I was thinking about how often we refer to good dialogue as ‘sparkling’.
For some reason, thirst perhaps, the word sparkling immediately
made me think about my favorite beverage—champagne.
Then, probably to keep my mind off drinking in the afternoon,
I began to think about how much in common champagne has with good
dialogue, and with good writing in general.
Here’s what I came up with.
Champagne takes a long time to create. There’s the aging
of the vines, the grape growing, the harvest, the process by which
a vat of grape juice becomes this magical beverage. But that’s
all backstory. Sure, we needed it to get to this point, but let’s
face it, our experience begins the moment we ease the cork out
of the bottle. Nobody thinks about the green grapes that were
picked ten years ago any more than your reader cares on page one
that your heroine’s mother used to braid her hair when she
was five.
Champagne opens with a bang. And so does a good book, a good
scene, a great sentence. That popping sound of the cork catches
the attention, gets the sensory glands working in anticipation
of the treat they are about to receive - then the dramatic pause
as the liquid pours into the glass. Now, the first sip. Mmmm.
The bubbles dance on your tongue.
You probably know where I’m going with this.
Great dialogue dances on the tongue too. In order to dance, your
characters’ words must have effervescence, a certain airy
lightness, and of course, an underlying music.
Champagne, at least the good stuff, is expensive, so you don’t
want to waste it. You want each word to count, to be the perfect
word for this character to say in this precise line.
When I hit a wonderful patch of dialogue, I often stop and re-read
it aloud. I’ll listen over and over to a brilliant play
or a loved movie just to feel the words dancing on the tongue
and hear the music of their rhythm.
Not all your dialogue needs to be Dom Perignon, of course. Lots
of other beverages sparkle, too.
Beer is my man’s drink of choice and I often think of it
as a manly drink. Your hero’s dialogue may be have more
in common with hops than grapes. His speech may be tangier, perhaps
a little bitter, and definitely not as clear as the heroine’s.
But beer still bubbles and sparkles, whether he’s a frothy
lager kind of guy or a Guiness man.
Well, having dragged that metaphor out until it begged for mercy,
let’s look at a practical example.
We’ve all read novels or unpublished manuscripts (perhaps
even our own) where the dialogue is heavy and cumbersome. The
couple bicker, bicker, bicker until you, the reader, want to slap
some sense into them. Here’s an example I just made up.
I’m deliberately using no dialogue tags or stage direction.
It’s just talk.
“Ginny, I told you not to go snooping in the cellar.”
“I’ll go wherever I please.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will, Hubert, and you can’t stop me.”
“Wanna try me?”
“I’m calling mother.”
Well? Did those lines sparkle like champagne on your tongue or
lay there like sour milk—irritating and unpleasant?
Is there a way to make dialogue sparkle? Partly it’s taking
the time to go over and over it, knowing your characters and their
word choices, taking out the unnecessary words, reading the passage
aloud until the lines feel right.
You can apply the same tests to sections of dialogue that you
can apply to any scene. If I’m not happy with a section
I’ll ask myself:
1. Does this exchange move the story forward?
2. Does it reveal important information, maybe some of that backstory
I didn’t dump into the beginning?
3. Does it reveal character?
The best dialogue does all three, but you should be able to answer
yes to two of those questions in order to be satisfied your dialogue
is doing its job. Looking at Ginny and Hubert above, that dialogue
shows a little of their characters. Enough to turn you off both
of them as being irritating, pig-headed and probably not too bright,
but not much else.
What could we do to increase the value of that exchange?
Let’s try moving the story forward.
“Ginny, I told you not to go snooping in the cellar.”
“I didn’t mean to. I never saw anything. It was all
dark.”
“You stay out of there.”
“It smelled funny. Like the butcher’s stall on a
sunny day.”
“You just forget all about it.”
“Like something was dead down there.”
Well, this won’t win any Pulitzer, either, but in the same
six lines, it does move the story forward - we’re wondering
what’s down there and what Hubert’s going to do next.
It reveals important information. We know Ginny’s already
been down there, and discovered it smells like a dead carcass.
It reveals a little more character, too. Ginny’s obviously
nervous, Hubert is blustery and maybe protective of Ginny or maybe
threatening, it’s hard to tell in so few lines but at least
we’re getting a sense of personality and plot. And hopefully
enough questions to turn the darn page.
One of the great joys of writing fiction is creating dialogue
that sparkles, dancing on the tongue like champagne. And speaking
of champagne, I’m suddenly feeling thirsty… I wonder
if there’s any in the house.
