Developing an Ear for Dialog

As I prepare to start looking for an agent for Rules for Giving, I am also getting some final proofreads.
One of the comments I get that people like the dialog. This comes mostly from writers, or those familiar with the craft. Since this is my first novel, I’m not sure where that talent comes from. I think mostly it comes from reading authors who are good at dialog.

Cormac McCarthy comes to mind. Not only is his dialog superb, but McCarthy is also one of those authors who does not use  quote tags, quote marks or commas. This forces him to be precise in his writing and requires that the reader concentrate.

I don’t have McCarthy’s reputation—yet—so I have to play by at least some of the rules. So here they are—Tim’s humble rules for dialog:

1. Listen to a conversation of two people as they encounter each other initially. The first comments are about the weather and their kids. Delete this stuff. Do not go there. Have you ever heard a reader complain that the characters in a novel did not discuss the weather or each other’s families. If you must include this information—and I have no idea why you would want to—then at least do it in the expository portion of the text, such as, “After asking Bilbo about his family and complaining about the weather, we discussed the issue at hand.” Even that sounds lame.

2. Even when you write dialog, keep it to a minimum. Only the important stuff. Let’s take an example. Your character is teaching someone how to golf. Here’s the dialog:

 “You’ve never golfed. You don’t know what you’re missing. Here, let me show you.” For the next hour we discussed and acted out the golf swing, talking about grip and tempo, how to use the hips and shoulders, concentrating on the follow-through and how actually hitting the ball should be an afterthought …”

Notice what we didn’t include that in the dialog. That’s boring stuff.

3. Edit dialog like you edit copy. This is a delicate balance. You can’t quite edit dialog to the absolute bare bones as you would with copy (you can if you are Cormac McCarthy, but neither  you nor I are close to that league), but take a hard look at it.  The reader will forgive much in exchange for the joy of reading a well-written story.

4. Beware of the quote tags (I’ve discussed this before). Limit them to he said and she said (or he says and she says if you are writing in the present tense). Resisted having your character whisper, yell, scream, warn, or—God forbid—gesticulate. I just finished reading Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey. He had a character ejaculate dialog. Puh-leaze.

5. Don’t be afraid to throw in some profanity, but it had better work within the context of the story and the character. If your character is a nun (two or three novels from now I have a character who wears the habit) she would not be saying, “Shit”—or maybe she would, but then you have to justify it. Just this last weekend novelist Alexander McCall Smith cautioned against profanity in the Word Craft column in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. I disagee, but remember context. Also, if you ever want to hear a man of the cloth drop the f-bomb, you only have to get him on a golf course. No problem.

I have yet to attain publication status as a fiction writer, so I am hardly the expert. In the three-and-a-half years I have been working on Rules for Giving, however, these are some of the things I have learned. Feel free to pass them on.

See ya' later.

 

Comments

[Skip]

In Grey's defense, the word didn't have the same connotation it does today, and he was writing a long time ago. That said, I found Grey amazingly flowery and ornate for a writer of Westerns. Then again, I don't know that genre much. One Grey and two L'Amour's under my belt, and that's all ... he said defensively. :)

[Tim Sunderland]

I agree about Grey's writing style. Very literary for a story about cowboys. Like you, though, that's not a genre I have read much. If you have read two L'Amours, that means you are two novels ahead of me when it comes to westerns.