How To Date - How to Write a Book | 6. DIALOGUE

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

In the sixth episode of How to Write a Book, Elizabeth Day’s new podclass series, hosts Sara Collins, Sharmaine Lovegrove and Nelle Andrew discuss crafting excellent dialogue. This week’s dialogue between these three experts covers the best exchanges they’ve come across; how to make dialogue work - from setting the subtext on fire, to distinguishing between characters through the words they utter; and the interplay between internal and external dialogue. One of the hardest things to master, dialogue can often fall flat - and part of the secret to making it come alive lies in getting to know your characters. Nelle, Sara and Sharmaine show you how. And, at the end, Elizabeth pops into the studio to offer her own final reflections. Together, Sara, Sharmaine and Nelle are your on-hand writing community giving you the push you need to get started on that novel, memoir, or piece of non fiction you've always dreamed of writing. We hope you enjoy our fourth episode. Stay tuned for the next week’s chat on… PLOT. Books discussed in this episode include: •  The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins •  The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margeret Atwood •  Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert •  Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes •  Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld •  Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout Films discussed in this episode include: •  Marriage Story •  Past Lives •  Amadeus •  Anatomy of a Fall We also talk about: •  John Berger, Hilary Mantel and Grayson Perry •  Succession Executive produced by Elizabeth Day for Daylight Productions and Carly Maile for Sony Music Entertainment. Produced by Imogen Serwotka. Please do get in touch with us, your writing community, with thoughts, feedback and more at: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Reading, playing, learning. Stellist lenses do more than just correct your child's vision. They slow down the progression of myopia. So your child can continue to discover all the world has to offer through their own eyes. Light the path to a brighter future with stellar lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLR.com. And ask your family eye care professional for SLOR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. Hello and welcome back to how to write a book. It's Elizabeth Day here, author, podcaster and

executive producer of this 12-week pod class, which takes you by the hand and guides you right through from developing an idea to getting your final manuscript ready for publication. And how to write a book is also the place to come, if like me, you're a passionate reader and want to find out more about what happens behind the scenes of the literary world. Every week, you'll get an exclusive insight into how and why our most celebrated writers wrote the books they did and what it really means to create unforgettable stories. Because we all have a story in us. But how do we get it out there? To help you through the process, I've brought together a crack team. Leading agent, Nell Andrew, best-selling author Sarah Collins, and powerhouse publisher Charmaine Lovegrove,

three amazing women who are also really good friends. So yes, we might be teaching you a new skill set, but you'll also get a seat at our friendship table. We hope very much you'll stay for the conversation and the laughs along the way. So now, without further ado, let me hand over to Sarah, Nell and Charmaine. I am Nell Andrew. I'm a literary agent at Rachel Mills Literary, and with me are two phenomenal women who I cannot sing their praises about enough. Sarah Collins, an award-winning writer and screenwriter, and Charmaine Lovegrove, the MD of a major division within a major publishing house who is just a pioneer of books. We will be discussing dialogue, and I am also going to be

slightly giving a wink to Charmaine because her division is called Dialogue. So I expect expertise from the screenwriter Sarah Collins on my left and the Dialogue Division on my right. If you've been with us before, you'll know that we like to start with a little bit of an icebreaker, which is let's talk about what great dialogue means for us. Shall I hand this straight to the screenwriter? He literally has to be paid in order to talk about great dialogue. I mean, you literally write. dialogue for a living so bring me the genius when i think about our sort of recent examples of absolutely great craft when it comes to dialogue great writing craft it's all on screen i don't know

how many of you have seen past lives but i'm obsessed with that um film i think it's selene's song who wrote and directed and anatomy of a fall so two sort of major films this year what's interesting to me is they're both doing in very different ways what I think good dialogue does, which is it is sort of asking whether we can ever get to the truth in talking to each other. Can we ever sort of connect with each other in conversation? And in one, in past lives, it's all about what's not said. It's all about the sort of elliptical moments and the silences and the things that are left on said but are expressed in body language. And then in anatomy before, you have the whole film builds up to this sort of pivotal moment where the couple are arguing and everything spills out

and it's just incredibly dialogue driven and yet so much as being done by the subtext beneath that conversation and for me I keep going back to them when I'm trying to write my own dialogue now I go back to them because I think what I've taken away from them is that the secret to really good dialogue is subtext it's what's beneath the surface and it's surprise it is how can the silences or the body language. And I don't think we talk enough about how dialogue doesn't exist in a vacuum on the page or on screen. It's being married up with setting and with body language and with all the things which we can talk about. But how do those things create some kind of turn, something really surprising in the scene that the reader's going to sort of sit up and wait

and take notice about, I compare it to the turn in poetry, you know, in a good poem where it sort of sets you up and you kind of moving in one direction and then some shit. in the Volta happens. And you realize everything has been reordered. My whole understanding of this is different. I think that's what dialogue should be working to do in a really well-crafted scene. That's so interesting and it's really just got me thinking. I've lived with this word dialogue for a very long time. I had a bookshop in Berlin called Dialogue. I had a publishing consultancy called Dialogue Berlin. Then I had a scouting agency called Dialogue Scouting. Then I had an imprint called Dialogue Books and now I have a division called Dialogue. So where that started from

was around that dialogue for me was sort of the greatest exchange essentially. The exchange between people and the multiples and the nuances of that. That was really important to me and that's why I wanted to call my bookshop dialogue and I'm very, very, very pleased that my publishing division is called Dialogue and to see Dialogue on every book that we publish, this just makes me so happy and our email addresses as well. It's like, why stay in this monologue when you can be in a dialogue, you know? Why just have the conversation with yourself when what you can learn from so many other people in the world around you was really important. Thinking about where dialogue is really loud, I can't actually remember the film, but it was an American film about a marriage where they were getting divorced.

and I think it has Jennifer Lawrence, maybe. Oh, is this the Silver Linings playbook? Is it marriage story? Oh, God, I love a marriage story. With Scarlett, your hands then. Excellent, excellent example of good dialogue. Yeah, that was phenomenal. Glad we're on the same page.

Is Star, Charming. You're redeeming yourself after that English loved about the last time. Yeah, we're back on the fold. The fold is reunited and it feels so good. Do you know what? I didn't even feel bad about not being in the fold. I didn't even notice guys. I just was like, I'm very characterful and full of myself. It's cool. I am myself. That's who I am.

But just you know, I've thawed now. The Thor is there. So, marriage story, that is like, like, dialogue-tastic. You know, it's just like throughout every single thing is dialogue. And you just cannot get enough of what they're saying, why they're saying it, how they're saying it, and what do they mean. And it's so engrossing. and so engaging, and then you understand that there's a difference between hearing and listening. Oh, God. Great. Yes. You know? You can be heard, but are you being listened to? So those for me, examples of the extremes of it. Marriage story. And then there was a film with Julianne Moore where she is struggling with Alzheimer's. And so that's like that loss of dialogue, that loss of language

and that change and shift in character and voice as you again go through something. Dialogue is like for me at the absolute epicentre of humanity and how we interact with that and whether that be John Berger and Dialogue with the Arts and Creativity or Grace and Perry with class, for example. So yeah, it's a big, big thing, this topic. I think dialogue is such a fascinating

element in terms of writing because when it works, it works so seamlessly that it pulls you in, even when it's incredibly challenging, like Urban Welsh or, you know, in Shiggy Bay, then when it doesn't work, when the vernacular feels so tin-eared and off, then it absolutely grates against you, like kind of nails on a chalkboard. I think...

Huckleberry Finn does that for me, I have to say. Oh, wow. She woke up and chose violence. I know, controversial. Controversial. The point is that, as we say over and over again, you bring yourself into any experience, whether it's writing or it's reading. And so if there is a vernacular or something that's just going to jar against you,

it's going to jar against you. All you can do is bring a level of authenticity to it. And I think that goes back to what we've said before in previous episodes. We talk about the character's voice and the authorial voice. Now, for me, as a reader and as an agent, one of the things that really gives me goosebumps is when the character voice is in conflict with the authorial voice. So, for example, in Olive Kittridge, which I adore, I didn't think I would adore that novel because it breaks a big cardinal rule for me, which is that it's multiple characters talking

about their particular experiences. It's by Elizabeth Strout and she talks about this woman called Olive Kitturidge who lives in Maine and it's told from the point of view of the people who live in this particular village or community with her and you see this character through their eyes

and they bring their own stories to it. One of the things that I think is amazing about is that she uses those characters as the authorial voice versus Olive Kitturidge's actual character voice And so how Olive uses dialogue kind of talks about herself versus how other people talk about her. And they bring their own stuff into how they talk about her and how they talk about other things. And so you're watching this conflict between these two perception.

And that, for me, is always really meaty and fascinating. And the way that people use speech and dialogue to render this version of themselves into the world. But then you have to watch how it doesn't work or it gets twisted up by other people. Or it doesn't match the internal dialogue. There's that bit in like Madame Bovry when she's being seduced by one of many lovers. And in the middle of the scene, Floubert is talking they're at a market. Does Charmaine go for French love? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I totally.

Yeah, I do. I do. French love is fine. Floubert does that scene and then they're at the market. And then in the midst of it, he does these little tincts of dialogue. so he's like bullshit and things like that. So he's just slightly undercutting all of this gorgeous love,

seductive dialogue with reality. And it's not forced. And this is what I mean about how dialogue can be an incredible element. It isn't something to be afraid of. But I do think writers struggle with dialogue. And I want to throw that open as to why we think dialogue is one of the things

that either people really embrace to the point where you're like, I feel like I'm reading a screenplay. Or they can sometimes go the other way you're like, is this all just going to be an internal monologue or you actually going to have people interacting? Like, why is dialogue intimidating? Grocery shopping, cha-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-filling food? Filling up on gas? Chach-ch-ch-ch-chmuting, using streaming services. With your RBC Ion Plus visa, earn three times the Avion points on groceries, gas, dining,

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He's sitting in this big leather chair and he reaches behind his chair and he pulls out a black handgun and he's like, I got guns everywhere. We'll find out how Alec Baldwin killed someone on a movie set. Rule break after rule break after rule break. A cascade of like seven failures basically happened. It wasn't just one. We'll take a look at the many faces of Mark Zuckerberg. If you are trying to spread propaganda or you're trying to sow chaos, the algorithm is probably your best aid.

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Holy sh**. So we've learnt what Charmaine, Sarah and Nell believe are examples of great dialogue, both on the page and on the screen. But that really is the question, isn't it? Why is dialogue so intimidating to write? And how do we make dialogue work? Here's Charmaine. I think because we've already looked at voice and we've looked at character,

and dialogue is the key that knits it altogether to create the completeness of the person. And to get that element right is the hardest because you can draw someone and you can render their voice. But then... This comes back actually to Nell's listener exercise at the end of our last episode. on character is that dialogue is basically character. And unless you know the person who is speaking, you will not be able to write their dialogue effectively. So when you're struggling with dialogue, for me anyway, when I'm struggling with dialogue, it's usually at the beginning of a work in progress.

It's usually in the early chapters, which is when you're working the person out. There will come a moment in every piece of work if you've put the work in where the dialogue starts to flow. Again, we're going back to that, the characters taking over and doing their own thing. A lot of authors describe this as being a conduit or channeling stuff. And I think actually that's not what's happening. What's happening is you know the character so well by this point that it's pouring out of you because they've become a part of you. Even if you feel like you're overwriting, that's all just preparatory exercises. The rubbish dialogue is kind of raw material. So you're getting to know the character and doing that. And then as you tune your air up to them,

in getting to know them. The dialogue starts to come to life, but knowledge is key. In order to understand dialogue better, one of my favourite genres is biographical fiction. And part of that is the idea of having a person already fully formed because they existed. And then that means that their voice is already fully formed. You don't know exactly what they said, so you're making it up. And that's really fascinating to me, because then that shows that you've got the characterization and the voice right if the dialogue is correct. So, for example, I've just listened to the audio book of Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld. And that's just amazing. Like, everybody in it is

exactly as we know them, but they're not. They're not because it's not actually their story. and their story is being made up because Hillary did marry Bill and Bill is who he is and Trump is who he is so they're entirely recognisable but they're different but the dialogue is so uncanny

but yeah it's totally untrue as I said it's my favourite genre for that reason because of how you can really play but where you get it right is really in the dialogue because you could have the imaginative person in your head because you already imagine them because they're already a distance to you.

It's that you know them already. It's just such a great genre to kind of play with to figure out dialogue, I think. People need to see dialogue in two ways. Dialogue is revelatory. You are revealing something about this person in the way that they speak. And you need to think about what it is that you want to reveal and what it is about themselves that they believe they are revealing versus what you are seeing in them. They're actually revealing. And that's the difference. In dialogue, this is what we mean about the subtext.

Speaking of biographical fictions, it's a play and a screenplay, but it's one of my favorite films of all time is Amadeus. Because the dialogue in that is unbelievable. And there is a particular scene that always speaks to me because it gives me like goosebumps about the perceived rivalry between Salieri and Maitzart. Now, I knew of Salieri, and obviously everyone knows with Maitzart, but you didn't really know whether or not they had this kind of rivalry, and it's fictionalised, but the point is that it builds on a universality, which is envy and jealousy,

and the notion of someone having the talent and the ability to do something that you wish that you've been able to do, and you don't think that they're worthy of doing it. And there is a moment when Sallieri realizes that Mautzart has this kind of God-given talent that he has longed for all his life, and he uses dialogue to express himself. and he says something along the idea is like it was not to be believed this like creature who was just you know facile and crude is been used as the voice of God and then there's this moment where he said it's like it was an anomaly it was a mistake it had to be it had to be it better be and it's that last line that always gets me it better be because the thought that this could be real cannot be concede and then the line it better be means if it is with That's where he's revealing himself without knowing he's revealing himself. If this is as correct, what is you going to do about it? That's what the dialogue does.

What is you going to do? It better be. Well, maybe it's not. Are you going to thwart it? Are you going to accept it? It's that moment. And that's what I think dialogue can do incredibly well. The problem is when you get dialogue that is incredibly tinid and you go, speaking back

to what you said show about, conviction, I don't believe you. I don't believe someone says that in that way. And sometimes that's because I think people think. drawn characters where you feel like they haven't earned the right for you to believe that yet. They haven't drawn them properly. And sometimes it's just because it's incredibly tin-eared. And I think in part that sometimes when people pick up dialogue, thinking that's how someone would speak in that situation, but they haven't done the research.

Oh my gosh. So the thing with this is that what that gets me thinking about is when dialogue feels a bit overwrought, when they're trying to use it to kind of move on or make a point that the character wouldn't themselves let it. And it's like, you might know what you want to say as the writer, but you've got to let your characters speak and you've got to let them speak in their voice with their tone in their language and their vernacular. And if you don't and you start pushing the point in order to speed up, arc, then it's lost. And that's where it really breaks down. And that's why this kind of conviction and this understanding naturally who these people are in different situations.

So like the task last week is really great. How do they respond to a situation that you're not going to put them in in the book? Then you need to know that because the reality is that otherwise you're going to force your characters to say things and give things away and do things before they're ready to do it. And we are also not ready till they're ready. We're really not ready till they're already because we're on their journey. And I think that that's a good point. That's the thing that kind of keeps us moving, right? And so the plots, the voice, the character, it all has to come together, obviously, to make a great book. But the dialogue is sometimes what I find can go really wrong in a novel specifically. It just gets too gobbled up and they're just trying to

speak too quickly and they're just trying to get it out and they're just trying to move it all on. and actually then it's not real and then we've lost you and then it's inauthentic and then we put the book down and we say this isn't working two things that helped me is one at the end of a scene or when I'm doing my second pass-through with each scene I try to delete 25% of it it's a really good exercise a hundred percent guarantee at least maybe this is just my little quirk but I think it happens with lots of writers that you've written too much especially too much dialogue. One of the biggest problems is people are saying too much

because the author isn't trusting the reader to fill in the gaps. And actually, in dialogue, you know you're in the hands of a master of dialogue. When they're not desperately panicking and putting everything in so that you don't get confused and lost, you want gaps, you want that elliptical feeling, and then the reader is kind of filling in. I love Hillary Mantell's line about how every novel is a triumph of deletion. because it's so true. But the second thing that I try to do is think about how in the scene can I get people

to be saying anything other than what they're really desperate to say? So what you do, if you leave the thing that they're really desperate to say, the thing they really want but for some reason won't get in this scene, if you leave that in the subtext, then you're setting fire to the subtext and that's what you want. You want to push a lot of the stuff that you're putting on the nose You want to push that right down beneath the surface because that's where the reader will get the most pleasure out of the scene. And for me, mastering those two things and looking at those two things when I edit my first draft always brings the dialogue just slightly further along. We don't all tell the truth when we're speaking.

And I think that's when I get really irritated when I read things. And I'm like, there's no way you'd say that. We all speak with about a 30% level of lie. How am I doing today? I mean, most of the time you don't go into like a full blow by blow. and the notion that people just say everything, how they're feeling all the time, is just such horseshit. And it drives me crazy.

Again, that's overwriting and it's too, yeah. And I think the other thing that when I read and I go, that is just not how people speak, I think again, back to what we talked about, which is research, where are these characters coming from? Who are they? Your background informs your speech, informs your vernacular. And tone. And your tone.

Where is the authenticity? Where is the cadence? Where is the rhythm? I will always say to authors, sorry, you remember this. I will say to them, you need to read your book out loud. How it sounds in your head and how it sounds when you read it are two very different things. You can kind of convince yourself that's working on the page. When you force yourself to say it out loud, you're realizing all the ways in which it doesn't quite work. Particularly when we talk about with Acula, we've talked about people bringing in, you know, wider and more diverse characters and things like that, which is great. The This is also what I mean about the research, whether you're writing historical or whether you're writing contemporary, if you're writing from a different gender's point of view, et cetera, et cetera. Is that how someone would actually speak? Is that what they would say? And don't we change how we speak depending on situations? Right.

Sarah and I are obsessed with succession. Shari, you also involved in the succession of session. I once said to my CEO, I was at dinner, and I once said, nothing can nothing equals nothing. And then he was like, wow, you really say. sound like a succession character. Which one? That is the question.

And I was like, which one? I was like, okay, I've got to forget that he said that because I'm going to watch it and be like, which one did he mean? And I just knew that they were all anti-heroes. Sorry, you could like go into this more than I can. But the reason why I love it is because that difference between what you say versus what you mean, it's so intrinsic in every single thing that they're like,

there's amazing throwaway lines. Like one of my favorite is like, oh, Logan Roy, call for journalism. next, the Jack the Ripper Clinic for Gynecology. I mean, you get these characters in a room and they are all lying. Yeah. They're all lying. There's like two different screenplays going on. It's this great Shakespearean family saga and the family is just bitterly dysfunctional because they've been damaged by money. And how the dialogue reflects that partly is that the children are so hypervigilant around their father that they can never say what they mean. there's an inability for them to connect with each other as human beings, and the dialogue reflects

that. They use words as weapons, they use words as shield. There's this wonderful sarcasm. They're all kind of using silences or trying to posture. Logan never, ever, ever allows his children to tell the truth, but then he gaslights them into thinking that he is. I think Succession is one of the shows for me that shows the most care and attention about not just what people say, but how they say it, so that you could identify a Tom line. And if you watch it on a surface level, it seems funny and flippant. But the flippants is hiding this real emotional pain. And that comes back to what I was talking about with subtext a moment ago, that where a succession really gets its resonance and why I think it's become a classic TV show is not because of the jokes. It's because

what the jokes say about the damage of the people who are telling them and why they tell those jokes to try and navigate their own trauma. It's just brilliant the way they've stitched it together like that. And the dialogue is what embodies that. Charmaine, this is good news for you. There is absolutely no English love in. I know. I really want to watch it. I just need to spend like a long time in the UK so I can actually just get to watch it. But the point is, is that when you were talking about that, it got me thinking about, because I was like, why haven't I watching. I was like, oh, because I haven't seen it in Germany. But then I was like thinking about language. And I was thinking, you know, I basically kind of inhabit three different

worlds of language. And so that's either patois or it's Jamaica, like Jamaica Patua or it's British English or it's German. And we were also talking about brevity and then tone and vernacular. Then obviously I'm thinking about that in three different ways all the time. And so often I'll be saying something and I'll be speaking German and then I'll be like, oh, I'm coming at this as a British person or I'm coming at this as a Jamaican or I'll say something in English. And then I'll be saying, oh, but the way that I'm saying this is as a German. And so my character changes depending on which I'm speaking. Yeah, of course it would. And that gets me to think about like dialogue as well in a different way and how a person can change depending on who they're talking. to, so when you're talking about Logan and his interaction with his kids, how they interact of each other. And so I'm really excited to see it, but it really got me thinking about, again, the different threads and the background of each person and how those nuances emboldened, enliven,

and in gender speech. You know, that's a really good point because one of the things that struck me while you were speaking is that the daughter in succession, Shivroy, who's played by Sarah Snook, I think she's the only one that when Logan, the father, speaking, with her. She's the only one who has a name name is a pinky. And it is such a small detail, but such a genius bit of writing. She's the littlest. Because what it does is it puts her in a category of, yeah, my little girl. She starts outside the business as well, whereas the oldest son is jocking to take over and the youngest son is sort of blailing around trying to find his foothold in the business. She's on the outside. And part of that is gendered. And they don't have to go

into this big speech. She doesn't have to tell anyone, I feel like an outsider and I'm treated like a little woman. Just the fact that he calls her pinky and that's all. And it says volumes about how he sees her and as a result how she's come to see herself. A lot of that's just to do with her being the only girl. But it's so spot on. Janice Rose Bullock was beautiful, a devoted mother. And then in 1977, she disappeared. You know she would not leave those kids. So what? happened. Most of the time when someone disappears, you fear the worst. I don't know she's alive or dead. People thought that he killed her. Eventually, you find the body. Or their disappearance remains a mystery. This twisted, trust me. Did she get herself into some unspeakable trouble? Or was it

something else? She's holding this little ball-headed baby. What they do it with a baby? Does she still in? Did she buy them? This month on the binge, the most unbelievable and bizarre missing persons case you've ever heard. From Sony Music Entertainment and Wild Night Media, this is The Vanishing of Janice Rose. Listen wherever you get your podcast. I mean, any discussion that involves deep analysis of succession is a riveting one for me. I say A plus for that. And it's so true that there is so much

to admire with a lot of premium television dialogue. But one thing that is tricky to do on screen that perhaps is easier to do on the page is that tension and that interplay between internal and external dialogue. On the page, we can have a lot more freedom to explore what's going on inside our character's minds, the dialogue they're having with themselves. So what's a good example of that? Here's Nell. Can I put it slightly in that, we talked a lot about dialogue, but can I talk about one of my favourite books as an example of the difference between internal dialogue and external dialogue? Have you guys ever read Flowers for Algernon? So you love this book, Mel. You made me read it. I don't know if you remember. I did like it.

way I'm going to like confess. Oh, now you're done. Now have you read it, Sherman? Absolutely bad. And I really love it. Thank you. Okay, great. This is the two against one. Oh, wow. I just don't understand. That book was so on the nose, like so on the nose with everything. The reason I think this is a great example of the difference between internal dialogue and external dialogue. So it's about this character who has a very, very sub-level IQ. And in the beginning, he's actually quite satisfied with his life. But as a reader, you hear the dialogue of how people talk to him versus his internal dialogue, and you realize that actually the world treats him very, very harshly and very cruelly, that he doesn't have the ability to see that. So he takes everything in a very

literal kind of way. And so you're watching this disconnect between what's being said and what he's receiving and what he thinks is happening. And then he becomes part of this trial, which was used on, like, Labmites, one of them called Altonon, that is going to elevate his IQ. And he suddenly receives this huge boost to his IQ, so he becomes actually quite, gifted and intelligent. And the flip in his internal dialogue versus the outside is so marked that it is really seamless. I think one of the things that I love about it is it doesn't just happen overnight. It's this graduation. His relation to language, his relation to people is climbing up and up and up until it kind of flips. And suddenly all this like discontent

and anger and rage and disappointment starts infecting his language and infecting his language and infecting his internal monologue and then unfortunately out and on the mouse dies and he realizes that his IQ is going to go bound to what it was so on the nose I mean the huge symbolic moment but I should have been about this no no no come in well I was going to relate this back to the kind of understanding of pacing yes because actually the arc of this is also time of that book that's one of the arts you know when you have this time to be able to express and do something what do you do with it, right? And how do you do that? And I think that it goes back to what we were saying earlier in terms of pacing of not saying too much, but then also having this gift

to be able to say a lot. And as your character shifts, how to navigate that, pacing is like a really, really important part of successful dialogue in terms of how you actually engage with other people, what you're saying to people, and the pace, literally like the speed in which who are saying it. And you're just like, just slow down. Just be breathless. Just take a moment, take a beat, and think about the beats of your character

and think about their voice and then when they're speaking, hit those beats. And of course, like in that book, there's a shift and that has to be consistent and then it changes again. I think it's a really good example, even if the plot can be on the nose

of how you're seeing this sort of pacing and time and then this kind of flux of change of language of dialogue. A good example of that for me is Mark Haddon's curious incident of the dog in the night time. That's actually a very good example too. Which has a lovely kind of narrative shape to it talking about how the inner and external dialogue meet or intersect. That's a great one. Because it's a big fault I have when I'm reading books and I'm like editing and critiquing and I'm like, what does this person think? Where's the bloody internal monologue?

What do they think? How are they receiving this? Why aren't they reacting to it internally just as much as you would externally? So I came across this amazing Margaret Atwood line when I was writing Franny, and it became a mission statement for the novel. And I think she was talking about the writing of The Handmaid's Tale. For her, part of the secret to the voice in that book was that power lies in the difference between what you think and what you're allowed to say.

Oh, yes. That book was all built on the fact that the interior monologue was so rich and so suburb. but the character in her circumstances and her world was very circumscribed in what she could actually say and all of the success of that book is in that tension and how marvellously it's conjured it. Which is why they had to have the voiceover in the adaptation because otherwise if they didn't have the voice over it wouldn't make sense. Like the dialogue would not be doing enough because of that like tension kind of in between. But the other thing I think that as an editor you must get this shalman when you're reading books and editing is

When you read something and you're like, all the characters sound the same, all their dialogue sounds the same. I think it's important to say that characters are also really important to flesh out in terms of voice, characterisation and dialogue as well. Because I think it's quite clear with your protagonist, but your protagonist has to interact with different characters and what does that look like. So it's for all characters to be fleshed out in that way. I grew up on being obsessed with like Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I bloody love up to the dialogue. No line that was said in that could have been said by any of the other characters. Their characters were so down in their vernacular, basically taught me how to speak.

But when you're doing this and you're editing book, Sharon, you're like, everything sounds the same. How do people create that separation and that distance? It's something that people do a lot. It's basically in the characterisation, especially if people are from the same place and from a similar class and background, then you were just like, sorry, who was saying that. And so a really good way of dealing with that is by adding kind of different clauses of how they said it. So then you get a sense of the character because then you already know that that character would shout something or another character said it under their breath or said it in a sarcastic way or whatever. Like if you just add things that

kind of denote who it is, but also just different words. I was having dinner with four friends the other day and we all grew up together and we went to primary school and secondary school together and so we've known each other a whole life since we've been able to speak since we're five years old and we all do speak slightly differently even if we have a similar accent we all have different influences and so we use different words and I think if you were to listen to us then you would be able to figure out who it was by tone and pacing and also almost like the demonstrative way in which we say things or the lexadaisical way

in which we say things like everybody has something quite different. So I become quite obsessed on the page of being able to delineate between who is who. I'm like razor sharp on that.

And so I almost try and ask my authors to separate the character and their dialogue, almost take them out and say, would they say this? Are you sure?

So how I deal with that is by asking questions to make sure that I've got the character right and also to ensure that the plot isn't getting swallowed in a jumble of dialogue. But it's quite complicated, but what's interesting probably for the listener is to hear that you can make those mistakes. If there's things that are, you know, really good enough, then you can get all the way to a publisher who's then helping you. But all the other things have to be in play to make us want to work on that book and to want to see that through and spend the next two years editing and publishing. So it's not about things being perfect.

It's about things being really, really good because, you know, before it gets to me, it has an agent and the agent will have also seen this. But this is like really, really detailed, detailed stuff. So I would say it's okay if all the other elements work, then hopefully you get to the next stage where you can be published. You can have people that can help you like me and like now you can help you with it. Or you could just be like Sarah, which is the complete and that a natural. And speaking as the natural dialogue. No, no, absolutely not a natural. It's because you see the stuff after I've tidied it up now. The thing I'd like to say to follow on from Charmains, you're not alone, is also it's okay that it's going to feel stilted and messy when you're working at it. Think of your

sort of planning stages as the getting to know the character stages. The truth is that when dialogue works, you shouldn't have to feel like you're making it up. That's the truth. And that can feel a bit scary because it may not happen when, you know, on page one. It probably won't happen on page one unless you're Muriel Spark, who for some reason, you know, said that she just sort of started and the book kind of unfurled in one perfect ribbon. Lie. It doesn't usually happen like that. Exactly. It has to be a lie, right? But yeah, I think the most useful thing I can say as someone who's been in the trenches is that most writers will have a period. where they're just putting down some on the nose stilted,

you know, very flat stuff. But that's giving them the foundation they need to work with. And then when the dialogue is snapping, you really aren't making it up. That's the honest truth. What you're doing is, or what you need to do, is work till you get to that stage where what the characters need to say or want to say

or when they need to be quiet is just coming naturally because you've kind of primed the pump to get to that stage. And then it's not about manufacturing or engineering something. At that point, it is about receiving something, but something that you've put in motion by doing the work. And that brings us almost to the end of our dialogue, or is it a trialogue, on dialogue. And here, in case you need some help getting your creative juices flowing, is our listener exercise for this week. As we come to the end of yet another fantastic episode, we hope. This week, imagine your character's been given a parking ticket by an officious warden.

How might your character try and argue the way out of it? What would the warden say back? Would your character be successful in avoiding the charge or not? Would your character try to prevent the warden or perhaps aggressively make an enemy of them? Try to write five to ten lines of dialogue where you show purely through speech, what happens and see if that will help and work. And since this has all been about conversation and dialogue and as our actual resident screenwriter, Sari, do you want to wrap us up and lead us out of this episode? I will say that having a dialogue with you two about books has fast become one of my favorite, favorite things. This has just been such a joy as usual. I don't actually know what we're doing next time.

We're doing plot. We're going to bring all of this into the story. We're going to make shit. it happen. That's what that one is. That's a kind of a logical progression. Well, I can't wait and we're still so, so, so delighted that you're still here with us listeners and we hope you're getting as much out of this as we are. I certainly am getting a huge, huge amount. So see you for some plotting next time, girlies. Yeah, let's start plotting away. Hello, it's Elizabeth Day here, adding to the dialogue in my own way by talking. By talking about what I felt about Sarah, Charmaine and Nell's revelations on the art of dialogue. Dialogue is one of those things. It almost gives some writers just a sinking feeling in their stomach, that idea

that they have to try and convey who someone is and nail the very cadence and content of their voice. So not only do you have to know who your characters are, but you need to know how they would speak. And sometimes it feels really, really overwhelming. And I think that there were some excellent practical tips there. Sarah and her whole thing of setting fire to the subtext, I want that on a t-shirt. I just want to set fire to the subtext on a t-shirt. And that idea of deletion of 25% of writing being deletion and really stripping back the dialogue specifically because her point is that one of the traps we can fall into

is making our characters. And this applies for non-fiction too, by the way. Making our characters do too much of the work and tell too much of the story and tell everything about themselves, which obviously people don't do in real life. in real life or in convincing fictional life, as Sarah says, very often we say everything except the one thing that we really want to say. And that's what she means by subtext. What are the gaps

that you can leave? What are the silences that will make this a more satisfying experience for your reader? I always remember going on one of the Arven courses as a tutor. So an Arvan course for anyone who doesn't know, it's a residential writing course and they do specific tutorials on how to write memoir or how to write novels or short stories and I actually can't remember what our course was entitled. It was a long time ago, okay? what I do remember was there was no Wi-Fi. And as much as it was a very pleasant experience in Totley Barn in Devon, very beautiful place, I had actually gone under the misapprehension

that I was going to get a chance to do my own writing. No, no, no. As a tutor, it's such hard work. I mean, I know it's hard work when you go yourselves and you sign up and you have to write a certain amount every day and share it and that's an enormous amount of hard work. But I I was doing it with my friend Jonathan Lee, who is a terrific novelist and latterly a screenwriter. And the two of us took it really seriously because these things are serious when someone is parting with their hard-earned cash. Unlike a pod class, unlike the How to Write a Book podclass, this Arvin course was a paid-for thing. So there was a fee to attend. And I remember we just spent our days devising workshops, delivering workshops, giving one-on-one tutorials, reading the work

that the participants had created and giving feedback and marking. And I thought, gosh, this is quite a lot of work. I salute all the teachers. Anyway, I remember Jonathan saying this incredibly helpful thing when he was talking about how to construct dialogue. And like Sarah, he is also a screenwriter now, and I do think that writing screenplays gives you a real ear for good dialogue. And that's because, obviously, in a screenplay, when you're writing a script, all you really have is what the characters say. And as someone who has recently written her first screenplay, not what it's going anywhere, but as someone who's written her first screenplay, I sort of understood the truth of that, like never before, that a dialogue, a piece of dialogue, has to do something. It has to either advance the narrative or, as Nell said, be revelatory. It's got to reveal something about the person or about the action. And I remember Jonathan Lee

saying this thing to me about how when someone is speaking in real life and they are asked a question, very often the answer might be yes, but they might start by saying no. So what I mean by that is someone's starting a sentence, someone being asked, oh, did you use up those tomatoes for dinner? And the answer being, no, yeah, yeah. And I just thought that was such a brilliant, tiny but huge practical tip that you can use. Because the person might not want to admit that they'd use the tomatoes for dinner. They might believe that they're being asked that because there's an implied criticism. of having used all the tomatoes, because perhaps the other person wanted to use the tomatoes.

Or it might actually be a completely normal question, did you use the tomatoes? Because I'm off to the shops and I'm going to get some more if there aren't any left. What's interesting is what the person being asked the question brings to it, what kind of emotional baggage they bring to it. perhaps they've had past experience of a passive-aggressive figure in their lives and therefore they make this assumption that they're being got at, that they're being attacked in some way and so they want to defend and they're defending by immediately lying and then perhaps what's happening is that they realise they've lied about something so trivial

and why have they done that because this person asking whether they've used the tomatoes doesn't mean it. They're not the figure from their past life, who was very passive, aggressive and demeaning. They're this person. And in such a small couple of words, you have managed to convey something quite profound. So caps off to Jonathan Lee for that. And I think that really feeds into what Nella Charmaine was saying about when it comes to writing dialogue, almost setting yourself the challenge of getting your character to say anything other than what they want to say. And that's really what Sarah was saying too in terms of deletion and subtext, saying anything other than what they want to say. How would that change and bring to

life your character's conversation? And when I sat in on this recording for the first time, I hadn't actually seen Anatomy of a Fall, that fantastic film that Nell talks about. But now, coming back and having listened again and recording these final reflections, I have seen Anatomy of a Fall. And it is just an extraordinary film. And I know exactly the scene that Nell is talking about. And if you've seen it, you will know it too. It's the climax in many ways of this film where the central question is,

did this wife kill her husband or did she not? And is she telling the truth not only to us the viewer but to her son? And there's this moment which is delivered in flashback, but they do a very clever thing with flashback in this film where it doesn't feel like flashback. It feels like a reconstruction in the present day. And it's the husband and wife arguing. And they are, they start off.

The wife starts off trying to be patient and civilised, and then it rapidly unravels. And you understand that what you're witnessing is not just the dialogue of that given day. It's a dialogue which has been built like a bonfire over the previous years of attrition and love and responsibility shirking. duty and marriage essentially. And it's a very, very good example of the things that aren't said and the things that are. And then as the argument heats up, everything being said and laid out on the table. And I think that that's actually a very good exercise, as well as the listener exercise that our wonderful hosts gave us, it's a good exercise just to go and watch that film. because that really taught me about the importance of dialogue being this active, revealing and concealing.

And as we heard from Charmaine, our resident publisher, when dialogue doesn't go right, it does feel very confronting and tin-eared. And it is probably the thing that is most quickly going to turn a reader. off your book because we all have a sixth sense for how people actually talk. And when someone feels like a fabrication, whether it's in the pages of fiction or nonfiction, because of the way they express themselves, it's like that feeling of nails going down a chalkboard. So dialogue is key, but don't panic if you don't get it right the first time. Because as Sarah says, so much of the art of writing is about the craft of editing. And sometimes your dialogue doesn't seem to fall right because you don't yet know your characters or your story intimately enough.

And so it could just be a question of carrying on, writing yourself into it or thinking yourself into it. And then the great thing about a book or, in fact, a screenplay, is that you can always go back and edit and refine until you're willing to show it. someone. So until next time, when we deal with plot, I hope that you have wonderful conversations in your own life and wonderful dialogues with the page with whatever you're writing. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for listening and please do remember to like and subscribe and share a link with everyone you know. This is a daylight production. and Sony Music Entertainment Original Podcast.