Prose Blip – Unspoken Dialogue

People talk.

They talk a lot, actually. It’s this funny thing about humans (and your related fantasy and sci-fi races) that continues to amuse me greatly. And it provides a lot of interesting choices while writing.

I want to talk about one of the more boring choices on that list, today. It’s not, in and of itself, boring, but compared to some other choices it’s definitely not up there on my “oooooh I get to do this!” list.

Dialogue is – as I’ve explored before and as your average third-grade grammar textbook will tell you – two or more people speaking. Thanks to your word-roots textbook, you’ll know that only one person speaking is a monologue. But that’s actually irrelevant and not necessary for this post. Oh well.

Most of the time, dialogue is shown through a series of (short) paragraphs surrounded by quotes and tags, with each person taking turns speaking (unlike real life, in my opinion):

“Hey Matt.”

“Hey, Sally.”

“I’m Bob.”

“Oh, sorry, you just look like Sally.”

Easy enough right?

Well, what happens when you don’t want to show all that speaking? What if your story just needs to move on and get to the next scene because things need to happen someday.

That is where you must ask yourself: is unspoken dialogue okay?

What is Unspoken Dialogue?

Unspoken dialogue is NOT telepathy. Telepathy is telepathy. Unspoken dialogue is dialogue that is summarized in a single sentence. This might sound strange, but you’ve probably used it before without even realizing it. This might look something like:

Arthur approached the guards and they blocked him from entering the door. When he said the password, however, they relaxed and stepped aside, welcoming him with stiff salutes.

Now. Find the unspoken dialogue in that poorly-written piece of prose. Found it yet? I’ll give you another second to-

Ah, there it is: “when he said the password”. This nifty little phrase allows Arthur to say something [in this case, the password] without my having to draw it out into actual dialogue. The scene could go something like this:

Arthur approached the guards and they blocked him from entering the door.

“Password,” one of them barked.

He swallowed hard and wiped his hands on his shirt. “Melon pellets.”

The guards glanced at each other, and then they relaxed and stepped aside. Both of them saluted as he passed through the doorway.

This second scene has twice as many words, for a scene that is rather unimportant. Yes, the second scene has more emotions – a grumpy guard barking orders, Arthur nervously giving his password. But… do we really need all of those extra words? Prose should be concise, shouldn’t it?

Well, that depends on two things: is his nervousness important? If he’s sneaking into the enemy base using a password he overheard from the villain, then yes. We need to see this scene painted out in painful tension and worry.

If Arthur is just arriving home after a day at work, then his password isn’t important. And he’s probably not nervous anyway.

The Uses of Unspoken Words

Unspoken dialogue is most useful when you’re trying to show that words are exchanged, but the exchange itself is not important:

The business partners greeted one another and, after a brief moment of small talk, turned to the matter at hand.

This situation is incredibly boring, unless I go on to show how the MC leans in to overhear their conversation because the matter at hand happens to be weapons smuggling and the MC works for INTERPOL or something.

But which is the best way to show this dialogue: spelling out each word of their small talk and greeting, or summarizing it in a sentence?

In the case of this, there’s no reason that this exchange need be told through tedious dialogue. It’s unnecessary.

When Unspoken is Best Spoken

A thing you’ll notice about unspoken dialogue, however, is the telling aspect of its entire being. While I don’t feel like discussing the truth of the phrase “show, don’t tell”, this is a moment where it actually makes sense.

Your reader wants to see the story in detail. We want your story to come alive and dance across our minds like a movie that’s playing in theatres just for us.

If you summarize a snippet of dialogue, then your reader won’t be able to picture it as a movie. It’s like you hit the mute button and then fast-forwarded through a bit of boring dialogue.

Just because it’s boring doesn’t mean we won’t realize that you’re skipping it.

Unspoken dialogue can be useful. But at the same time, it can kill the vividness of a scene.

So what do we do? Do we show all the boring bits of dialogue to maintain the scene, or do we skim over the parts your reader won’t care about?

Allow me to sum up:

-Show emotional dialogue. If the exchange involves strong emotions, your reader needs to be in on the conversation. Actually, if it’s emotionally strong, it’s probably not boring at all.

-Show dialogue that includes the MC. If your main character is speaking, your reader deserves to know what they say. We’ve been following this character around, sitting on their shoulder or inside their head, watching their every move and hearing their thoughts. If your MC speaks, we want to hear it. Even if it’s boring. When it’s boring, just make it awkward. Solves everything.

-When in doubt, start the conversation, then let it trail off. What do I mean by this? An example:

“What do you mean?”

Bart shrugged. “I’m jus’ sayin’ that you shouldn’ have ta do none o’ tha’ if’n you jus’ do as I say an’ not do that other thing.”

Aaron spat. “You know that’s not how this works; anyway, you’re one to talk.”

The two wandered off, still bickering.

This is a prime example of a rather unnecessary conversation that is established, then summed up and moved on from. Your reader gets a chance to picture the scene, then you whisk us off to something that’s actually important.

And that should be the goal of unspoken dialogue. Your reader should still be able to picture the scene, watch it move, but they shouldn’t have to sit through a long boring conversation about Aaron not doing that other thing.

Related Posts:

8 Tips to Polishing Dialogue

Prose Blips – Dialogue Tags

Bringing Words to Life

Featured Post:

The Rough Draft (Vera Aisling)

Sequels and Threequels

We all know that one book that has a sequel.

I’m not talking about a series of books, per se, I reference that book that could stand alone, but doesn’t. Instead it becomes the first in two or three books.

Part of my thinks that trilogies were first invented because some author didn’t want to stop writing about the same characters, but wasn’t willing to come up with a plot that lasted five to seven books.

Because books so commonly come in sets of two or three, nowadays, I thought it’d be nice to discuss them: what makes a sequel strong? What makes it weak? Why is it so uncommon now to just write one book?

Strength in Numbers

Sometimes, one book isn’t enough. If that’s the only reason you have a sequel, you’re probably doing it right. That’s why we have series of five or seven or fifteen. Plots are vital to story and sometimes plots grow too big to be contained between just one pair of covers. It expands and inflates and twists and turns and becomes too complex to resolve in one book.

So you decide “hey, I’ll just write another book after this”.

And that’s okay. Some stories just need another book. I’m currently writing a fantasy series that is – unless my plot drastically changes – thirteen books long. The plot is just too big to make two or three books (not to mention one) feasible. Six main characters and twice as many important villainous elements (some human, some not) does that, sometimes.

Having a sequel or threequel can give your story strength when:

-It allows the plot to finish at a natural pace. A rushed plot is a bad plot; an unresolved story is a poor story.

-Each book has a distinct goal, even as it points to the larger goal of the trilogy/series. If your books begin to read like chapters instead of books, you’re going to lose readers. I don’t want to read a book that doesn’t feel complete. If your book ends as incomplete, your reader will feel cheated. Each reader should be able to put your book down – be it the first book in the series or the last – and walk away without feeling unfinished. That doesn’t mean you can’t have lose ends and cliffhangers, but it does mean each story needs its own distinct goal.

-The characters continue to change without the cast fluctuating. Does your trilogy contain the same people in each book? If not, that’s okay. But at the same time, you’re going to need to have a very good transition from cast to cast. If you want to introduce a new POV character, we need to know them before it happens. Much like C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, you need a slow transition from main character to main character. Not a sudden jump.

And as you write the second or third or fourth book, keep this in mind: every character needs to change in each book. If your character arc comes to an end in book one, then that character needs a new arc for book two. Characters that don’t change aren’t good characters.

Emotional Attachment =/= Sound Reasoning

Here’s the deal: some people don’t have enough plot to make a sequel. But they still do.

Why?

Because they’re attached to their characters.

Have you ever had that? You created and shape and form characters that just feel right. They come alive and they’re adorable and you wish nothing bad would ever happen to them (as you proceed to write about all the bad things that happen to them).

And then… the story ends. You finish their book and realize you don’t want to be done. These characters are so great and so well-rounded and developed and beautiful human beings, like they’re your little babies.

I can empathize with most of that (not the last phrase, but sure, the rest). I’ve had a cast of characters that I didn’t want to stop writing about. Turns out, Asher’s Song gained twenty thousand words and a major plot twist because of it. I didn’t want it to end, so I changed the plot and suddenly I could write more about these characters that I love.

But here’s the deal: when you write a sequel solely for the characters, it will be a weak sequel.

Just because you want to write more about your characters doesn’t mean you should write another book about them to share with the rest of us. It’s like writing a fanfiction about your own book.

It’s fine, until you try to get everyone else to read it.

That’s not how this thing works. See, your reader needs to care about what is happening to your characters, not just the characters. Yes, we need to care about your characters as people. If we don’t care about them, we don’t care about your story.

At the same time, however, there needs to be a story. Not just some random plot you pulled together, however. If you want to write a sequel, it needs to further what you wrote about in the first book.

Unrelated sequels are weak.

There, I said it.

If you want to write more about your characters, that’s fine. Have a hay day. Enjoy your fanfiction about your own characters.

But does it really deserve its own spot on the bookshelf?

A Dying Breed of Books

Once upon a time, people wrote just one book. They wrote about a set of characters who did a specific thing and that was it. The end.

Nowadays, however, if you see just one standalone book, that author is a crazy person. We’ve become a world of trilogy readers.

Why? Some of the best stories in the world (To Kill a Mockingbird, War and Peace, Paradise Lost, Death of a Salesman, Alas Babylon, Black like Me, Fallen Angels, Crime and Punishment, even The Old Man and the Sea, and so forth) are standalone books*.

Given a choice between a trilogy and a single book, I’d choose the single book.

When an author can tell a story in one book, it tells me something very important: that author knows how to be precise. They know how to tell a story in less than two books. When an author writes one book about one cast of characters and moves on to a different cast, that shows me restraint. It shows me that they know when to stop, when to move on.

A standalone story is powerful. If Arthur Miller tried to write a sequel to Death of a Salesman, it would probably turn out awful. It’d be flat and weak and, chances are, have none of the strength that the original possesses.

If C.S. Lewis wrote Screwtape Letters, Volume 2, the idea wouldn’t be original anymore. The novelty wears off and suddenly you’re left with a story that not too many people want to read.

Expanding Horizons

It’s okay to want to write a sequel or threequel or a series of seventy-two books.

Really, it is.

At the same time, however, why not try… not?

Try writing a novel that stands all by itself. Specifically, try writing a standalone novel with a cast of characters you love. Don’t slide by with writing about those characters you like, but wouldn’t mind not writing more of.

Prove how much self-control and conciseness you have deep down in your soul.

Who knows, maybe you’ll discover that writing just one book is a powerful exercise that can strengthen your writing.

Maybe.

Related Posts:

Plots – Bringing It All Together

Extending the Conflict

Why Outlines Aren’t Evil

Sidekicks - Part One

Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Inspiration

Featured Post:

Holding On to Story as a College Writer (Brynn Fitzsimmons)

*yes I realize there’s a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird now, but I stand by my reasoning because the sequel’s publication is so far removed from the first, time-wise, that I don’t count it.

World Blip – To Dragon or Not to Dragon

Dragons.

These mythical creatures are the most famous beasts out there. More common than phoenixes, less discriminated against than unicorns and pegasi. They come in all shapes and sizes (like elves, but cooler) and generally appreciate treasure (like dwarves, but cooler).

You can find dragons everywhere in fiction, and in many “non-fiction” settings. You’ll find dragons incorporated into culture after culture. They might look like snakes with legs or majestic four-legged scaly beasts with wings and fire. Sometimes they speak; sometimes they just rampage and destroy.

And they’re awesome.

 

Commonality

Consider this: does your story need dragons? I mean, dragons can fit into any genre, except maybe Victorian His-fic, and now I kind of want to see that happen. 

See, dragons can be used in all sorts of ways:

-Guardians of treasure (The Hobbit, for instance)

-Protectors of secrets (Dragons in Our Midst)

-Steeds of the air and magical companions (Dragonkeeper Chronicles)

-Extinct creatures of symbolic magnitude (Wheel of Time)

-Cute little cat-like creatures that bestow magical powers through self-sacrifice (oh wait, that’s one of my novels, whoops)

(As a side note, my mentioning these titles does not equate my recommending them; two of the titles? Sure. But these are just examples, yes?)

These little [er… large] creatures can come in handy for any number of plot and character needs. They can be villains, mentors, or allies. Some can communicate with spoken words, others through telepathy.

Yet…

Aren’t they overdone?

If they really are everywhere, why should all sorts of writers use them? Won’t that make them cliché?

Well, yes and no.

Munching on Deep Thoughts

There are a few aspects of dragons that are cliché, and some that are not. Others are neither cliché nor un-cliché, they are simply too well-known for us to get away with.

For instance, a dragon that guards a treasure in a cave is too well-known. Tolkien used it, so you shouldn’t. Too many people know his story and will begin to picture your story as a knock-off. It’s not a happy truth, just a true one.

Now that isn’t a cliché because it hasn’t happened successfully all that often. It’s just that one instance of it is so well-known that people will call you out on it.

So. Just shy away from “dragon living in mountain with gold” and you’ll be fine.

A common cliché among dragons is the ability to communicate telepathically. I’ve seen this is many novels and it’s getting rather old. I’d rather the dragon just… talk. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with telepathy, it’s that it’s been done so often it no longer screams “I’M UNIQUE PAY ATTENTION PLEASE”.

There are some types of dragon-lore that are not cliché, however.

-Flightless dragons: I’m currently writing a novel (it’s my brainchild) that includes dragons which, for the most part, cannot and do not fly. There are only a few – very old – dragons that can actually fly. Instead they’re more like Chinese dragons: long and snake-like with small wings and a rather nasty habit of killing people.

So many dragons fly in stories, when they don’t have to. Besides, flightless dragons are interesting. I mean, even the real world has them. That makes them cooler, in some ways.

-Fireless dragons: so many dragons breathe fire. It’s one of those aspects that aren’t cliché in the same way that people with hands aren’t cliché. They just are. At the same time, however, dragons that don’t breathe fire are unique. They’re special.

-Wyverns: these are those weird kinds of dragons that have only one pair of legs, instead of two.

You find these almost nowhere, nowadays. But it can add an interesting dynamic to your story, just like using Chinese-dragon-like creatures.

Are Dragons Diverse?

There’s nothing wrong with a dragon.

In fact, dragons are great. Fantastic.

At the same time, however, they’re common. Like elves and dwarves and fairies and dogs and humans are common. Sometimes being unique requires trying something new. It means making up your own creatures and developing your own races.

Other times, a dragon or an elf is just what your story needs.

I’m not against dragons in stories. I am, however, against mediocrity.

Don’t settle for average or common. Your story should shine vibrantly in an ever-growing sea of less-than-fantastic books. Use dragons if you wish; that’s fine. But also remember to look past the common and on to the new and the strange and the wonderful.

Related Posts:

For the Sake of Diversity…

The Two Questions of Worldbuilding

The Importance of Color

Featured Post:

Holding On to Story as a College Writer (Brynn Fitzsimmons)