As I embark on my short story collection called Paint I am reflecting on the crossover skills between the long and short writing forms. Today it is the role of dialogue in fiction.
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| Thinking of the story |
Dialogue has its part to play on both long and short fiction. It presents very common problem for new short story writers and novelists
Dialogue is hot and hard and challenges the reader not just to imagine, but to hear different voices, It allows us to witness aggression, seduction, passion and anger and the nature of relationships without having to be told that this is happening. What is happening hits you in the face. Look at these writers, What do you witness happening here?
Dialogue is hot and hard and challenges the reader not just to imagine, but to hear different voices, It allows us to witness aggression, seduction, passion and anger and the nature of relationships without having to be told that this is happening. What is happening hits you in the face. Look at these writers, What do you witness happening here?
Look at Why Don’t You Dance? by Raymond Carver
and observe his ability to imply risk
and jeopardy through what seems like simple dialogue.
…He sat down on the sofa to
watch. He lit a cigarette, looked around, flipped the match in the grass.
The
girl sat on the bed. She pushed off her shoes and lay back. She thought she
could see a star. ‘Come here, Jack. Try this bed. Bring one of those pillows.’
she said.
'How
is it? ‘he said.
'Try
it' she said.
He
looked around. The house was dark. 'I feel funny,' he said. 'Better see if anyone’s home.'
She
bounced on the bed. ‘Try it first,' she said...
Or look at Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now
where she uses dialogue to set the tone of mystery, threat and personal grief near the beginning of the short story. .
…‘They’re not old girls at all,’ she said. ‘They’re male twins in drag.’ Her
voice broke ominously, the prelude to uncontrolled laughter, and John quickly
poured some more Chianti into her glass.
‘Pretend to choke,’ he said, ’then they
won’t notice. You know what it is – they’re criminals doing the sights of Europe , changing sex at each stage. Twin sisters here in
Torcello. Twin brothers tomorrow in Venice
‘Jewel thieves or murderers?’ asked Laura
‘Oh murderers definitely. But why, I
ask myself, have they picked on me?’
The waiter made a diversion by
bringing coffee and bearing away the fruit, which gave Laura time to banish
hysteria and regain control. …
In my story Sharpening Pencils I use
dialogue
to show the uncomfortable contact between a shy girl and her equally
shy tutor. I think.
...The girl stood back from the
painting and surveyed it. Mrs Forrest came to stand beside her. She said. ‘I do
like the way you manage to convey both humanity and abstraction, Miss
Wintersgill. You hold onto the intimate relationship while making the meaning
universal.’
The
girl undid and redid her ponytail, filling the air again with the smell of
turpentine. Mrs Forrest contemplated the thought of turpentine infusing the
curly tumbling hair. Then she said. ‘I can indeed draw quite well. They told me
so at the Slade, many years ago.’
‘You
were at the Slade?’
Mrs
Forrest laughed. ‘So I was. As I say, it was many years ago. I worked alongside
people who now are what thy call household names.’
The
girl coughed. ‘It must have been hard work there.’
Mrs
Forrest noticed the accent for the first time. Somewhere from the West perhaps.
She lifted her shoulders and sighed. ‘For the first year all I did, dear, was
sharpen pencils, clear workspaces. I did draw at night. That eventually earned
me my place. My night drawing earned me a place there.’ She paused. ‘Not that I
was very good.’
‘It’s
hard to think of you just sharpening pencils, Mrs Forrest.’
Mrs
Forrest smiled showing discoloured teeth. ‘Of course I watched what they did
and in my little room at night I tried it all out myself.’ She looked around.
‘Just as, perhaps, you do here, Miss Wintersgill, in the dark of night. But
then you are so much more original.’ She backed away then, fading out of the
room and closing the heavy door behind her with a click. Outside she untied
Koppy and let him run through the darkened parkland around the house, barking
now and then when he scented prey...
And in this story, The Little Bee I have tried
to show the world of a little girl
observing the complex and ambiguous world around her. Clearly here I am unable
to resist contextualising the dialogue in the larger narrative. But perhaps
there is room for that in the wide world of the short story, I hope so.
... Amalie
put a hand on my shoulder and I stood up before her. ‘And your Mama was very
beautiful, ma p’tite. I knew about that. Hadn’t I been her dresser in the Theatre
de Varietés?
The sheer beauty of your mama drew great applause.’
My
father giggled then. ‘But unfortunately she could never remember a line. Not a
single line. The manager who had been intoxicated with her became embarrassed
and employed beauties with more brain and better memories. Her friend Josephine
was one of these.’
Amalie
suddenly scowled at him. ‘But after all when you met her, Monsieur, you fell in
love.’
He
sighed very deeply. ‘So I did, Amalie. So I did.’ And with this he laid his
head on the stout oak table and fell asleep, snoring and snuffling within
minutes.
My
gaze met Amalie’s and - both embarrassed and amused - we started to laugh. She
hugged me tight and I could smell the meat and garlic on her. And my father’s
fruity cigarettes. Still laughing, I helped Amalie to trundle the trolley
through to the dark back places of the house, where her two nieces, who
couldn’t speak French at all, washed the pots and dishes and cleared the
kitchen for the following day.
As always you should make your own judgement.
? Why not try these …
- Abstract some dialogue
from an existing short story – separate it on a page – and decide what you are doing here. Can you cut it back to just what is spoken? Can you implant more meaning, enhance the tone, and expose the difference in the way people speak by what they say?- Take a one line encounter from your story
and render it into dialogue which gives us more of the different lives of the speakers without telling us facts.
- Take an overheard fragment of the conversation of strangers
and create a
whole incident though invented dialogue Happy writing!
wxx
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