Dialogue in Fiction - Part 1

Dialogue in Fiction is much more than what the characters say...

There are several parts to what we call dialogue in fiction, and we have generally accepted labels for each part:

Dialogue: what is said
Dialogue tag: who said it
Dialogue description: how it is said

These are the big three parts, but when we consider that "dialogue" takes place between at least two people (characters), then we can also describe each of the character's physical, emotional, and internal responses to the dialogue. We also have "internal" dialogue, and this differs quite significantly from "external" dialogue. Internal, or direct, dialogue is what one of the characters is thinking vs. what she is saying. Let's illustrate this little bit of dialogue first before we proceed with a fuller description of the function of each part of dialogue:

"Would you like to be my date for the prom?"
Not even if I have to stay home. "Oh! Thanks for asking, but I kind of already promised someone else."

I didn't want to muddy up the example with the other elements of dialogue. I just wanted to illustrate that the "internal" dialogue is presented in italics, to show what one of the characters was thinking, before showing what that character said aloud, which is bracketed with opening and closing quotation marks.

Dialogue should rarely be presented in a vacuum. In other words, dialogue occurs within an ongoing scene, and a scene clearly lays out setting, with concrete description of place. So, now let's take the hapless character who has asked another character on a date to the prom, but this time, I'm going to put it all together and present all the possible elements of full dialogue:

But first, let's say that we've already described "Hapless Character" whose name is Johnny. He's the high school nerd. He wears thick-lensed glasses and has a mop of black hair, which he has forever despaired of controlling. He has beautiful blue eyes and long lashes, which you can't see behind his totally utilitarian glasses frames. He's old enough that he's almost out of the acne stage, but not quite and, in fact, right now there's a big, red zit in the middle of his high forehead. He has a small nose, which gives him the appearance of being two years younger than he really is, but his nicest feature (if only he would smile more often) is his full lips and nicely straight and white teeth, which his dentist father has made sure are in good shape. He's not athletic, but he still has a nice square jaw, although it's not the jutting jaw of a jock, and since he's a nerd, he's used to keeping it tucked close to his chest. He's small of stature, on the skinny side, and because he has low self-esteem he carries himself in a semi-permanent cringe when he's around others; part of this is from being bullied by the football jocks who aren't quite sure why anyone ever bothers to read, although it doesn't stop them from bullying Johnny into doing their homework for them.

The potential prom date is, of course, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, cheerleader, Scarlet, who dates revolving guys on the football team. Maybe deep down she's a really nice person, but she learned early that being a little accommodating to popular guys in school gives her an "in" when it comes to being noticed. She's pretty in the conventional sense, and although she's smart, she hides it on purpose. Her face is nicely configured, with a small nose that has just the slightest perky upward attitude, and even though her lips are not as full as Johnny's, she overcomes their thinness with expertly applied, bright red lipstick. She does eyeliner and eye shadow but only enough to make her lashes look longer than they are, and which give her eyes (she wears contacts) a bright, twinkling look. In grade school, where she and Johnny first met and where Johnny first fell in hopeless love with her, she was not yet not a nice person, she was not yet self-centered, and she was not yet desperate to date the football quarterback, which is about the only player on the team she hasn't dated. Like Johnny, she is also small of stature, but unlike him, she has learned to stand straight and thrust her chest out, with her chin held high.

The prom was only a month away, and Scarlet made it a point to spend her after-school hours at the local coffee shop, which used to be a Starbuck's, but during that company's adjustment to the economic downturn was one that went out of business in the town of Newport, Texas, population forty thousand—give or take a few thousand, depending on whether or not you believed the sign coming into town. The interstate had bypassed the town, and so the population was shrinking. The coffee shop was now called The Coffee Pit and, ironically, was busier now than it had ever been as a Starbucks. It still had a wall of glass front that faced east, which diffused the afternoon sunlight and gave the red leather chairs and glass tables a cozy, rather than an antiseptic, look. Scarlet liked the diffused light as well, because she could see who was coming in off the street, but they couldn't readily see her until they were inside. So on that Friday afternoon, Scarlet was busy scanning the pedestrians walking by the shop, hoping that Daren Culp, the quarterback would come by. Every day, she dressed in her street clothes that still shouted "Cheerleader!" with her short, pleated crimson skirt, crisply pressed tuck-in blouse, and utterly white shoes. But instead of Daren she saw Johnny lurching nervously through the tall glass door, looking furtively around, until his four eyes came to rest on her face, which she kept inscrutable, ready to turn into a smile or a frown depending on what she needed to express.

Oh, god! Here he comes, she thought turning up a slight smile on her lips when Johnny came up to her. It was not unexpected, since Johnny often helped her with her homework, and that was precisely what he asked her by way of greeting, if she needed any help in her English class. She was seated at a table a few feet away from the glass wall, near a corner of the room, which gave her a view of the whole cafe.

"Hi, Scarlet," Johnny said, redundantly with a second greeting, shuffling his feet and clutching a ridiculous pile of books close to his chest like a girl. "I was...uh...wondering if you would like to be my date for the prom?" he said. He had obviously flunked Socialization 101 in his freshman year, because he got straight to the point before making small talk.

Scarlett chose to brighten her smile just a bit more, but she made sure to punctuate her eyes with slight question marks. Not even if I have to stay home, she thought, waiting just a beat to keep him on the hook. "Oh! Thanks for asking, " she said, scrambling for a good excuse, "but I kind of already promised someone else!"

About that time, right after the words were out of her mouth, Daren pushed his way into the coffee shop with a confident, smooth motion, even managing to hold the door open as a woman was making her way out the door with a cardboard tray of drinks with to-go lids firmly in place. They exchanged smiles, and then Daren made his way over to Scarlet and Johnny, who was still standing awkwardly with his back to the cafe door.

If he asks me to be his date now, Scarlet thought, with Johnny right there, he would know she had lied to him, and she didn't really want to hurt his feelings.

Daren was glad to see Johnny, but he needed to get him away from Scarlet for what he wanted to tell him. Daren had seen Johnny without his glasses...

This example of dialogue, setting, and scene description is rather stereotyped, and I wouldn't imagine doing much with it, but I made it up to illustrate several things about dialogue, one of which is that dialogue doesn't take place in a vacuum. And rather than just presenting what was said and who said it, we have several threads going on in the weave of the dialogue that adds fullness and a bit of reality to it.

First note that the two main lines of dialogue are done in such a way that we situate the characters into a scene, complete with setting. When the prom invitation comes, the first item of the dialogue is what is said, followed by the dialogue tag (who said it), and I have used hesitant speech patterns for Johnny to show that he is nervous (how it is said). This is followed by a bit more description of the character's state and characterization of his speech as being awkward.

Second, note that when a different character speaks, we change paragraphs, but again we set up the dialogue so that after we see what Scarlet is thinking (internal dialogue) we get what is said, who said it, and how it is said.

Finally, note that the three main parts of dialogue work best and more realistically if we keep the three parts in the same order: what is said, who said it, and how it is said.

In another post, I will discuss why keeping the dialogue parts in this order is the most realistic, and give examples of how changing the order of presentation of the parts of dialogue tends to make it less realistic. In real life we don't know how someone is going say something until we hear them speak, and we don't even know that they are going to speak until they speak. Ponder this and look for the next post: How to Make Dialogue Realistic.