Writing Motivated Dialogue: What Does This Person Want?

Considerations — and a highly effective technique — for crafting dialogue.

Recently, having read a review by Peter Shull of the fiction-writing craft books he likes most, I endorsed books in the Art of... series from Graywolf Press, namely those on subtext (by Charles Baxter), perspective (by Christopher Castellani), and mystery (by Maud Casey, my one-time teacher).¹ In response, Peter noted there is no Art of... book about dialogue. Because I’m a pedant, I replied with my thoughts on the art of crafting strong dialogue. Another reader soon chimed in, and at her urging, I began to write this reflection.

Here, I’ll take a hard look at the issue of characters’ motivations and why that is the most vital consideration in dialogue. Past the paywall, I’ll excerpt from my writing journal to illustrate a highly effective technique for crafting dialogue. Finally, I’ll delve into the use of attribution (dialogue tags), my pet peeve with dialogue written more for the reader’s benefit than the characters’ benefit, and the advice which most helped me work out what to do with the dialogue in Quibble.

Though Graywolf hasn’t published one, a number of craft books treat the subject of dialogue. Perhaps because, in my last reflection, I took Stephen King to task over the prescription “Write every day,” his advice about dialogue in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft leaps immediately to mind. I’m much less critical of King when it comes to this. Whether or not you like his dialogue — some of it I do, some I don’t, just like his novels generally — he offers splendid advice about writing it, advice I’ve often used.

As with characters’ actions, King sees dialogue as a window opening into who characters are. It should illustrate personalities, inner lives even beyond what the story tells us explicitly. More than just what we may like about characters, dialogue should reveal their flaws and self-deceptions, which often give rise to conflict. And more than this, it should show the characters’ motivations: Why are they doing what they’re doing? In sum, King echoes the old saw that we should show, not tell. Through dialogue, we’re disclosing things to our reader about our characters.

I believe disclosing motivations is the key to writing strong dialogue. In real life, of course, we say things to each other all the time which lack a real goal, but in a story, this is usually a waste of the reader’s time.

Just think of telling a story to a friend about your recent interaction with another person. Do you include everything the two of you said in that interaction? Do you even remember everything that was said? No, probably not. You’re telling a story, you feel you have a point to make with it, and so, if you’re a smart storyteller who doesn’t bore your listener to tears, you recount what you think is relevant to the point and not much else.²

Lest I be mistaken, let me say that your characters should not appear to be lifeless robots whose every word somehow pushes the story forward. Let them have their jokes and be silly. Let them have hearts and minds of their own — messy, a bit distracted, following their noses, climbing atop their hobbyhorses. They’re supposed to be people. The story’s plot doesn’t always have to be “on” with them.

But pick your moments for this sort of thing. The story you’re telling ought to be “on” with you, always. Go out on a limb with dialogue if you like where that limb takes you, but always come back to your point and make sure the scene arrives somewhere. And make sure any “fluff” in the scene is earning its keep!

If, at the end of a scene, your characters are in the same situation they were in at the start — no choice is made, no emotion about another person is reassessed, no useful information comes to light, or no new sense of purpose enters a character’s life — then the scene does nothing. You’ve just killed time. Your reader is already snoring.

I learned how my tangential dialogue put the reader to sleep very literally. While writing the first draft of Quibble, I brought chapters to my lover and read them to her in bed. She fell asleep again and again.³ One chapter hung up our progress for days. I read her the chapter three times before I realized the problem wasn’t her attention span but my storytelling.

The less action and more dialogue what I read had, the quicker she nodded off. There was a lot of aimless talk. What was worse, my characters often sounded much the same, as if they were all really just one character talking to herself. Partly, this was because I was still figuring out who my characters were, what differentiated them. But also, I didn’t understand motivation drives not only what characters do but what they say, so if it’s missing from most of what they say, they come across as weak characters lacking in motivation, and a story populated by people like that is a snooze fest.

Dialogue should be motivated, heading somewhere. It shouldn’t just take endless detours and loop around on itself like a Möbius strip, as much of mine did.

If a character is saying it, why are they saying it? How does it comport with what they want or need, either generally in the story or specifically from other characters? At the end of the scene, do they get what they want or need? Or something else they didn’t bargain for? How do they feel now? Has the conversation changed them?

Above — between the em dashes — I listed things a scene might achieve (instead of nothing). For efficiency, I try to achieve more than one goal in a scene. Dialogue does not have to be pulse-pounding to do this. It can be a quiet talk in which characters just try to understand each other. It can feature simple fun, too. For instance, this scene from chapter 27, “Consensus,” begins with a joke as Quibble has been reciting A Midsummer Night’s Dream from memory:

“Acorn!” Graph blurted, throwing back his head in mirth.

“Well, not just acorn,” I said, imagining he missed the point and annoyed too at having my recitation interrupted. “First Lysander calls her a dwarf, then a weed, then a bead. It all builds up to acorn. And this is the girl he really loves.”

“Don’t parse scripture for him,” Cord told me, wryly smirking as her adroitness went on laughing. “Just let him have acorn.”

Cord offered to refill Nish’s mug and was politely refused. Nish ate sparingly; her glumness had returned. I leaned over and whispered, “What’s the matter?”

“Where are the Zeros?” she whispered back.

“Being discreet.” At least, I thought, I hope that’s the case.

Cord appeared to have noticed our exchange, but she said nothing. Rising, she began to clear dishes from the table. When Nish started to rise too, Cord showed her an open palm: You’re a guest. After helping Cord with clearing away, Graph went to the mantelpiece, took down a short-stemmed pipe, knocked out its ashes against the hearthstone, filled it with a green-and-orange herb from a cedar box, and lit it with a small ember he picked from the fire with tongs. Taking his chair again, he drew deeply on the pipe, then offered it to me. I shook my head. Nish accepted it, dragging in smoke as deeply as Graph had. At once she coughed out a cloud of smoke; it hung around her head as she wheezed. Getting her breath at last, she sputtered, “Kindness!” She gave the pipe to me with a scolding skance at Graph. He was laughing quietly. I took the gentlest breath in I could, held it, breathed it out. I took another. The smoke burned in my lungs, but I didn’t cough. My head buzzed a bit. Cord sat down, and I passed the pipe to her.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Not sure,” Graph said. “Got it from an Isleh-ri. She called it qeht-li-qah – that’s ‘companion with the blood.’ Or ‘with water,’ or ‘with the sea’ – I don’t know! The Far word qah confuses me. Qeht-li-qah is like an orb. Their shamans dream with it.”

Nish waved fingers in front of her face. “It’s dreamy, sure enough,” she droned.

“Ah,” said Cord, handing the pipe to her. “Have a little more, and go easy.”

“Speaking of—” Graph skanced Nish as she took a suspicious puff. “—let me set your mind at ease about that song. I had a chat with the Notes, dropped a hint.”

Nish stared at him. “You dropped a hint?”

“That’s how it is here,” Graph went on after a sigh. “A hint is all they had to start with, and that’s all it takes. Every Adroit in the consensus knows two things by now: there are no Ones coming Without, and shut the hell up about the excelsior. I’m sorry they didn’t know already. Enthusiasm got the better of me.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “We’d better watch our words, too.”

No forgiveness was forthcoming from Nish. I eyed her with as much seriousness as I could muster under the effect of the qeht-li-qah, which made me want to giggle.

“Quill,” said Graph, “what are you going to do?”

All eyes fell at once on me, and I found myself speechless.

“Nothing she doesn’t want to,” Nish put in for me.

“If you don’t mind, Nish, I’d like to hear it from her. Quill, that silence, Aladfar, gave me to understand we’re taking a risk harboring you.” Graph’s eyes flitted briefly towards Nish, then back to me. “That’s by the by – life is risk. I just want to know your plans, what we’re risking our necks for.”

“I don’t have any plans,” I began. Then, to clarify: “No plans as far as excellence goes, anyway. I just want to find out what happened to my mother. If she’s alive, where is she? I told Alnasl that when I came Without, but he’s kept mum about it ever since. Then all this nonsense came up. Bit by bit, I’m getting a picture I’m the queen in a chess game Vega’s playing. How can I use that?”

Graph gave Cord a look as if cuing her, and she said, “Quill, maybe it’s the furthest thing from your mind, but I suggest you make some plans about your excellence. Vega is crafty. You can be sure she’s making plans. If you don’t, you’ll just end up going along with hers. Like Citation did.”

There was a long silence around the table.

“Did you know him?” I asked Cord.

“Graph did. I was already here.”

“He was my first adroitness,” Graph said. “Not like you and Nish, but we were close. Cite was like a son to me. That’s two the Zeros took.”

He rose. With a sudden curse – “Damn their edict, damn their eyes!” – he knelt at the hearth with his back to us. His shoulders shook as he knocked ashes out of the pipe. My eyes went to Nish. She skanced me: I didn’t know.

“Cate said he was brave,” I ventured, unsure of the wisdom of speaking. “I guess he thought it was a brave thing to do, giving kindness to the Ones. The lady of kindness may have really believed the dreamless orb would turn blue, I don’t know. Cate’s right, though. She should’ve been aware she was risking Cite. The first excelsior made the orb that rectified him kind by giving up his transcendence. It costs at least that much.”

Graph grew still, turned to me, and wiped his eyes with his fingers. “You mean,” he said, “you don’t know?”

Surprised, I stared back at him. “Know what?”

“Cate gave you the wrong end of the stick,” Graph told me. “Cite knew he’d burn. And he was successful. He died in the hub fourteen years ago.”

When I gave Graph only an uncomprehending look, he sat again at the table, leaned towards me, and fixed me with a gaze. “Think back. How old were you then?”

“I’m seventeen now. So I guess I would’ve been three.”

“And where were you?”

“Um, let me see. Fourteen years is twenty-eight Fears. I was with my consensus seventeen Fears – no, it was eighteen, it’s just that Quiddity vanished at my next-to-last Fear. Before that, I was in the Large Spiral ten Fears. That makes twenty-eight.”

“And what happened during your first Fear in the Large Spiral?”

I blinked in surprise at Graph’s intuition. “I saw shadows.”

“You didn’t look at the orb?” said Cord.

“Of course I looked! But it was dreamless. How could it trance me?”

“Did the other Ones look away?” Cord pressed. “Or ever mention the shadows?”

“Kindness, no! I told One about them, but he hadn’t a clue. When the Ones filed out of the Depth of Night, Rasalased took me out of line, and the One called me heretic. The lady had caught me looking away, you see. I told her about the shadows. She—”

“She kept it secret from Unity,” Graph said. “Cite gave his life so that you could see shadows Within, Quill. It had nothing to do with turning orbs blue or making Ones kind. He was creating another excelsior, stronger than himself.”

Let’s stop there. One thing I think this scene shows, if you think about what’s going on, is that a discussion is always a negotiation of some sort between the characters having it.

Graph and Cord, who govern the Adroit consensus, want to know what Quibble intends to do with her strange talent, which recently made a Zero’s glass burst. They’re motivated by their responsibility for the Adroit. Meanwhile, fresh from a confrontation over Quibble’s intentions in the previous chapter, Nish wants to shield her from other people’s manipulation. Quibble just wants to find her mother.

Graph and Cord make Quibble aware they’re taking a risk, but she sticks to her motivation. Given their concern for her — they know her very life is at stake — all they can do is urge her to make plans for herself and not become Vega’s pawn. Behind the concern, though, lurks their sense of duty to the Adroit. Indeed, Graph has been rattled by his own indiscretion. “Make your own plans” has a subtext the reader is left to infer: “Don’t bring trouble here. Make a plan to move on and leave us in peace.”

Quibble picks up on it and tries to reassure them that she won’t bring trouble to the consensus. Though she’s single-minded about her motivation, she’s conscientious, too. She tries not to put other people in harm’s way to get what she wants.

Meanwhile, Vega’s motivations are hovering in the background. Quibble already learned Vega once took an extraordinary, arguably immoral step with an excelsior, but now she learns Vega did it to help her acquire excellence, her ability to escape dreams and break glasses. Quibble’s feelings about Vega are in flux. This scene launches a new stage in that evolution. In the subtext, then, there are two questions: “What motivates Vega? How far will she go?” The former question, once it’s answered, informs the latter. Vega will go as far as her motivations take her. She seems not to be as conscientious as Quibble, so we’re left to assume that’s quite far.

The negotiation between all these competing motivations carries the plot forward in this scene. At the same time, though, a lot else is going on.

Nish learns something about Graph. Previously, Nish believed Graph just abandoned her after their son Index was taken from them, blinded, and left in the Vale of Teeth to be the prey of wolves. Now, Nish learns Graph suffered the loss of a loved one at the Zeros’ hands before she met him. This revises her notions of what motivates him. He isn’t selfish after all. For the first time, she sees he’s really in pain.

Also, we get some information about the Far, the nomads with whom Quibble lately had one very chancy encounter. Though not transhuman, the Far are not strangers to mind-altering experiences such as drug use. Some world-building important later in the story is slipped in: for some reason, the Far word qah conflates blood, water, and the sea. In the short term, this addition builds a bit of mystery around the Far, laying the groundwork for Quibble’s befriending of Imay in the next chapter.

And finally there’s the allusion to Shakespeare that begins the scene. This was a happy accident. At first, I concocted it to contrast Quibble’s word-perfect memory with Graph’s comparatively myopic perspective on things. Revising it from draft to draft, I realized it foreshadows events to come as Quibble and Nish make a life together in the consensus. Thanks to the pranks of Robin Goodfellow, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a romp of misunderstandings and mixed signals between lovers. That’s exactly what will happen between Quibble and Nish once Asuja starts manipulating Quibble.

At this scene’s end, Graph observes, “Robin’s turned everything nicely upside-down. How far is he going to take it?”

Asuja turns everything upside-down, too. How far is he going to take it?

I owe my familiarity with and love for Shakespeare to a few English teachers, among them Dr. Eustace Palmer, who taught me at Georgia College. From Sierra Leone, Dr. Palmer matriculated at the University of Edinburgh. So he’s an African man with a British accent, cosmopolitan. That intrigued me in itself. I knew I’d love studying with him when we began to read Othello. In the first scene, the villain Iago tells Desdemona’s father that she and Othello are “making the beast with two backs.”

“Do you know what that means?” Dr. Palmer asked us, erupting in giggles and practically dancing at the lectern. “They’re having sex!”

He was beside himself at the thought of showing us how salacious a playwright Shakespeare was. I’d go on to take an elective survey of British drama with Dr. Palmer. I absorbed a lot of knowledge about drama and a delight in its wordplay from him. The education I got would pay dividends as, later, I returned to writing fiction.