On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [99]
DIALOGUE: BETTER THAN REAL SPEECH
Though real speech can be a good basic model for dialogue, the goal you're striving for is well above the mere reproduction of real speech.
Real speakers often break into each others' sentences, use slang and imperfect grammar, don't complete sentences or thoughts, and change subjects abruptly. They repeat themselves and use fillers such as umm, you know, uh, and the like. Or, they start off a sentence without a clue of how they're going to finish it, then wander all over the place. They use dialects, baby talk, accents, and nonstandard pronunciations. They often respond to another person's statements with insubstantial and repetitive comments like "I see, yes, right."
Good dialogue, on the other hand, is clear, crisp, logical, substantial, fast moving, and not repetitive. For the most part, it uses standard English spellings that our brains are trained to recognize on the page. Nonstandard or phonetic spellings that attempt to reproduce accents or dialects require the readers to figure them out, and even that momentary delay drags them out of the story.
Every line of dialogue should advance the plot or develop the character— ideally, it should do both. In its many functions, dialogue can:
• Add immediacy to the story. Through dialogue, the readers can feel as though they are actually present, watching the action. There's a big difference between summarizing that "Sarah told John how hurt she felt" and sharing the actual dialogue in which Sarah blasts John with the details of how she feels and why.
• Help to characterize. What a character says can indicate his mood, disposition, or mentality more convincingly than any amount of description. Let's say you have a character who says, "It's a tough break that your mother is dying of brain cancer. I hope it doesn't drag on long, because it's a real nuisance for me not to be able to make plans."
In just a few words, he's shown the readers that he's an arrogant, heartless, and self-centered jerk. Furthermore, because you've allowed the readers to make that judgment (rather than simply telling them the guy's a jerk), you've drawn them further into the story.
• Add humor. Even in the darkest stories, in which slapstick or jokes would be inappropriate, a character can show graveyard humor in the way he talks, breaking the tension for a moment and leaving the readers refreshed and ready to be frightened all over again.
• Explain action that the readers don't actually see happening. For instance, dialogue might mention events that are not important enough to show in their entirety but that the readers need to understand.
• Describe a person, place, or thing. One character telling another about what he's observed is the most natural way there is to share this information.
• Provide smooth transitions. Having characters come and go in a particular setting, with each combination of characters talking about different matters, is an effective way to glide from one segment of a scene into the next.
• Intensify conflict. Telling the readers about the characters' disagreements is less effective than letting the characters talk to each other—explaining the logic and reasons behind the particular standpoint each has assumed. As they listen to others' suggestions, perhaps they modify their opinions, clarify what they're thinking, come to a new understanding of their own feelings, or become even angrier.
In her medical romance The Doctor's Rescue Mission, Marion Lennox pits her heroine, the only resident doctor on a tsunami-ravaged island, against the hero, who's come to tell her the island will be deserted rather than rebuilt:
"Why would I ever want to be somewhere other than here?" she told him, her anger suddenly threatening almost to overwhelm her. "... I like having dated the island's only two eligible men—and deciding they weren't