By the Wind Grieved

By the Wind Grieved
“O lost, And by the wind grieved, Ghost, Come back again.” Thomas Wolfe

Monday, October 14, 2013

Creating Authentic Dialogue

I have just started revisions on my completed first draft, and one of the areas I will be focusing on is a review of sections containing dialogue. Dialogue is crucial for the way it can add dynamism and description to the narrative, move the plot along, and serve as a vehicle for showing the motives or underlying feelings of the characters.

When it comes to dialogue, the problem I have encountered in writing a memoir for my client is that he has a difficult time remembering conversations; at most I might get a line of two of a conversation between two people, and even then, it is the content of the exchange and not idiosyncrasies of speech that he provides. Entirely absent are characteristic expressions that would help to flesh out important characters in the narrative. In most cases, all I have captured are the bare bones of the exchange.

Just as I was grappling with this problem, I read author and writing teacher Mary Carroll Moore's recent post "Dialogue Do's and Don'ts" on her blog How to Plan, Write and Develop a Book. (I highly recommend signing up for this weekly gem.)  Ms. Moore briefly touches on when and when not to use dialogue (something dealt with at length in her popular workshops) and provides excellent insights into what makes for effective dialogue.



I plan to do the following exercise soon, but even if you choose not to do it, the tips she provides here are extremely helpful:

  • Eavesdrop on conversations in public places.
  • Write down dialogue you hear and pay attention to "beats": where people pause, interrupt, change the subject. 
  • Listen for the subtext of what is being said in these pauses or shifts; i.e., listen for what is not being revealed.
  • Note how the emotional punch resides in the subtext.
  • Note how speakers shift away from a topic that becomes too "hot" or uncomfortable.
  • Take what you have learned back to the draft of a scene from a story you are working on and use it to evaluate dialogue you have created; see if the dialogue you are working on reveals too much information too early.
  • Craft the dialogue, aiming for more subtlety and paying attention to your placement of the "reveal."

While this exercise may not solve the problem I have of too little information from my client, I think it will still help me improve the dialogue I have included in the narrative. If nothing else, it has brought home to me that the dialogue must serve a function, that it cannot just be there to add variety to the text.

I would love to hear of others' experience with writing dialogue, problems you encountered and how you solved them. Happy dialogue crafting!

7 comments:

  1. Love this blog and the advice, Jeanne. Would be interesting to see you apply the exercise to the "China Hutch."

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    1. Yes, I am looking forward to going back to my "works in progress" and applying these tips. I thought of "The China Cabinet" as well...I think I tripped into into the "share too much" pitfall in that story. Thanks for the comment.

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  2. It has always amazed me that some people are able to recite whole conversations verbatim, while others, like me, can only offer the bare bones. Unfortunately, your client isn't a good recaller.

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  3. It has always amazed me that some people can apparently recite whole conversations verbatim, while others, like me, can only come up with the bare bones. Unfortunately, your client is not a recaller...

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  4. Stephen King is in your boat Barbara. In his memoir on writing I mentioned above, he lauds Mary Karr's The Liar's Club for her fidelity to the nuances of her characters' speech, and bemoans the fact that his memory is not so extensive. Alas, I think I am in that boat too...as is my client...

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  5. I dare say that I made up dialog for conversations that took place 30 to 40 years ago. Certainly I could not remember exactly what people said, but I remembered what happened, which I believe is more important. So I made up the dialog to reflect my memory of what happened and how I felt about, other people's reactions, etc. Of course, it's totally my remembrances, but then it's my memoir, isn't it?

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    1. Thanks for commenting Robert. I have had that same problem in trying to "nail" conversations from long ago. I agree, you have to construct the dialogue with the aim of staying true to what was said but also with an eye to how it works within the text, to move the narration or reveal something about the characters.

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