Irene Smith

Take a look at the following short exchange and see if you can tell me what’s wrong with it:

“Good morning.”

“Good morning to you,” I replied.

“What is new?” said my boss, George Newbinging.

“Nothing. How was your weekend?”

“Great,” he replied. “How are the kids?”

“Oh, same old, same old,” I said.

So, what do you think? Besides being boring as hell, this little dialog does none of the jobs that dialog is supposed to do within a story. Dialogue can do any or all of the following:

• advance the plot
• tell us about the characters
• heighten the conflict
• provide information the viewpoint character might not otherwise know

I suppose I could make a case for increased tension if the employee had done something terrible, say screwed up some paperwork or lost an important order. Then the very fact that the boss doesn’t say anything about the incident could be a means to heighten the tension. Otherwise? Not so much.

While people exchange comments like the above every day in real life, they can’t afford to do the same in fiction. Dialogue in fiction must perform at least one of the functions I listed above.

Advance the Plot

Take a look at this short exchange:

“You must be my new master.” The man looked around and sighed. “What year is it?”

“Two thousand and nine,” Ken replied. He tried to get up but he couldn’t move.

“Only eight years this time,” said the man shaking his head. Then he bowed low. “I am a jinni and you are my master. What is thy first wish?”

Now Ken was glad he hadn’t run away. “How many do I get?”

“Three wishes are standard. Everybody knows that. ”

“Finally something is going my way,” said Ken.

In just a few lines we’ve managed to convey the information that Ken has found a jinni and that he is entitled to three wishes in a more entertaining way that “Ken found a jinni and it told him that he was entitled to three wishes.” The narrative version might use less words but the version with dialogue is more interesting.

Tell us About the Characters

If you are doing your job right, the characters in your stories each have their own mannerisms in speech and action. For example:

“Yo, man, how’s it hangin’?”

“Good morning, my dear fellow, how is the world treating you on this fine day?”

Obviously there are differences between these two characters’ speech patterns. The informality of the first speech (yeah, I know it sounds corny) might indicate a lower level of education or it might indicate someone who is putting on a personality that isn’t really his own. Which it is depends on the context of the story of course.

Heighten the Conflict

Dialogue is the perfect way to heighten conflict. Don’t tell us that two characters are angry at each other. Show it in the way that they speak. Instead of:

Mom was angry.

Have Mom show us herself like this:

“Matthew Denis Smith, what in the wide world do you think you are doing?”

No question that Mom is a little bit annoyed now, is there?

Provide Information

Dialogue can give us information that we might not be able to get any other way. For instance, if a story is told from the point of view of a character that was not a witness to something that needs to be presented, a character that did see the incident can tell the viewpoint character about it in a much more interesting way than, “Later I found out, blah, blah, blah.”

I find dialogue is more fun to write than narrative too. But that’s just icing on the cake, so to speak.