CRAFT YOUR WORDS ALIVE NOT STILL-BORN

{Photo Credit: UCLA Special Collections}

I pried open my sleepy eyes:

the ghost of Raymond Chandler was stroking a slightly freaked Midnight.

Whether it was because my cat was being petted by a ghost or being called Tiki by him I didn't know but could guess.

Chandler was talking softly to Midnight:

"Did you know, Tiki, that Lake Charles is an old town, a lost town. 

Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the state, 

and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches

 and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. 

They are all rooming houses now.  

On the wide cool front porches, stretching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, 

sit the old men with faces like lost battles.

Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; 

men with quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame;

street punks with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank;

patrol cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; 

cookies and coke peddlers; 

people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work.

 But they come out early, when the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on them" 

To which Midnight replied, "Yowl!"  Which is cat for: 

"If I promised to miss you, would you go away?"

Chandler looked up, seeing me awake, and dropped a relieved Midnight onto the carpet.  

"Ah, you're up.  I wanted to talk to you of dialogue."

He carefully packed his pipe.  “Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft."

Chandler thumbed a ghost match to life.  

" As craft, dialogue serves several functions in any scene. It plunges us into the moment. It reveals character. It moves the plot forward. 

As art, good dialogue has as much to do with the sound of music as the meaning of words."

 

          He tipped the flaring match into the pipe bowl.   "But good dialogue isn’t simply putting words in your characters’ mouths and then adding “he said” or “she said”. 

 Nor is it having characters conveniently dump background information into the story—with quote marks around the words. 

 And what’s considered good dialogue today is a far cry from what even the most beloved writers of other eras produced. 

 Readers in our hurried, distracted times will not sit through long, involved speeches, for example, 

and their inner ear will recognize “believable dialogue” even if they haven’t a clue what it is. 

BELIEVABLE DIALOGUE

The first thing to remember is that good dialogue is all illusion.

By understanding how real speech works

—with its half-spoken phrases, false starts, interruptions, and misdirection--

you can begin to play dialogue like an instrument. 

Sometimes your characters may speak without listening, with interesting possibilities for plot. 

 Let your dialogue reveal character and advance the plot.

"SPEECH IS WHAT CHARACTERS DO TO ONE ANOTHER," CHANDLER SAID.

  

Dialogue is action. Not just any action, but conflict. 

Pick up a good novel or story at random and flip through to some dialogue. 

You'll see immediately that it’s argumentative in some way. 

Even when you don't really know the story or the scene, the dialogue will pull you in because it's combative.

"THE BEST DIALOGUE KEEPS THE BIGGEST BRUISES HIDDEN, HE SAID.

A person may say one thing, but the way she holds her body says the opposite.  

Real people are walking contradictions seeking to fool everyone and in the end only fooling themselves.

Your dialogue contrasted with your description should embody that.

"All my life I lived on the edge of nothing.  Now, as a ghost, I live on its knife's edge.

No matter what genre people read, all they really care about is the creation of emotion through dialogue and description."

He bent down to stroke Midnight.  
 

"Plausibility is largely a matter of style. 

It takes an awful lot of technique to compensate for a dull style, 

although it has been done, especially in Presidential Debates."

 "NEVER FORGET THAT THE WORLD IS SIMULTANEOUSLY A HORRIBLE AND A BEAUTIFUL PLACE," 

CHANDLER SAID, FADING AWAY AS THE SOUNDS OF HIS WORDS JOINED HIM.

 I hope Raymond Chandler helped you a bit, for that would make up for my and Midnight's lost sleep.