and that her perspective about love or her

general mindset is heavily influenced by Ed.

3. Dialogue as a physical thing

Carlson implies that when we talk about dialogue, everyone “thinks talk, when in fact

that may represent a small portion of the scene. Let’s think of a dialogue as a physical

thing.” He believes that dialogues can have not only the embedded actions in order to

advance in the story, but also demonstrates the speaker as they talk. For example,

moments like “Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his glass” or "Mel, for God's

sake,” Terri said. She reached out and took hold of his wrist. "Are you getting

drunk? Honey? Are you drunk?" are the one that input actions in between the dialogues.

It shows action, the changes, the advance and progress in the story, and in general creates

the vividity to craft the scene, so that it becomes more lively.