Week Eight: "Voice and dialogue: the unique verbal DNA of characters and relationships"

This week we were learning about voice and dialogue. In my writing, I have a habit to rely on dialogue too much, so I’ve definitely found this week’s lessons about the significance/power of dialogue really interesting.

I liked the idea that was put forward this week that “voice and dialogue are the unique verbal DNA of characters and relationships.” It’s quite difficult, or at least I find to be quite difficult, to make differences in character dialogues. Their personality and/or emotions can come out through the way they are speaking, but altering the actual dialogue itself to create a crystal clear voice is something I’ve not consciously experimented with before.

The note on the resource page continued; “once you've tuned into the voice of your character, once you know the kinds of idiomatic language they'd use, your character becomes present every time they open their mouth. This can be done in a way that is dramatic and exaggerated or it can be contained and restrained.”

This statement made me think about all the characters I’ve ever written, and I realised that in subtle ways I’ve been doing this before I even knew I was. When I picture a character, I begin to picture how they speak and what they’re saying. Sometimes this is influenced by the voices of people I already know or even myself, and their/my idioms slip into the dialogue, so although I have never been actively conscious of it, I noted that this is a fundamental part of creating dialogue and character voice.

These were my notes on this week’s readings (so I didn’t have to write out the titles each time in my below work, I alphabetised them for ease.)

A) Cat Person by Christen Rupenian

- Very clear age gap between the two

- Many differences in the way they speak/act

- They clash on various elements of dating due to their different ages

- The power of the situation bats back and forth between the two of them

- She tries to take power back in the sexual situation - he denies her telling her she’s drunk

- She enjoys the power of Robert wanting her even though she is not so convinced about her own enjoyment

- She feels humiliated by what she does

- She breaks up with him

We were asked to address this as our main text in the work below, but overall I found this story really engaging and can see why it caused a controversial stir. The way Rupenian smoothly manages to transfer power back and forth between the two characters creates an interesting dynamic in the story.

B) Love by William Maxwell

- Clear tone of voice

- Miss Brown is the main character, but her story is told through the perspective of one of her class children

- The class love her – she is described by them as the perfect teacher

- Her tone of voice, and that of the class, is delivered through indirect dialogue – no direct conversations

I liked the idea of using less direct dialogue conversations to reveal character and used this method to inspire my own story this week (see Week Eight writing)

C) She’s the Bomb by T. Coraghessan Boyle

- Hailey’s direct dialogue comes from a text conversation – interesting dialogue medium

- Hailey’s problem is slowly revealed

- Hailey calls in a bomb threat to avoid the ceremony – doesn’t want her mum to find out about it

- Her relationship screwed her over so she doesn’t finish her work – can’t graduate college, but hasn’t told her mother

- Hailey gets in trouble for calling in the bomb threats

- Everything we learn about Hailey is indirect through her texts and third-person narration

Once more, I admired this way of using a different dialogue format to introduce the character’s personality. This story keeps the reader guessing for a long while, and that created tension in an intriguing way.

D) The Voices by Elizabeth Taylor

- Laura learns everything about the other people by the sounds of their voice – she never gets to see them

- Everything we learn about Amy and Edith comes through Laura and what she has heard of them

- She repeats their dialogue

- She can only base her opinions/her information of them off of what she hears

- Laura has been affected by a mysterious illness – we do not learn much about her other than this – she takes comfort in hearing Amy and Edith

- Laura is evidently quite lonely and alone – Amy and Edith are “undemanding company”

- When Amy and Edith leave, Laura is shocked and alone once more

This story struck me in quite a melancholic way; Laura is evidently lonely, which makes her storytelling on behalf of the other two characters quite tragic. The way that the story presents the characters of Amy and Edith through the funnel of Laura is fascinating and would definitely be interesting to try at some point.

Prompt work:

1. Dialogue should only give information indirectly. What we're interested in is tension between characters and the way in which the exchange reveals and changes them. As you read the dialogue, see if you can identify where the power lies. How is power asserted and how is it controlled?

In A, the power shifts back and forth between the two characters. Although the story is told from the woman’s perspective, Robert has the power of their relationship for most of the story. Margot takes power when the situation gets sexual and in the breaking of the relationship. The narrative is controlled by Margot.

In B, the power lies with the children, specifically the child narrating. Although Miss Brown is the main character, she is not in control of her own narrative, nor her own dialogue. The child controls her story by simple virtue of telling it.

In C, the power is retained by the narrator telling Hailey’s story. The narrator relates Hailey’s thoughts and feelings, but Hailey is not in control of her narrative either for most of the story. The only time her voice comes through is in the texting dialogues, and this is the moment she asserts power, before it is once more taken from her.

In D, Laura has the power over the story, even though for the most part the narrative is not directly concerning her. She is the main character, but she controls the other two character’s narrative. She asserts power over their story by telling it in her own way, and controls the power by not directly introducing the other two characters she references.

2. What do the man and younger woman want from each other? Do they know?

The man seems to want more of a relationship whereas the woman is unclear about what she wants. Once they’ve had sex, she’s revolted and decides she wants nothing more to do with him.

3. How does texting change the nature of dialogue that's possible between the two characters? How does this contrast with face-to-face encounters?

People are not necessarily the same in real-life as they are in texting – for Margot and Robbie, their texting sets up an expectation. For Hailey, texting is an expression of her inner thoughts. Neither characters are as bold in their face-to-face encounters as they are in their texting messages.

4. How do other voices (the expected voices of a culture/ memes/ performances) blend with the voice of the authentic character? Can we even talk about an authentic character moment in this situation? In other words, are there common phrases that appear to control the behaviour of the characters in the story.

Using pop culture references can cite a piece in time, but they are repeated words and therefore not authentic of the character. What I mean to say is that a meme or a recount of a performance is not individual to the character so cannot be said to be completely authentic to that character. You could say that social/cultural norms control the behaviour of the characters in these stories.

5. What is achieved by contrasting the dialogue between the young woman and her peers and the young woman and the man?

Most simplistically, Margot’s immaturity is shown by her interactions with her peers. When interacting with Robert, she also seems immature, but by comparison to him instead of when with her peers when she is similarly immature to them.

Seminar notes:

We started off with a short automatic writing exercise (see Week Eight Writing)

- Why do we use dialogue?

To tell something about your characters

To tell something about your story

To define your character relationships

Reveals backstory

Moves along the plot/action

- What are the pitfalls?

It can be repetitive

Sometimes you can lose the character voice

It can become convoluted when you’re trying to convey information

It can feel a bit clunky

- What about attributions (he said, she said)? Sometimes readers need a push to see what the intention is behind the speech.

- It can be freer and make your reader work more if you don’t attribute speech to a given person – they have to question who’s speaking

- Sometimes, dialogue is clear enough that you don’t need to add speech marks or attributions – how is that format more interesting?

- The banal conversation – a quick bite of conversation, polite, the stuff of everyday life – sometimes you need this to introduce a scene/character

- The unsaid – what has been left out? What has been implied? What are the subtexts? Language is slippery and conceals as much as it reveals. How can we work out what has really been said?

- What is the use of text messages? They can be misinterpreted – tone of voice is quite complex without visual factors. They can also tell us things about the character personalities – do they like texting? Are they on top of modernisms of texting?

- What can a character do with dialogue? Can they show what they want from someone else? Can dialogue show the clash/tension between people as they try to get what they want from the other person?

- Can you write a story that is purely composed of dialogue? How much information can you convey through dialogue?