Writing Dialogue: What is it supposed to do
And a conversation with the guy down the street
This is going to be a very short tip. I hope that’s okay with you all.
Yesterday, I was walking my kiddo down the street toward her work and on my way back, a man was raking a ton of leaves toward the lobster traps lining the side of his driveway. Looking up, he waved with one hand. I started to walk past, but paused because I’m like that.
“That is a great looking pile of leaves,” I said. It was.
“Oh, it’s not much, really,” he said. “There’s a dirt pile underneath.”
“So, I shouldn’t channel my inner five-year-old self and jump into them?”
He laughed, tapped the pile with his rake. “Nope.”
We ended up talking about the health of his neighbor’s oak tree, the leaves that came off it, other trees that he and his wife watch bend lower and lower ever year, curving toward the ground instead of up to the sky.
“They have to deal with so much,” I said. “All the snow and ice weight.”
“And the wind.”
We stood there maybe both of us thinking that people are like trees that way sometimes. The November wind blustered. We said goodbye.
“It was good to see you,” I said because it was.
“It was good to see you, too,” he said, maybe because he’s polite.
There wasn’t all that much to our conversation, but it made me think about two things that will hopefully help you in your writing.
Conversations are usually about connection (unless one person is trying very hard to not connect) and about being seen and heard, of exchanging words. Connections.
Conversations in books, when you write them, need to have a point. So when you revise your dialogue, you need to think: What do I want to give the reader here? What feeling should they come away with? What knowledge that moves things forward? Are these words true to the truth of this book.
Actually, conversations in real life might be like that, too.
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