Flapping jaws: how to write sizzling dialog….

As writers, we are constantly seeking the perfect ingredients for that magic stew called the popular novel. What I mean, of course, is that we want the most possible readers from our genre or category to be so engaged, so smitten that they are willing to leave positive reviews, tell their friends and—dare I say it—buy the next book. As always, I encourage writers to follow their own instincts and their own voices, but maybe the following tips will give us all something to think about.

One of the easiest ways to captivate readers is to use authentic dialog in a gripping, tension-building way. I know, it’s easy to say something like that but doing it…well, that’s another thing entirely.

Or is it?

A few years ago, J.A. Konrath, bestselling author of the Jack Daniels series and other books, said that liberal use of white space was key to writing popular fiction. I read that line several times before I realized just how liberating and probably true that statement was. As applied to dialog, that might mean our characters should stop making long declarations of anything. No more tedious explanations, no more long history lessons or discussion about backstory, no more forcing our characters to bore our readers.

Instead, our characters should speak in short bursts like most of us do in real life.

 

Another great dialog teacher was the late Jack Bickham, professor  at the H.H. Herbert School of Journalism at the University of Oklahoma.  Jack wrote a number of how-to books for writers as well as 75 published mostly successful novels. He likened effective dialog to a tennis match. Each character gets her or his turn to hit the ball. Wait for the other character to hit the ball back, and so on. How long does a tennis ball stay in any player’s court? Not long, obviously.

Effective dialog is fast and hard, just like a good tennis match.

It’s also important to note that dialog should serve your characters and your plot ONLY. We have all been on that phone call that just wouldn’t end, where maybe both parties were passionate about one subject or another. You speak about it for several important minutes…but then it’s over. You’ve talked it out yet the conversation drags on and on. You look at your watch and are ultimately relieved when the last lame words are spoken.

You can’t let the lame part of conversations enter your fiction. Always start and end your conversations on the passion. Cut the rest…or better yet, never write it.

What about all those everyday moments, some of you are saying? People really do talk about pets, kids, hairstyles…blah, blah, blah. Books aren’t written about the boring parts of life. We live enough of those. A novel is supposed to show us snippets of the good stuff, the important stuff. If your readers want boring, they will find a family member and invite them over for coffee and fruitcake. In the meantime, you must keep them entertained.  

So what we have learned so far is that dialog should be limited to short bursts of important stuff, and should be quick like a tennis match. Now we’re experts, right?

Not quite.

 

Dialog should also reflect character and mood. Elmore Leonard has been known to visit police stations so that he can effectively mimic crime dialog. Todd Finley, Associate Professor of English at East Carolina University, advises his students to go out into the world and eavesdrop at coffee shops, restaurants, airports. The goal is to learn how to reflect the nature of a place, a situation and a character.

What that means is that a professor in your story will likely use very few contractions. A contractor will likely use a lot of contractions as well as clipped sentences using words of an Anglo-Saxon, guttural origin. While a young woman in love would more likely dip into the lyrical romantic phrases of a Greek/Latin origin.

Let’s say we ran into our contractor out on the sidewalk. He might say, “S'been great seeing you. Have to get back.”

Our professor might say, “It is so pleasant to see you, Samantha. I hope your work with social services is turning out to be everything you hoped it would be.”

And we see our young woman in love a few minutes later: “Oh, it’s so wonderful running into you. Did I tell you how amazing Stephen's and my last date was? The stars were out, and we strolled through Longfellow Greens. The flowers smelled like perfume and the warm breeze carried the sound of crickets from nearby fields….”

 

But remember, our conversations don’t just reflect people, they reflect situations. Let’s say we saw the same people during a low-level emergency:

“Steer clear of the north plaza.” Our worker points. “Just in case.”

While our young lady might say, “I have to contact Stephen. I’d be so worried if he traveled to this side of town. He’s in the city a lot for his mortgage work.”

And our professor: “I have often thought using those cranes was too dangerous for the inner city. More engineering studies should have been done before the deconstruction.”    

Okay, so we can see that personalities and situations will determine engaging dialog. But what types of dialog idiosyncrasies DON’T you want to introduce into conversations? Leave out the meaningless habitual words and phrases. There is no need for “Like, such as,” or “I mean” to be dotting your dialog landscape. Let’s try a couple of the above conversations with these lame additions:

“Like, yeah,” the contractor said. “Good talkin' and such. I, like, have to get back.”

And our young woman: “Oh, it’s so, like, wonderful running into you, Samantha. I mean, I’ve been looking forward to telling you, like, how great Stephen’s and my last date was….”

You get the point. It’s true that people really do talk like this. We, however, do not want to muddle our dialog with these clunkers. Of course, you can always flavor a character’s dialog with a few of these fillers, but do it sparingly and make sure not to bore your readers with too much. How much is too much? If you have to ask, you’ve probably already gone overboard.

 

Finally, let’s talk about content.

How do you know when dialog is important enough to show on the page and when it isn’t? This is an easy question when you start attuning your mind to the big picture. Let’s say you’re writing a novel about a missing dog. By all means, dialog pertaining to dogs makes sense.  But let’s say you’re writing a murder mystery and pets have nothing to do with the crime or the people involved. Would you then do this?

“Stacy, this is Detective Burns. He needs to ask you some questions about the bloody blouse you found in the bathroom yesterday.”

“Sure, Sam. I’m happy to help. By the way, how is your cat Lacey. She was so cute at the picnic last month. I just wanted to hug…”

Obviously, conversations sometimes do go this way, but not in good fiction. How about this one?

“Tabby, it’s your mom. I tried stopping at your house yesterday, and that sweet golden retriever that lives beside you came up to say ‘hi.’ He wiggled his tail and…”

Now this one isn’t quite so easy. It seems to fit. People say those kinds of things. You might argue that it gives depth to the character or the scene. But as a general rule, you would still want to nix that line. It would be better like this:

“Tabby, it’s your mom. I tried stopping at your house—”

“What’re you doing at my house? I don’t want to see you!”

So, now you can see the difference. Sharp dialog is easy to spot. It always goes straight to the heart of your story.

 

And that brings us to our final point of the day. Good dialog is not just about short, snappy comments whipping back and forth between well-imagined characters. Good dialog is more about choosing important moments. And important moments are almost always about conflict. Did you see how much quicker we were drawn into the mother-daughter conversation when we realized they were fighting? That’s always true.  

If you said to a literary agent that you wanted to write dialog between two people enjoying dandelions on a Colorado field, I’m guessing she would roll her eyes and make an excuse to move on. If, however, you mentioned you wanted to write a scene about two brothers fighting over a dead uncle, I’m guessing she will be pulling out her notebook and making arrangements for a meeting to learn more.

So let’s leave the speeches, the lame fillers and the boring stuff in general on our cutting room floors. Great dialog sizzles. It’s short. It’s important. And it encapsulates the personalities of your characters in brilliants bursts worthy of bestseller lists and Hollywood.

Do you have any dialog-improving advice?

 

How to write tension: hooking readers from the opening line…

Don Maass , author and literary agent, says that tension is one of the most important and misunderstood factors in fiction. Michael Halperin, novelist and Hollywood screenwriter extraordinaire, felt tension was so important that he actually included it in the title to his 2003 how-to book “Writing the Second ACT: Building Conflict and Tension in Your Film Script.” If you were to do a Google search for “writing tension,” you would have months of homework before you got to the end of the most applicable pages.

So what does all of this mean? First, let me give you my standard disclaimer: I’m just a guy who writes. Though twenty-five years behind a keyboard and a quarter million books downloaded in the last couple of years might suggest some credibility, the truth is that for every idea I have about the craft of building stories and novels, there are dozens of authors who have done exactly the opposite and have hit one or more bestseller lists. Please trust your own judgment and voice first, because ultimately that is what will earn you a place on national bookshelves. The ultimate goal for every mainstream author should be individuality that resonates with a large audience.

Merriam-Webster’s first definition of tension is:  the act or action of stretching or the condition or degree of being stretched to stiffness/tautness. I think this is an apt description of tension in story. It would be the act of stretching out a plot. Hook the reader with a mystery, a crises, a fascinating detail…then stretch that point throughout the next few pages, chapters or maybe even the entire book. Piers Anthony says that the key to being a great novelist is learning to hook a reader like a fish, and then slowly but inexorably reel them in. They should be gasping for breath on the beach by the end of the book.

Let’s look at Merriam-Webster’s second definition: either of two balancing forces causing or tending to cause extension. I also like this definition as applied to story. Two balancing forces might be your antagonist and your protagonist, and the tension might be a tug of war between them. I could go on to describe how successful novels might have the antagonist winning that game right until near the end of the book when our hero comes out ahead. But we’re creeping too far from our original discussion.

 Merriam Webster’s sixth definition for tension is: a device to produce a desired tension (as in a loom). Of all the definitions, this is my favorite because I think a loom is a perfect visual comparison to every story. Imagine a loom frame with threads stretching from left to right. Other threads are also stretching from top to bottom. Each thread represents a facet of your story.

Let’s say we’re writing about a poor family struggling to survive after the disappearance of the bread-winning father during the depression. In this story, one thread might be grief, another fear, another hunger. Other threads might represent different bill collectors, broken items in the house, and altercations between the children, the mother, and maybe even the equally poor neighbors. No matter what the ingredients are, all must be stretched tightly across our loom…all must have tension. What does that mean exactly? Let’s illustrate with our depression story while we use Piers’ fishing analogy. First and foremost, we must hook our reader early. We must come up with a unique opening that will intrigue our reader. Maybe something like this:

“I’ll have another!” Darrel Babcock yelled to the barkeep. He slammed his whiskey glass down on the polished wood counter to make his point.

“You’re usually the most broke feller in the place,” the balding bartender said. “So where’d you get that wad tonight?”

Darrel glanced at imaginary blood on the backs of his hands and shook his head.

“You don’t want to know, Mitch. You don’t want to know.”

So what have we done? By making our reader ask, “Where did Darrel get the money?” and, “Who did he have to hurt to do it?” we have set our first hook.

Now our job is to reel our reader further into the story. We might slowly reveal details of Darrel’s potential killing. We might introduce two thugs in the bar who pay particularly close attention to the “wad of money” comment. No matter what we do next, it’s important to remember that this early in the novel we should not give the reader a break. We need to keep on reeling them into the story until there is no turning back. What that means is we must continually, paragraph by paragraph, add more tension. How? Let’s say we devote the next scene to Darrel’s wife:

Seeing her neighbor through the kitchen curtain, Abigail Babcock wiped her eyes and opened the door a crack.

“Are they gone?” she whispered.

Widow Nelson gasped. “What did they do to you?”

Abby’s hand fluttered to cover her swelling cheek.

“I think Darrel’s in trouble!”

So what we hope to have done is set yet another hook by increasing the tension. Now our readers (notice we now have more than one J) are worried for Abby while also being reminded of the mystery surrounding Darrel’s possibly ill-gotten windfall. We have successfully pulled our readers closser to the end of our story. If we wanted to return to our second analogy, we could also say that we have now begun stretching a second thread of tension across our loom.

Next, we should scene-by-scene continue to create tension that will draw our reader further and further into our fictional world. In short, tension is simply a reason to keep reading. Of course, there are many kinds of tension: fear, loss, mystery, anticipation, dread, curiosity, and the romance writers’ favorite...sexual tension. Effective novelists use a mix of most if not all of the above. In the case of our depression story, we could and should continue to unravel the mystery of what Darrel has done, but a new type of tension might introduce shame when he leaves the bar…maybe something like this:

Darrel stumbled out into the back alley. Blurred eyes peered both ways. He knew he had to return home to Abby and the kids, but after only two steps he collapsed to his knees and cried.

Now we’ve introduced a new aspect to his mystery. Did he kill an innocent man? We could still ramp it up:

Visions of a stuffed dog falling from lifeless hands flashed across his mind.

Did he kill a child?

We can continue to play out this mystery and keep our readers enthralled, but as we switch from scene to scene we also need to introduce other types of tension. Maybe he could be attacked (violence/survival). Maybe the wife could receive an eviction notice (dread). Maybe Abigail’s parents could get wind of some malfeasance (more shame). Maybe Abby sees the Widow Nelson laughing and whispering with the thug who hit her (mystery/betrayal).

Obviously, we have endless ways to keep the reader enthralled and wanting to read onward. But what if we come to an important scene that doesn’t involve the obvious tensions of violence, mystery or new questions? Let’s say we want to have Abigail play blocks with her baby boy. Fisherman will often say the challenge to catching a big fish is to reel them in slowly, while occasionally letting them have extra line so they will get tired and won’t break free. That toy block scene might be that extra fishing line. BUT let’s remember how easy it is for a fish to get away and a reader to close a book. Wouldn’t it be best to endow those slower story moments with more tension? Maybe the toy block’s color remind Abby of the dress she had to sell to pay for groceries. Maybe the baby cries because of an ear infection, an infection Abby has no money to cure. Maybe…maybe…maybe…

If we are continually looking for moments to ramp up the tension, we will pull our readers to the very last page…where they will happily gasp for more.