There’s an insurance commercial where the company’s iconic spokeswoman takes on multiple roles at a family picnic. I don’t even remember the company that was advertising—that’s usually lost on me (sorry, Madison Ave wonks)—but I do remember noticing one actor took on multiple roles. Writing dialogue is a lot like that. An author with multiple characters shouldn’t speak in a unique voice that makes them sound the same. Each character must have her or his individual voice.

Newbie authors often don’t write good dialogue for that reason. An author has to adopt different personalities. Actors are trained to do that. Many creative writing programs neglect dialogue and emphasize narrative. That’s fine for literary fiction, I suppose (maybe that’s why it’s so boring for me), but not for genre fiction. Of course, the reason for a writing program’s emphasis on narrative is also due to the fact that it’s easier to teach. Indeed, unless an author is a wee bit schizoid and can assume different roles like the actor, writing good dialogue is almost impossible to teach.

But I think authors can learn to do it. More on that later. First, let me show narrative isn’t as easy as writing programs think it is. What do Moby Dick and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea have in common? Boring narrative! Melville goes into boring detail about how to turn whale blubber into lamp oil, among other boring things; Verne dwells on all the wonderful undersea flora and fauna his protagonist is seeing. I’m being repetitive because I’ve mentioned these two “classics” before, but these 19^th century books often used to teach high school students to think they hate reading (Giants in the Earth, Silas Marner, and Jane Austen tomes are other examples) are good illustrations of HOW NOT TO WRITE interesting narrative.

Narrative can be interesting; it’s also often essential. In sci-fi, narrative is often world-building—the author is constructing a fictional world and must describe it to the reader. First rule: spread it out. Pages and pages of narrative all too often make the reader wonder when will the story start or continue—at the very least, it’s usually static. Second rule: get out of the omniscient point of view (POV). Let those bits and pieces of description come from some character’s POV. (You can even compare one character’s perception with another’s—normal people DO see things differently!) Third rule: add dialogue. I often speak of the Goldilocks principle: not too much, just enough. A corollary to that is: not too much of one thing at one time. Dialogue helps break up the narrative, and vice versa.

In fact, dialogue can be part of the narrative, and vice versa. The “v” in the title indicates something antagonistic, but narrative and dialogue are really complementary. You can have dialogue in narrative without any quotation marks too. Dialogue can be unspoken—thoughts are internal dialogue. I’m not discussing ESP here, but characters’ conversations with themselves. I record some thoughts in present tense and use italics: Why is she wearing red on St. Paddy’s Day? Compare that to: She asked herself why the woman wore red on St. Paddy’s Day.

Here are the two versions:

“Brenda, what do you think of my new dress?” said Alice.

Why is she wearing red on St. Paddy’s Day? “It’s lovely, my dear.”

“Brenda, what do you think of my new dress?” said Alice.

She asked herself why the woman wore red on St. Paddy’s Day. “It’s lovely, my dear.”

In these examples, I prefer the first. Both show Brenda (it’s her POV, obviously) is a wee bit dishonest with her coworker. Both mix dialogue with descriptive narrative—the reader learns what color of dress Alice is wearing. Maybe before and after this, the reader learns more about Alice’s appearance, seen through Brenda’s eyes.

You can imagine this kind of mix even sprinkled with larger paragraphs of narrative for a scene following soldiers at the Battle of Normandy, for example. The author should imagine what his characters are thinking as much as he imagines what they vocalize.  The description of big guns booming, shells landing, and blood and guts can all be in one soldier’s POV, of course, but you can switch the POVs around to get different perspectives too.

But what about what they vocalize? Characters’ words must match characters’ personalities. In a stretch of pure dialogue, an author shouldn’t make characters all sound alike. To some authors, that skill comes naturally. To others, they have to work at it. One way to combat sameness is to read the dialogue aloud and ask yourself: would this person actually speak like this? Do these persons sound different? Even better, have others read it, at least until you get the hang of it. This goes hand in hand with observing and remembering how different people speak. Language describes a person as much as appearance.

There are some general clichés about writing that don’t apply to dialogue. One of those is using clichés! Many people use them. They often are comparisons or stereotypes, and a lot of people use them a lot. You can and probably should avoid these in narrative; you don’t have to do that in dialogue. I’ve known persons where almost every spoken sentence contains a cliché—sounds a bit weird, but that’s part of their personality. I often say something like, “I don’t give a rat’s ass what X thinks!” People tend to use common expressions in their daily speech.

Another problem is dialect. It’s only a problem, though, if the reader doesn’t understand what you’ve written. I have as much problem understanding written Cockney as I do spoken. I have to work at it. When I read Garcia Marquez’s Otoño de la Patriarca, I only had trouble with the author’s lack of punctuation (maybe not a problem in the English version?). The author is Colombian, after all, and I learned the Atlantic dialect interacting with students there.  But, in any case, you don’t want to leave the reader in the dark too long.

Readers are often forgiving, though, up to a certain point. I recently read (and reviewed?) a crime novel where the author wrote in the present tense—while seeming strange at first, I got used to it. I had no problem in understanding. But you can’t lose your readers, at least all the time (twists in mysteries are definitely allowed).

Finally, how about those dialogue tags? I think the following piece of prose doesn’t work:

“What do you expect from me?” Marcy asked desperately with tears in her eyes.

You might think this sentence is OK, but I have problems with it.  First, this is a direct question to someone, so the “asked” is superfluous. Second, that –ly adverb adds nothing because of “the tears in her eyes.” I much prefer:

“What do you expect from me?” Marcy said with tears in her eyes.

There’s still a mix of dialogue and narrative, but it’s also minimalist writing because the author has allowed her reader to participate in the creative process. The reader learns the poor woman is crying, so she can well imagine that mascara is smearing or her lip is trembling.  Here’s the worst version, something Jane Austen might write:

“What do you expect from me?” Marcy asked desperately with tears in her eyes causing her mascara to smear and her lower lip to tremble.

OK, Jane wouldn’t have written that—she’d know tears DON’T CAUSE lips to tremble because both are just part of an emotional reaction. I’m not sure 19^th century Jane used or knew mascara either; that’s a gaffe akin to the perp’s car turning from red to blue in mid chase. But you get the idea: my minimalist version is snappier and would make Goldilocks happy: there’s just enough description in the dialogue tag to allow the reader to create her own image. You want your reader to be an active, creative participant in your prose because that keeps the reader interested.

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