658349328743289

50 Part II: Realising That Character Is Everything
‘Things about you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do I know them?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Are they bad things?’
‘Yes.’
—John le Carré (The Tailor of Panama, Sceptre, 1999, first published 1996)
Write a dialogue of your own as terse as this one. Don’t write more than ten
words per line. Don’t let your characters answer the questions they’re asked
with more than minimal information.
One of the main problems when writing dialogue is deciding how much to let
the dialogue stand on its own and how much readers need explained about the
characters’ thoughts and feelings and what’s going on around them when they
talk. The only suggestion I can give is for you to practise writing a lot of dialogue
and gradually develop an instinct for when it works and when it doesn’t.
The following exercise helps you develop your dialogue-writing skills:
1. Take your notebook or open a new file on your computer and write a
dialogue between two people, leaving plenty of space between each
line. Write only the lines of dialogue, with nothing else.
2. Think about the point of view from which the dialogue is viewed,
from just one of the two characters. (Check out Chapter 8 for much
more on point of view.)
3. Write down in the spaces between the dialogue what the viewpoint
character is thinking and feeling.
4. Write in any body language that the viewpoint character notices. (See
the following section for details on this aspect.)
5. Add any external observations that the character makes – perhaps
noticing the clock ticking on the wall, the sunshine coming through
the window or the traffic passing in the street outside.
6. Write any ‘he saids’ or ‘she saids’ you need in order to make it clear
who’s speaking.
7. Go through the piece and edit it, taking out anything you feel isn’t
needed or is over-explained.
How do you know when the scene is finished? That’s hard to say. In the end,
you develop an instinct, but ultimately the only way to be sure the scene is
finished is when the goals the writer sets for it are achieved and the necessary
information, character, conflict or subtext have been conveyed or the
tension established.