6 CHAPTER SIX

Character and Dialogue

I’ve found that most of you know how to write strong dialogue. We all watch a lot of serialized narratives on TV and devour all kinds of films from noirs to classic Hollywood to art cinema. We know the rhythm of our times and the beats with which people speak.

Dialogue can make a story pop, bringing characters fully to life. Direct dialogue grants them, as I’ve argued (taking my lead from Ron Carlson’s Ron Carlson Writes a Story) in previous chapters, their own agency, their own spaces to speak from, giving us writers all kinds of narrative threads and impulses to follow. But we have to be listening.

The Five Modes of Fiction

Dialogue is probably the most important subset of the five modes.:

Dialogue. Conversations should involve conflict or something at stake, possibly a reveal. Not every scene is a battle. Often characters just want to be understood. Vulnerability plays a role here. Moreover, dialogue scenes should be full of uncertainty. Characters in a scene are often breaking from “fixed” roles of behavior, traveling somewhere they haven’t gone before. Most moments of dialogue involve some kind of subtext (the unsaid) and waver between moments of connect and disconnect.

State of Mind.. This is where, depending on the point of view, we enter into a character’s consciousness and get some of their direct interiors. A goalie awaits a penalty shot and tries to guess the shooter’s tendencies, what move will be tried; a woman wonders what the hell she’s doing at a laundromat at 2 a.m. still dressed as Gena Rowlands from Minnie & Moskowitz. State of Mind also touches on what we explored earlier: the outer versus the inner story, the overarching plot versus the discoveries of character. What’s happening at the plot level, how does the dialogue or the scene further the plot (close off an action; open up another)? What’s happening at the level of character, how does the dialogue and scene further the emotional impact the event has on the character (look at where she starts the scene and where she ends it: what journey did she take?). If a scene doesn’t have this kind of arc, you probably didn’t need to write it.

Action. Physical movement of some sort: fleeing from an adversary; a fight on a front lawn; looking through backyards for a stolen bicycle.

Description. A kind of pause in the narrative where we get a description of a structure, a place, a character. These descriptions are often linked to character psychology and the setting’s mood. Moreover, short descriptions in a scene often function as beats, pauses, while a character figures out how to change tactics, how to get what he wants.

Exposition. A form of narrative telling, exposition can establish a quick backstory or compress time so that we can leap forward or back in a narrative. As I argued in a previous chapter, Bernard Malamud uses exposition as section-start bridges.

Trigger Words in Dialogue:

In acting, we talk about not speaking until you have to. What are you responding to, what is your scene partner giving you or not giving you that makes you speak? In fiction, just as in acting, there are words that encourage a response and braid a scene together. Moreover, staging, brief physical details work as beats, punctuating a scene, pauses, building tension, suspense, raising questions as to what might be coming next.

Here’s a brief part of a scene from Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novel King’s Ransom. Note all the trigger words.

The given circumstances: Diane King wants her husband to pay the ransom demands for Jeff, their chauffeur’s son. King doesn’t want to pay; it will break him financially and end his attempted desire to seize ownership in the battle for his company. Besides, the boy is not his son. But, Jeffrey Reynolds was kidnapped because the kidnappers mistook him for Bobby King. You have a moral obligation to save him, Diane argues.

She paused. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am serious, Diane.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m not paying. Start believing it, Diane. I’m not paying.”

“You have to pay.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“They asked you for the money.”

“Yes, a bunch of crooks asked. Why should they make the rules? Why should I play according to their rules?”

“Rules? Game? There’s a little boy involved here.”

“There’s a whole lot more than a little boy involved,” King said.

“There’s nothing more than a little boy involved,” Diane answered. “If you don’t pay them, they’ll kill him.”

“He may be dead already.”

“You can’t even consider the possibility.”

“Why can’t I? I can consider every damn aspect of this thing, I’ve been asked to pay five hundred thousand dollars for a boy who means absolutely nothing to me. I’ve got every right to weigh the possibilities. And one possibility is that he’s already dead.”

“They told you he was still alive. You know they did. You can’t excuse yourself by—”

“And another possibility is that they’ll kill him even if I do pay. Ask the police. Go ahead. See what they—”

“And if you don’t pay, they’ll most certainly kill him.”

“Not necessarily.”

King rose from his chair. He left the fire reluctantly, walking to the bar until at the other end of the room. “Would you like a brandy?” he asked.

“No, I would not like a brandy.” She watched him as he poured. His hand was steady on the neck of the bottle. The amber fluid filled the brandy snifter. He recapped the bottle, walked back to the easy chair, and gently rolled the glass in his big hands. She continued watching him, and finally she said, “Doug, you have no right to gamble with Jeff’s life.”

“No? Who has a better right? Who’d they ask for the money? What is Reynolds doing to get his son back? He’s sitting on his behind, the way he’s sat all his life. Why should I pay for his son?”

“Doug. I’m trying very hard to keep from screaming. I’m trying with all my might to keep from screaming.”

Take time and mentally circle all the trigger words and you’ll see how McBain threads this scene’s conflict, escalating the tension: “serious/serious”; “believe/believing”; “paying/paying/pay”; “asked/asked”; “rules/rules/rules”; “little boy involved” (spoken three times); “kill him/kill him/most certainly kill him”. McBain even includes a strong visual beat change, King attempting to change tactics: “King rose from his chair. He left the fire reluctantly, walking to the bar until at the other end of the room. ‘Would you like a brandy?’ he asked.” It doesn’t work. Dianne rebuffs him: “No, I would not like a brandy.” This scene sounds and feels natural because of the clever use of repetition and doubling of the story’s life and death’s stakes (the boy’s and King and Dianne’s relationship).

Let’s briefly return to my previous chapter’s analysis of On the Waterfront and study all the trigger words abounding in the “getting to know you” scene, forwarding the narrative’s causal chain and tonal shifts. Among the highlights: when the “juice head” tells Terry “he’s still a bum” it forces the ex-pugilist to acknowledge his deepest fears: “Who’s calling me a bum”; later Edie’s trigger word “teacher” (her desire to become one) allows Terry to slide into praising her smarts and his brother Charlie for being a “very brainy guy.” Edie responds to Terry’s trigger word “brainy” with the challenge, “It isn’t just brains, it’s how you use them”; and finally his plea to be seen, “You don’t remember me, do you?” sets forward her half-rhyme of conciliatory love: “I remember you the first moment I saw you.”

Dialogue as a Verb: What are you willing to do to the other person to get what you want?

Sidney Lumet once said that acting is “doing. Acting is a verb.” If you look back on my analysis of On the Waterfront you’ll see many subtextual beats listed as verbs: deflect, challenge, chastise, admit.

Don’t pre-plan or over-determine scenes: let the scene grow organically, surprise you. But once you revise, step back, and think more like an actor. What verb is being played here? And here? And there? Every time you have a new line of dialogue, wonder what verb/objective is under it. If the dialogue, in a certain line is cajoling, and you don’t feel it quite works, make what she says a reprimand. Change the verb, the action, and the subtext will adjust accordingly. And as the subtext adjusts, so will your choices and thus the revision of a scene you’re struggling with will suddenly take you to surprising new ends.

Julie Orringer plays with verbs brilliantly in her scene work to “Isabel Fish.” The story centers around a victim, Maddy, who was a passenger in a car that crashed into a lake, killing Isabel, the driver and girlfriend of Maddy’s older brother Sage. Angry, Sage is now estranged from his sister and treats her cruelly. Maddy tells us in the story’s opening line: “I am the canker of my brother Sage’s life.” Their parents encourage Maddy to take SCUBA lessons at a local YMCA. Central to Orringer’s story is a therapeutic theme: confront the fear of nearly drowning in water by going back in and learning how to breathe underwater.

And Maddy does. In the last two scenes Orringer’s choice in “actions” intensifies. On her way to SCUBA lessons at the Y, Maddy verbally spars with her brother. He’s stuffing food in his mouth, avoiding her. He feels guilty for having killed her “fish” out of spite. To smooth over the fish killing, Sage offers Maddy a cigarette, but she rejects him with a curt, “Yeah, right.” He tries to placate her: “I know you steal them sometimes.” But she won’t allow for any playful connection, calling him a “dickhead.” Thwarted, he offers to buy her new fish and she rebuffs him: “Do you know how ridiculous that is?”

Their jazzy musicality isn’t leading to any kind of reconciliation, so Sage opts for resignation: “okay, okay,” and then surprisingly confesses, “I’m an asshole.” This is a moment of complete honesty and vulnerability, and it quietly rhymes with an earlier scene: at a “hot-tub party” Sage told a story in front of his high school peers about five-year-old Maddy peeing in a pool, embarrassing her. Isabel defends the younger Maddy, challenging Sage with the hard-edged “Why do you have to be such an asshole?” and then abandoning him at the party. She and Maddy drive off together in their fateful journey.

Maddy, however, isn’t ready to fully embrace Sage’s openness, his admissions of guilt. Instead, Maddy tops Sage’s confession with the heart-felt tonalities of the wounded, “You make me wish I died instead of her.” Beat.

This is a staggering and dramatic punch line. An overhand toss that leaves us on the canvas, long passed the referee counting to ten. Sage is so shaken that it forces him to reassess his relationship with his sister and admit, “I can’t believe I turned into such a shitty person. . . . I wasn’t even nice to her.” Orringer cleverly places the epiphany in the hands of a supporting character, not the lead.

But it is Maddy’s story, not Sage’s, and Orringer writes through the epiphany. Maddy, moved by her brother’s confession, soothes him: “You weren’t a terrible boyfriend. . . . Isabel loved you.” Her actions in the scene move from challenging to rebuffing to staggering to soothing. The verbs he plays follow a trajectory of offering, placating, abjectly confessing, and indirectly apologizing. Orringer plays levels as both characters adopt strategies to get what he or she wants (largely understanding, compassion, and love).

In the final scene, Maddy with Sage by her side conquers her fears. “Quit thinking about the last time,” he says, assuring her she won’t have another panic attack like she did the previous time in the pool. They tumble in the water and Maddy has the stage’s final spotlight:

We tread water, watching each other through our masks. I cannot see his eyes through the glass, but I can see, reflected small and blue, a girl wearing swim fins and a metal tank, self-contained and breathing underwater.

They’re together, committed to one another, but the moment is hers. And she’s visible.

Earlier, Maddy admired the translucent blue pair of fins and matching mask that her mother purchased for her, observing, “They seem like they’d be almost invisible underwater.” It was as if she had wanted to disappear.

Now, however, she isn’t hiding. She’s finding herself. She can’t see his eyes but her own, and like the SCUBA tank she wears, the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, she, in a moment of double-voiced wonder, is made whole again, no longer fractured but self-contained.

Writing Three-person Scenes and Ricochet Dialogue

Raymond Chandler once joked that he struggled with three person scenes, that’s why The Big Sleep opens with three couplets (Marlowe and Carmen Sternwood; Marlowe and General Sternwood; and Marlowe and Vivian Regan).

The advantage of an ABC scene over an AB scene is tremendous. In Frank Hauser and Russell Reich’s Notes on Directing, they suggest staging scenes in diagonal lines and triangles. Two actors on stage are in a single relationship, but add a third and suddenly audiences are in the midst of seven relationships (one for each pairing; one for each pairing up against a third character; and one for the entire ensemble).

But what if a crime writer creates a destabilized triangle and then repeatedly opens one of the triangle’s sides, a character exiting the setting, but that character is never really gone, their absence is a structured presence, an ongoing mood of destabilization? This is what Ed McBain accomplishes in King’s Ransom in some of his scenes involving the kidnappers.

In chapter five, after luring Jeff to the Sand Spits tar paper farmhouse, Sy takes the eight-year-old to a back room to show him a “real gun.” While they’re offstage, Kathy talks sense to Eddie. Eddie refers to the kidnapping as “to borrow a kid,” but she doesn’t let him rest easily, with his half-hearted rationalizations. Instead, she warns, they could all get the electric chair. While attempting to change her husband’s course of action, Kathy is painfully aware of Sy’s menacing present-absence, glancing periodically at the door Sy and the kid are shut in behind. “What’s Sy doing to him in there?” McBain has amped up the story’s urgency: this is life or death stakes.

In chapter eight, Sy once again is o!stage, shaving, the bathroom door closed. Kathy returns to work on Eddie’s conscience. Eddie insists that they ought to trust Sy, he knows what he’s doing, and Kathy, twice, snaps back, “He wants to kill that boy.” Eddie, dreaming of a better life in Mexico, refuses to budge. Point blank, she asks, where do you stand, “I have to know,” and Eddie refuses to answer, heading outside for a fresh pack of smokes.

The tension of the scene is doubled: will she finally win Eddie over to her position, and what if Sy, behind that closed door, is listening in, aware of her attempted coup? As Eddie continues rummaging the car for smokes, McBain shifts to another triangle, Kathy and Jeff versus her offstage husband and Kathy and Jeff versus the presence behind the door, Sy. She turns to the sofa bed, once again looking off at the closed bathroom door, and promises Jeff, “I’m taking you out of here.” As the boy delays, retrieving his unloaded but treasured “real gun,” Kathy continues looking at the closed door, wary of the sudden violence lurking.

Eventually, the open side of this particular McBain triangle is closed off as Sy re-appears and catches them making a break. “Where do you think you’re going?” McBain now shifts our attention to the absence of Eddie: what might he do if he were to discover Sy roughing up his wife?

Eddie returns and Sy and Kathy keep their showdown (his threats; the attempted escape) a secret, and McBain slides into the menace of double-voiced dialogue. Sy: “‘There ain’t nothing going to foul up this job.’ His eye caught Kathy’s. ‘Nothing,’ he repeated

Three person scenes can also provide wonderful moments of menace. With three or more people you can also enhance your trigger words with ricochet dialogue. Ricochet dialogue, as explored by James Naremore in his monograph on Sweet Smell of Success, occurs when one character is talking to another character for the benefit of a third. When the “juice head” attacksTerry in On the Waterfront for, his words in part, are spoken for the edification of Edie. Clifford Odets loved such scenes because they unveiled a pernicious undercurrent to his characters and moved us outside the realm of the usual two-character scene.

Early on in Sweet Smell of Success slimy press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) meets one of his “clients” Weldon outside of the 21 Club in New York. Weldon, a woman on his right arm, says to Falco, “Get your hands out of my pocket, thief!” The woman tries to restrain Weldon and as she does Falco barks back that his client is just “showing off for the girl. They supposed to hear you in Korea?” She becomes the beneficiary of two ricochets: Weldon’s barbs bouncing off Falco, and his return salvos bouncing off Weldon.

But it’s inside the club we get to see Odets (with the help of Ernest Lehman) at the full powers of his craft. Here’s a clip. Enjoy the arsenic in the words. Analysis, inspired by Naremore’s monograph, will follow:

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)- “This one is toting that one… for you” 1 min Film School

Once inside the 21 Club, Falco, uninvited, joins J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) around his table. Present are Senator Walker, press agent Manny Davis, and ingénue Linda Adams. Here Odets’s ricochets fire in several directions in this six-minute scene. All of them suggest veiled threats behind terse words. Upon Falco’s arrival, Hunsecker doesn’t look at him directly and for the benefit of the others gathered says, “Mac, I don’t want this man at my table.” Falco, however, remains undaunted. He has some vital information on J. J’s sister and forces his way in. Seconds later, J. J. attacks the press agent Davis for possibly having extra-marital affairs: “Everyone knows Manny Davis, except Mrs. Davis.” Following an obscure phone call between Hunsecker and another failing press agent, Falco asks the senator. “Do you believe in capital punishment?” The senator is perplexed and Falco explains, “A man has just been sentenced to death.” Falco’s now talking directly to Senator Walker, but he’s letting Hunsecker, via the ricochet, know not to try that stuff with me. Finally, when Linda Adams, in response to Hunsecker’s prying questioning, says she’s studying singing, “of course,” J. J. purrs with a smile full of arsenic, “Why, ‘of course’? You might for instance be studying politics.” He may be talking to Linda, but his ricochets are landing on Senator Walker, warning him of what this might look like, or as the gossip columnist, seconds later, bluntly states: “Where any hep person knows that this one (camera pans to Manny) is toting that one (swish pan to Linda) around for you” (swish to medium-close up of Walker).

Ernest Hemingway, a literary antecedent to Odets, was an expert at ricochet dialogue. In “The Killers” the two hit men speak for the benefit of everyone else in the diner. They talk to intimidate. They make fun of the menu, of Summit, and the recreation it provides. When one asks, “What do they do here nights?” the other answers, “They eat the dinner. . . . They all come here and eat the big dinner.” All of these “soliloquies” are ricocheting off Nick and George, the spectators to this performance. The killers use trigger words such as “bright boy” and the repetition of “think’s” and “thinker” to build tension, until they tie them all up and admit their purpose: they’re here to kill a Swede.