We have an idea of our characters and set the scene for them; now, they speak and know them through the subtext. Here are some other clues on how to write the dialogue before we go to practice:
Write the scene’s subtext, so the reader understands what the characters are really saying.
Create the proper dialogue for that particular scene (is it staged in a church, a park, or a prison?).
Express your character’s inner thoughts, but don’t overuse this trick. Everything, from how the character speaks to how strong its mimic is, is vital to deliver a message, a subtext.
Well, now let’s take some dialogues from some stories. The first one is an extract from The city, a short story I published some time ago. We are in a newspaper’s office, under the ground and two characters are confronting themselves. On one side is a curious journalist, a woman who wants to uncover the truth behind some mysterious killings. In contrast, on the other side, an old journalist reacts unusually.
She finally arrived in the basement and found Benito seated as always under his large lamp, his dirty hair over his face.
<<Hi, Benito!>>
The former tax attorney raised his eyes, nodded subtly to Anita and returned to his paper, moving his head like a big, old turtle.
Anita cleared her throat to attract attention, at the same time adjusting her jacket. Anita never noticed how cold that basement was.
<< I’m so sorry, Benito, I need only some information. It happened to you to find an ad… how to say it? Peculiar?>>
This time the eyes of the old tax attorney lit up with a strange, unusual light. He answered without raising his face.
<<No, not at all. Nothing strange.>>
He said, pursing the thin wrinkle at the side of his mouth. It was similar to a smile, for whom had a chance to learn how to read his emotions.
<<But…still…all right, don’t worry. I will check tomorrow, have a good night.>>
Murmured Anita, going up the stairs again without receiving any answer. She couldn’t guess how many volumes are written about hate, how many cathedrals build over the repressed resentment.
Dialogue, by Daniele Frau
Benito first is like a silent, harmless old turtle, but the reader can see a change in a couple of lines. When the right chord is played, his expressions change, he produces a sort of smile, a dark wrinkle. Anita is sure about herself, but suddenly she starts doubting her intuitions. We can understand it from how she speaks; her thoughts aren’t straight, and she doesn’t want to say something out loud. She can sense something isn’t right, but she doesn’t have proof. In the last scene, her intuitions will prove correct.
The extract I showed you is from a short story, and it’s crucial here to be precise; we need to be fast, we cannot indulge too much. Think about the scene you’re writing. Keep in mind the settings, the subtext and who your characters are, then give some life to it with mimics, sounds, and colors.
For an actor, the script would be a simple text, simple words on a piece of paper, without reason. Without a cause, a sense to use a specific term instead of another, the actor would lose what is more important to make the difference in his job: the emotions.
Therefore, the actor needs to dig deep into his character’s motivations and what brings character X to say that exact word in that particular scene. In this way, the actor will express his emotions enough, moving the audience as well.
This is even more true when speaking about a writer since we must consider thinking about subtext and context when writing any dialogue. Imagine this scene:
“Luke, do you love me?”
“Yes, I do love you.”
(cinematic kiss)
This is a flat scene, but if the context is appropriate, even a flat scene can be pretty valuable. Imagine if the story is about two young boys living in a country where homosexuality is still considered a crime; forced to get married by their respective families, they finally find a way to reveal that they love each other.
We didn’t know, we just suspected for the whole movie, and now they are telling each other and kissing for the first time. Without subtext (friendship, bad marriages, latent homosexuality) and context (conservative, retrograde country), the scene above will show 0 pathos.
Without nuances, if the characters were just robots declaring their lines mechanically, there would be no dramatic tension. That’s what Brandlyin Collins calls WYSIWYG, or What you see is what you get (the longest acronym ever, I suppose).
A conversation with subtext occurs when a character starts a conversation without revealing the real objectives and it works as follows:
The subtext is natural. We use it in many situations, not just when we’re tense or don’t want to open up to others.
The subtext isn’t something to use with strangers. We also use it every day with friends and family members.
The subtext can sometimes be an entire conversation. Imagine you start speaking about war with a close friend of yours, who’s getting increasingly arrogant daily. Both of you know after a while that you’re talking about war, the conversation is about war. Still, the communication between the two of you, the message, is about something else, more personal.
Subtext of a story, how to create a dialogue.
It’s crucial to balance text and subtext to make a realistic dialogue, creating the proper context to push the reader to read between the lines and understand the subtext. For instance, at the very beginning, when there’s no context to help the reader. Clearly, WYSIWYG can be a good solution in this specific moment of our story when we need to be plain and straightforward.
When you need to use subtext in a conversation, it must be helpful for the sake of your character, so you should ask yourself:
What is the purpose of my character in this conversation?
The first character wanted to say something straightforwardly, but the second used subtext. Why?
Do the characters involved in this conversation know why this subtext is present?
Does this conversation present a conflict, or is it a changing moment?
If the scene is about an ongoing conflict, the best choice is to go for a subtext dialogue. In contrast, if we’re about to reveal a changing moment through our conversation, it’s better to avoid it and go straight to the point.
The subtext is a good choice when the reader knows the conflict well and the dialogue must come from the character’s motivation, not yours as a writer. We often start speaking through one of our characters, which is fine, but we always have to remember that we’re not it; our character is something else
Even if it comes from our fantasy, a character lives a different life inside the pages of a book and we need to take a big breath and let it live and die. If in doubt, go back to read your character description card, remember what is that it needs, remember its voice, and go on with it.
Your character is there, surrounded only by enemies; they’re ready to destroy him physically or metaphorically (sometimes both). Sometimes the hero will survive; some other times, it’s his defeat that makes him great. Think about the end of 300, with the Spartans ready to die for their freedom, 300 against thousands of soldiers.
Their glorious death makes them heroes, as well as Sir William Wallace, in braveheart (if you didn’t watch the movie, please do so). I remember that when I was reading The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, I was in a sort of panic, thinking about what would happen to the characters.
He mastered character creation so well that you feel what the characters feel and you won’t let anyone leave the scene. I read that book many times, in English, Italian and Spanish, and I thought I was reading it for the first time.
So, this last D is the one that lets you think about the worst. Your character is on one side of the battleground, and the opponent is laughing at him and ready to finish him; there isn’t no chance. A miracle? Maybe, but has to be a believable one.
Devastation.
If an angel comes from the sky and saves him, that’s when you say, “oh, come on, really?”. How comes it was never a single scene with an angel and now this creature arrives just in time? Why it didn’t come before, then? Why waiting the last scene to intervene if it was such a great and powerful creature?
Now, you have the four Ds in your hands, you know how to make the distance between the character and the primary desire, you know how to make it impossible and even beat your character so severely that everyone will think it’s the end (and a bad one).
Not all stories have to conclude with a good ending, so play it well; sometimes, it’s a good ending when your character dies as a real hero; other times, it’s a good ending when he triumphs in the last scene.
Not just that, use the 4 Ds when you’re writing the single scenes. Ask yourself:
What is the objective of the character in this scene, the main desire?
How to make this objective difficult?
How to make this desire impossible?
The desire seems gone, out of reach, but then… is it, really?
Let’s take Forrest Gump. He’s in love with Jenny Curran, from schooldays until the movie’s end. At the end of the film, there’s a perfect example of the 4 Ds; Forrest is rich and bored in his big mansion and hopes of seeing Jenny again. Sometimes he’s sure she’s coming, walking through his garden, but then it’s just an illusion, a ghost, a mirage. One day, he’s gardening when he sees Jenny coming again toward him. He thinks she’s again a ghost, but this time she’s real and she came for him.
He loves Jenny so much that he only wants to see her again.
He is in pain and he starts being delusional.
We see jenny again walking through his garden, but we think it’s just a vision. He’s irremediably crazy.
We were wrong, she’s there, coming back for him, finally reunited with Forrest and he’s finally happy.
All of these actions happened in no more than 2 minutes, but it’s one of the movie’s best scenes because of its pathos.
We finished with the 4 Ds! We’ll focus more on desires and objectives next time. Ready? Keep reading!
Did you ever spend so much time with a friend that, in the end, what remains between you two is only silence?
That’s not the worst sensation since it’s better than talking just for the sake of talking. So, you and your character are getting good acquaintance, then good friends and maybe best friends after your chat. You really want your fictional friend to strive and have a wonderful meta-existence.
Unfortunately, fiction writing doesn’t work like this. I have a friend that likes to write only real stories with a good ending. he said once, and I quote:
“Why imagine some adventurous sad story when I have a good one in front of me with a perfect happy ending?”
And I answered:
“What do you believe, speaking about Napoleon is a boring topic? But his life didn’t end well, did it?”
That’s the summa of what is behind the “so what?” moment. You need to understand your character better; to do so, you need some difficulties. It’s too easy to be a badass or a choirboy sitting in a bar chitchatting. I’ve met so many of these people in my life, and when it truly mattered, they disappeared like smoke.
Yes, smoke and glass disappear when you reach a certain point in the chat with your character. What remains? The bone, some nerves, you x-screen your character completely.
Let some people enter the coffee place where you’re supposedly chatting with your new dramatic persona. For example, in the movie “Danny the dog”, there’s a scene that depicts this moment. Some criminals enter a shop with guns and beat up a couple of customers. It’s quite a shocking scene; all characters are surprised and shocked. The reaction of the main character?
He appears on the screen and tells his new friend (Morgan Freeman) that he finally found a ripe melon. A ripe melon! There was a life-or-death scenario around him and what he was focused on was a ripe melon? Well, his friend would understand eventually that something is utterly wrong with him.
It’s a turning point in the movie, a powerful scene that tells us a lot, even if we were just tuning in at that moment and saw it alone.
So what?
So what? Graphic by Daniele Frau.
Stress them out
Let’s see what our characters do on a stressful occasion, exactly like Danny. They will turn to us with ripe melon in their hands, or we will find them behind the Kellog’s stand, shaking?
This method will allow you to undercover something that lies way under the surface: the values. Given a stressful situation, will your character react violently or remain as calm as a toad in the sun?
What these values will uncover? Let’s discover it in our next article.
We talk about character creation and how important is this phase for the story design. I feel Getting into the character by Brandlyin Collins is one of the best books if you want to learn how to sketch your character.
First, ask questions
Rule number one creating a character.
First, ask questions directly to your character. Treat your characters as if they were real people, and sit down with them to know them better. I’ll tell you about an actual conversation with one of the last characters I created for a story I’m writing. First, I pictured him with the body and face of Alesana Tuilagi, the famous rugby player. That helped me have a tangible person in front of me, but it was like he was standing behind the curtains and I could only see his traits through them.
“Hi, what’s your name?”
Silence.
My character didn’t answer me back. I tried again to notice, to my surprise, that my character didn’t have a mouth; hence, his voice was kind of muffled. I got closer to the curtains and I felt it. A smell that only later I recognized as a snake smell and his voice made me shiver. I asked my question again, this time trying to understand his answer.
“My name is Lasghari, but no one has called me like that since I was 5. I mean, there are all dead.”
So, now I knew that there was a giant creature with no proper mouth that hissed while speaking and had a smell like a snake. Plus, I discovered my character was an assassin and a brutal one since he probably killed his own family.
“And now, how old are you? How can I call you?”
I didn’t dare to call him Lasghari. See, even though I knew I was speaking with an imaginary person, I had to feel it was real if I wanted to discover something interesting. The more we talked, the more I acknowledged in him the characteristics I saw before in people, mainly violent individuals I was unlucky enough to meet in the street. He slurred his speech, as he was drooling, the heavy breathing.
Then, I noticed a detail
His voice wasn’t just slurred and muffled because of his monstrous mouth, but he had something else. My character, I discovered again with surprise, was masked; a thick mask made of cement from crushed bones. I imagined him like an infernal baker, but instead of using flour, he used crushed bones.
Two hours later
We spoke for about two hours since I knew everything about him in the end. Also, I thought about deleting him from my tale because he genuinely terrified me. His background story was so intense and horrific that I asked myself if that was too much.
No, he was too powerful, and I didn’t just give him the privilege of being the co-protagonist with another character. He turned out to be the perfect alter ego, the best way to speak about what I had in mind when I started writing the story. I wanted to talk about how violence begins in the first place, taking The Lucifer Effect by Zimbardo and mixing it with the thesis by Rutger Bregman and his optimistic history of humankind.
What a trip!
What a trip it was. When I finally let the two characters one close to each other, even though they were well separated by a solid wall, I heard the craziest stories. While they were speaking, I was taking notes, scribbling so fast that my hand was blue with ink by its end.
The second rule we’ll discover in another article is about finding the values that define your fictional characters. This is a very challenging part, so don’t blink, or you’ll miss it!
We realize how easy it is to start writing a story, having the right tools. But what is the content of your story? It comes from your everyday life, inspired by something you witnessed once, or some social problem? You need to ask yourself where the inspiration comes from to realize which tone is better to use.
Your roots
Roots, image by Daniele Frau.
These are your roots, the base from which you will build your story and the way you find inspiration afterward. Let’s talk about the inspiration for a moment. We’ve grown with the idea that we need a specific sparkle to write, a magic moment. Without that, we imagine the writers sitting in their rooms, desperate, in front of their typewriters. It’s not exactly like that.
Yes, you can have some blank moments, periods where you have nothing to say. Well, that’s the best moment for you; take this as a vacation, write ideas, and make your life full of experience, so then you’ll start writing again. Inspiration is a myth, solid and difficult to erase from people’s imagination, but still a myth. When I don’t have anything to say on a certain topic, I switch to another one. I start writing about mathematics, science, and economics. I write about topics far from my usual niche, and an idea naturally pops out.
For instance, a few days ago, I wrote an essay about international investments and wham! Something strikes my mind, an original idea about a real estate man that lives in the streets. The main secret here is the first rule every writer always has to keep in mind:
Write, write, write.
If you don’t write, you won’t be able to clearly understand your limits, your common errors and as we said, you’ll feel increasingly tired of writing. See it like you were going to the gym. The more you go to do sport, the more you want to, because you feel your body is responding immediately. It’s precisely the same when you start writing, then you want to write more and more.
Solid roots
So, you have an idea of a real estate agent living in the streets. Now you need to understand which tone you will use to describe the situation. It will be something like Jean Claude Izzo in Les soleil des mourants, or you would try a political angle? Do you want to write in a sarcastic-dark humor tone, as Jonas Jonasson? After you realize that everything will be easy, your pen will scribble so fast on the paper, faster than your thoughts.
Then, it’s time to write your characters. But this is a story for another time.
See you, people! As always, send me messages or comments here below and I’ll be glad to answer all of your questions.
Daniele Frau 