I think that dialogue is very important in fiction.  It can make the characters seem more real than they would otherwise be if what they said was merely described.

An example from every day life: a friend tells me that he’s had an argument with his girlfriend, and leaves it at that.  How much more real (and interesting) the argument becomes if he says, “She said to me . . . . and I said to her . . . . but then she said  . . . well, then I replied . . . .”

Dialogue also helps to define the characters; we know them better when we hear them speak.  For example: two characters have a headache.  One of them says, “Oh, I feel poorly today.  I’ve got one of my headaches.   I’ve taken some tablets, but it’s still there, throbbing away.”

The other character says, “I’ve got a bit of a headache at the moment.  Nothing to worry about.  I’ve taken a couple of tablets and it’ll be gone soon.”

You might say that the first character is a bit of a hypochondriac and a pessimist.  The second character you might decide is an optimist with a stiff upper lip.

Good dialogue can also move the story forward.  Facts, impressions, attitudes and values can be revealed.  Decisions can be taken (or not).

The dialogue I write is probably a bit artificial in the sense that real people seldom speak so concisely.  We all tend to use a lot of extra words when we’re talking.  Rather than telling someone, “I saw a fox in my garden this morning!”  We’ll say, “I saw a big red fox in the back of my garden this morning!  You know, right where I have those white chrysanthemums, to the left of the garden furniture.”  The essential facts are contained in the first message: we can visualise a red fox in a flower bed.  The second message is friendlier than the first: it’s reminding the listener that s/he knows the garden, and since s/he knows the garden s/he is certainly a friend.  But for the reader (who probably doesn’t care about the layout of the garden), it has too much information, and therefore invites that deadly criticism: boring!

Here is a piece of dialogue from Fishing in Foreign Seas.  Jamie has just lost a huge order and his wife, Caterina, has just discovered something in his desk.

She didn’t answer, left the room and returned with a small piece of paper.  She gave it to him and asked: “What’s this?”

His premonition suddenly turned to dread; ‘Oh shit, why didn’t I throw that away?’ he thought, but he said: “It’s an advertisement for a bit of jewellery.”
“I can see that!  And why was it in your desk?”  Her tone was cold, and her face was hostile – untrusting, as she looked, unflinchingly, at him.

“I was going to buy it for someone” He paused. “but . . . .”

She cut in: “Did you buy it?”

“Yes,” he said softly, eyes on the floor, anticipating the next question.

“For whom?”

‘I’ll have to tell her,’ he thought, ‘maybe she knows – anyway, no good to lie.’  His eyes were still on the floor.

“FOR WHOM?” she repeated.

Softly, he said: “It was a birthday present for Mary Beth.”

“A birthday present?  For five hundred dollars?  For your secretary?”  She was almost shouting now.  Her face was red with anger.

“Well,” he responded lamely, “she gave me those nice trout cuff links, and I . . .”

“Those ‘nice trout cuff links’ couldn’t have cost her more than fifty dollars!  But you, Jamie, felt you had to give her a present worth ten times as much!”

He said nothing.

“What’s going on between you two?”  Her voice was insistent, now.

“Nothing.”

“Some nothing!” she shouted.  “You give your pretty, young secretary with big boobs a five hundred dollar bracelet covered with hearts!”  She paused, studying him.  Then, in a low voice, she asked: “are you in love with her?”

“No.”
“I don’t believe you!”

“Caterina, I swear to you – No!”  He paused.  “I just . . . “

Her anger returned.  “YOU JUST WHAT?”

He shrugged.

“Have you f***ed her?”  She spat out the words.

He recoiled with shock: “No.”

“I don’t believe you!  . . . Your pretty young secretary with big boobs reminds you of Alice – doesn’t she? . . . I looked at Alice’s picture in your Yale year book, today.  They could be sisters!”

“I haven’t . . .” he faltered.

“You haven’t what?”

“I haven’t had sex with Mary Beth.”

“But you were hoping to, weren’t you?” Her malice was evident.

He nodded.  “Oh, Caterina, I’m so sorry.  I really am.”

She ignored him: “why didn’t you?”

“Why didn’t I what?”

“Why didn’t you f*** her, you bastard?”

“Because . . . because she said ‘no’.”

“She said ‘no’?” she asked, incredulously, “at least she has a little sense to go along with her big boobs . . . When did this happen?”

“Last night.”
“Last night when she asked you to go to that country bar and she asked you to go to bed with her, but she changed her mind?”

“She didn’t ask me, but she said ‘no’.”

“So you asked her.  You were feeling low because of your precious Mid America, you tried to have a pick me up with your pretty young secretary.  But she wouldn’t have it.”

He said nothing.

“Why didn’t you come to me?”

He looked truly forlorn.  “I don’t know, Caterina. . . . I’m so sorry!”

She suddenly turned, walked away, went upstairs, and he heard their bedroom door slam.

What happens in this dialogue is a role reversal between Jamie and Caterina.  Jamie, the ever-confident, masterful husband is reduced to a shamed, naughty child.  And Caterina, the beautiful, compliant wife, fuelled by her anger, suddenly takes charge.

(For more information about my novels, see www.williampeace.net.)

I suppose every author relies heavily on imagination – I certainly do.  If I didn’t, I would be writing autobiographical, non-fiction: pretty boring stuff.  But I think there’s more to it than avoiding the mundane.  It’s also about surprising the reader with something s/he hadn’t expected.  Reading a novel should take the reader to a place unanticipated, so that it becomes something of an adventure.  At the same time the unfolding scene has to be credible; if it’s just improbable, the reader will lose interest.

For me, there’s also an element of inspiration involved in the process of imagining.  Sometimes I think of the word ‘muse’ when I feel inspired.  Do I have a muse?  There’s no other person involved inspiring me to create a scene or a situation.  Yet it does feel very personal: as if someone whispered to me, “what about saying . . . . “  This often happens when I’m searching for just the right word or phrase.  It will suddenly come into my head.

Similarly, when I’m trying to create an interesting new situation, a concept will spring to mind.  Before calling on my imagination to develop the concept, I’ll examine it.  Is it interesting?  Occasionally not, and it gets discarded.  But if it is interesting (at least to me), I’ll consider its credibility.  Could this follow from what’s happened already?  If ‘yes’, I’ll turn my imagination loose, fleshing out the detail, while keeping it both interesting and credible.

One example from Sin & Contrition: Ellen is making a lot of money as a designer of fashionable, expensive ladies evening wear.  She challenges her husband, Gene, to think of a way for her to avoid paying taxes.  He comes up with a scheme that will allow her to write off non-existent losses against her taxes every year.  In brief, the scheme was that Ellen bought a business, including a package of dress designs, from Aldo, an Italian immigrant, for ten thousand dollars in cash.  The business included goodwill valued at $2.2 million and a long term payable of $2.3 million as an earn-out.  The dress designs were real: they were old pieces of work which Ellen had done and which had been re-labelled with the name of Aldo’s shell company (which Gene created).  After signing the deal, Aldo returned to Italy with his ten thousand dollars.  The accountant at Ellen’s business added the acquisition to Ellen’s business.  Each year, a chunk of the good will was written off, and the write off reduced Ellen’s taxes.  In my final interview with Gene, he admitted that the IRS suspected that it was not an arms-length transaction, and that they tried to contact Aldo for verification, but they were unable to find him.  Gene told me it saved over four hundred thousand in taxes over eight years, but at the risk of a fine of five hundred thousand dollars and five years in prison.  Gene liked to live dangerously.

I do quite a lot of research when I’m writing.  In fact, it’s not unusual for me to spend more time researching a particular point about which I’m writing than it takes for me to write the actual passage.

I was amazed to learn that Jonathan Franzen, the very popular American writer, does not have an Internet connection in his office.  He must have a marvelous imagination – a subject which I’ll cover in a later post.

As for me, I can’t rely completely on my memory and imagination.  For example, I used to live in the town of Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, in the States – a town where much of the action in Sin & Contrition takes place.  But I had to use the Internet to remind myself of the names of streets, churches and important landmarks.  The professional baseball players who are mentioned briefly in Fishing in Foreign Seas and Sin & Contrition are (or were) real people who were playing major league ball at the time in question.  I had to research the Marine Corps training process to write accurately about LaMarr and Jason’s experience of it in Sin & Contrition.  As part of my training to become a naval officer, I went through a month of Marine Corps training at Little Creek, Virginia, but it’s not the same – although I sometimes felt much as LaMarr and Jason did.  Similarly, I had to research the city of Hue, Vietnam to be able to describe the young Marines walk  to the brothel.

For my third novel, Efraim’s Eye, I felt that it was important for me to understand Islam.  I bought English language versions of the Qur’an, and I listened to an audio version for hours while I was in the gym.  (It absolutely amazes me that some Muslim children in madrasahs  learn to recite the Qur’an by heart.   My copy of the Qur’an runs to 440 pages!)

The places in my novels are, generally, real places, as are the hotels and restaurants which are mentioned.  The menus are (or were) real.

For me, writing as I do about largely fictional characters – though some of them remind me slightly of people I know – it’s important to place the characters in real settings.  That way they seem to me more real, alive and credible.