Naked Dialog

Day #3 of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and the busiest of the six days. Stuff happening from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. In the meantime, this previous post about Naked Dialog from Randy Ingermanson is a good one. 

See ya' later. 

by Randy Ingermanson

NOTE: I am well aware that writing is made up of many different facets—characterization, setting, descriptions, plotting—dozens of things. But I have a soft spot for dialog—the conversation. This

is probably why I like Cormac McCarthy so much (move No Country for Old Men to the tippy-top of your reading list and you will see what I mean). Then try some naked dialog.

"What's naked dialogue?"

"It's dialogue without any action, description, interior monologue, or interior emotion."

"Can you do that?"

"In short stretches."

"Why would you do that? It sounds stupid."

"If the main conflict is in the dialogue, then adding anything else takes the edge off the conflict." 

"I don't believe that could work. Give me three examples where you'd use it."

"Courtroom scenes. Interrogations. Um ... can't think of a third example."

"Maybe a Socratic dialogue?"

"Oh, right."

"So you can actually make this work without even one tag to tell me who's talking?"

"If it works, it works."

"What if it doesn't work?"

"Then add in the minimum amount of other stuff necessary to make it work."

"I suppose you'd call that bikini dialogue then?"

"You're stretching the metaphor too far."

"And you somehow imagine this kind of dialogue works?"

"I know it."

"Could you do a whole scene that way?"

"Orson Scott Card did several scenes that way in ENDER'S GAME."

"How did the reader know who was talking?"

"Readers are smart."

"Don't be ridiculous. Don't readers have to see at least one tag so they know the names of the speakers?"

"Not unless they need to know the names."

"But you'd have to limit it to two people, right? You couldn't possibly do this with three people, could you?"

"Hey guys! Whatcha talking about so violent-like over in the corner? Gretchen, are you practicing your interrogation skills on poor Grendel?"

"Get lost, Goober. I'm just trying to get the bare facts."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I get the message. I'm not wanted, so I'm outta here. Give her heck, Grendel."

"So what was your question again? Something about three people?"

"Never mind, I figured it out."

"Any more questions?"

"Well, naked dialogue sounds difficult. Is it worth it?"

"You have to decide that after it's all written. You can always throw the scene away if you don't like it."

"Have you ever tried it? In your own scene?"

"Just once."

"When?"

"Just now."

"Oh, man, are you going meta on me? Mixing planes of existential reality again? You are so weird!"

"Admit it, Gretchen, you love me."

"That's it. We're finished and I'm leaving."

"It ain't over till I say it's over."

"You can't keep me here against my--"

"It's over."

This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 32,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit

http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

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Photo by Mindaugas Urbonas from Lithuanian wikipedia (Profile, Homepage, Photo Gallery, E-mail, Vestuviniai papuošalai nuotakoms ) (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Comments

[Rosanne Dingli]

Brilliant, Tim. You can really do it. Kept me there to the end, an it did end like people should read what you write.

[Tim Sunderland]

Credit needs to go where I found this article--from Randy Ingermanson. I hope that I can write dialog like this when I grow up. :)

[Mesnard.wordpress.com]

Great job with this post. I seem to end up reading a lot of LinkedIn posts where the links take me to your site. Starting as a screenwriter, I favor naked dialogue over the usual means; so this spoke right to me [no pun intended]. Thanks!

[Michael J. McFadden]

LOL!

*THAT* was fun!

I think I've seen Stephen King do it at times as well. King likes to play with dialect, and if you have characters that speak in very different styles and accents it's easy to follow who's who.

I believe I've also seen it in Lisa Fender's "Fable" where she has a lively modern teen female interacting with a grizzled tough cop and a somewhat medieval-sounding character who's from a somewhat parallel sister-world to regular Earth. The three characters clearly have different ways of speaking so there's no need to keep adding "Bob grunted, 'That is what I meant,' as he sat down."

:)
MJM

[Tim Sunderland]

Thanks to both of you for the input.