Models for Dialogue

[Avalon]

Thank you so much to everyone who contributes to these boards. You've helped me enormously! That being the case, I wanted to bring you a question.

I'm starting to zoom in on my dialogue -- specifically, how I can improve it, when it's the best tool for a given situation, when it's bad, when it's good, etc.

I'm picking apart Connie Willis' Domesday Book, for one, but I wondered... can anyone recommend novels in which you would consider the use of dialogue to be outstanding? (I ascribe to the theory that the best way to learn is to find someone who's doing it well, and try to figure out word by word how they did it.) My particular field is fantasy, with a minor in SF, but if you can suggest something in another genre, I'd love to hear about that, too.

Help?

Or, rather, "Help!"

[scribbler1382]

John D. MacDonald, Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard. Absolute geniuses with dialog, in my view.

[blacbird]

John D. MacDonald, Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard. Absolute geniuses with dialog, in my view.

Yes, these absolutely, esp. MacDonald. James M. Cain, for another. Regardless of your genre, absorbing what these writers do can't fail to help your ear for dialog. For the more literary fiction-minded, Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy (regardless of his infuriating penchant for omitting quotation marks).

caw.

[SusanR]

Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner. If you don't remember this book, it's about a young woman who is an elementary school teacher, and her (dangerous) secret sexual life. She picks up strangers in bars.

Because the men she gets involved with are all so different, they all speak differently, and the author's facility with dialogue really shines. You can tell in one sentence which of them is speaking, just from the construction of the dialogue.

Also, all of the Mary Poppins books feature great dialogue. Mary's Poppins' character is revealed with every word she speaks.

Gone with the Wind also has great dialogue. I think what makes dialogue great is that it so perfectly expresses character. Not one word too little, nor too many. Not too literary, not too much cluttered with the inefficiencies of real speech. GWTW is a classic.

SusanR

[Carlene]

Read your dialog out loud into a tape recorder. When you play it back - you'll hear the clinkers.

Carlene

[Avalon]

Thank you so much for the great suggestions so far! I'm scribbing furiously...

They've also helped me to hone my question, a little. I find I'm interested not so much in the sound of the dialogue (ie, the rhythm, etc), but in how and when it's wise to use it at all, and when the choice is made to do so, what's the best way to apply it. I'm examining when the particular tool needs to come out of the bag.

For instance, I find myself asking, "Is it best to use a conversation here, or would this information be more dramatically conveyed with a plot event?" "Should this be a shorter chunk of exposition, or a longer chunk of dialogue?" "This conversation is necessary. Do the pacing of the book and the tone of the scene require short comments or long ones?"

In addition to using rhythm to convey dialect and mood of the speaker (and simply to 'in-clue', for that matter), are there books in which every page of dialogue, every paragraph of it, every word of it advances the plot, illustrates the characters, and supports the theme? Are there books in particular that do that well? Or does well-used dialogue become invisible?

I guess it's a question of proportion, and pacing. Isn't it?

These are my thoughts for the day! Poor brain....

[Jamesaritchie]

Elmore Leonard is one of the very best ever. You can't go wrong studying him.

And as strange as this sounds, if you want absolutely wonderful dialodgue, watch "Buffy." The dialogue on that show is as good as any I've heard anywhere, at any time, in any medium.

[Sage]

And as strange as this sounds, if you want absolutely wonderful dialodgue, watch "Buffy." The dialogue on that show is as good as any I've heard anywhere, at any time, in any medium.

:kiss: I didn't want to be laughed at for mentioning it, so thanks James.

[Avalon]

I've never watched Buffy. What the heck is wrong with me?

I'm going to look for it now, though! Thanks, Buffyites, if that's what you're called!