Dialogue: It Was the Best of Problems, It was the Worst of Problems

A client of yours who is a literary agent has asked you to work with a client of hers on point of view, telling you the writer seems baffled by it.  Another, quite different agent, has remarked to you more than once that his biggest problem in dealing with his clients is getting them to understand the nature of "beats," those moments of activity in a story, the literary equivalent of notes on a musical score, expression volition and duration.  A client who is a writer finds difficulty in expressing motivation, and yet another has problems distinguishing voice from style.

You sympathize with all these difficulties to the extent that you had to work your way through them to the point where you felt confident with them, where they neither intimidated you nor caused you to either under- or overestimate their importance.

And yet.

You still believe the single most important aspect to the early and intermediate writer is dialogue, which is not what people say to one another so much as it is how characters advance story through its accelerated impact upon them.  It is in effect the energy created between one character saying "Good morning" to another, only to be met with the response, "Not that cheery-dearie business again."  Or, "I love you," provoking the response, "I'm supposed to issue a get-out-of-jail-free on the basis of that, right?"

It is true that some short story writers are able to express an entire narrative without using a word of dialogue while at the same time causing you to believe you have heard conversations among the characters.  It is also true that Harold Pinter could get "dialogue" out of two characters who didn't speak a work but instead rattled or otherwise got "dialogue" out of the sounds they produced by holding their portions of the daily newspaper and turning pages or otherwise creating sounds that evoked the nature of their feelings through the silence surrounding them.

Dialogue is not only the imaginary conversations within a single character or a pair of characters, it is in its way An American Gothic of drama in the evoked volley and return of feelings set against the deeper, truer feelings of the individuals; it is the seemingly magical effect of what is being said, set against what is being felt.  Of course it is not magic.  It is drama.  It is dialogue.

This early into the twenty-first century, the great dramatic dialogue seems to surround the issue of whether there is or is not a god.  You have close friends and some students on both sides of the debate.  Your own take is that there is none, although that only matters to you because you do not always address it directly in your stories.  You have not polled your characters on whether they believe or not, although you suspect a smaller percentage of them believe than those who do not.  The dialogue is, you recognize, a useful subtext, an argument your characters have had off stage with those about them, thus the residue of their differing attitudes as they engage one another.  How do such characters behave, speak to one another?  How do they speak of any basic matters?

There are a number of individuals in reality for whom you have measures of love along with regard.  You love some of them in spite of your regard for them because this, too, is part of human nature.  You feel love from a number of persons.  A number of persons you have loved have died, their loss particularly haunting because of you awareness that they loved you in ways that at one time defined your connection to the world and to reality.  It is feasible that the time will come when all those who love you in that particular way will be gone from you except in memory, revising your sense of connection to what you think of as reality and the universe.

The effect this will have on your conversations and dialogue cannot be forecast nor measured just as anticipated grief can only be spoken of aslant as opposed to straight on.  You can predict that in the process of aging, persons show a tendency to be haunted by past events and by the ghostly memories of significant individuals in their life who have died.  These individuals in some form or other of denial or displacement carry on dialogue with ghosts.  Your mother, for instance, frequently told you as a kind of ironic aside that if there is such a thing as an afterlife, your father will have a great deal to answer for.  This glimpse of her, this memory of her speaking to you, helps define her at once at her strongest and best and as an example of her own felt vulnerability.  This is the stuff of dialogue.  This is the stuff you need to remember.

When first we practice to discuss

When individual characters in a story converse, does their dialogue have to give the effect of an argument between them?

The simple, direct answer to that rhetorical and simplistic question is yes.

Even when characters are in accord, there is an ever present sense of a word or two being misunderstood, overly emphasized, felt or construed in some ironic or cynical way you know will ultimately lead to explosion.  Yeah, right; you're doing it because you love me.

When Character A makes unblinking eye contact with Character B, then says, "I see what you mean." a portion of our reader sensitivity is already leaping ahead to wonder if Character A does in fact see what Character B means.  Thus the seeds of anticipation and ambiguity are broadcast, the former setting in our minds a scene in which Character A will come to some kind of accounting for having with such emphasis seen what B means.  As well, we are drawn to the reality of our own communications with those about us and the comparatively low rate of satisfaction we have.  Some of us writers are even more likely to wince, having experienced editorial queries on our own works, notations asking us if A really intended that observation.  Truth to tell, it is a world of anticipations being driven off cliffs and of ambiguous fates out there.

Look at it this way:  when two or more characters converse it is indeed not mere conversation of the sort you are likely to have among a group of civilian (non-writer) friends; it is instead an enquiry board or an arbitration panel or a grand jury, trying variously to effect a cause, an agreement, or the extent of guilty participation.

Magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Liberty, from the heyday of short fiction would tend to view the simple phrase, "Honey, I'm home" as a simple announcement from the head of the family, in from an energetic, productive day at work, ready for some quality time with the kids before supper, a Kool-Aid metaphor for the Great American Dream being firmly in place.  Later in the same century, along comes Playboy in cynical riposte to the point where "Honey, I'm home," produces another reaction altogether, "Geez, I thought you said he never left the office before six," and the even more cynical "Will you please shut up and remember why you're here!"  Some might argue about the use of the exclamation point there; it was included to indicate the speaker's ardent wish to business at hand to be concluded rather than interrupted, thus occupying even more time before a potential confrontation might emerge.

Among the words you use to describe the resident emotions of scenes is edge.  You have seen plays written by Harold Pinter in which even though there was no dialogue being exchanged between the persons on stage, the mere rattling of a newspaper became dialogue, implying impatience, anger, irritation.

Dialogue is the unseen mosquito buzzing about in the room, the static electricity that sparks from the characters' clothing as they sit or stand; it is sexual tension and/or suspense or suspicion or resentment repressed at some degree of effort.  In David Lodge's remarkable novel, Deaf Sentences, it is a man losing his hearing, constantly misreading homophones, getting progressively more muddled as individuals close at hand increasingly shout at him.  However it sounds in appearance--"Did you sleep well?"--it is a world of implication in its own right, a reference to something in the past or some ongoing symptom that if not treated will become, that does become epidemic. Dialogue is the unthinkable, come to stay for a nice, long visit.

Converse Conversation

Dialogue is a siren's song leading the story teller into the temptation of trying to find it in the way characters speak as opposed to placing it directly at the roots of how they act.

For some years, you listened carefully, working to capture on the page what you heard out there in such realities as the coffee house, the workplace, even the classroom.  As a consequence, your dialogue reeked of authenticity but conveyed boredom in conversational form.  You in effect gave voice to boredom, thinking it would be interesting if it sounded real but dooming it from the get go for that very reason.

Since those days of conversational characters, over-explained and linear story lines, you have with the fervor of a circuit-riding preacher advocated the view of dialogue in which it is specifically:

not conversation.
not really American English.
not a tool for explaining the story.
not a platform for addressing the reader.
not the author speaking to the reader in any way.

With these embargoes in mind, you have moved closer to the interior of story telling rather than story by description.  You are pleased to be in this position because among other things, you have wanted to be here without being able to articulate the mechanics of why you wished to be here.  It was somewhat like being sympathetic with your need to involuntarily shout ouch or worse, when you hit your thumb with a hammer.

Understanding what characters want is a major step forward; so is what you understand to be subtext, the difference between what a character actually feels while saying what is actually said at the time.  These two elements have moved you closer:  (1) awareness of what the character wants, and (2) the sensitivity to the fact of the character being caught in the bind of having to speak to appearances--the Social Contract, if you will--while feeling indifferent or oblique to it much less in hearty endorsement.

In an exchange with your literary agent yesterday in which she told you of a friend who'd been fired as editor in chief of a publishing house because of his irreverent behavior toward a martinet of a publisher, you were reminded of a similar situation in which you, as editor in chief, were fired because of your relationship with the publisher.  The man who fired you was a significant force behind your learning the inner life of dialogue.  Occasionally one meets such persons in life and while they may seem a puzzling quantity at first, they merit close attention not only in what they say but in ways their behavior speaks to who they are and what they want from others.

As you noted to your agent, "Your friend the late Pockell reminds me of  how I 'left' my ed in chief gig at the scholarly publisher.  The  Publisher was a short, martinet of a man whose behavior taught me much about writing dialogue."  You went on to recall a particularly memorable exchange with him, EHB:

"You didn't tell me you went to Yale."
"Because,"  I said, "I didn't."
"You wear J. Press.  Only men who attended Yale wear J. Press."
"But I didn't attend Yale."
"And you wear striped ties with houndstooth jackets.  You dress Yale."
"An accident.  I have no idea what people wear at Yale."
"How do you rationalize not wearing Brooks Brothers?"
"I don't rationalize it.  I simply don't do it.  With the exception of one shirt, an emergency purchase, I tend not to like Brooks Brothers clothing."
"Odd.  Very odd.  You appear neat in spite of it."
When members of my staff saw us together, they would say loud enough for me to hear it, "Well, there's the long and short of it."

Such exchanges remain in memory and help forge the structural nature of exchanges of dialogue, which is a kind of ladder by which the characters reach higher emotional levels of involvement with the cosmos of story.

Letters to a Young, Middle-Aged, or Geezer Writer, XXIV

There is an order of dramatic events in story that at first blush may seem to come at whim, either the whim of the characters or of the writer.  This order has its origins in what the major character wants and how this character behaves in service of bringing these wants to resolution.  Each time that character appears in a scene, he or she brings expectations relative to the final outcome.

All characters come into a scene with some degree of expectation, perhaps dread or anticipation, perhaps even curiosity.  A character without some tangible expectation has no business in a particular scene.  It is literally enough for you to say John, a minor, minor character, who will be in the scene, dreads the scope of the scene which could be say a faculty meeting or other arrangement where individuals tend to talk at great length about themselves as opposed to the agenda for the meeting.  John has, through his dread of the coming meeting, bought his way in.  Everything John says will reflect his being here under a measure of duress-regret-unwillingness.

This vision of characters having an expectation in a forthcoming scene is the basis for what they say, which is what dialogue is.  If you don't know what a character is doing in a scene, that character will not sound convincing, but even more to the point, will not sound as though he or she knows why you've got him there at that moment.

Dialogue is not conversation, not even when the characters are conversing.  Some expectation or misinterpretation or misunderstanding is waiting close at hand to pounce.  In the better scenes and exchanges of dialogue, characters may become so eager or frustrated or preoccupied that they reveal/betray some hint of their true agenda.

When I was a low-level employee at the night office of The Associated Press, nestled in a corner of the Los Angeles Times building, there was a sign in place at every reporter's desk.  It read:  "There has never been a better verb than said."  This adage can well apply to fiction as well; said is a neutral word, one the reader takes for granted unless it is inelegantly or inexpertly repeated to the point of distraction.  Elements of story such as dialogue may be used to create a relevant effect, but think about this:  the best effect of all in story is the plausible sense of story, a sense we take in the same way we take in breath as we read.  We do not need someone to explain to us why we breathe any more than we need someone to explain to us what story is and what it means.

I Confront, You Confront, He, She, or It Confronts

Confrontation may well be the head-on meeting of two or more opposing forces but it is also the spine of story and in the ironic bargain the navigation system by which most of us maneuver the reefs and shoals of our daily reality.

A sophisticated balancing act begins when we set forth to tell a story, putting onto a collision course the same forces we claim to observe in fiction while at the same time pursuing any kind of civil citizenry. We manipulate characters into irresistible situations of stress, moral confusion, and the just-beyond-arm's-reach realization of heartfelt agenda at the same time monitoring, controlling, and restraining our own behavior in the names of consideration and social restraint.

To the extent that we inject our own sense of tension and temptation into the story at hand, we invite the reader inside the raging dialectic between teller and reality, between observer and actual participant, between character and temptation.

Conventional wisdom whispers into our ear the encouragement to focus on conflict as the engine of story, an encouragement we fall upon with the eagerness and recognition of fleas discovering a long-haired dog. But our results of following such a course are fraught with the misplaced energy of thin, one- or two-dimensional characters who barely hint at the conversation to be had between writer and character, between characters and readers.

If the reader is led to feel the tension the writer experiences between story and reality, then and only then has the story succeeded in becoming more of a portal to interior conflict than a mere traffic report of conflicting agendas.

Confrontation is the meeting within each and every character, however front rank or humble walk-on, of the character's core agenda and what the appropriate behavioral dictates of that particular character--what is felt internally and desired as opposed to what is said and done in consequence. Accordingly, confrontation is present in every stave of dialogue, a simmering, bubbling catalyst that may explode into a force that causes the character to say and/or do something that betrays the protective covering, the Kevlar vest of reality worn by the character. Most characters will not willingly betray secrets of agenda until the collision with the stress of urgent confrontation, knocking at the gate like the porter in Macbeth, demanding to be let in.

The Mine Field of Story

As you see it, event is critical to story. At one point in the history of when you began pondering such things and trying to understand why you used them and, indeed, why some of them were so much more effective than others, you were firm in your belief that characters were the most critical element. How, you reasoned, could a story progress without them? But then as editor, teacher, and your own self as writer, you began to see numerous examples of narratives in which there were characters but no event. If, after some pages of angst and reflection, there were events, they were all events expressed in past or past perfect tenses.

Event has become for you the unexamined part of the formula, which is of a piece with attempting to understand algebra without paying any heed whatsoever to the equal sign. Look at the mischief possible when A and B are at an event. The event passes into history and now A and B are discussing the event with C and D, each attempting to convey implications and nuances. Of course C and D begin as more or less neutral audiences, responding to the "You should have been there" trope from A and B. The neutrality of C and D begins to implode and explode as A and B constantly contradict one another as their attempts to define or describe the event and its implications progress.

This came about because you were in the parking lot of the Montecito Von's Market, unloading purchases from the shopping cart to the back deck of your Yaris, when you saw a friend with whom you began to converse. (Anything to avoid the task of unloading.) Moments later, a late-model luxury car drew abreast of you, pausing to make polite inquiry from the passenger seat of how to reach the Four Seasons Biltmore Hotel, a dead giveaway that they were tourists because a local would have merely asked How do I get to the Biltmore from here?

Okay. Round One: You said, "Go to this (pointing to the exit) exit, then turn right. Proceed for about a mile and a half until you come to Olive Mill Road--" whereupon you were cut off by your companion.

Round Two: "Go to the exit, then turn left until you approach the roundabout, which you follow until you reach Coast Village Road, where you will proceed southeast toward Olive Mill Road--" whereupon your companion was cut off by you.

Round Three: "Why complicate things with the roundabout and Coast Village Road? If they turn right, they will be on Hot Springs Road, which becomes Olive Mill Road, which will take them to the Biltmore without the extra traffic and potential confusion." Which was true but not critically true, imperatively true. Thus the vision of a story in the making over this seemingly random event in which A and B are more closely joined by a relationship and a history and C and D are the innocent victims caught up in this particular event which is the emotional equivalent of the improvised explosive devices we have experienced in all their sudden potential for damage and horror in Iraq.

Thus this formula for you from one who tends not to trust formulae: In the beginning, the event is entirely in the present moment and remains so until the reader can see the trigger for conflict being tripped. This allows the writer to move back into the past for a brief connection in which one or more characters sees a relationship between the present time event and a past-time event. Perhaps just a hint, but enough of one to alert the reader. Back to the present event again and an increase in the rancorous exchanges of dialogue, suggesting with even more clarity that the characters are not about to maintain civilized discourse, they are fucking growing angrier by the moment. This would be a perfect time to shift from the present event to some seemingly unrelated collateral event, which provokes even more of a disconnect, causing either or perhaps both A and B to turn on C and D as well as upon each other.

The event becomes as artfully and carefully braided as a middle school girl's pigtail, and is ready to lead you into the mine field that is story, a mine field you attempt to cross wearing snow shoes--one step at a time.

Learning not merely how to write but when to write it

In a meeting with a student yesterday, you were handed your own reading copy of a manuscript that turned out to be exactly what you asked for: the first draft, the very first draft of the first scene of a short story. As you read through it, one minor suggestion quickly arose--reverse the order of the first two sentences. A mere editorial enhancement. Reading farther along, you felt yourself gripped by a growing sense of unease that had nothing whatsoever to do with the student, who after all truly did give you exactly what you'd asked. Rather the sense of discomfort spreading just below the enjoyment level of your medium latte was a strike of lightning hitting you, particularly the you of the past, directly in the middle of your attitude.

Unfortunately for you, there was a time when you conflated energy for writing with first-draft performance. If you messed up with a word or sentence, you merely struck it out and substituted right there on the spot. This effectively meant first draft was the only draft. You took great refuge in the thought that being a lousy speller meant you had to go through the first draft to clean up spelling errors. Even novels were produced this way, thought out for their form then written as quickly as you could, then shipped off to whoever would have them. You felt a kinship with one of your heroes, Fitzgerald. You couldn't spell, either, and you had a great affinity for such potables as scotch, bourbon, vodka, and a wide range of liqueurs such as Benedictine, strega, amaretto, and anything with a licorice aftertaste. Mornings after, you consulted the ramos gin fizz, which often meant you had to be in San Francisco because where better to get the ramos gin fizz than the Buena Vista at Sunday morning breakfast.

So much for all that.

What the student had done, you noticed, was a nearly pitch-perfect map or chart of the emotions of the protagonist of the tale, line by line. You were able to see beyond the literalness and excess of the lines of text into the perfectly placed responses the character was experiencing as the scene progressed. The student was so successful in this that you wondered, still smarting from the lightening strike who had taught whom.

You are quite fond of saying (and sincere in the saying of it) "Don't think during the first draft. Get down what comes out. The thinking comes in subsequent drafts."

You are also quite fond of saying that however much fun the first draft is, revision is even more so because it is in this process of entering the story that your own awareness of feelings, subtexts, and intentions come forth or need to be made to come forth. As you were imparting this theory of yours yesterday, it metastasized into an overt strategy, representing yet another nuance of your theory about the ways in which drama inheres in the developing story.

It helps also to have been reading the splendid novel, Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, in which the characters' agendas so deftly and convincingly define them.

Speak the speech, I pray you

The spoken word in a dramatic narrative is a welcomed respite from the conversation of the workplace, school, home, and all those places in between where we attempt to convey our needs and dreams to others. Although these spoken words have subtext and make some attempt at nuance, they are not dialogue and they are precisely not dialogue because no matter how we yearn or try to be characters, we are merely ourselves. As ourselves, we speak conversational English, trying to enhance the result with wit, possibly even humor. We go about our daily routine approaching moments when we wish we had dialogue to offer but at the same time mindful that dialogue does not work in the quotidian any more than conversation works to any effect at all in fiction.

The secret is to understand that dialogue in fiction may be given the sound of conversation, but it and trees falling in the forest have in common the need for a hearer. You might say each, the tree and the dialogue, needs a listener or a reader. If conversation between two or more individuals becomes too focused, the participants become self-conscious or distracted.

We have in common with our characters the trait that causes us to say one thing while meaning either its very opposite or an understatement of our true intent. In conversations, we have devices to defuse the sentiments and bits of information put forth. In dialogue, we speak at these elephants in the living room, their appearance beginning to appear before the reader as though intent had sprung a leak and was spilling slowly forth.

None of this means we cannot have an enjoyable time with friends or that dialogue needs to be confrontational; in either case we should be understood and the motives of our characters begin find places through which to leak. If, in a conversation, we allow that today wasn't particularly eventful, in fact even a bit boring, this can be an excuse for another round, a commiseration, or some attempt at raising the level of conversation to something more substantial. If in a story nothing happened that was particularly eventful, the reader should have the option to think one of the characters was lying or perhaps failing to notice something momentous, which the reader has already seen.

Seven Ways of Looking at an Ambiguity

Last night I dreamed I went to UCLA again. It seemed to me I stood midway between Royce Hall and the Library, amazed at finding myself there. Unlike the protagonist's experience in Rebecca, I found no gates closed against me, no ominous chains or locks, only a mild and not unpleasant drizzle as I purposefully moved toward the library and the sprawl of steps leading to the main entrance. From that point, it was over to the western banister, a large concrete slab near which chums often met between classes and at which place many of us left books, notebooks, even temporarily unworn jackets or sweaters, a sort of large, informal substitute for a bank of hall lockers. There were present at the steps a group of younger men, all clad in suits and ties. They did not seem to know me nor I them, giving me the sense that some form of closure with them and the venue, itself, had been achieved, a closure that could not be sorted out at the moment because, approaching me was a young woman who apparently had been expecting me and although I did not recognize her as a specific individual I nevertheless felt pleased to see. I strode toward her and the dream ended.

There are two psychotherapists in my Woodside writing workshop, one Jungian psychiatrist, making him perforce an M.D., the other a psychologist who is also an educator and multifarious writer, currently about to publish a book about the uses of LSD. Each of the two have a similar take on dreaming, more or less boiled down to one of five or six episodes a night of events during which the individual dreamer resolves or edits waking hour conflicts. Each of them was discussing these dream sessions in his own context, leaving me to wonder aloud of patients of Freudian psychiatrists have Freudian dreams, patients of Jungian analysts accordingly have Jungian archetypal dreams, patients of more eclectic therapists having eclectic dreams, and those of us not in any special mode of dialogue or, perhaps, past patients in a dialogue, having random dreams. We concluded affably that the psychiatrist/therapist is a partner in the transaction, his or her encouragements, even sub-vocal grunts being a part of an invitation to "have" a particular format of dream.

Not too long back, after mentioning the details of one of your dreams in a classroom setting, one of your students offered a Zen interpretation which seemed entirely plausible. In general, it is difficult to dismiss dreams as having no contextual value nor indeed precluding their predictive or warning or omen potentials given the vast outreach possibilities of the brain as a processing organ.

You don't think you'll be spending too much time ferreting out meaning from your UCLA dream or the sense of closure it gave you, rather content to interpret it as a fanciful construction implying you'd finished--dare you say come to terms with--your classroom aspects of learning and were more likely now to achieve learning in the library.

You'd give a pretty to know who or what or both the young woman was, what she wanted, and what was in store. But you suppose that will be the subject of one or more dreams to come. The question is whether you will remember the answers that will occur, which very question leads you back to the subject you raised yesterday of resident attitude and motivation for writing.

Ambiguity is as much a presence in life as loss; it may be redundant to say you live with loss and ambiguity but nevertheless, redundancy earns its keep here. The things you believe you know, the experiences you believe you have had, the observations you have made with varying degrees of intensity are all subject to the revision of your waking memory, your sleeping dreams, and the contrary impressions of individuals who claimed to be present at the same time or place. You may love some of these individuals deeply, consider some not worth the time it takes to hear their views, or regret having any cause for further dealings, but all of these bring into play alternate views of the reality you carry about.

Much of what you write and write about is an attempt to deal with ambiguity, have a dialogue with it. A dialogue you will remember and it will remember. One of the lovely ironies inherent in ambiguity is that the more you invite readers in to your reality, using deliberate techniques that allow them to see their certainties in your narrative, the more you are using the tool of ambiguity.

A Table for Two

The driving force in narrative is curiosity.
Reader and characters proceed to peer beyond what will happen, into the territory of what information will be revealed in the unfolding of an event.

Two individuals are having a conversation somewhere--or so the reader thinks at first blush.  Each of the two characters has come into the scene bearing the baggage of explosive previous encounters.  They have come to THIS place because it is neutral, with no associations for either of them.  They have brought with them the gifts of a resolve to be patient with one another, each purposeful in the intent to let the other finish thoughts, sentences, ideas.

We don't know the names, gender, ages, social rank of either and yet look at how much we already know about them.  The "Go-ahead" card is down on the table; each is determined to let the other go ahead and/or finish what is to be said.

We can begin to wrap other relevant data about the armatures of these two, data that will find its way with a snow-shoes-through-a-mine-field purpose and caution, learning more about each of the characters and feeling the tangible emotional climate as they proceed.

So long as we have been triggered toward suspicion, we can suspect they will once again escalate toward combustion because they have done so in the past.  WE may also feel the mounting tension because timing and pace have become important factors in the meeting.  

Though neither has an abundance of time, each is constrained by the be patient rule. Whatever the subject of conversation, we sense the control and deliberation being exercised to the point where it becomes a tangible tension.  

The subject may never be directly articulated, as with the conversation between the couple in the Hemingway story, "Hills Like White Elephants."  The subject at hand may also be--writer's choice--carefully spelled out to the point where the reader will wonder, What is it with these two? because there is a subtext shimmering there over the conversation like the ghost of a former lover.  

We may, of course, set off with a conclusion already in mind.  They are heading to combustion, perhaps to the point of not speaking again for some weeks or months to come--perhaps not ever again.  Having opted for this approach, we can set the conversation in motion with an agenda or agreed-upon result:  Did you bring the papers for me to sign?  

What a lovely, evocative line.  "Of course I brought the papers for you to sign.  That was the entire purpose of this meeting, wasn't it?"  What a lovely lagniappe to tack onto this simple sentence:  "What do you take me for?"  And now, the attitude-tinged response.  "Well."  Or, if you are the sort who prizes greater clarity:  "Well, I thought..."

The thing has evolved; we want to know.  Reader and writer, we want to know.  Let's start with the first thing we want to know:
"What's that supposed to mean?"

There is absolutely nothing unusual in this conversation, yet it carries agenda and implication crackling between the two characters much in the manner of the electricity between Richard and Anne in Richard III, Act One, Scene Two.

What will they do?  When and how will they do it?

We still know precious little about them.  Does it say anywhere that they are analogs of two trains, speeding toward one another on the same track?  So long as the conversation is on the table, a tension begins to grow until none of us, reader, writer, or characters can endure it.  And this is the point where we begin looking closely for the optimal point in the text to end the scene, a deed that may mean leaving out a line or an exchange that has become memorable with the texture of wit, but this is not about wit; it is about two unnamed individuals of indeterminate age, gender, and moral clarity, meeting to exchange dialogue.  

We barely know enough about either to determine who they are or what they want and what they might do to us.  They could be man and woman, woman and woman, man and man.  They could be former lovers, present-time lovers, parent and child.  The choice is entirely ours.  

We have set them loose to work their way across the whiteness of page, of computer screen, of the stage of the mind.  They are nameless but they are armed with two weapons that may pierce us to the quick, drama and dialogue.

Bad Dialogue: The Last Refuge of a Tin Ear

In your own reading of the fiction of other writers, you are willing to put up with matters of plot--too much or too little--as well as matters of description, setting, even theme.  You consider it a strength that some of the stories you have enjoyed the most were set in places or eras for which you had no apparent interest.  You were somewhat taken aback, for instance, when Richard Powers' novel, The Echo Maker, began in, ugh, Nebraska, but the outcome of that is, as they say, history.  

Having more or less defined yourself as laissez faire in your approach to reading, let us move to the place of intransigence, the place where your cholers rise with every infraction to the point of boil, to the point where you become, as it were, at one with Dorothy Parker's observation about a book she was reviewing:  "This is not a book to be set aside lightly.  It should be thrown across the room with great force."  

The issue is dialogue.  No other thing, not even Lee Child's stick-figure representation of his character, Jack Reacher, comes upon you with the force of a dragon waking up with a hangover as does dialogue rendered as conversation.  You find yourself the perpetrator of enough inane conversation without having to endure more in print or on the computer screen or the screen of your iPod Touch.  "Oh, yeah, the novel's comin' along.  No, don't have anything but a thematic ending in sight yet.  Yeah, yeah, a little something, page or two, every day."  You find yourself on the receiving end of it, too.  Conversation is, after all, a major component of the human condition, and you want that; you relate to how, Intelligent Design factotems to the contrary notwithstanding, the need to transfer sophisticated and complex information has led the size of our brain to enhance, giving us some greater opportunity to survive a tad longer.

You are particularly offended by such tropes as, "Oh."  Or even "Oh, I see," rendered as separate paragraphs, absent any bodily movement or interior monologue to provide subtext or even context, but the blood doth begin to boil when the Hi, Honey, how was work today? Oh, not bad kind of conversation begins and the writer, struggling to break away from such bons mots, becomes even more conversational.

Bad dialogue is the albatross an otherwise decent story must carry in living tribute to The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner."  Bad dialogue is the But she really said that of drama, the burden one must bear until the message comes through and the writer--yourself included, realizes that a bad story is made palatable, even good with effective dialogue.  Bad dialogue is the pin prick in the tip of the condom of story; it is a reminder that we are reading or participating somehow in the literary equivalent of vacation photos.

"If you come any closer, I--I'll shoot,"  he said menacingly.

"If you don't stop at once, I'll scream," she said threateningly.

Bang, bang.

"Help, help."

I'm outta here; just thinking about it is getting to me.  See you later.

Timeshares in Inevitability

Once you're aware that each character in a story has a separate and distinct reality, you're ready to enter the frightening landscape of inevitability, which is, after all, the guiding force in drama.

First you have to get through a few outer doors, beginning with suspense and its reputation for being the fuel that powers story.  Suspense posits a critical interruption of agendas, of plans under way or about to start.  Menace is often a stowaway to the interruption, either threatened or actual, the remaining questions being where, when, and what the afflicted characters will do next.

Tension is the next barrier, a tricky one to get over because it is a tangible byproduct of characters having differing realities.  The moment two or more individuals spend any time together, each of them begins to question, however under the radar the questioning, the reality of the other.

Inevitability arrives in a longer story early in act two, where characters begin to sense opposition, disagreement, and a measure of what each judges to be self-interest in the other. You can see the classic pull between wanting the freedom of aloneness and openness of choice fighting with the urge to form friendships or romantic associations.  A tentative compromise is sent forth, either to be accepted, ignored, or rebuffed.  Thus does tension begin, slouching toward the Bethlehem of suspense, fulfilling the inherent promise of inevitability.

Those who came before us spoke of inevitability as Fate or the will of whatever gods were accepting earmarks or outright tributes.  Some of us still hold those beliefs.  Whatever.  The evidence is there before us in story after story, whether a play, novel, or short form:  place two characters in the same setting and they speak to the story at hand, they respond in some way that creates at the very least a fabric of tension.  They do what persons in real life often don't--they respond and speak that sublime dramatic language of dialogue.

Ah, the misbegotten scenes of the learning curve, in which characters chatted, expounded on theory and philosophy, missed the nightly showers of subtext and agenda in the dramatic skies.  Ah, the moments when the author in us, eager to be in command, wrested control from the characters, individuals whose goals we barely knew, all but holding up posters explaining the motivations that should have spoken for themselves.

But with time, we came to realize.  It was, you might say, inevitable.

The Genie out of the Bottle

If revenge is a dish best served cold, which is to say dispassionately, then irony is a dish best served with a secreted body part of a bug or small rodent, which is to say with a hidden agenda. Revenge is a dramatic way of getting one's own returned, a score settled, a slate wiped clean as in Poe's "A Cask of Amontillado" and Thurber's artful follow-up, "The Catbird Seat." Irony is the reader being allowed to eavesdrop on the difference between what is said and what is actually meant, as in Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day.

As an actor learns the essentials of the acting craft, it becomes increasingly clear that persons in real life and, consequently characters in drama, do not always say what they mean, covering intent with distracting gestures, contrivances, and disguises. As a writer learns the essentials of dialogue, it becomes increasingly clear that what passes for conversation must be driven by the inflections and attitudes of constrain, perhaps even caution, lest a misstep will let the genie out of the bottle.

Living with irony as a fact of the human condition allows the writer to impart complexity and dimension to a story, a complexity and dimension that extend beyond the alleyways and culs de sac of plot. To arrive at the point of living with irony, the writer profits from beginning each new scene with an investigation of the intent each character comes on stage carrying. Sometimes the intent is to keep status quo, to refrain from giving in to the smoldering resentment or impatience felt toward another character. If she says THAT one more time, I will scream. Of course she, whoever she might be, comes cheerfully into the scene, proclaiming THAT at the top of her voice. Thus are moments of tension formed, and even more thusly, another step is taken toward the goal of combustion. Now we are in a position where we do not actually have to see the "I" scream--we can end the scene shortly before the actual scream which, however skilled and excellent our descriptive powers may be, we could not do justice to the scream within the reader's mind.

No question about where to begin the next scene. Another character is remonstrating with "I." "I think it was terrible the way you shouted at her." Of course, you could have the remonstration take these lines, "I was really surprised that you were able to show such restraint."

We could also have a completely different set of circumstances:

"What's wrong? I thought this was something you really wanted to do."

"I do," she said, "but--"

"But?"

"I've never made love with a sixty-year-old man before."

"If it makes you feel more comfortable," he said, "neither have I."

A Call to Action

actioning--an interpretive concept for actors, also useful for providing writers with structural insights; a technique for establishing authentic spontaneity in a character's response to a stimulus, whether from another character, a dramatic condition, or an inanimate object.

Actioning implies finding an action for a particular event in a story. This means translating agenda or goal or perhaps fear or revulsion at every opportunity, resorting to mood as a secondary tool. Once this concept is understood by the writer to the point where it becomes muscle memory, the characters will emerge from a story with greater clarity and purpose. The concept involves knowing in addition to who the character is, what that character wants, what that character is willing to do or not do to attain the goal, and how the character feels about all the other characters in the story.

Hint: For writers, dialogue is also part of actioning.

This last attitude--how characters feel about each other-- is of particular importance when the character speaks to another. Does that character admire, distrust, resent, possibly even hate the other character? And what are the social boundaries surrounding their relationship. Suppose Mary can't stand her mother-in-law? How would she, in a family gathering, inquire if her mother-in-law wanted tea? And suppose the mother-in-law thinks her son could/should have done better in his choice of a wife. How would she respond? "What ever led you to think I drank tea?" Nice, maybe. What about, "This time, remember the lemon." Or, "I'll get it, myself."

Dialogue is not conversation, it is an exchange of dramatic action. A simple line of dialog such as "I'm not hungry" may be read in a number of contexts. Your character should not say "I'm not hungry" (a perfectly plausible thing to say under many circumstances) unless, being said, it hovers between the speaker and the hearer...and the reader with a meaning that extends well beyond,"I don't require food." For instance, suppose the speaker of that "I'm not hungry" line is met with the response, "But I went to great effort to make this for you." Ah, now the light is beginning to dawn.

Added hint: Think verbs at your characters. He wants. She lusts. He envies. She detests.

The writer has the advantage over the actor of being able to use mood in narrative, but to action-ize narrative, imagine the character thinking thoughts at as well as to a particular character or group. I should tell them all, she thought, to take their offer of a vice-presidency and shove it. Thinking that, what does she do next? That's actioning. That's also story.

In much of today's modern theatrical productions, the director and cast meet early in rehearsal to action the script, creating the bonding chemistry among the cast that will inform their interpretations of the lines before them, and making it easier for the director to block out each scene, defining where each character should be. Even for writers who like to proceed with no game plan, detailing the feelings for each character to all the others is a floatation jacked for a sea of chaos.

Talking Heads

talking heads--two or more characters in a scene/setting, exchanging dialogue with only minimal accompanying gesture or inflection; characters seen by the reader as exchanging dramatic information which is little more than narrative encased in quotation marks; by implication, characters who fail to demonstrate significant dramatic force within a story.

Individuals converse in real life. Characters use dialogue and agenda as though each were a volleyball being batted back and forth over a net. "Characters" in an oratorio sit in some pew-like arrangement, singing while reading directly from a musical score. Characters in an opera exchange dialogue, sing, and move about on the stage, providing dramatic action while they sing.

Some writers use talking heads in the belief that they are showing rather than telling, indulging their characters in long exchanges of information framed by quotation marks, but giving no sense whatsoever of what the speaker is seeing, tasting, feeling, or any other drama-based activity. Such exchanges, because they are notably lacking in subtext, add a weight of consequence to the narrative that is often fatal, providing the reader with an excellent opportunity to set the book or story down without intention of return.

Get your characters into a reaction process with one or more of the other characters in a scene as quickly as possible. Avoid the temptation to have characters utter speeches or, for that matter, anything else. Dialogue is spoken, even shouted, perhaps sputtered. Imagine a cast of characters in a play or film, not using their body, certainly not their face or eyes--only their voice. But remember, even radio drama has sound effects, noises the characters would plausibly make in their time within a scene.

All right, you ask, how do I go about getting important information into the awareness of the reader? Have one or more characters interrupt or draw the wrong conclusions, or cause an immediate digression. The reader will become frustrated, which is considerably more positive than if the reader were to experience boredom.

Even when you are giving the impression of making things easy for the characters, your best approach is to make it as difficult as possible. In one of Graham Greene's undeservedly neglected thrillers, The Confidential Agent, the protagonist is sent to a foreign city where he is to meet a fellow spy, who is working as an instructor in a language school. They must observe the convention of speaking in an artificial language called Intrenaciono, a take-off on Esperanto. Thus the protagonist must wade through his instructions in this artificial language and not only make sense of it but translate his own reports. A great deal is at stake during the transaction, but if the two are to avoid detection, they must play by these artificial rules.

Talking heads represent missed opportunities at genuine story telling.

And now, it will not do you any good to complain about the laxity of enforcing such exchanges in already published work. They have all had the effect of causing literary agents and editors to be more determined than ever that you not be allowed to get away with having your characters emerge as talking heads.

The "Other" Parts

inference--an assumption or conclusion reached by a character in a story or by a reader reading the story; a reaction or decision which is possibly correct, made without direct, unassailable evidence; a conclusion formed by a character or a reader based on past experience; the use of circumstantial evidence; arriving at a conclusion or decision based entirely upon a character's experience and subsequently based on the reader's experience.

As the twenty-first century shifts into gear (See pathetic fallacy), one highly visible fork in the narrative road is the inferential one, in which the reader is left with more leeway to assume such matters as agenda, intent, and volition of characters as well as what actually happened in a narrative. Did they or didn't they? Were they, or not? Such words as ambiguity and elliptical come forth, particularly in the short story.

A highly prolific and versatile writer, Elmore Leonard, speaking at publishing conventions (ABA, Book Expo, etc) and writers' conferences (notably Santa Barbara, CA) has often been quoted expressing his working approach to story, which in essence is to write only the parts that interest him, while leaving out the "other" parts, it being understood that "other" means descriptions and scenes that don't directly involve him. By extension, Leonard could be interpreted to advocate as a part of the revision process the removal of anything he considered unnecessary explanation, whether in narrative (which includes description) or dialogue.

Contemporary writers as diverse as Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Haruki Murikami may be argued to write with the inferential less-is-more approach, yet none of these is arguably a minimalist. There is among them a common thread of trust. The interesting questions to consider is the applications of the trust: Do they trust the reader? Themselves? The reader and themselves?

A storyteller in the twenty-first century is well advised to read these writers as well as writers of past eras and, indeed, new writers on their own path of self-discovery, keeping in mind choices to be made about how much the reader truly needs to know.

Hint: Some writers of nonfiction are often seduced by the need to use all their research in a particular project, resulting in their project telling the potential reader more about the subject than the reader wants to know. In similar fashion, some writers of fiction may be tempted to explain to the reader more about their characters and the motives of those characters than the reader wants to know.

Added hint: Because of its subjective base, the result of fiction is greater than the sum of its parts; the goal of storytelling is the evocation of that greater effect. Evoke rather than describe. Encourage the reader to infer. The reader would rather discover his misapprehension in the face of surprise behavior from the characters than be told he was wrong by the author.

According to

attribution--identification of who is saying, thinking, feeling something relevant to the story at hand; also a quality possessed by an animal, a person, place, or thing in a story; most common use, a direct distinction of who is saying what, perhaps even with the adverb or adverbial clause attachment of how the thing being said was spoken.

Even at the risk of repetition, the identity of the speaker or performer is uppermost, beginning with the reader knowing for a certainty who the narrator of a given scene is and at all times who the speaker is, who the listener is, who the one who acts is, who the one being acted upon is. This important standard prevents such awkward, difficult-to-unravel locutions as "She knew she would go with her no matter what she did or when she did it because it was her basic instinct to help her whenever she felt she needed help." The reader is literally so grateful as to forgive repetition of names, although this gratefulness does not extend across the board to careless, unintended repetitions, which do nothing but make the reader cringe (if the offense gets past the editor in the first place).

In the matter of attribution in dialogue, the verb "said" has demonstrated over a long history its neutrality, thus Jim said, John said, Fred said will not raise any reader hackles that might have been raised if Jim said but John remonstrated, and Fred averred. Thus do not keep at hand a list of synonyms for said, particularly avoiding expostulated, admonished, and uttered. Verbs that convey feeling are welcome in all other places than synonyms for said, accordingly do not let characters bark or growl; ululate is also a no-no, the main reason being that the word may appear to be an authorial judgment rather than from a character.

Unless the string of dialogue between two characters goes on for some time, it is not necessary to continue with the "said." If there are more than two characters on stage, the writer might consider burying the "said" in mid action or mid sentence: "This is not going to work," Fred said, standing, stretching. "We need another approach." In such scenarios, the writer will do well to pick a dramatic (suspense producing) place to break up the sentence. "This," Fred said, standing and stretching, "is not going to work. We need--" he looked about him as though tracking a fly unseen by the others, "--another approach." Yet another way to tack an attribution to a line of dialogue is with a sentence immediately following that contains action. "This is not going to work." Fred stood, spotted a roving waiter, and motioned him over to them.


formula--a recipe or pattern for a story; a means of linking reader expectations with a plausible outcome; a narrative device for producing accelerated risk and subsequent resolution.

Some examples of formula in story:

1. A sympathetic character struggles against great odds to achieve a worthwhile goal.

2. Sin, suffer, and repent.

3. Something happens and someone changes.

4. A journey and/or quest that produce unexpected results.

Often conflated with plot, formula is theme based, frequently traceable from culture to culture throughout human history, thus Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces but also the trickster, recurring in such diverse cultures as Native American and in the persona of Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx). Other widespread themes: Man against Nature, Man against machinery, Man against convention. The operating factor in formula is predictability; if you add element A, the reader will expect element B as a consequence, thus formula makes the reader vulnerable to the possibility of surprise.

A narrative spoken of as formulaic is likely to be predictable, suggesting the need somewhere in the process for the writer and characters to collude against the expectations of the reader; narratives that are considered non-formulaic are often those that end with a resolving force that veers sharply from expectations, as in Thomas Berger's Little Big Man.

A Twofer

scene, the--the basic unit of dramatic storytelling; an integral moment in a setting which one or more characters have entered with agenda and expectation; the crucible to which the heat of ambition, agenda, or desire is applied; a period of dramatic engagement in a particular setting where personalities and goals collide, producing a sense of movement toward a resolution or trial.

Put enough of these basic units together and they assume a form suggesting a specific path toward some arbitration, trial, discovery, or resolution. As the collection of scenes emerges, the characters in them appear to grow in resolve or stubbornness, producing varying dramatic options to the point where they become memorable enough to eclipse the narrative in which they appear.

In varying degree, scenes have at least the following ingredients: setting, characters, beats, pace, blocking, tension, subtext, dialogue. They may also contain reversals of fortune for one or more characters, shifts in the power exerted by one character or organization over another character or organization, shifts of allegiance within the cast of characters, surprise, discovery of relevant information, and revelation.

The setting is the thematic and physical locale for the scene; the characters are the individuals who come into it, having just been somewhere else. The beats are movements or activities, a pause to consider, a decision to turn a response into a riposte, a reaction to an invitation or an insult. Pace is the tempo with which the beats occur, slow and leisurely or at staccato intensity. Blocking is the sense of movement and placement of characters in the setting, where they will go if they are in motion, where they will remain if sedentary. Tension is the atmospheric pressure of something about to happen, of impending pleasure or gloom or discovery, while subtext is yet another atmospheric pressure, the palpable awareness of the difference between what a character says and what that character is thinking. Dialog is what the characters say to other in ways that express who they are, what they mean, what they intend.

Characters come into scenes with expectations which may be met or frustrated. A character who achieves an expectation, no matter how deserving he may be of the success, may experience buyer's remorse or conversely indulge exuberant celebration. Just as likely, characters may enter scenes with fears, hopes, prejudices. A character who enters a scene with no expectations needs to be sent home and re-costumed to reflect the basic assumption of story that the characters within them have a sense of being right about something.

A character who is right about something--an interpretation, an entitlement, a sense of being a victim, a sense of having something to protect--has earned admittance to the tent of story and must now pursue the goals that drive him, perhaps tentatively at first, but then with the increasing intensity of ambition. 

 Some characters require one or more scenes in which to ratify or shore up their sense of being right, which instills within them the glorious dynamic of defensiveness, which they are free to interpret as Justice must be done. Even the ghost in Hamlet has an agenda, which drives the story forth, stirring up from beyond the grave the stew of ambition, power, and sexual jealousy. That lovely, dysfunctional family, the Macbeths? They are also propelled by ambition, but who can say that Dorothy Gale is a passive observer.

Scenes should be wound about the armature of at least one salient emotion. Characters may not agree with that emotion, may be prevented from recognizing it by the sun-in-the-eyes of their own agenda, but the reader will see through all that and be able to identify the emotion. A significant example of this is found in the character of Bobby Dupea, wanting at this point in the film Five Easy Pieces nothing more than a conventional breakfast in a small roadside lunch room. "You want me to hold the chicken," the waitress asks Bobby, producing not only the crucible overflowing but a subsequent persona for the actor Jack Nicholson.

A scene is a crucible, an arena, a place where characters go armed with the baggage of their past, their attitudes, their agendas, fortified with the toolkit of their abilities and hopes. The scene is the Swiss Army knife of story.


magical realism--dramatic narratives told from the perspective of one or more narrators who have a vision of reality that differs from the conventional; stories in which beings, places, and events appear as though conventional, their existence supported by the behavior of one or more characters and/or the writer; narratives which suggest alternate origins, universes, and abilities than those found in conventional literature.

Against a setting most characters and readers would agree is a rigorously plausible rendition of reality, the writer of magical realism adds one or more fantastical elements that barely slip under the net of reader believability or are not overtly challenged because everything else seems acceptably real. Accordingly, characters in magical realism are less likely to seem vulnerable than those in super realism, the measure of a writer's ability and popularity measured in accordance with the degree to which readers believe their characters are subject to harm. Thus the intriguing comparison between two seemingly incomparable couples, Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry in Pullman's The Subtle Knife, the former being lovers from an all-too believable wartime reality, the latter lovers in a reality infused with alternate universe topography and magical realism. The argument here is that while the relationship between Henry and Barkley is convincing enough and poignant, the young love romance between Belacqua and Parry is the more memorable because of a greater depth of detail and nuance, in spite of being set in a patently unworldly world. The further argument becomes: no matter how fanciful the setting, if the details of a commonly felt emotion are strong and nuanced enough, the reader is more likely to suspend disbelief to the point of accepting the magic along with the realism.

Such widely diverse authors of magical realism as Ben Okri, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, and Alice Hoffman employ the medium with a significant lack of defensiveness, while the Japanese author, Haruki Murikami, is so deft in his applications that the reader may totally buy into his uses of coincidence, dream states, and implied symbolism.

A good governing principle for the use of magical realism is to set one magical element into a world of detailed realistic detail.

Humor: It Only Hurts When They Laugh

omniscient point of view--a narrative technique for conveying the essential goals and sensations of story through the lenses of more than one character in the same scene; a vision of story simultaneously seen by numerous eyes. A major effect of the omniscient point of view is its suggestion of a crowd, even if there are only two characters on stage at the moment; they appear to be speaking and thinking and behaving at the same time, which in fact they are. An omniscient scene with three or four points of view evokes the sense of being at a party or gathering, with voices clamoring to be heard.

One of the resident difficulties accruing from the use of the omniscient point of view, particularly in shorter narratives of five to six thousand words or less is the problem readers will have determining whose story it is, then subsequently what that character's goal is.

Since the omniscient point of view is the least used of the spectrum, the shifts from person to person may produce a bumpy narrative ride unless closely managed. The writer who uses this approach is well advised to spend time in revision checking for a seamless switch from character to character, making sure the reader has a reasonable clue who the next narrator has become. The significant modern writer to observe for his use of this technique is the Irish writer, William Trevor, who uses it exclusively in short stories, mid-range narratives, and novels. Omniscient point of view is not an easy technique to control; reading Trevor makes it appear that it is. Caveat emptor.

An ideal theme for an omniscient point of view narrative is a family or group gathering event in which a number of front-rank characters gather to celebrate, mourn, or render a necessary decision, each bringing to the gathering a different agenda. Trevor has managed to expand on this trope by bringing romantic, filial, or sororal relationships involving two persons into the tent.


habit words--words favored (often unconsciously) by writers who use them repeatedly to the point where they become distractions for the reader. All writers have habit words; many make a point of a special seek-and-destroy mission during revision to root them out and change them. One of the many habit words shared by large numbers of writers is the innocent connective "and." The writer uses and in place of a comma, to connect independent clauses, a technique most famously used by Ernest Hemingway and now parodied at his expense some fifty years after his death. Another habit word in frequent use is a tense variation on the verb "to walk," as in he walked over to, she walked by, they walked up to, he walked into.

Accordingly, the verb "said" might seem to be a habit word thanks to its use with attribution in dialogue, but here things differ in ironic perspective. The need some writers feel to supply synonyms for said, such as averred, opined, intoned, rebutted, growled, barked, shrieked, moaned, etc help make the point that repetition of said is scarcely noticed, is largely considered a blind word, not an obvious repetition, rather than a habit word.

True enough, the reader may misinterpret, gloss over, or take text to have a meaning completely foreign to the author, but the reader is as well an amazing computer, able to detect anomalies missed by copyeditors and fact checkers, all too eager to hold these anomalies against the author. Overwhelmingly, readers are not offended by "said" as it is used in dialogue.


humor--a sudden, painful awareness of exposure or vulnerability; a force aimed at an individual, institution, or tradition with the intended goal of ridicule and possible destruction; a view of reality and a redemptive philosophy for dealing with that view; a sense of justice in which the emperor is revealed to have hand-me-down clothing but nevertheless insists it is Ralph Lauren.

First principal: there is no such thing as victimless humor.

Second principal: the target of humor always believes he has the moral high ground.

Third principal: the moral high ground is mortgaged for more than its actual value.

Fourth principal: when someone tells you "That isn't funny," it probably is.

Humor is explosive, irreverent, undemocratic, a splendid example of the unthinkable come to pass. Suspicious and anarchistic in nature, it asks the wrong questions, makes the wrong assumptions, creates a shambles of disorganization, the only thing left standing it the truth for all to see--not the truth you are told to see; the only truth you can see after the dust settles.

Humor is separate from comedy in that humor is situational and dramatic, a punctilious, super-orderly person squeezing too much toothpaste from the tube then trying to dispose of or hide the waste while comedy is more physical, trying to force the toothpaste back into the tube and, of course, bungling the operation.

How to initiate humor:

1. Select a target, which may be any institution, profession, or attitude, also an individual who thinks or feels entitled, justified, or merely right.

2. Place that institution, profession, or attitude, also said justified or entitled individual in a situation where it/he/she feels it appropriate to behave as usual, then apply pressure in the form of a question, challenge, or time constraint-type pressure. Then push the subject to defend itself.

3. Watch for the results.

4. Think dramatically, along the lines of the three-act play format of old, where act one presents the challenge, act two presents the attempt(s) to cope with it, and act three brings the venture to a combustion that blows up in the target's face.

5. Remember Wile E. Coyote. The reward is humiliation, which the target may not yet be able to see--but the audience can.


Hints:

1. A major goal of humor is humiliation.

2. Memorably successful humorists often used themselves and their foibles as targets.

3. Even though the goal is humiliation, don't kick the target unnecessarily when it is down, lest you shunt the force of humor onto yourself.

4. Ignore the warning that a particular subject is not fit for humor.

5. Remember, humor is not jokes; humor is exposure of facades and hypocrisy, reversal of positions.

Last Chapter on Revision

The next item on the Revision Laundry List to be checked off has to do with the basic unit of dramatic writing, The Scene, whence the following questions need to be considered:
1. Are they all necessary?
2. Are you sure; which is to say, were there any in which you were merely showing off, trying to outdo the likes of Noel Coward or Elmore Leonard or Annie Proulx for pithy dialogue?
3. Are there any duplications? Be serious about this. For instance, it may be successfully argued that after a point, most mysteries are simply a series of interviews. Has the manuscript under revision taken steps to insure that the interviews have some sense of freshness and divergence from the others?
4. Does each scene develop the reader's understanding of characters and the issues they are facing?
5. Are the characters actually interacting and reacting?
6. Do the scenes contain suspense, tension, or ominous foreshadowing?
7. Do the scenes end on a note of unresolved conflict or anticipation or do they linger like the last guest at a party?
8. Most important of all, do they leave an emotional impact?

From which we move to the divisions and sections of a work, mindful that in shorter works such as stories, scenes are separated by a two-line space break, advancing to the long form where, after the scene break, the most significant division is the chapter. A constructive way to look at the chapter is as a collection of relevant scenes, meaning the rudder could be the simple matter of chronology or point of view or theme. It may help to regard a chapter as a mini three-act play, in which there is a beginning, a middle, and a resolution; the presentation of a problem and or goal, a muddle of clangorous expectations, and an apparent goal in hand which results in a significant abeyance (which causes the reader to look at yet another chapter before setting the story down for the night. Chapters are often presented with a number, which serves no real dramatic purpose and is little more than the literary equivalent of a mile marker on a map. Chapters are just as often presented with a date line, much as newspaper stories, followed by a city. Los Angeles, September 1985. Chapters in multiple point of view novels often begin with a tag line reminding the reader who the narrative focus of the following events will be. Fred, for example.

The next potential division is the Book, a collection of relevant chapters in which the rudder could be chronological or, back to Fred, a particular point of view. Some books have been given the book subtitle for the geographical locale in which they take place, other still use the name of a character or family.

Getting down to the end of the revision tour: make a complete pass in which you become a heat-seeking missile trained on spotting and knocking out cliche of all sort, whether it is racial, occupational, or narrative. The question often arises in writing groups and beginning classes, Suppose one of my characters has as a trait the speaking or thinking in cliche? The answer of course is that such a character is a fine example of a cliche. If you must have such a character, render that person's linguistic tropes in as deliberately fresh a manner as possible in order that the cliches emerge as original as possible, so that the critic will say of you in all sincerity, even this author's cliches are original. A good standard to follow is: If you have to ask if a figure of speech or character or situation is a cliche; it probably is.

The last but one thing to look at is the title, which can and should pose some relevant enigma, pun, double entendre, or even an irony. Clever titles often attract favorable attention, but the irony here is that titles obviously intending to be clever attract negative attention. Sometimes a phrase from the text will suggest a title, sometimes a pun on a well-known situation or condition will fit the writer's purpose. The old standby is the straightforward declarative description as in, say, John Steinbeck's The Red Pony.

Another question often asked in writers' groups and beginner classes: How do I know when I've finished revising?

Answer: When you make changes no one will recognize.