Dialog Redux

Dialog is a dramatic force that resides in what is said but not intended, in what is intended but not said. It propels the Sisyphus boulder of story up the hill of expectation, where it pauses, lurches, then begins its downward tumble toward the discovery of damage. It is an attempt to communicate something, either to the person making the utterance, the person to whom it is putatively directed, or some abstraction of audience, perhaps even the gods.

Dialog is the drawings on the cave walls, exquisite evocations of something real, functional, beautiful; in some ways it is recognition and proof of our own existence because someone has uttered our name. But it is not all good news, not by any means; it is a Wagnerian opera when we were expecting Puccini, it is no when we were hoping for yes, it is a broken heart when we were expecting the kite fly of elation, it is the who? when we were hoping to be remembered.

In real life, the life from which we flee or seek to redesign whenever we sit or stand or lie down to write, there is conversation. In the alternate universe of fiction there is dialog, what we might have said had we been our characters, what we might have said had we known more clearly what we were doing. Conversation in fiction becomes a speed bump, a device that causes the story and our sense of it to lurch, jostling us out of our abandon. In fiction, dialog may be contrived to sound like conversation, but when have you seen individuals in story actually rely on such a thin veneer? Thus does conversation in fiction become a betrayal or motive or goal or self by the way it offers up proof of a recognized weakness.

The remarkably apt literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) recognizes dialog as a duality attempting to organize life, imparting to it the potential of being an agent as a specific aspect of message. This is a position I believe most writers come to accept as they grapple with the duality of dialog and their own attempts to set it into motion with action and intent. We don't have to wait for the Pinter and Miller and Stoppard of today, we can start way back in the day with, say, act one, scene two of Richard III, in which the dialog between he who wishes to become Richard and Anne, rages before us in a fiery clash of agenda and duality.

Dialog is the kindling for story; it should make us aware of the smoulder manifest when individuals--any individuals--gather to debate agenda--any agenda. To get to this place, we need to position ourselves firmly within the sphere of influence of each character who steps onto our stage. We have to become the three bag ladies waiting outside for Macbeth as well as the Rob and Laura Petrie of Macbeth. Anything less is conversation.