The two human characters, a male and a female, don't particularly like each other, but depend on each other to get through their adventures alive. I'm having a lot of fun having these characters continually bicker as they work. It seems so natural to have the two protagonists that don't like each other. (Implied sexual tension intentional.)
Here is an excerpt. They are walkig down a very steeply sloped corridor and just arrived at a branch where they must select which way to go.
(No critiques please, this is very raw)
Jasmine waved her flashlight at the walls and ceiling around the common corner. “They were probably following two branches of the same vein of whatever mineral they were mining.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“Which one does your invisible friend say we should take?”
Billy scowled at her, but didn’t reply immediately. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. I’m not feeling a nudge in either direction.” He paused momentarily to collect his thoughts before he continued. “Maybe they lead to the same place.”
“We’re going to have to pick one of them.”
“Which one did your helmet pick?” (aside: earlier, Jasmine dropped her spacesuit's helmet and it rolled downhill to who-knows-where.)
Jasmine looked directly into Billy’s eyes. “Pick one.”
Billy hesitated for a long time, but finally selected the corridor on the left. He took a step forward, then Jasmine said, “Why that way?”
“Why not?”
“What if it’s the wrong way?”
Billy stepped back onto the intersection and pointed down the right-hand corridor. “If you think it’s the wrong way, then you go *that* way.”
(Not the best example in the book, only the most recent.)
[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited June 17, 2005).]
Spell it out for a sleep-deprived moron...why'd you post this?
What has worked for you to keep dialog interesting in a long manuscript.
People do not talk in a linear fashion, not in the real world. So often we try to force that in fiction (or only have the one track in mind) and thus can't figure out why our dialogues feel forced and unnatural, even if they follow a logical progression.
[This message has been edited by TheoPhileo (edited June 17, 2005).]
quote:
I think if they argue all the time, it wouldn't be all that interesting. It'd be like endless repeats of Roseanne
It's very hard to give a feel for the dialog with such a small sample. I intermix mission-related dialog with the digs. And as I said, the sample is very raw. The male character is from the deep south, but I can't write fluently in that language. That change will occur in revision. I certainly would never let anything I write remind anyone of Rosanne in final revision, though I did always want to see Rosanne Barr (ultimate man-hater) and Sam Kinneson (ultimate woman-hater) go at each other on stage. That would have been something to see.
That's just the nature of dialogue. I suspect it's because of our natural human tendency to want to eavesdrop.
Without an answer to that question, I can't participate meaningfully, other than to say that dialog does appear to be intrinsically interesting to anyone that understands "language" at a practical level.
One example is what Spaceman did, where the two are feeling antagonism. Another would be if the two are both talking, but not really listening to each other--sort of like following two monologues that interleave in an interesting way. Or one can say something somewhat ambiguous--we know what he meant, as he is the POV character and we can also see his thoughts--but the other character takes it a different way, as we can tell by his response.
Anything that helps build tension, as opposed to simply exchanging dull information (even if it's information that neither the reader nor the other character knows--I'm not talking about the horrid "As you know" problem), can help make the dialogue sparkle.
I've found (IMHO) that very little written dialogue works as spoken dialogue. Written dialogue - because it's part of writing - tend to be a lot more complete, direct, and precise. Real dialogue usually involves a lot fo pauses, shifts of emphasis and meaning half way through a sentence, tailing off, interrupting, and so on. Some of this is incredibly hard to do in writing (for instance, if B interrupts A, the reader is bound to be thinking "hey, I want to know what A was going to say!"), and some of it is not actually wise to try and represent.
In the past, I've written dialogue that flowed brilliantly as I was writing it, but read back, looked absolutely terrible. In "The Accidental Witch", I'm trying to get a much more realistic dialogue tone, but I suspect it may not work - it may simply be too confusing on the page. We shall see.
I have to admit, though, there is a really great feeling when you're writing and the characters have conversatoins or arguments almost by themselves - you are so familiar with their thought processes that "they" just react to one another and "you" don't have to do anything but let them speak. That's a [I]good{/I] feeling.
[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited June 17, 2005).]
In any case, it is certainly true that by having a dialogue in which the POV character is dealing with a problem through the use of wit and argument, you have a great advantage. Dialogue that shows the character acting rather than just vocalizing story information is always a good thing. We can see that Billy is trying to be fair, but having Jasmine ridicule his abilities even when she's so dependent on them is getting to him. We can also see that she's needling him because she wants more assurance...but his unwillingness to provide them seems honest rather than obstinate or pig-headed.
He's human enough to take a couple of jabs at her, but he isn't just leaving her there or quitting. She's clearly less than thrilled with being dependent on his intuition or whatever, but she's willing to have faith.
Without the dialogue, it would be hard to communicate any of this without just stating it flat out. Which would kinda kill the sublties of this interplay.
So yes, dialogue is very good for showing the dynamics of a relationship, particularly one that is under some kind of stress. Also, it is something with which almost all readers and writers are quite familiar. It's a strong hand for relating the characters to the reader.
Hopefully, you introduced their relationship mostly through dialogue rather than through introspection. Not that you can't elaborate a relationship through introspection, but it does mean the character is fully cognizant of any aspects of the relationship thus revealed.