Today is for writers…or readers who are interested in craft.

I just read Benjamin Percy’s fabulous article on “The Geometry of Dialogue” in the Poets & Writers Magazine, July/August 2009 issue.  Unfortunately, it’s only available in print, so if you’re a writer, run–don’t walk–to the nearest Barnes & Noble to grab a copy.

Percy’s piece is a succinct look at avoiding long-windedness and instead, creating layers of meaning while the discussion is happening on the page.

He states the problem first.  “Perhaps this is why so many writers feel they can wallow in dialogue, especially in novels.  They set their characters down on a park bench–or at a dimly lit bar, or in a rusted-out Datsun–and away they go, yakety-yak-yakking for pages on end.  Not only is this chattiness excessive, often redundant (we understand the father is a prick and the son a pushover after four lines) and expository (we don’t want your characters to go on and on explaining their troubled history or how the museum painting contains a stupid code), but it also destroys momentum.”

There needs to be something more at stake.  “The outcome of the conversation (Character A wants to reveal her feelings to Character B, for example) is almost never enough.  To make the audience want to push forward, to wonder what happens next, there needs to be something else at work.”  Percy gives an example from Thomas Harris’s thriller Red Dragon.  Francis Dolarhyde brings his girlfriend Reba home, and while they’re drinking martinis, they have a long discussion about the history of his house, his own faults, and their romance.  Sound compelling enough?  Not really.  “But as Harris has written it, the reader can barely breathe.  Reba is blind, and while she and Francis talk, he readies and then silently plays a home video of a family he murdered.  The conversation takes on a whole new meaning as we wonder whether Reba will make Francis walk the straight and narrow or if he will chew off her face.”

Hmmm.  Yes, that does make the scene so much better.  Now what if you don’t have a psychopath as your protagonist?  Percy offers another lovely example from Kent Haruf’s Plainsong in which the two McPheron brothers go crib shopping for the pregnant teenaged girl they’ve taken in.  They’re out of their element in the store, as evidenced by their comments.  “Why would you ever want hooded casters?”  The clerk tells them it’s for decoration.  “I expect that’s important, how the wheels look.”  Their love for the girl is evident, but in an underhanded way.

If you want to write great dialogue, study how the masters do it.  Read line by line–sloooowly–and see how they weave in odd details that enrich simple conversation.

And if you’re writing screenplays, which are mostly dialogue, then it’s even more important that you hone your skills.

A parting word from Percy: “No matter how beautiful or ugly your characters are, no matter how charming or obnoxious, quiet or noisy, no matter what their purpose in a given scene, the reasoning behind triangulating dialogue is simple: Always have more than one thing going on in your fiction.  And if the triangle is the strongest, most basic, self-reinforcing structure, then consider this a lesson in the geometry of dialogue.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Lastly, two reminders.  The link for the free Coldplay nine-song download (that I mentioned several days ago) is now active.  You can find it here.  [I’ve changed the link, too, on the original day I mentioned it.]

Secondly, remember to enter the giveaway for a SIGNED copy of Karen Maezen Miller’s Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood.  The contest ends at noon CST on Wednesday.

Happiest Monday to all of you!

[Post image: Talkin’ About Revolution by edmondo on stock.xchng]