“Say What?”–Dialogue Writing Assignment
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Sorry this post went up so late–I thought I’d set the “post ahead” time for 2 a.m. instead of 2 p.m.!
It’s time to play with dialogue a little bit. I’ll give a scenario and ask you to write a quick dialogue exchange. Actually, if you have something like it in your WIP that works, feel free to use that.
The scenario:
Two people have been becoming friends for a while. One of them needs to tell the other a secret (can be good or bad), but knows she/he can’t just blurt it out. So what do they say?
Remember, this is a dialogue challenge—so while you should include some dialogue tags, focus on what they’re actually saying and not necessarily what’s going on under the surface.
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KayeDacus.com 
I’ll play. 🙂 Here’s a snip from my novel, KINDRED. I weeded out a bit of the stuff between the dialogue, but hesitated to take out too much. It throws off pacing, and something else gets lost, all the things that aren’t said but are still communicated through body language and silences. I’ll leave most of it in, and then afterward lift all the dialogue and post it without the narrative. The two characters are Seona, a slave, and Cecily Reynold, a neighbor whose baby she delivered, and with whom she has formed a friendship.
From KINDRED, Copyright 2008, Lori Benton
(posted for a dialogue example)
“Comment ça va, Seona?”
I’d already told Miss Cecily I was doing fine when we met in the yard. It was the question she always started off with, when she was minded to teach me some new French. I scrambled for the words.
“Ça va…bien. ” I pressed my face to the baby’s head, breathing in his clean scent, then laid him on the coverlet in the dappled shade. His little body stiffened, then went limp. I fiddled with his wrappings.
“Something has happened,” Miss Cecily said. “Something good? Dis-moi, je t’en prie?”
Would I tell her?
“Je—je n’osais… pas vous dire.” I got the words out, but the thoughts in my head argued against them. Maybe I _did_ dare to tell her. Cecily Reynold was the one person I could trust—aside from Mister Ian.
“Je… voudrais vous dire—but I don’t know if I _can_ tell you,” I finished in a rush, my French giving out.
Her head tilted in a listening way, and her hands were quiet in her lap. “Is it the language over which you stumble? Or is it what has happened that prevents you?”
“Both,” I said, with a flutter in my belly.
“Has it to do with… Ian?”
I glanced over my shoulder at the cornfield, where Mister Ian and John Reynold had gone to check on the crop. When I turned back I caught the tail end of a look that fled from Miss Cecily’s face. She’d been reading me like Miss Judith read a book.
It seemed to me then I could do one of two things. I could get up off the coverlet and run off home, leaving Mister Ian to come back in his own time. Or I could answer her question true. Before my tongue could tie itself in a knot, I made my choice.
“Mister Ian’s letting me draw pictures for him. For the desk he’s making his sister. He wants a design he can carve. I’m meant to draw the pattern for it.”
I sounded like I’d been running through the hills instead of taking my ease for the last quarter hour.
“I been drawing the likeness of things ever since I was a girl. No one knows about it.”
“Seona… alors.” Miss Cecily took my hand, spying the faint ink stains on my fingers. “And yet you say Ian knows. How did he come to know this of you?”
I dropped my gaze to the sleeping baby. His eyelids were thin, showing fine blue lines like the petals of a flower. I touched the curve of his cheek with my fingertip, and his tiny mouth drew to a pucker, as though he dreamed of suckling.
“I never meant for him to know,” I said. “He just… found out.”
[end snip]
Mostly dialogue:
“Comment ça va, Seona?”
“Ça va…bien. ”
“Something has happened,” Miss Cecily said. “Something good? Dis-moi, je t’en prie?”
Would I tell her?
“Je—je n’osais… pas vous dire. “Je… voudrais vous dire—but I don’t know if I _can_ tell you,” I finished in a rush, my French giving out.
“Is it the language over which you stumble? Or is it what has happened that prevents you?”
“Both,” I said, with a flutter in my belly.
“Has it to do with… Ian?”
“Mister Ian’s letting me draw pictures for him. For the desk he’s making his sister. He wants a design he can carve. I’m meant to draw the pattern for it. I been drawing the likeness of things ever since I was a girl. No one knows about it.”
“Seona… alors. And yet you say Ian knows. How did he come to know this of you?”
“I never meant for him to know. He just… found out.”
[end snip]
LOL. Just realize how much French is in this scene, but it’s the only one I have that remotely fit the criteria. Hope there is a character limit on these posts!
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Ooh, toughie. This is mostly hard for me because I have several to choose from in my WIP. The biggest problem is that most of these involve so much information that they’re rather long. I guess I can take just the crux of the secret from the first one.
Character backgrounds: Charlie is a newspaper photographer who meets Margaux at the press preview of a show of lost masterpieces by the late Marcel Duchamp (d. 1968). Fredrick is Margaux’s partner in crime. This is set in 1974.
In this particular scene, Margaux has agreed to tell Charlie the truth about an anachronism he found in one of the works in exchange for his help in tracking down someone who kidnapped her friend, Sherry.
Here’s how it appears in its current form:
Charlie sipped his shake and Margaux did the same. “Now we get to the part about the violin?”
She should have known he’d be this persistent. “I guess.” After talking about Fredrick’s scam with Sherry, it was beginning to feel like she’d already told her own story. Had he always intended for their prank to end up a scam?
Her heart sank an inch, but Margaux pressed on. “You called about the violin and Fredrick flipped. He was convinced I did something to tip you off.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have had the pictures if we hadn’t stayed late.”
He had a point. Margaux tried very hard to not let herself think about that night. “So how did you know?”
“The label on the violin has a copyright notice on it. 1971.” Charlie sat back, grinning.
Margaux shook her head. She should have seen that. “The violin was Fredrick’s idea, too. He called me up out of the blue last year. Said it would be harmless fun, get our names in the papers–at the end of the show, we’d reveal it had all been a hoax, passing off real junk for art and fooling the world.”
“Well, you did fool everybody.”
“But it looks like the joke was on me.”
“Quoting the Bee Gees now?”
She cast him a look that turned his smile down a notch. “Fredrick said it would get my work the attention it deserved.”
“Yeah, I would definitely want on that story. But weren’t you already pretty much set there? I mean, a graduate of the Cooper Union. . . .”
She studied him for a moment. There was no mocking in his tone or his expression. “Turns out even the Cooper Union can’t guarantee success in the real world.” And neither could Fredrick Lasaint. Margaux fell into pensive silence. Years of failure notwithstanding, how could she have believed him?
“So–wait. The whole show is fake.” It wasn’t a question.
Margaux pretended she didn’t hear him.
Charlie leaned forward. “You have to tell me this.”
She concentrated on the stripes on her straw for a long minute. She was really going to have to admit what she’d done–how low she’d sunk.
“Look, Margaux, I don’t know you all that well, and I have to be able to trust you.”
She met his eyes and was reminded of the way he’d smiled at her when they first met–like he knew he could trust her. Even now he wanted to trust her.
And this time he could.
“Yeah,” she said at length. “It’s not just the violin.”
And, following Lori’s lead, mostly as dialogue:
Charlie sipped his shake and Margaux did the same. “Now we get to the part about the violin?”
“I guess. You called about the violin and Fredrick flipped. He was convinced I did something to tip you off.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have had the pictures if we hadn’t stayed late.”
“So how did you know?”
“The label on the violin has a copyright notice on it. 1971.” Charlie sat back, grinning.
“The violin was Fredrick’s idea, too. He called me up out of the blue last year. Said it would be harmless fun, get our names in the papers–at the end of the show, we’d reveal it had all been a hoax, passing off real junk for art and fooling the world.”
“Well, you did fool everybody.”
“But it looks like the joke was on me.”
“Quoting the Bee Gees now?”
“Fredrick said it would get my work the attention it deserved.”
“Yeah, I would definitely want on that story. But weren’t you already pretty much set there? I mean, a graduate of the Cooper Union. . . .”
“Turns out even the Cooper Union can’t guarantee success in the real world.” And neither could Fredrick Lasaint.
“So–wait. The whole show is fake.”
Margaux pretended she didn’t hear him.
“You have to tell me this. Look, Margaux, I don’t know you all that well, and I have to be able to trust you.”
“Yeah,” she said at length. “It’s not just the violin.”
Naturally, it moves a lot faster without the running commentary of physical actions and internal monologue. Maybe a bit too fast, since this is kind of being dragged out of her. Without the internal monologue, it’s harder to understand the motivations behind some of her responses, too.
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I had trouble taking this too seriously. Just as a forewarning.
[John approaches Bill in the breakroom as they both stand staring at the contents of the vending machine]
John: So, uh, you keeping a leash on Debbie, Bill?
Bill: I’ve known you like two weeks, John. I don’t think we’re close enough for you to be asking about my wife.
John: Let’s just say you’re lucky I’m just asking about your wife.
Bill: What’s that supposed mean?
John: I am just asking about your wife.
Bill: I heard what you said.
John: If you know what I mean.
Bill: Obviously I don’t.
John: Maybe you could. For the right price.
Bill: What? Are you blackmailing me?
John: What? Absolutely not.
Bill: Then what am I paying you for?
John: Just a little intel. Intel others might not want to give
you.
Bill: About my wife.
John: Among other things, if you catch my drift.
Your wife among quite a few other things.
Bill: Right.
John: Maybe even around a few other things, eh?
Bill: I get it.
John: Or in bed with a few other things.
Bill: I said I get it.
John: Maybe not even in bed. Maybe just on the couch.
Bill: Stop.
John: Or in the kitchen.
Bill: STOP.
John: The bathroom, the shower, the piano room—
Bill: We don’t have a piano room.
John: Oh.
[John pauses to think]
John: Really? Your wife’s the blonde with blue eyes,
right?
Bill: My wife is Jewish.
John: Oh… Huh.
[John stands in confused silence as another worker walks by the entrance to the break room]
John: OOOOH.
[John hurries out of the break room behind him]
John (O.S.): Hey, WILL!
Will (O.S.): Hey…new guy.
John (O.S.): How’s the wife, man?
End Scene.
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© Jessica Purser, 2008
Hey, man.”
Jachin had gone into the staff room to get a post-staff-meeting cup of coffee. Avery, instead of going to the youth house to type his Parent Newsletter like he was supposed to, had followed him.
“You know, I’m eating at your house tonight. We could always talk then.”
“This is important.”
“Okay.” Jachin sniffed the powdered non-dairy creamer and wondered who’d used the last of the half-and-half.
“Well, Tarry and I have mentioned that we’re going to move out of the apartment.”
“I think I remember that,” said Jachin. This was an understatement, as it had been included in every dinnertime discussion since February.
“And that we got a loan.”
“Yeah.” Jachin glanced up from his coffee mug. Avery looked worried. Not worried. Terrified.
“We found a house. A great house.”
He stopped mid-stir. He wants to borrow money. He looked back into the mug, watching the chunks of creamer hurricane towards the middle. Don’t let him want to borrow money. He hadn’t realized it, but he valued his friendship with Tara and Avery, and when you loaned people money everything got—
“It’s got everything we want. Good neighborhood, three bedrooms—‘cause we’re thinking of trying to have kids, you know, that’s how come we want a house in the first place—it’s near work—“
“Avery—“
Avery’s voice rose an octave. “We looked at it on the Internet, you know. And we thought, hey, it’s perfect. It’s got termites–that’s the only way we could afford it–but my brother owns an extermination company, so that’ll be no problem—and it’s got a really big bathtub–”
Please don’t let him ask for a loan. Or wet himself. Jachin was unsure which would be more awkward.
Avery swallowed, his Adam’s apple trembling. “And then we looked at the address. And it was in your neighborhood. On your street. Then we, um, drove by. And it’s next door.”
The coffee in Jachin’s stomach doubled its acidity.
“And you know how your house is kind of on one side of your property, so one of your neighbors is closer than the other one?”
He closed his eyes. “It’s the closer one,” he sighed. Next door.
“Yeah.”
He realized, now, that he had not meant to continue the best-friendliness he had had with Avery if Nain came back. He had wanted them to remain friendly. Friends, even. But not hang-out-three-nights-a-week friends. Not talk-about-things friends. Not friends the way other couples were friends, and went to dinner walking two by two.
You brought them into my life and I said Yes. I ate at their house, I helped them with their youth group. But I can’t do any more. When I go home I want to be alone.
And of course there was no answer, but he had the impression that a divine eyebrow was rising, as if God was recalling that Jachin had spent the last eight months asking for the opposite of aloneness. In fact, if there was any kind of still small voice in Jachin’s spirit, it was saying Ironic, huh? which was, Jachin felt, not how still small voices were supposed to speak.
“I just want you to know that we didn’t plan this, man. I know I’ve sort of been invading your space, but I didn’t mean to invade this much.” Avery let out a long breath. “Um, the thing is, Tarry’s set on this house. It’s what she’s always wanted, it’s in our price range—“
Avery’s tone was mild but he was saying You can ask me not to do this, and I’ll still do it.
“It’s okay.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m sure it’ll be good.”
“That’s what I think too, man! It’s going to be awesome. It’s such a God thing, you know? I mean, what are the odds, right?”
“Right,” said Jachin, and the punch he had long been anticipating landed hard against his shoulder.
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