Question of the Month
copyright 2002 by Alicia Rasley
Ask me anything.... about writing, that is. It's all I know.
All dialogue, all the time. Questions about male-speak and female-speak, quote tags, and of course, punctuation.
Want some old questions? Click here for an archive.
uestion:
My characters are always smiling and laughing. How can I convey their amusement as they speak without being so repetitive?
nswer:
Well, you can try to use actions that convey amusement, like "he shook his head ruefully," or descriptions of facial expressions-- "his eyes twinkled."
But I'm suspecting that you're using "he smiled,' etc., to avoid adverbs like "he said happily". (See below. :) Or maybe you do it to give them something to do while they pause for breath. I don't use "smiled" too much, but I think my heroes are all going to end up bald from running their hand through their hair as often as they do. <G>
Discovering that we overuse some device is halfway to fixing it, so it's good you've noticed! What helps me is to think about what's going on during the dialogue. If they're doing something physical, like shoeing a horse or making a cake or cleaning a gun or running a marathon, use that to punctuate the speech. Break the big action down into a series of actions, and use the little actions where they fit best.
For example, maybe she's getting dressed as she talks on the speaker phone to the hero, and he says something that makes her mad.
"You have no right to say that. " She jerked the scarf tighter, and the knot pressed against her larynx.
"Are you all right?" he asked. "You're coughing."
She yanked the scarf off and threw it on the bed. "I'm fine," she said. She cleared her throat painfully. "Anyway, I'm saying..."
If you can make the action sort of manifest the emotion, you'll subtly get across the "expression". You know, a closing fist shows tension. Writing down a phone number so hard that the pencil lead breaks shows anger or determination. What shows amusement or glee or happiness? Humming, tapping fingers in time to music, touching someone lightly... The reader can take the hint.
BTW, I find that some characters will smile but won't laugh. Or they'll chuckle, but they'd never chortle. So part of the problem is, you can't just go with a synonym, as a giggler is not going to turn into a guffawer two paragraphs later!
It's funny how we're seeing dialogue not just as the speech, but really everything in the speech passage-- the actions and the introspection and the quote tags too.
I'm reading a legal thriller now where the characters' actual speech is fine-- each character has an individual voice, and the words sound plausible-- but everything surrounding the actual quotes is off. Like the prosecutor will take a bite of a sandwich and then launch into two paragraphs of perfect sentences without a pause to chew or choke or swallow. Or someone will have just run to catch up with someone else and start talking fluently-- no panting, no short sentences until the breath comes back, no "she took a deep breath..."
And often, when there are three people in a conversation, the identifier (who said this) is at the end of the long quote paragraph, so I'm reading 6 or 7 sentences wondering who it is that's saying this. (If there's any doubt about who might be saying this, put the identifier at the beginning of the speech paragraph.) And actions that belong at the beginning or the middle of the paragraph (as actions -usually- do) are stuck at the end, and there's a bump that really makes the paragraph feel awkward.
It's hard to explain all the little tricks of dialogue-- all I know is, when I read something that does it wrong, I notice! What I'm trying to do is to figure out -why- it doesn't feel right and how it could be revised for better effect. But what works in one paragraph (action at the beginning) might be wrong for the very next paragraph (like if the action clearly happens after the speech is concluded-- "Okay, I think this is the right key." She jammed the key into the lock and it turned easily)-- it's all very situational and contextual, so it's hard to generalize (though I still do generalize :).
I've been "dinged" in writing contests for dialogue "mistakes" like using adverbs in quote tags, and bad grammar and sentence fragments within the dialogue. Isn't this okay if we're in deep point of view?
Well, "deep viewpoint" (what's going on inside the character's head) affects narrative (the narration of thought, action, and feeling), not dialogue. Dialogue is reported presumably faithfully, and so the viewpoint depth shouldn't affect it much, although it -will- affect what goes on around the speech, like the quote tags and the introspection.
I think that good dialogue is good dialogue, and it's going to have many different elements in it. Punctuation is important, and sentence length, and word choice, and quote tags, and all that stuff. But what's most important is-- two great dialoguists will use those ingredients in completely different ways. A Patrick O'Brian is going to punctuate (bear with me-- I love punctuation, and I bet no one has ever said that before <G>) very differently than a Janet Evanovich. His quote tags-- where he places them, which words he uses, etc-- will be quite different from Laura Kinsale's. They've got different purposes, different rhythms, different characters.
I think some contest judges are making the mistake of assuming that since -they'd- do this dialogue passage this way, it can work only this way, but it's not true. So there's no one way to do dialogue. If you gave, say, Jenny Crusie and Robert Parker the very same basic he-said/she-said passage and told them to revise it to "sound more authentic," they'd end up with two different versions, and both would be fun and plausible and just right.
Then again, as a frequent contest judge who "dings" entrants and expects them to enjoy it :)... I have to say that entrants really have to consider if maybe the judge is right once in awhile. We hear speech all the time, and we're often able to read something and think, "No way any human being ever said anything remotely like that." Or "there's something weird about that rhythm." Or "that doesn't sound like the same guy as in the last scene." Sometimes we might not know what's wrong and we'll try to diagnose it and we won't get the right diagnosis-- but we might well be right that something is wrong. So it never hurts, when you get a critique of your dialogue, to try to look at that passage and see if something really is wrong.
For example, sentence fragments and other ungrammatical elements are certainly allowed in dialogue. That doesn't mean they are always best in this particular stretch of speech. Sentence fragments are going to sound inauthentic coming out of certain mouths (the queen's, for example :), and even with someone who does use sentence fragments, seven in a row might sound ugly and discordant and be hard to read. Not to mention fragments tend to be only pieces of thought, and it's possible you don't convey enough meaning in the collection of fragments, or that the reader has to work really hard to figure out what this guy is talking about.
Same thing with local or ethnic dialect. A little goes a long way. More than a little-- however "authentic"-- is like grinding teeth to many readers. Phonetic spelling of dialogue drives me nuts, first because I'm a proofreader and my brain keeps trying to "fix" it, but also because English spelling -isn't- phonetic, and it's sort of a futile task to try to render anyone's speech phonetically.
And, pardon me for being politically correct here, but no one ever thinks of the Boston Brahmin matron as having a dialect that needs to be rendered phonetically-- it's always the Irish maid or the street kid, someone considered low-class. Linguists will tell you everyone has a dialect, and there's nothing wrong with that-- it's just part of the versatility of the English language, and there's no real reason to stigmatize one particular group with phonetic spelling.
Again, a little goes a long way. No one minds a goin' here and there, but "gwine" is going to baffle most people and stop them in their reading tracks. Try using word choice and sentence structure to replicate dialect or regional speech. And while it's fine for a character to have a little catchphrase-- maybe the Scottish laird always refers to women as "lass"-- but if it's going to be repeated frequently, it probably should be a pretty inoffensive and easily ignored word. "Lass" is easier to assimilate than "colleen" might be... sometimes the art of dialogue is keeping things pretty familiar so it sounds normal.
Anyway, whatever criticism the judge comes up with, consider it objectively. The judge could be wrong, but she could also be trying to figure out what it is that doesn't quite work in the dialogue passage-- and that's something we all ought to do when we revise. Read it over; read it aloud into a tape player. Have someone of the correct gender read it aloud. Are the lines so long you're gasping for breath? Do the fragments make this person sound like he's got a terminal case of attention deficit disorder?
One thing I pay attention to when I'm judging is how long the speech goes on without a "close quote"-- that is, without a "she said" or a pause for action. The reader needs a breath now and again. Really, most readers have an unerring sense of how long people can speak before taking a breath, or how many sentences you can put together without pausing to think of another one. After all, we all speak and listen all day-- we are experts in dialogue in real life. So I often write "pause here? action here?" in the middle of a long speech paragraph, indicating the need for something to break up the long block of talk. I'd even go so far as to say more than 3-4 lines without a pause is likely to feel off to readers in many cases.
Back to judges-- Judges also sometimes take guidelines to be rules. I'd like to crown the person who first said that adverbs shouldn't be used in quote tags. You know, if the remarkably fluid and effective English language didn't need adverbs, they would never have been invented. Now it's true that English has a splendid variety of verbs, more than most languages, and by using verbs alone we can frequently convey quite nuanced action. ("Declared" is a little different than "declaimed"; "commanded" isn't quite the same thing as "ordered.") There are particularly a whole lot of verbs signifying some form of speech.
But... well, sometimes even the amazing variety of "said synonyms" don't quite produce the perfect one. This is often a matter of tone or volume -- I don't actually mean of voice, but sort of force or intensity. "He snarled" might be too high-pitched in emotion, while "he said ominously" is one or two tones down and more acceptable. And many "said" synonyms just call too much attention to themselves, while a "said + adverb" might not. "He expostulated" is NOT usually a better alternative than "he said pedantically".
Still, it's true many of us use too many adverbs to modify quote tags. It's especially annoying if it's redundant-- if all it's doing is telling the reader what's already obvious. "I adore you," she cooed tenderly... is a bit much. There are three "mush" words in there, and probably only one is needed... though I could see myself using two. ("I adore you," she said tenderly. I'd never actually use "coo" unless she were talking to a baby or being sarcastic to an adult: "I just love that little wart on your nose," she cooed.)
The -best- time to use an adverb is when there's subtext you want to convey -beneath- the speech-- some contradiction or irony that the words themselves don't completely create. Remember, in real life, we have all sorts of cues beyond the words themselves which help us interpret what someone means, in addition to what she's just -saying-. There's facial expression, tone of voice, look in the eye, body language, etc.
We can often tell when someone is lying by the way they say what they say, for example, and we certainly get it when our teenager is being sarcastic with us: "Yeah, mom, I got nothing better to do than visit old Auntie Isabelle in the Alzheimer ward." (heavy emphasis on "nothing", half-closed eyes, sulky mouth... yes, I have two of these creatures, and they NEVER say anything straight... it's all sarcasm).
Well, when we write out that sort of line of speech, sometimes it's not going to be clear what's actually meant unless we modify it with, uh, "he said sarcastically." Or "his voice dripped with scorn," even (anyone who has a teenaged son knows that "dripping with scorn" is not just a figure of speech, but a -reality!-). So don't be afraid to use adverbs when the meaning isn't quite the same as the mere words, unless, of course, it's so clear from the context that this is sarcasm that you don't need to add anything.
The trick is-- don't overdo. If you're constantly modifying with adverbs, the perfect adverb will go unnoticed and won't have the effect you want. And diminish that "intensity" problem by coupling the adverb with a bland verb like "said" or "asked" or "commented"-- something that doesn't bring on a whole heavy weight of meaning beyond "spoke out loud".
As I said above, dialogue is so contextual and situational, it's hard to have any rules, even of punctuation, which are hard and fast. So judges shouldn't have too many fixed notions in their heads as they judge dialogue. What counts is-- does this read well, does it sound plausible, can I understand what's going on, is what's supposed to be suspenseful suspenseful, can I sort of hear this in my "mind's ear".... Not "no author should ever, ever, use the quote tag 'he expostulated,' or anything other than 'said'." I could probably write a dialogue paragraph and stick in expostulated and it would be exactly the right tag. (Well, maybe I couldn't, but Patrick O'Brian could!)
The effect is what counts. If the effect is right, then we shouldn't cavil at what ingredients have gone into the mix. (Hey, just last night my dh told me the mashed potatoes I'd just made were the best he'd ever tasted. I waited a beat, and then said casually, "Oh, that's because I put in a half cup of sour cream instead of milk." Understand, my dh -hates- sour cream, or thinks he does-- I doubt he's ever actually chosen to taste it. Anyway, he started to splutter, and I said, "If you like the result, don't bitch about the process." <G>)
Alicia
Can you identify a few writers you think are particularly good at dialogue?
Well, I'm of the opinion that most writers are either good at dialogue or they're good at "texture" (setting, description). There are occasional writers who are good at both, of course, but that's a hard thing to work out, because the "texturing" tends to break up or slow down the quick back-and-forth that makes for snappy dialogue.
But we should probably all try to do both well.... but emphasize whichever we're strongest at.
Some dialoguists I think are impressive, and why:
Jane Austen. The language is a bit archaic, of course, but she does something that I've been trying to emulate-- her dialogue is usually conflict. That is, when the speakers are in agreement, she'll have a bit of narrative summary --
... Mrs. Bennet began repeating her thanks to Mr. Bingley for his kindness to Jane , with an apology for troubling him also with Lizzy. Mr. Bingley was unaffectedly civil in his answer...
But she reports verbatim any conversation where the speakers are in conflict:
"Do you not feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize upon such an opportunity of dancing a reel?"
She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, wtih some surprise at her silence.
"Oh!" said she. "I heard you before; but I could not immmediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes', that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste.... I have therefore made up my mind to tell you that I do not want to dance a reel at all-- and now despise me if you dare."
"Indeed I do not dare."
So dialogue is never boring and inconsequential in Austen's books.
A modern author that many liken to Austen (or "Jane Austen's admiral brother, if he could write"-- one of her brothers was a sailor) for his stylized but authentic-sounding early 19th C dialogue is Patrick O'Brian, who wrote a series of sea adventure novels that are much admired among other writers. (He's one of those "writer's writers" that the general public probably didn't as fully appreciate.) O'Brian starts with two very different male leads (and best friends), the bluff, confident, and emotional (and somewhat dense!) sea-captain Jack, and the highly intelligent, erudite, and self-doubting ship's-surgeon Stephen. Their dialogues, full of missed cues and misunderstandings and constant translation of the other's speech, are priceless:
"I agreed to accompany old Mr. Browne (as his doctor): It is true that Minorca is not the mainland, but then, on the other hand, so great an area of calcareous rock has its particular flora, and all that flows from that interesting state."
"Mr. Brown of the dockyard? The naval officer? I know him well," cried Jack...
"No. My patient died at sea... when Mr. Florey and I opened his body, we found so great a... In short, we found that his advisors (home doctors) were altogether too sanguine."
"You cut him up?" cried Jack, leaning back from his plate.
"Yes, we thought it proper, to satisfy his friends...."
There was a pause. Jack filled their glasses and observed, "Had I known you was a surgeon, sir, I do not think I could have resisted the temptation of pressing (impressing/drafting into military service) you."
"Surgeons are excellent fellows," said Stephen Maturin with a touch of acerbity. "... But I have not the honor of counting myself among them, sir. I am a physician."
"I beg your pardon, oh, dear me, what a sad blunder. But even so, Doctor, even so, I think I should have had you run aboard and kept under hatches until we were at sea. My poor ship has no surgeon...."
It's hard to explain why his dialogue is so much fun to me, but I think it's because they are so much "in voice"-- the characters speak so much as who they are, and their conflicts and disagreements are so evident not just in what they say but how they say it.
Another great historical dialoguist is Laura Kinsale, who has a wonderful knack of showing the subtext under the dialogue with introspection, showing how much context there is beneath the dialogue, the thoughts and feelings and impulses and anxieties. Dialogue for her is part of a rich tapestry of context, and the speech is a powerful clue to the deeper meaning underneath.
In this passage, the very wealthy, handsome rake Jervaulx is toying with his two impoverished Quaker dinner guests, his fellow mathematician Mr. Timms (who is blind) and Mr. Timms's daughter Maddy. In a sort of cruel flirtation, one meant to disquiet and disorient the shy, inexperienced Maddy, Jervaulx tells Mr. Timms that he will describe Maddy's face (the widowed Mr. Timms has not seen his daughter since he lost his sight when she was a little girl). Jervaulx uses inappropriately sexualized terms to describe her, and concludes with:
"This serious mouth might have been insipid, but instead it goes with the wonderful long lashes that haven't got that silly debutante curl. They ... shadow her eyes and turn the hazel so gold, and she seems as if she's looking through them at me. No..." He shook his head sadly. "Miss Timms, I regret to tell you that it isn't a spinster effect at all. I've never had a spinster look out beneath her lashes at me the way you do."
In his house, at his table, she felt she could not say precisely what she thought of him and his spinsters. Besides that, her father appeared enraptured. "Maddy," he whispered. "Thou hast your mother's look."
"Of course, Papa," she said helplessly. "Has no one ever told thee?"
"No. No one ever did."
He said it without any particular emotion. But by the candlelight, she could see that his eyes had tears in them. "Papa," she said, reaching for his hand... he lifted his fingers, touching her face. He explored her slowly, intently, over her cheeks, and across her eyelashes. She held her hands locked tight, embarrassed and suddenly close to foolish tears herself.
She had never thought of it: she could have sat and let her father envision her with his touch in this way any time. He looked so happy.
It was just that life went on, an everyday thing, and one never considered that Papa and not seen her face for eighteen years, or might wish to.
"I thank thee, Friend," her father said, turning his face toward Jervaulx. "I thank thee. For one of the finest days of my life."
Jervaulx didn't answer. He didn't even seem to have heard, but sat gazing into the shadowed folds of the tablecloth, his dark blue eyes meditative and his pirate mouth turned grim.
What I love about this is how it all shifts. Jervaulx has everything-- money, power, youth, beauty-- and he starts out by being very much the gracious but arbitrary lord. He wants to make Maddy, and perhaps her father, a bit uncomfortable, and he wants to exert his powerful sexual magnetism over the plain Maddy, who dislikes and distrusts him. He wants to remind her that he sees her in a sexual sense, that he -knows- her somehow in that way, and in that he means just a bit to put her in her place. She is so resistant to him, and he wants to show her that she is still a weak woman to his very powerful man.
And doing it in front of her father, in front of the man who ought to but can't protect her, adds a bit of interest. (Note the contrast between his almost-modern, educated, casual speech, and their archaic Quakerisms -- he later characterizes it as "thee-thou" talk.)
But he doesn't count on the moral clarity of these two Quakers, who truly care nothing for wealth and power, and have something that he has always lacked-- a certainty of family love. His teasing inadvertently shows him that however weak and ostracized they are, Maddy and her father are superior in that they can truly, and simply, love each other. In fact, his teasing brings them together, and puts him on the outside... looking in. And he sees something pure and true-- and perhaps for the first time, he realizes how empty his 'superiority" is. This very verbal man, never at a loss for words, is finally left speechless.
Okay, who else? Well, I'm running on too long with all these examples, but the best romantic comedy is found in dialogue, because it shows the hero and heroine interacting and sparking off each other. I love Susan Elizabeth Phillips's very long dialogue scenes. It's hard to pick out a snippet, because they are great examples of the power of postponement, where every line contributes to an edifice of comedy. But here's one that has the heroine having to constantly invent-- and, oh, by the way, the hero is pulling her leg, but she doesn't know that. For complicated reasons, she's pretending to be a prostitute, and his friends have hired her to service him for his birthday, and he's not in the mood, and besides, he's pretty sure that she's not a prostitute at all, and the harder she tries to convince him, the more unlikely it gets:
"Please, Mr. Bonner. You can't dismiss me.""I sure can."
"You'll... You'll get me fired. The Stars' (his pro football team) account is a very important one to my agency."
"If it's so damned important, why did they send you? Anyone can see you don't know diddly about being a hooker."
"There's a -- a convention in town. They were shorthanded."
"So what you're sayin' is... I ended up with you by default."
She nodded. "And if they find out you weren't satisfied with my services, they'll fire me. Please, Mr. Bonner, I need this job. If they dismiss me, I'll lose my benefits."
"You get benefits?"
If prostitutes didn't get benefits, they certainly should. "They have an excellent dental plan, and I'm scheduled for a root canal."
I love the root canal, that contrast between the sexual and the mundane. I like the way this very intelligent and well-spoken man pretends to be a hayseed, while he's constantly challenging her to come up with more and more reasons why he should sleep with her. He might not be attracted to her, but he's sure amused! (Don't worry-- she gets the better of him in a few chapters, in the infamous "Lucky Charms" scene.)
Janet Evanovich is also known for her comic dialogue. Her heroine Stephanie of course has a lot of great lines, but there are also two very appealing fellas, one of them flirtatious, the other laconic. They are both of them completely masculine in their speech, and that often leads to sharp lines that are funny because they are so GUY. Here's an example-- Stephanie has had a really rough time in this book, and is trying to decide between the two guys, and finally decides, and she gets all dressed up in a slinky dress, thinking to seduce him finally with the glitz. He arrives at her house, takes one look, and says, "Nice dress. Take it off."
That makes me laugh, because it's so ... male. Reminds me of that joke about how men and women prepare for a romantic dinner. The woman prepares gourmet food, extra candles, soft music... the guy calls and says, "Come naked. Bring beer." <G>
I also like Jenny Crusie's dialogue and... well, lots of others! But this is too long already. I think that if we take dialogue passages we love and try to figure out -why- we love them, why they work for us, we'll end up with all sorts of interesting insights. I'm always fascinated by the rhythm of dialogue, how good dialoguists can tell that a particular line has to be longer or shorter, as in the Phillips passage above, -- "So what you're sayin' is... I ended up with you by default." It could have read, "So you're saying I got you by default." But by stretching it out, she's made it more comic.
Rhythm's also affected by the "tag" or quote identifier.
"Of course, Papa," she said helplessly. "Has no one ever told thee?"
I love that "she said helplessly". I would never have thought of "helplessly" myself, but it works, because she's at such a loss-- she's realized something she should have already known.
Anyway, probably everyone has other examples of great dialogue... but what's fun is figuring out why it works, what elements create the great interactive whole that makes us believe that these people really are talking to each other!
:)Alicia
I'm afraid my characters, especially my hero and heroine, sound too much alike.
First consider the gender difference, which is pretty important in romance. :)
I think even brothers and sisters-- same parents, same home, same class, same town, etc-- will sound somewhat differently because they are of different genders. For whatever reason (social, biological, cultural), men and women often have distinct patterns of speech.
There's a good book on this subject-- very readable!-- called You Just Don't Understand, by Deborah Tannen. She's a sociolinguist who analyzes speech, and she's come up with several markers that differ (on average, of course!) between men and women. You might get that book and check your hero's speech against her "typical masculine speech".
For example, women use a lot of "tag questions", don't they? They do this to involve the listener in the conversation, to stress commonality, to draw out the interaction. "It's raining, isn't it? You think you should put on boots?" she'll say, even though she knows very well it's raining and it doesn't require confirmation. She just wants you to have a reason to answer and keep the conversation going.
Men seldom use tag questions. They state what they know, and they don't need you to agree with them. They seem to give commands when a woman would phrase a question or suggestion. "It's raining. Wear your boots."
For women, conversation tends to be more of a joint project. When two women are talking, you'll hear a lot more affirmation--
"They're supporting the same bill, I hear."
"Oh, yeah, I heard that too-- the senator, right? It was in the last issue."
"Right, and you know, I worked for him."
"You did? What, like recently?"
"No, back when he was in the state legislature..."
Women prompt during conversations. They offer cues in the form of questions. So their conversations tend to last longer, because they're collaborative. Conversations are entertainment, involvement, camaraderie; they have all sorts of functions beyond the simple exchange of information. Ask any man-- women will talk even when there's nothing to say.
Men (especially macho men) talk when there's something to say. :) They exchange information. They say what needs to be said. They state the facts. Now as long as they're on this plane, talking about facts, providing necessary information, telling what they know, they tend to be pretty articulate.
It's when they're talking about their feelings or the past or things they don't really understand that they get inarticulate. They'll stammer and break off sentences and start over and even end up with "I can't explain it!"
Contrast this with your ordinary woman (and I know I'm generalizing here, but think about your girlfriends when they discuss the latest fight with the husband :) who can be sobbing her heart out and still put together three in-depth paragraphs complete with complex sentence patterns and a variety of synonyms for "jerk".
Men's speech tends to be more functional, more concrete, with hard-edged verbs and an emphasis on action. "He went downstairs and signed the contract. Just like that. Put his name on the dotted line and walked out with that Porsche."
You won't get a lot of "kind of" or "rather" or "tends to" from a man.
Women's speech is usually more expressive and descriptive and detail-oriented, and often edged with nuance.
"He went downstairs-- I mean, he RAN downstairs. You should have seen the look on his face. It was like the orphan boy who found out Santa had come for him too! You know how dark his eyes are? Well, they were glowing like black diamonds then. And he was so nervous and excited, he could hardly sign his name on the contract. His hand was -trembling-. It was so cute, you know? I mean, it almost made it worthwhile to see him so happy. I practically forgave him for spending the kids' college fund on that silly car..."
I think of myself as pretty knowledgeable about how men speak-- I grew up with 6 brothers, and I have only sons, and the husband is a pretty typical manly man. But I still have to revise my dialogue because too often my heroes (especially the more sensitive men) talk like women. I remember one hero was at a party with the heroine, and he said, "So are you done mingling?" My husband told me a real man would never say the word "mingle". I asked him what the hero would say instead. Here's his answer. "Let's go. I want out of here now."
Yeah, that sounds like a man. :)
But beyond gender differences, consider that every person involved in a conversation has his or her own purpose, and that will help individualize each piece of dialogue. For example, say John is keeping a secret, and Mary is getting suspicious. John's purpose in this conversation is -concealment-, and Mary's is -investigation-. So Mary is likely to ask probing questions, and John is likely to give unrevealing or ambiguous answers and keep trying to change the subject. It should be pretty obvious in this situation that Mary is the one saying, "So where -did- you have dinner last night?" And John is the one who's saying, "Dinner? Yeah, I guess I had dinner. Probably. Hey, did you see that Colts game?"
:)
I once took a linguistics course where we had to record, transcribe, and analyze conversations. It was really illuminating to see how individual speech patterns were. Once I'd analyzed one person's speech, I could recognize that person further up in the transcript, just by word choice and sentence length and the like. So you might try that sometime, just taping a couple people as they're involved in a casual conversation, and transcribing it, then jotting down what you see as markers of each person's speech, like:
Nick-- clipped speech, sentence fragments, "guy" language. Replace "I'm sorry to say" with "too bad". Go for the harder-edged words. Won't talk long without an action intervening, because he's physical. Uses sardonic humor as a weapon when he's angry.
Kate-- composed, quiet: uses complete and completely grammatical sentences. Usually thinks before she speaks. Composes whole paragraphs first. When she's excited, she gets more elaborate, not more incoherent. She's a linguist, loves words and how they work, but worries that she's boring people when she gets going on her field of interest and will break off-- "I didn't mean to lecture you! Tell me what you think!"
Or try that with your hero and heroine. Jot down the "markers" of his speech, and then of her speech, and then go back and revise the dialogue to individualize with those markers.
How often is it acceptable to interrupt a line of dialogue? For example:
"I never meant--"
"Yes, you did. I was there when you met Chris, and I realized--"
"No, it wasn't like that! It was--"
"I KNOW what it was!"
Is there a rule of thumb regarding how many incomplete sentences you can have?
Well, I do it ALL the time. <G>
But... I think it's much more effective if you (and I :) confine the broken/interrupted speech to conversations where it's really reflective of the dynamic between the speakers. If ordinarily these two get along well and let each other finish sentences, we'll be that much more impressed with the tension when they start interrupting each other.
I actually love to play around with interruptions. It turns out that it's a subject of some study with the sociolinguists, as a matter of fact. (Deborah Tannen has a whole CHAPTER on interruption in her book You Just Don't Understand.)
They distinguish between "high-involvement" speakers who interrupt often, showing their involvement and excitement with the conversation, and "high-consideration" speakers, who never interrupt and always wait until the other person has clearly stopped speaking and not just paused for breath. High-consideration speakers consider the interrupters to be rude, and high-involvement speakers are always asking, "Are you listening?" to the considerate ones. <G>
Anyway, I like to think about WHY John is interrupting Mary and vice versa. Now it could be they're just both high-involvement speakers, so that when we see them interrupting, we know something about them and how they speak, but we don't learn much more about this conversation or what's going on between them at that moment.
But more often, John interrupts for a -reason-. In your example, first off, what I notice right away is that they know each other -very well-, so well that they don't need to finish sentences. (Now they could be -wrong- about what the other was going to say... that's one of the problems with interrupting! You think you know what the first speaker was going to finish with, but you could be wrong.)
"I never meant--"
"Yes, you did. I was there when you met Chris, and I realized--"
Here, the interrupter not only knows (or thinks) what the speaker is going to say, but is willing to contradict her and say she's lying... doesn't need to hear the end of that to make this judgment. That indicates they have some pretty strong acquaintance, and have maybe even had this conversation before in some form. It also must be a pretty tense subject, if they're verbally battering each other like this.
"Yes, you did. I was there when you met Chris, and I realized--"
"No, it wasn't like that! It was--"
Notice that they're both interrupting-- and they're -cutting each other off-. See, interruption can be either cooperative/collaborative ("It was Tuesday--" "Oh, right! I remember! Now I see what you mean!") or competitive. This is definitely competitive. They're trying to outdo each other in telling their version of reality.
"I KNOW what it was!"
And here you have the final conclusory "you can't interrupt me now!" punchline-- sharp and short.
So what's the purpose of interrupting? One is like the above-- to insist on controlling the "story", on telling your version of the story. In that case, you're likely to get what we have here-- short broken quotes, quick interruptions and re-interruptions, and constant contradiction. That's a good use of interruption, though it will get annoying pretty fast (just as in real life, when someone keeps cutting you off), so don't stick with it for more than a page or so.
But another reason for interruption might be to conceal what is about to be said, or to keep the speaker from saying it out loud. You'll see the former (concealing) more when there are three or more people in the conversation. I tend to use the quote tag to indicate that it's a "shut up" situation-- "interposed smoothly" below:
"So we were headed south, and that's when we saw--"
"That the McDonalds had been torn down," Jeremy interposed smoothly, ignoring the look Joey shot him."So?" Lucy asked. "What's the big deal about that?"
"Well," Jeremy started, thinking fast, "we had to keep going all the way to Meridian before we found a fast food place. And so we were late to class again."
You can probably guess that whatever Jeremy and Joey saw was something Jeremy doesn't think Lucy should know about.
But then there's the "please don't say it!" interruption, which can be very poignant, I think. I'd use it when the interrupter knows what's going to be said but can't bear to hear it--
"Anyway, Judy, I just think that maybe this would be a good time for us to, you know, start seeing other--""Oh! Look! There's Pete! Let's go ask him about his car accident!"
So I'd say there's no rule of thumb about interruptions. They can be very effective in dialogue because they show that this isn't just two people lecturing to each other or reading from a script, but actually interacting (even if it's a negative form of interaction). They are sparking off each other, trying to deal with each other or shut each other up or out-do each other-- but they are working together in a sense to create this conversation/confrontation.
And they can show conflict actually working out there in the dialogue (and conflict is Good!). That way produces emotion-- anger, despair, amusement, frustration... not just the emotion that was there when the conversation started, but emotion actually generated by the conversation.
But, as I said, this is much more effective if it's reserved for real confrontation/conversations and doesn't happen in every single dialogue encounter. I know I overuse this technique, and so after I write a scene, I'll often go back and take out 80% of those dashes and finish most of the sentences, and leave in the interruptions only when they're really reflective of the interaction.
In real life, people speak quickly, in clipped sentences. How do I convey that without overusing tricks like broken sentences and words and dashes?
You probably already figured out that I like the broken sentences and other dialogue tricks, and would never say you shouldn't do it. :)
But I am also uneasily aware that, like all good things, I at least tend to binge when it comes to "authentic" dialogue. It's so much fun to play with dashes (indicating an interruption) and ellipses (... indicating a fading out) that I swear, my characters seldom complete a thought in my first draft. And I have no doubt, in this state, my dialogue is pretty grating to the mental ear.
Journalists have long known that the way to make an interview subject look stupid is to faithfully render her response to questions-- with every "uh" and broken thought and backtracking and repetition and mispronunciation-- all the things that we mentally fix when we're actually listening to someone speak (as we all screw up vocally, or most of us do). So most journalists, when they -don't- want to make their subject look stupid, drop repeated words and "huhs" and such, and "You know, I mean, uh, what-- what matters most is not-- IS, I mean, our children's future," becomes "You know, what matters most is our children's future."
In the same way, we tend to clean up our characters' speech, which is why most of them are so much more articulate than we are. :) That's fine-- but it's also important not to clean away dialogue "missteps" which add to the context, meaning, or experience of the passage.
I think the trick, as always, is to select. Well, first, binge, then select. Put in all the "ummms" and "..." and "--" and "you knows" that make the dialogue sound authentic to you, and then go back over it and decide where the tricks actually add meaning to the passage, and where they are just basically stuttering.
For example, I like to put "umm" in there when someone is trying to think out loud, especially if he wants to be seen as thinking out loud. "Let's see, there are, um, forty-three different ways of saying 'hello' in the Slapatac language." I might also do it when she's making a big point of being discreet. "Yes, well, it's said that Mr. Clayton and his secretary are, um, quite close."
Otherwise, I take out all the umms. :)
I am quite profligate with dashes in the first draft, and take most of them out in revision. In real conversation, we seldom actually finish a sentence-- we either trail off or go off on another thought or someone interrupts us. So if I'm being faithful to the reality of real speech, nearly every speech line will end with a dash. But that's too much. Better to save that for actual interruptions, or those moments when the speaker wants to be portentous or dramatic. "And then---!"
So, as with so much in art, less is more. The dash will have more meaning when it's used sparingly instead of as a substitute for the period or comma. The "um" will be more significant if I use it not as just a common verbal tic, but only when it signifies some meaningful hesitation on the speaker's part.
Now that doesn't mean I don't still have fun with dialogue, but I do it more with casual terms ("hey, there" "Come on" "You know") and placing the quote tag here and there:
John said, "Hey, there, little one, just what do you think you're doing?"
"Hey, there, little one," John said, "just what do you think you're doing?"
"Hey, there, little one, just what do you think you're doing?" John said.
I like to experiment with things like that in order to get a certain rhythm that can add to the audial quality of the dialogue in much the same way the dashes do.
So I'm all for your sort of dialogue-- that's what I do too! Just be selective, because the more selective the placement of such devices, the more meaning they'll have each time you use them.
Alicia
What are your best tips for achieving plausible historical speech that's neither anachronistic nor archaic?
If it's word usage, do you have any rules of thumb (i.e. a certain number of words per sentence or paragraph that seem to work best)?
This is a very complex issue for me. I almost think the farther you get from modern English, the more freedom you have. Mary Renault, for example, in her great classical world novels, pretty much just used slightly more formal dialogue, avoiding anachronisms ("Boy, that gladiator has eyes like lasers, doesn't he?" "Not to mention a butt as
cute as Ricky Martin's!" <G>) but not trying to translate ancient Greek and Latin into some archaic English equivalent.
Dorothy Dunnett's wonderful Renaissance-era novels tend to follow that example. Of course, her characters aren't usually speaking English (in fact, in her Niccolo series, I'm not sure what they're speaking most of the time... since the books range from Scotland to Timbuktu, and the hero
converses easily with just about everyone :), so there's already the "translation factor" in effect much of the time-- that is, if the characters are speaking French, it's going to be rendered in English anyway, so there's not so much of a need to be absolutely faithful to the way an English person of that era would have spoken.
In fact, just as in the movies, where aristocrats of all historical eras and languages and places sound like Alec Guinness and all working class people sound like Michael Caine, Dunnett trans-renders most of her dialogue in the Lymond series into the appropriate pre-WWII
British-English dialect. The elderly Scots characters use a mild Scottish dialect ("Well, I wouldna ask him the now or you'll get a right nippit answer"), but the younger ones mostly use a more typical "Oxonian" dialect-- educated and sleek. The working-class types aren't quite speaking Artful Dodger-style Cockney slang, but something close to it.
Here's a random example, from the (sigh) extraordinary Checkmate. Okay, it's not random. It's like the most famous (among romance writers) passages in the Dunnett series. Lymond is Scots, educated in France, and Philippa is English. Both are aristocrats. He's older than she is, by 12
years, maybe? She's probably 18-20, and he has been a friend (and only a friend) to her mother Kate for many years.
(This is a spoiler, by the way!)
Philippa has just sort of confessed her love for Lymond, to whom she's sort of married but they're not even -friends- (it's very complicated <G>) and has said that she knows he loves another, having heard him sing passionate love songs with evident feeling--
"I had no expectations. This is one lesson I know by heart already."
"You are young," Lymond said gently. "You will change. I don't take lightly what you feel for me, but it wasn't the kind of passion I was speaking of. You asked me a question , and I think we have come to the place where I must answer it. For one thing, you are being hurt. And for another... as you see... I seem to be losing the knack of concealing things from you."
She said, "I was wrong. Don't tell me."
"No. You were right," he said. And as the chill spread through her nerves and her flesh, he said, "Tant que je vive (umm, let's see, loosely translated-- As long as I live, and implied is that's how much I'll love).... I said too much that evening, didn't I? It was not, of course, Guzel (that I sang those love songs for). Or Mariotta."
"Kate (her mother) loves you," Philippa said. "It's all right. She has always..."
"Philippa, no," he said. He stood in an island of space, as isolated as he must have been directing his forces in Guines or in Calais. "You were right to ask, and wrong only in your conjecture. Kate is my friend. That is true. But the songs were for her daughter. And the passion, for ever. That is why we are parting."
The words reached her, without bringing the sense any nearer. He would think her very slow.... "But I am her daughter," Philippa said.
Like some obscure and difficult text, the look in his eyes was too complex to be read at a distance. She said, "You can't mean...?" And then, as he did not speak, answered herself. "No."
He was as pale as the sheened marble mask on the chimney-piece, but a ghost of the old self-derision pulled his mouth at the corner. "No? Then let us leave things as they are." (he goes and pours some water)... "Think, Yunitsa (literally "heifer", but really meaning "darling" in Russian-- well, you know, we say "honey" and the French croon, "My dear cabbage," :)," he said abruptly.
(long introspection while she puzzles this out... more anguish because he insists for her sake, they can't be
together and she'll get over him quickly, it's just a crush, etc,... he's, well, sort of a seriously bad dude, and she's still an innocent :)
"There is no basis for marriage between us. And that is quite final, Philippa."
She was breathing almost as quickly as he. But she kept her voice calm. "As you say, I'm inexperienced. On the other hand, you are not always right. Please listen. Please think. Are you sure, when it matters so much, that you know my feelings better than I do?"
"No," he said, "I am not infallible. You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forver, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him."
She couldn't speak... She raised her glass and dashed it on the parquet... the wine lay like blood.
Speech came back. "God in heaven. Do you think that I care?"
He looked up from the mess. "I know you don't," Lymond said. His eyes were black, not blue, and there were red splashes on the white velvet.
"But you must excuse the hunchback, who does."
Sigh..... (oh, hunchback is only figurative. He's actually beautiful. :)
But spiritually he's a hunchback, in his own estimation.)
(Long pause while Alicia reads the entire 600-page book over again. Sniffle, sniffle, sigh.)
Okay, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah. Dialogue. :)
This is a pretty common way of handling historical dialogue. The speech is slightly formal (in fact, hers is more formal than his), and there aren't any obvious 20th C howlers, but there's virtually no attempt to use many period-words or archaic sentence patterns.
This scene is taking place in, oh, 1560 or so, so just four years before Shakespeare's birth. We are fortunate indeed to have Shakespeare so we know very well how people talked in English then-- definitely comprehensible, but with many words we no longer use, and unusual constructions (which could be because Shakespeare forced them to speak in Iambic Pentameter :). There's no attempt here, or in most modern books set in the Renaissance, to have the characters speak like Shakespearian characters. They even use contractions sometimes (but of course, so did
Shakespeare :), and a modern sentence structure.
The only concession really to the historical period is the slightly more formal speech, more eloquent, more articulate, than you'd see in most books set in the current time.
This is what I see most in historical novels-- a slightly formal speech pattern, maybe a scattering of period words and an attempt to avoid obviously 20th C words. The advantages are that it's easy to read, and also in some ways it's probably easier to identify with characters who talk like us (only much better :).
The disadvantage, well, you can see that. It doesn't really -feel- historical. Here's an excerpt from Laura Kinsale's upcoming book, set a couple centuries earlier:
The sound of the door latch barely reached her, but when it swung open and a tall, simply dressed knight ducked through, clad in black and carrying a golden-haired boy child, she rose hastily from her chair and fell into a deep curtsy. "My lord, I greet you well!"
"Nay, rise, my lady," Lord Ruadrik said, extending a large,
weapon-hardened hand to Elene even as he easily deposited the wriggling four-year-old in Lady Melanthe's lap. He had the north country in his speech, and an open grin. "Take this goblin, lady wife, 'ere it slays me!"
Now that's all pretty comprehensible, but there are a couple of historical markers --
"I greet you well... 'ere it slays me!" and a much more formal speech pattern. (Okay, is anyone else completely and utterly miserable with envy at that "large, weapon-hardened hand" line? Why couldn't I have written that????)
But Ruadrik is by far the most "period-speaker" in the excerpt I read. Melanthe speaks formally, but without many period words, and Elene too. This is one way Kinsale distinguishes between the somewhat old-fashioned
Ruadrik and his, well, Continentally decadent wife Melanthe. (Actually, the earlier book that "starred" Melanthe, For My Lady's Heart, used transliterated (with modern spelling) late-Middle English dialect. I loved it, but I know the author got a lot of comment, negative and positive, about it.)
Paradoxically, the closer the book is set to modern times, the more the reader seems to want "historical dialogue". Part of that is simply that, say, Regency English is comprehensible to us in a way that even
Shakespeare isn't-- the vocabulary is very similar, and the sentence structure is nearly identical to modern speech. So rendering your Regency dialogue like Jane Austen isn't going to bother your readers much-- it just sounds like exotic English, not almost a different language. Look back at those examples above from Austen (who wrote in 1800)
and Patrick O'Brian (who tries to sound like he's writing in 1800 :), and see how the authors show this is not Bridget Jones's England: --
(Darcy to Lizzie) "Do you not feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize upon such an opportunity of dancing a reel?"
------
(Jack to Stephen) "Had I known you was a surgeon, sir, I do not think I could have resisted the temptation of pressing (impressing/drafting into military service) you."
In the both instances, the "period" is shown in the predicate phrase, where there's a bit of an inversion. "Do you not feel" happens because they didn't use contractions as much as now, but it is every bit as clear as "Don't you feel" would be to us. It -feels- historical, however, just as Jack's "Had I known" construction. We still use that very construction in the conditional, at least occasionally, or at least I remember doing that in an academic paper once. <G> Now we'd be more likely to say "If I had known", but again, the meaning is exact and accessible to us, but there's a slightly exotic feel to it.
What else? Well, you're right about more words in a sentence-- notice how stretched out the sentences are. Darcy is basically asking, "Hey, Lizzie, don't you want to dance?" But the greater formality and discretion (and, it must be said, his tentativeness) require a longer,
more complicated sentence construction, though one that is still recognizable. This, I think, is an easy way to slip in some historical feel... stretch out the sentences more. You're not writing for the Associated Press here-- waste some words. Use words we recognize (seize,
opportunity, inclination) but are not the ones that would come immediately to mind in a modern character.
Also note that both break up the sentence after the first part of the clause to address the listener:
"Do you not feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet....""Had I known you was a surgeon, sir,"
We're more likely to put the addressee either at the beginning or end of the sentence, but with the longer sentences of "historical-speak", the name or honorific of the listener gives a nice little natural pause. And oh, yes, keep in mind that until the 20th century, people tended to
address each other more formally well into their acquaintance. Jack calls Stephen "sir" or "Doctor" for most of the first few months of their acquaintance-- and he is a very informal man. It's only when he fears his friend has been killed and then sees him safe that he slips and
calls him "Stephen"-- and even after that, they use first names only in private. They are "my dear Doctor Maturin" and "Captain Aubrey" in public.
Miss Bennet's parents still call each other "Mr. Bennet" and "Mrs. Bennet," even after they've created 5 daughters. Lizzie calls him "Mr. Darcy" up to the point that she accepts his proposal, and only then does he call her "Elizabeth" (in fact, he calls her "loveliest Elizabeth," sigh).
This is another little trick to make dialogue feel more historical without making it hard to understand. And it's sort of sexy, you know, to have a hero and heroine so formal with each other while exchanging heated glances. My critique partner was complaining that her Regency
characters were almost in bed together, and it's still Sir and Miss between them, but I think that's fun.
What else? Notice that Jack (not the most educated of men-- he went away to sea at 12) falls into the common subject-verb error "you was". Grammar and spelling weren't quite standardized even by the Regency, and
even upper-class people like Jack sometimes used the simpler form which ignored subject-verb agreement. (BTW, one of my futile quests is to stamp out subject-verb agreement as redundant. <G>) This is especially
fun when it's combined, as in this passage, with a quite elegant turn of phrase: "Had I known you was a surgeon, sir, I do not think I could have resisted the temptation ...."
So... those are some markers that I think make for easy-reading historical speech. :) There's also no harm in a sprinkling of words that have gone out of use since that time, as long as they're clear from the context, and of course, I'd avoid any obviously 21st century terms. (I
had a copy editor once insert "inferiority complex" into my Regency hero's dialogue... sigh.) The OED has the date when words first entered the written language, and you can usually assume that the word would have been circulating in the spoken language for 20-50 years before that.
But I do think that it's not necessary to try to sound like a medieval lady or a Regency buck. "Verisimilitude" might be what we're aiming at, that is, the illusion of authenticity rather than authenticity itself.
And there is a strong tradition of just having historical characters speak clear English, perhaps a bit more formal and without obvious anachronisms. The argument I've heard is that we're basically "translating" their speech anyway, much as our French characters' dialogue gets translated to English, so why not make it something very accessible?
I think either approach will work in today's market-- just avoid the extremes, you know, Chaucerian spelling on the one side, and medieval ladies who talk like Valley Girls on the other. :)
Alicia
Can you explain more about the difference between men's and women's dialogue?
I already wrote a bit about gender-speak, but let's explore it further.
As I said, the best guide for this is Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand. http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/tannend/
But nothing she says should be regarded as a "rule"-- just as a guide to the more obvious markers of male/female speech.
Here's a page with her info in miniature:
http://www.usm.maine.edu/com/genderlect/
For example, if you happened to read, "Let's do it together, is that okay with you?" would you think that was a woman or a man speaking? You'd figure, probably, that it was a woman. What are the markers? The tag question (is that okay?), the cooperative "Let's" and "together" and the
turning of a command into a request are all pretty typically feminine.
If you read, "I'll drive for the first three hours, and then you'll take over," you'd probably think "man!" Why? The markers are the precision (three hours), the direct declarative sentence, the use of "I" and "you" rather than "we", the turning of a request (will you take over then?) into a statement (not a command, notice, but a statement).
If you read, "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that! But my cousin had that too, and the chemo was very hard on her, but now it's three years later and she's doing great," you'd probably identify that as a woman speaking: the instant "I'm sorry" meaning sympathy and compassion (men tend to think
that I'm sorry means an apology, and will often respond, "It's not your fault I have cancer!"), the amplification (Oh, so sorry, too, very hard, now) that makes the sentence longer and more "soft-edged", the effort at camaraderie (my cousin), the use of a personal example.
If you read, "So I'd say it's time for a two-pronged attack on that cancer. Yeah, keep on with the chemo, but bring in a personal trainer and start an exercise program," you'd know it was a man-- the "So" meaning a conclusion or judgment, the authoritative "I'd say", the immediate search for a "fix" (most men see a problem and immediately devise a fix), the "war metaphor" (two-pronged attack).
So it's not just word choice-- it's attitude. Women -tend- to be more collegial, more cooperative, more personal, to work for consensus rather than self-assertion ("Let's"). Men tend to be more direct, informational, impersonal, and action-oriented. Women are more likely to offer empathy; men are more likely to suggest a solution.
Keep in mind, however, that everything's dependent on context and on character. A macho longshoreman, of course, will tend to have more of the masculine markers than a poet might. A woman CEO who has dealt with men
professionally will probably be "bilingual", moving easily from the sports-metaphor-laden masculine talk to the more collaborative, feeling-based speech of women when necessary.
So first think about your characters. Not all heroes need to be Gary Cooper types, for example. There are plenty of men who are quite masculine and yet articulate and adept at language, even the language of emotion. The "silver-tongued devil" comes to mind. This is a masculine
archetype, certainly no sissy-- he's the Casanova, the seducer, the trickster, the charmer. The masculinity is shown in his purposefulness-- he uses his eloquence for the very masculine purpose of impressing and seducing and getting what he wants. <g>
Dennis Quaid often plays this sort of character (think of Remy in The Big Easy), and so, with greater British smoothness, does Pierce Brosnan. Their characters are always set up as decidedly masculine (tough cop, lethal spy), and so there's never any doubt that they're manly men, even though they can turn an elegant phrase. If you've got a silver-tongued hero, you might rent a couple of
their films to see how the screenwriter masculinizes their speech while still letting them be flirtatious and eloquent.
It's sometimes fun to operate against type. A man who is set up as very macho can actually be more expressive than men traditionally are. My husband played college football, and those guys were practically maudlin when they talked about their beloved coach and the importance of team and
how much they loved each other-- but you know, you don't look at a 280-pound lineman bulging with muscles and call him a sissy, even if he's weeping (as they often did-- I'm not kidding-- well, the team went 1 for 8 that last year <G>).
Humphrey Bogart is another example of a macho man who could get away with less-than-macho speech. You might rent Casablanca to see how often he plays against type. First, however, in the early part of the film, he firmly establishes himself as capable of the short, declarative
sentences, the commanding attitude, and a lack of empathy that's quite deliberate.
Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?Rick: Well, if I gave you any thought, I probably would.
Ugarte: But why? Oh, you object to the kind of business I do, huh? But think of all those poor refugees who must rot in this place if I didn't help them. Well that's not so bad, through ways of my own, I provide them with exit visas.Rick: For a price, Ugarte, for a price.
Ugarte: But think of all the poor devils who can't meet Renault's price. I get it for them for half. Is that so parasitic?
Rick: I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.
Ugarte: Well, Rick, after tonight, I'll be through with the whole business, and I'm leaving finally, this Casablanca.
Rick: (quipping) Who'd you bribe for your visa, Renault or yourself?
Ugarte is a craven little man (played by the distinctive Peter Lorre!), and it shows in his combination of the feminine need for reassurance ("don't you?") and the more male focus on problem-solution. (And of course, there's that amazing Peter Lorre -laugh-- heheheh.) And he goes on and on, justifying himself.In contrast, Bogart is economical, direct, and coolly arrogant. His short sentences and simple declarative constructions are all-man. But he's setting up the wonderful pattern that gets amplified as soon as Ilse (Ingrid Bergman) comes in-- the use of poetic devices such as anaphora and repetition within his sentences.
For a price, Ugarte, for a price.
I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.
Bogart is so quintessentially the streetsmart urban cowboy -- even in his tropical white suit-- that he can play with the whole masculine/feminine speech contrast. As soon as Ilse arrives, his lines get longer and more ornate. He "tells stories". He explains himself. He talks about his feelings. His lines become amazingly rhythmic, full of imagery and
pattern.
In contrast, Ilsa plays a more laconic character, using short, plain sentences-- almost a masculine pattern. In their first scene together, she reminds him that the last day they met was the day the Nazis marched into Paris.
Rick: Not an easy day to forget.
Ilsa: No.
Rick: I remember every detail. The Germans wore grey. You wore blue.
Ilsa: Yes. I put that dress away. When the Germans march out, I'll wear it again.
Rent the movie and see how Bogart caresses that perfectly balanced pair of sentences. The Germans wore grey. You wore blue.
Later he gets drunk, and has a monologue as his friend and pianist Sam plays moodily in the background. Again, look at the poetic devices of compare/contrast (They grab Ugarte. Then she walks in.) and anaphora (repetition of the phrase opening-- I bet... I bet...) and then the famous line, again rhythmically balanced-- of all the gin joints...
They grab Ugarte. Then she walks in. Well, that's the way it goes. One in, one out...( It's December 1941 in Casablanca. What time is it in New York?...I bet they're asleep in New York. I bet they're asleep all over America. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.When Ilsa comes in a few minutes later, he's every bit as emotionally expressive as a 12-year-old girl, and uses exaggeration and imagery and narrative and repetition of keywords in a quite feminine way to show his anger and pain:
Rick: It's funny about your voice how it hasn't changed. I can still hear it: 'Richard dear. I'll go with you anyplace. We'll get on a train together and never stop.'
Ilsa: Please don't. Don't Rick! I can understand how you feel.
Rick: Huh! You understand how I feel. How long was it we had, honey?
Ilsa: I didn't count the days.
Rick: Well I did. Every one of them. Mostly, I remember the last one. The wow finish. A guy standing on a station platform in the rain with a comical look on his face, because his insides had been kicked out.
Ilsa: Can I tell you a story, Rick?
Rick: Does it got a wow finish?
Ilsa: I don't know the finish yet.
Rick: Go on and tell it. Maybe one will come to you as you go along.
Read these lines aloud-- Well I did. Every one of them. Mostly, I remember the last one. The wow finish. A guy standing on a station platform in the rain with a comical look on his face, because his insides had been kicked out.
see how long that last one is. Men don't usually speak in such long sentences with so much visual detail. But Bogart delivers it as he might sing it, with every prepositional phrase on a slightly lower note... A guy standing... on a station platform... in the rain... with a comical look... on his face... and then the harsh (and masculine) conclusion.
When she tells him -her- story, he lashes out with a typical male insult, but using the more feminine device of personalizing ("someone I know") to create a comparison between the listener and another.
"Yes, it's very pretty. I heard a story once. As a matter of fact, I've heard a lot of stories in my time. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano, playing in the parlor downstairs. 'Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid,' they'd always begin. Well, I guess neither one of our stories is very funny. Tell me, who was it you left me for? Was it Laszlo or were there others in between? Or aren't you the kind that tells?"
(BTW, Claude Rains -- Captain Renault-- also has some wonderfully poetic/rhythmic lines... in fact, the secondary characters in this film are extraordinarily written and acted. Heck, this is a great film on most every level. :)
I can't remember what I was getting at! Oh, just that it is indeed a good idea to listen to men speak and read about how men on average speak if you're a woman writer, and vice versa. But people are people first. And the rough poetry of Bogart's speech is possible because he's tough
enough and macho enough that he can allow himself to speak expressively when necessary. :)
You know, as I read through the script, I realize the hero I'm currently struggling with (and he's bigger than I am, so he's winning :) is really very much like Rick in Casablanca!
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