The businessman rushed into his colleague’s office. He stopped short in front of her desk, eyeing her before deliberately closing the door behind him. The woman’s eyebrow’s raised.
“Sometimes…” he started, then paused, staring at her a moment longer.
“Sometimes what?” she prompted, a hint of suspicion in her tone.
The man took one more intense look at her, as if driven by some inner torment, and finished. “Sometimes, I can’t help it. I just have to come in and stroke you.”
If you’re a writer, your head is already spinning with at least five possibilities of where this dialog leads. She rushes into his arms and they share an amorous embrace. Or he laughs, making it – and the woman – a joke and walks out. Or she stands up from her desk and slaps him. Or she insults him. Or she calls security.
Or… he sits and shares a compliment he just received about the woman from one of the company’s largest clients.
The dialog was real and the last ending is what happened. My point is that you would not know that from the lead in dialog. In fact, it would be rather jolting to the reader for those to be the next lines. And this creates a tool to use when appropriate and avoid when not.
I spent years reading depositions – the written transcripts of a witness’s oral testimony. Let me assure you, the relationship between information relayed by hearing someone speak and that conveyed by those same words written on a page is tenuous at best. The connotations change. Let’s use an easy example:
“You snuck in and stole the cookies, didn’t you?”
“Right. I did it.”
For the reader to understand this exchange, tags must be added to cue in the connotation. “Right, I did it,” the diabetic answered sarcastically. Alternatively: The child held up her hands in surrender. “Right,” she said apologetically. “I did it.” And sometimes merely adding tags won’t be enough. The words of the dialog itself must change to work on paper, even if it is exactly what would be said in real life. In this example, consider changing it to “You’re right,” she said apologetically. “I did it.” Chances are that “you’re” wouldn’t be uttered in a real situation. But fiction isn’t real life, and will more convincing if it is not exactly accurate.
Or use the ambiguity to your advantage. The fluidity of the connotation is a tool I am fond of, as my writing partners can attest. The uncertainty of dialog can develop tension for the readers – leaving them curious as to what is going to happen next – or it can create misunderstandings among the characters. An example in the book I am currently editing: A womanizing guy is in the hallway, being ribbed that the young woman in his bedroom is about to be the next in the long line of his conquests. He responds to his buddies’ taunts with something along the lines of, “It’s not like that. I wouldn’t do that to her,” then returns to his room to find the woman crushed by his open rejection of her. He’s baffled because in his mind, he’d been defending her honor – saying that it’s different with her – not dissing her as someone he’d have nothing to do with.
I suppose the lesson here is that dialog can be hard. We hear it in our heads – some of us more than others. But we can’t write it exactly the way real people talk. Rather, consider all the ramifications of the words and how they could be interpreted or misconstrued by the reader. Use those misconstructions when it works for your story and characters, but when you’re trying to convey straight dialog, make it read real rather than be real.
