33. Writing Great Dialogue: How to Avoid Writing Clunky Dialogue that Lacks Subtext

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:     

Continuing with the key principles for how to write great dialogue, this week's episode unpacks Principles 8 and 9.

• 8. Good Dialogue should be short. 

Compress it as much as possible. Use the trigger principle. Cut the hesitaters (Oh, Well, No, Yes, But, Wait, Listen, etc.). Also, beware of repetition or redundancy, direct Q & A, or stilted words and phrasing. 

• 9. Good Dialogue should include subtext.

Don't be on the nose. What is said is not as important as what is meant. Say one thing, mean another. Let the conversation be "loaded," especially between characters with complex relationships.  Juxtaposition helps.

UP NEXT

Next week, we will address the final key principle of great dialogue, how to write with appropriate familiarity between two characters. This episode will explain what we mean by high context versus low context dialogue, which will help you to avoid writing dialogue that your audience won't believe.

QUESTIONS OR TOPIC REQUESTS? 

If you have a question or a specific writing related topic that you would like Zena to consider addressing in a future podcast, click on the link below to leave a voicemail recording with your problem, question, or issue.

https://www.speakpipe.com/ZenaDellLowe

SPECIAL THANKS

The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe would like to thank composer Carla Patullo for the original music she graciously permits us to use in the intro and outro of this podcast. To find out more about this amazing talent, go to  www.carlapatullo.com

Tags: Artist, Artists, Writers, Writing, Writing tips, Story, Storytelling, Storytellers, Zena Dell Lowe, Mission Ranch Films, The Storytellers Mission, The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, Dialogue, Writing great dialogue, characters, novels, screenplays

Transcript

Ep. 33 - Dialogue 4

Thu, 10/15 12:32AM • 15:24

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

dialogue, principle, writing, trigger, words, short, subtext, character, naturalistic, person, loaded, relationship, heated discussion, contractions, lines, context, actor, scene, podcast, speech

SPEAKERS

Zena Dell Lowe

Zena Dell Lowe  00:00

INTRO: Hello, and welcome to the storyteller's mission with Zena Dell Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story. 

Zena Dell Lowe  00:07

TOPIC INTRODUCTION: At the beginning of this mini series on dialogue, I said that there were going to be 10 primary principles, or essential ingredients, of good dialogue. Last week, we addressed principle number six and principle number seven. So this week we're going to address principles number eight, and nine. And then next week, we'll address the final principle of what makes great dialogue, and the week after that, we will dive into the tools and tricks - my favorite tricks - to be able to do the things that we need to be able to do through dialogue. Alright, so let's dive right in. 

Zena Dell Lowe  00:47

PRESENTATION: Principle number 8: Dialogue is good if it is short. 

Zena Dell Lowe  00:56

Now, I know this sounds strange, but the truth of the matter is, dialogue must be short. You have to compress it as much as possible. Speeches should be minimal and you really have to work at them. If you're writing a screenplay, a movie is only two hours long. So it needs to move rapidly. If you're writing a novel, you might have more wiggle room when it comes to how long a particular section of dialogue is. However, it should never ramble. It should never go longer than it has to be. You should cut as much as you can, because any kind of redundancy is annoying to the audience. It feels condescending to us. Once you've said it, you've said it; you don't need to repeat it. 

Zena Dell Lowe  01:37

Now, there's another way to make it as short and compressed as possible, and that is to recognize that this is not real life speech. You need to watch your hesitaters. What do I mean by that? Well, I'm talking about intro words like these: Look, comma, dot dot dot. Listen, dot that dot. Then... Yes, comma, No, comma. Oh, comma, But, comma. Well, comma. I mean, comma. Yeah, well... It's not about blank, it's about blank. These types of words are very tempting to write. And the reason why we want to write them is because we think it sounds natural. We think it sounds like real life speech, like how people talk in real life. The problem is the way people talk in real life, and what we read in either a script or a novel, comes across differently. So in a novel, when we read those words, it reads clunky. Even though you as the writer are trying to make it sound naturalistic, to us, the reader, it just reads clumky. So you want to cut those words. Cut those intro words. Go back through your novel, look for them, and then cut them out. Because the truth of the matter is, your writing will come across cleaner if you do. What we want to do is just write the message. Get rid of the clunk. 

Zena Dell Lowe  03:06

Now, the same is true for screenwriters, because in screenwriting, you want to let the actors act. I'm often writing in the margins of my students scripts: LTAA, which means, let the actors act. Because what happens is, they're writing those words thinking, again, that it's going to sound naturalistic. But the truth is, if an actor needs those, they will add them. So, let the actor act. You write the message and let the actor translate or communicate the story. Trust me when I say, it will make your story so much cleaner, it will be so much more palatable, it'll be easier to read for a reader or for an audience, it's just much much cleaner, and it comes across better, it seems crisper. It's finer writing. 

Zena Dell Lowe  04:00

And, as I said last week, get rid of the adjectives and adverbs. Any words that modify the nouns. Look for "LY" words, like desperately, faintly, quickly, extremely, happily - any "LY" words, try to cut them, because A.) those words don't sound naturalistic, and B.) they clunk up the writing, and you don't want to do that. You want it to be clean and as readable as possible. So again, you want it to be short. Good dialogue is short.

Zena Dell Lowe  04:39

Now, remember, we also talked about the trigger principle. This is another reason why dialogue is typically short. The truth of the matter is, if two people are in a conversation, and it's escalating and getting more and more heated, you're going to enter into the trigger principle, where people are compelled to respond because of a hot word that somebody said. Well, when that happens, their dialogue is necessarily short because they can't keep going on. 

Zena Dell Lowe  05:08

So, if you remember me discussing the trigger principle, the basic idea of the trigger principle is that as soon as one of the characters says something, says a trigger word, that compels the other person to respond, then that other person interrupts and responds. And there's different forms of the trigger principle. The most common one is the heated discussion. So if a husband and wife are arguing, and one of them says, "You know, my mom is coming this weekend and I really need you to be nice to her." "What do you mean? I'm always nice to mom." "Oh, right, like last time when you told her that she was ugly." "Well, I was just trying to tell her that she didn't mean to put on all that makeup." "You insulted my mother." "I was trying to be helpful." This is the trigger principle because each character is responding when they hear the hot word that will compel them to respond, and the form of that particular trigger principle is the heated discussion.

Zena Dell Lowe  06:06

But there are other types or forms of the trigger principle. For example, you might have a confirmation of what the other person has said. "I can't believe how weird it is here at Costco, with all these masks." "Yes! Yes! I was just saying to somebody that it felt like I stepped out of a zombie movie." So that is a confirmation of what the other has said, "Yes, yes!" Or it may be some new idea or new thought that is brought to mind because of what the other person said. "I decided to take that Zumba class with Gina." Oh, Gina!" "What?" "I just remembered, she called and left a message yesterday and I forgot to call her back." Okay, so that person just brought up Gina with a different context, but the other person responded. So those are forms of the trigger principle. 

Zena Dell Lowe  06:54

Now, coming back to this idea of it being short. First of all, if it's a trigger word, then of course it's naturally going to be shorter. But one thing you need to remember, you don't want to let a speech go on too far past the most provocative line before the other character responds. What do I mean by that? I can't tell you the number of times that I'll have a student give me a scene that they've written, where one character comes home from work and says, "Hi, Honey, I'm home. Oh, my goodness, there was a terrible accident on the freeway. I saw a dead body on the side of the road. Oh, my mom's gonna be here in an hour, have you started the spaghetti yet? Oh, I brought home some paper plates so we don't have to do dishes tonight." And then the other character will say something like, "You saw a dead body on the freeway?" That is too late. You need to have the other person respond right when the provocative line has been said. Now that's an extreme example. However, it's actually pretty common for somebody to say, "Hi, how are you doing? Do you want to come in?" "Oh, I'm doing fine, thank you. Yes, i'd love to come in." But see, good dialogue goes back and forth. You don't wait for one character to say all their lines and then the other character responds to all their lines. It's a banter, it's a tennis match, boom boom boom. And that's how you have to play it and the trigger method helps with that. 

Zena Dell Lowe  08:24

Now, going back to this idea that dialog needs to be short, here are a couple of other things that people do to violate this. First of all, I see a lot of repetition or redundancy. For example, Somebody says, "Would you like some soup for dinner?" "Sure, I'd have some soup for dinner." "What would you like to drink?" "I think I'll have a coke to drink." Do you see how this is redundant? It's repetitive. We just don't need those types of dialogue exchanges. They don't add anything. They don't move the story forward and they certainly don't reveal anything about the character or about the character relationships. It would be much more interesting to have somebody say, "Would you like some soup for dinner?" "I want tacos. How many times have I told you, it's tacos on Wednesday." That would be far more interesting then, "Sure, I'll have some soup," or, "No, I wouldn't like some soup." But that is just repeating back to them what they just said and I see a lot of exchanges like this.

Zena Dell Lowe  09:28

Or, the direct q&a. Ironically, the example I just gave is also an example of another problem with dialogue and that is the direct q&a. The direct q&a can become trite, it can become cliche, and it can be boring. And it can cause writers to write a low context dialogue exchange when they need a high context dialogue exchange, which, of course, we'll talk about next week. And the other thing that needs to happen to be short is that you don't want to use stilted words and phrasing." I am fine today. How are you doing?" Instead of, "I'm fine. How're you?" Don't ignore contractions. Don't have bad word choices. You want to be quick, to the point. We don't speak formally like that so you want to make sure that your characters aren't speaking in an overly formal way. They use contractions. That's just how it is.

Zena Dell Lowe  10:32

All right. Number nine, dialogue is good if it includes subtext. 

Zena Dell Lowe  10:39

Don't be on the nose. What is said is not as important as what is meant. You want to have your characters say one thing but mean something else. Now, subtext is what's underneath the text. It means that their lines are loaded, and by the wa,y we all understand this. If you are in relationship with people, especially your family members, you know that not everything that's being said can be taken at face value. It's loaded. Right? So, if you have a sister who says to you, "Oh. Your hair looks so much better this way." You know that what she's really saying is, "It looked like crap before." Are you with me? So, you want to make sure that you're including those types of lines of dialogue. It's loaded context. You want to have your characters saying things to each other that are loaded because of their relationship. That is subtext. Very rarely in real life are we saying things plain as day, if we're in complicated, complex relationships with people. It's always a little bit loaded. So just be thinking about having things be loaded. Include subtext. And again, juxtaposition can help with this. 

Zena Dell Lowe  11:57

So, as I mentioned, juxtaposition means you set the scene in a context that isn't normal for that particular event. So if you have a love scene while changing a tire, that makes it more interesting. But now you can actually formulate subtextual comments because of the context. So for example, if the guy is trying to change the tire on the side of the road in the middle of a rainstorm, but they're supposed to be falling in love, he can reach for a tool and say, "Can you hand me a lug nut? And she can say, "I'd love to." Right? I mean, I don't know what that means, exactly, but the point is, it could be loaded. And then he can interpret that however he'd like to interpret that. Her helping him change the tire, now, when they're talking about tools, they might be talking about their relationship or hinting about how they feel, and they're using the changing of the tire to sort of tell each other how they feel. That is far more interesting. That is how you include subtext. 

Zena Dell Lowe  13:04

The point is that you use the juxtaposed scene to allow subtext to come out, where they're actually talking about their relationship or their feelings through the use of whatever tools are available in the scene. It makes it far more interesting and pleasurable for the audience. We enjoy stuff like that. We love innuendos, and that is a form of subtext. 

Zena Dell Lowe  13:28

RECAP: To recap them. Principle number eight. Good dialogue must be short. You must compress it as much as possible. Speeches should be minimal, and you really have to work them. Also, you want to watch the hesitaters. Look, listen, then, yes, no, oh, but, Well, I mean -- all those things need to be cut because it makes your writing seem clunky. And you also want to watch repetition or redundancy, direct q&a or stilted words and phrasing or uninterrupted speeches. Don't ignore contractions. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:10

And finally, principle nine. Your dialogue should include subtext. Don't be on the nose. What is said is not as important as what is meant. So say one thing and mean something else. Subtext is what's underneath the text, and again, juxtaposition helps. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:31

CALL TO ACTION: I want to thank you so much for joining me today. If you found these principles helpful, would you please consider subscribing to the show and rating the show on Apple podcasts? That would be really wonderful. Also if you have a subject you would like me to address, please click on the link in the notes section, which will take you to something called my "podcast voicemail." If you click on that, you can leave me a direct voicemail. Tell me what you'd like me to talk about, and I will try to address it in an upcoming episode. 

Zena Dell Lowe  15:03

OUTRO: In the meantime, you've been listening to the storyteller's mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.