How to Write a Good Story

Dialogue: The Music of Speech (IIII)

DIALOGUE: THE MUSIC OF SPEECH (IIII)

This is the final part of Ms Ippolito's article, which can also be found here: http://www.expert-editor.com/id11.html

Talking Heads Syndrome

            Years ago, I once heard TV news readers referred to as "talking heads", a humorous and apt description. While the camera shifts from one head to the other, we might as well be listening to the radio. The "talking heads" are just reading some script—they aren't out there like Woodward and Bernstein, investigating, digging, and discovering.

            Back then, I was editing several mass market novel lines, each with a massive and detailed back-story—events that occurred before the current story began. The writers were often new novelists who tried to solve the problem of back-story through the use of "talking heads". The dialogue often degenerated to that of talking heads—recounting facts or information rather than revealing character. Sitting in his war room buried deep in the heart of a mountain, the king might say to a counselor: "I have ruled Emanon for thirty years. In all that time, the Norlanders have been attacking our borders. Our people have resisted valiantly, and thousands have died on both sides. Now the Norlanders are at the gates."

            The speech does fill in some background, but who talks like this—even in fantasy fiction? The reader knows that the words aren't coming from the mind and heart of a believable character but from the writer.

            Characters in fiction are as enmeshed in their experience as you or I. In conversation, we don't stand around uttering background information. We get on with our lives, and so should your characters. The king and everyone with him know about the Thirty Years War. What they need is to solve the problem beating at their gates now. That's what the reader wants, too. It's the present story, not back-story, that he or she has come to read.

            That means you keep the action moving forward, slipping in bits of background here and there. To do this, you'll use realistic bits of spoken dialogue by any character in the scene and the main character's interior dialogue.

             In the example of Emanon and Norland, what if a general bursts in on the king with a report of desperate battle just outside the walls? Hearing this, the king looks around at his counselors, seeing how the long years of war have aged them. In a flash, he realizes that his counselors are too cautious, while he has been too uncertain. For example:

            The king was barely listening. He didn't need a battle report to know where things stood. He stared at the map of his kingdom, once so vast and protected by mountains to the north and by the sea to the east and west. For years, the mountains had kept the Norlanders at bay, but no more.

 "Enough!" He slammed his fist on the table. Maps went flying, flagons overturned, and his counselors just stared at him. Within the walls of his city, even deep in the mountain stronghold of his war room, the king saw that his counselors, like his people, were weary of war.

He would listen to no more talk. Talk would not save them.

 

And there's your story. We've given the king both an external and an internal conflict. We've slipped in just enough back-story to involve the reader with his dilemma here and now. That's your story, not what happened over the past 3 days or 3 months or 30 years.  If my example were a story's opener, it would be enough to grab the reader's attention, get him immediately involved with the main character, and fill in enough back-story that he could quickly jump in with both feet.