Creating Tension: Put Dialogue to Work

Dialogue is one of the hardest, most rewarding things for me to write. I’m sure you have your own opinions on it–or perhaps you’re new enough to the writing thing that you haven’t developed an opinion–but when I go back and read a piece of dialogue I’ve written that rings true and feels authentic, I jump up and down a little bit. It’s that exciting for me.

Dialogue–especially the kind of dialogue that creates tension in your story–must be worked at.

Here are five things to consider:

You and I say boring, completely necessary stuff all day long. We say, “Hi!” and “um” and we greet people we see with the standard, “How are you?” constantly. Totally normal. You should all keep doing these things. But on the page, these filler words drag at the story. They rarely introduce any kind of valuable information and they can dampen any tension you’ve been trying to build. You’ve probably heard it said that writers should not waste words. This is particularly true with dialogue. Every word your characters say should be moving the story forward in some way. If it is not, reconsider. Which brings me to . . .

Well-written dialogue does more than simply show the reader that two or more people have things to talk about. Well-written dialogue jumps off the page and surrounds the reader with things like mood and tone. It should reveal–or at least hint at–how well the characters know one another and whether they enjoy each other’s company. You should catch glimmers of a character’s education and the things that are important to them. When dialogue is doing its job, it’s furthering the layers of conflict and tension in your story.

Here’s a very short excerpt from Dark Halo, the third book in the Angel Eyes trilogy. See if you can pinpoint tone and personality and relationship here. Read it twice if you have to. This small section is accomplishing a lot.

“You mind if we make a little detour?”

Kay crosses her arms. “Are you plotting, Mysterioso?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“You’re not going to kill Henry, are you? Cause Slugger’s a Bug. A Volkswagen Beetle. We’d have to cram the body in the bonnet. The bonnet, Marco. Plus, I’d be the worst getaway driver ever.”

A smile’s taken Marco’s face before he thinks to fight it. “You ever think about acting? Your comic timing is very . . .”

“Betty White?” Kay tries.

“Phoebe Buffay.”

“I’m flattered, but no. I fall daily. Cameras would be all kinds of unhelpful. No murder, okay? Promise me.”

“No murder,” he says. “Shall I pinkie swear?”

Kay’s standing two steps higher than he is, and when she leans forward, her forehead nearly smacks his. Her brown eyes rove his face, like two searchlights routing out a criminal.

After a minute she straightens up, turns on her heel, and marches up the stairs, puffs of flour squelching from her slippers.

“All right,” she calls over her shoulder. “Detour it is. But if Slugger poops out, you’re pushing.”

 

Trying to slip information to the reader by summarizing backstory or description into dialogue is a mistake a lot of new writers make. Shake off the bad habit because as you get more experienced, it’ll be recognized as lazy writing. For example: 

Clunky, right? Ick. Clearly, the writer wanted to pass some information along to the reader. What did good old Billy tell us? In this condensed bit of dialogue, we learned that Sarah used to work at the only diner in town, that she has red hair, that her hair has changed, and that her mom is a hair dresser. Let me give it another go.

Okay, okay. It’s not perfect, but you get the gist. You can’t slide a bit of “telling” in between quotation marks and call it “showing.” You have to do the hard work of developing a conversation. But the upside is that when you dig deep and write this way, you almost always create tension. I wasn’t even trying for conflict up there and I stumbled into it when poor Billy insulted Sarah’s new hair cut. Dig deep. Do the work. Create tension by letting your characters talk to one another.

Obviously there are exceptions to this and every rule we lay out for you here. But in the thick of dialogue, your sentences should never be any longer than they have to be. It reads much more naturally this way and it also helps the reader. White space on a page is good. It breaks up the monotony of black ink and helps with pace. We don’t want our readers to stop reading, do we? Short bits of dialogue keep them moving forward.

JK Rowling is fabulous at this. When you’re reading her Harry Potter stories, readers never have trouble distinguishing between the character’s voices. Ron doesn’t sound anything like Hermione and neither of them sound like Harry. They have their own nuances and their speech has a unique cadence and there are certain words each of them use more than others. This takes work for most of us, but when you write unique sounding characters, you don’t have to depend so heavily on dialogue tags, which, let’s be honest, is the most basic form of “telling” you’ll ever find in a novel.

When you work hard to develop each character’s voice, you are giving them so much more than just a unique sound. You’re giving them a backstory and speech patterns. You’re giving them goals and dreams and their own reasons for having conversations with others. All of these things generate conflict and tension when you let your characters be themselves in dialogue.

I’m just scratching the surface here, you guys. Just knocking on the door of all the things that dialogue can do for your fiction. In our own lives, tension and conflict often start when we open our yaps and stick our foot in it. Your characters are no different. And with some elbow grease and a writer’s imagination, you can put your characters to work creating tension in your story.