Creative Writing -- Working Undercover

In writing (as in life?) the most interesting things are usually what lie just beneath the surface.  It's the stuff you glimpse, that you have to work for in order to reach.  Anything that's handed to you on a plate can feel as if it's not worth having.  This is never more true than in dialogue, which provides delicious opportunities for being elliptical or evasive.

In the real world, when we talk to one another, a large part of our communication remains unspoken and the small amount that is actually said can often be an innocent-looking cover for deeper stuff: to glean meaningful information, to insult or attack, to seduce. In other words speech is a great means of touching on things we can't deal with directly.

To this end, when you are writing dialogue it is often a good idea to be as spare as possible.  Use the minimum number of word that you feel comfortable with, and when you have written them, see if you can cut them by a quarter (you can always put them back later). The trick is to leave plenty of gaps for the reader's imagination to inhabit.  It will make your work more challenging and your characters more recognisable and sympathetic.

It Ain't What You Say...

...it's the way that you say it, as the song says, and in this instance, the song is right.  To prove this to yourself, write a passage of dialogue between two people.  Keep the speech as neutral as you can and then inflect it with meaning by describing how  the characters are speaking - expend your energy and word power on the context of the exchange.

When you have done this,  rewrite the scene keeping the dialogue identical, but changing the way in which your characters behave.  See how radically different you can make the two versions. I remember reading somewhere that only seven per cent of communication between two people is verbal, so have some fun exploring the other ninety three percent.

A Question of Attribution

When you're writing dialogue, it's easy to get bogged down in a he said / she said / he said / she said riff and although it can sometimes be used to stylistic effect, as with everything else, variety is the spice of life.  Here are a few ideas which might help you break down the tricky problem of attribution....

• Sometimes use he / she, but intersperse it with the names of the characters involved - Fred said, Jane said.
• Root around in your Thesaurus for alternative ways of describing speech: he observed, she replied; he declared, she answered etc
• Get verbal - distil the verbs you choose into the most concentrated form of meaning: instead of saying he said sleepily, try he yawned; rather than he said loudly, try he yelled / shouted / bellowed.
• Use action to indicate who is speaking: "I've had just about enough of this," Jane rummaged in her bag for her cigarettes and when she couldn't find them, she clawed her fingers through her hair.  "You think I haven't?"  Fred was standing with his back to her, staring out of the window at the street.
• Vary where you place your attribution so that it is sometimes at the beginning of the speech and sometimes in the middle, not automatically at the end each time: Jane hesitated, "What do you mean?  What are you - ?"  "Well, it's obvious, isn't it?"  Fred cut across her,  "We've both known for months now..." 
•  Establish a rhythm where Jane speaks and then Fred does, so that you don't need to label each exchange, as the reader can work it out for themselves.

Why not write a short piece yourself, putting all of these to the test?  Be as creative and inventive as you can; overexaggerate it so that you get a feel for the different techniques, then you can row back a bit, to a level that feels more comfortable.

It Ain't What You Say, It's The Way That You Say It...

Dialogue is fun - I really enjoy writing it.  It offers a chance to change tempo, it is more relaxed and, well, conversational than descriptive prose.  It is quick to do, you can be funny or dramatic and it's a great way of really getting to grips with your characters: the words that come out of their mouths are the pure essence of who they are.

Dialogue is infinitely flexible, as well.  What people say is open to several interpretations, so there is scope to be elliptical and enigmatic.  To find out just how flexible, have a go at this little exercise.  Try writing a conversation between two people and then, while keeping the dialogue exactly the same, alter the sense of it by changing how they say it.  Context is all!

F. Scott Fitzgerald (Did Somebody Say Something?)

As well as writing The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, Scott Fitzgerald demonstrated his all-round brilliance with the following quotation:

"One of the privileges of dialogue is silence."

This is deliciously counter-intuitive, because when you think about dialogue you think about people talking, you think about what they are saying, how they are saying it and why. But stop for a moment, and consider....

What about the things that people aren't saying?  If you start to pursue this as an idea it can take you into interesting areas of secrecy, duplicity, hypocrisy, manipulativeness, slyness, and so on.  It leads you to oblique and murky waters.  It can also help you further your plot: why are they not saying these things?  Are they frightened? Passive-aggressive? Already you're doing character work as well!

Silence can take you to the spaces in between, where unexpected things happen.  It is where storytelling stops being literal and becomes something else more enigmatic and interesting.  It can be unusual, tender, dangerous or mundane. Because it isn't defined by words but by context, it can be anything you want -- that is its privilege: use it.