All Talk and No Action

 by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

Word guy that I am, I like to turn on the subtitles when I watch TV.  Number one, there are too many celebrities who mumble.  Number two, I find it interesting to see how the words on the screen are interpreted by the actors.  And three, it can be funny when a news channel with auto-translation thinks "senior advisor" is "seen your abs eyesore".

There are other times when I will close my eyes and just listen.  Lacking visual cues, I assess how effectively the dialogue alone carries the story.  I am frequently surprised by the lengthy breaks of no dialogue at all, when wordless action takes over, especially during movies.  I'm also surprised by how often I fall asleep while doing this, but I digress.

These scenarios illustrate how dialogue and action depend on each other.  In a book, long pauses like the one above will be covered by narrative, explaining the silent activity taking place or providing exposition.  A novel with an abundance of dialogue benefits from these reprieves from incessant conversation.  Even though the reader is still absorbing a litany of words, they do not register in an audible way.

By the same token, too much narrative without quality exchanges of dialogue gets wearisome.  We like to see dialogue coming because we think communicatively, whether it's conversation with friends or our own endless inner monologue (we see something out of the ordinary and literally think to ourselves, "What's that?").

Deciding what to say via dialogue and what to say via narration becomes easier by remembering this classic saying:

"If you can't say something right, don't say it at all."

Okay, I changed that a bit. But in writing dialogue, it's more important to say something right than to say something nice. 

Dialogue is "wrong" if it's unrealistic.
In normal conversation, people don't talk in long, uninterrupted diatribes.  Jack Nicholson's famous "You can't handle the truth" speech works because the setting is a courtroom interrogation and he's on the stand.  Plus, he's Jack Nicholson.  Most of all, the whole story has been built to lead up to his climactic soliloquy.

Dialogue is especially unnatural when characters give awkward exposition:

"Hi, dear brother!  I haven't seen you since Aunt Betsy's funeral in Minneapolis two years ago this August."

or:

"Did Leonard's family get here yet?"

"Yes, around 3:00," she answered, "with an entourage that included his wife, two noisy, badly-behaved children and several suitcases big enough to tote tubas in."

Instead, let the narration do the heavy lifting:

"Yes, around 3," she answered, "with a couple of spoiled brats."  She recalled the oversized suitcases they had brought in and imagined stuffing the children in them.

Don't load too much exposition on your character's back.  Simply put, if a real person wouldn't say it, neither should your character.

That said . . .

Dialogue is "wrong" if it's TOO realistic.

Between typical people, conversation includes a lot of stuff that would run a reader off:

"Did you take out the trash?"
"Yeah."
"Did you remember to take out the recycles?"
"Yeah."
"Even the stuff I had by the door?"
"Yeah."

or:

"I'll see you tomorrow."
"Okay, what time?"
"I dunno, how about 2:00?"
"Can we make it 2:30?"
"Sure."
"Great. Bye."
"Bye."

Minutia like this is the stuff of life, but not the stuff of story.  Any dialogue that doesn't further the plot doesn't belong.  Readers who are conditioned to a snappy pace don't think twice when a character simply says, "See you tomorrow," and leaves.  But they take note if dialogue lapses into banality.

The most interesting dialogue delivers the unexpected.  Instead of:

"I saw Grace at the supermarket today."
"Yeah?  How is she?"

How about:

"I saw Grace at the supermarket today."
"Grace is in Italy."

Dialogue done right can be as intriguing as your action scenes.  Put well-crafted dialogue in the mouths of your characters, and you'll give your readers something to talk about.

And You Can Misquote Me On That

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director

Okay, film buffs.  Which of these famous movie lines is misquoted?

“Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

“You dirty rat; you killed my brother.”

 “Play it again, Sam.”

“If you build it; they will come.”

“Luke, I am your father.”

As you may already be aware, they are all incorrect. Despite their familiarity, none of these phrases were ever spoken in those exact words. Close, perhaps, but no cigar. 

Ready for a couple more? These come from the pages of literature:

“Elementary, my dear Watson.” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never penned this, though Sherlock did finally say it in a movie.)

“Money is the root of all evil.” (Without the key words, ‘The love of money’, its meaning is completely altered.)

Inaccuracy notwithstanding, time and repetition have made classics of these phrases. I would guess a fair share of the movie misquotes are the result of impressionists turning a phrase which becomes the new standard. We’ve all seen comics on Johnny Carson delivering a shifty-shouldered, “You dirty rat”. And the much wordier “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By’…You played it for her, you can play it for me!” just doesn’t play the same in front of a Tonight Show crowd.

Despite the occasionally tattered retelling, these are only a handful of the countless quotes which have stood the test of time to become part of our vocabulary. Does it ever make you wonder if the author had any idea it would become a legendary line as they were writing it? Can you imagine the thrill of having a moment when you’re crafting dialogue and thinking, “There’s a line that will go down in history”? I know that’s an offer I couldn’t refuse.

The phrase that pays is as different as each movie itself. The following have nothing in common other than they reveal a huge revelation in the plot:

“I see dead people.”

“Houston, we have a problem.”

 “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

“I’ll be back.”

“You can’t handle the truth!”

We can never predict what words are going to click with the public, but it is apparent that movie lines which do become classics are typically uttered by charismatic main characters; heroes and villains whom readers believe are capable of expressing the wisdom of the ages. (With the possible exception of the unidentified lady diner in When Harry Met Sally who said, “I’ll have what she’s having.”)  (You must admit, though, she was pretty charismatic in her own right.)

Only time will tell if the protagonist in our novel will deliver the next famous quote. But it does behoove us to give each line of dialogue more than a passing consideration. When putting what might become classic words together, it may help to remember short and sweet is the stuff dreams are made of.

For it doesn’t get much simpler than the jungle man’s actual quote, which was merely:

“Tarzan. Jane.”