Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

Employing indirect dialogue
Magnetic characterization
Character, setting, and types of stories

I’ve cited the dangers of using too much direct dialogue and urged you to revise or cut as much of it as you can. Yet what exactly might you revise it to? The problem persists: what do you do if there is no escaping a long and potentially boring speech in, say, a novel?

I can virtually guarantee that in every extended creative prose piece you write, this problem will arise somewhere. A character will have something to say—something necessary that will take several pages to write—but it’s neither exciting enough nor emotional enough to particularly hold the reader’s interest. Simultaneously, it’s not inconsequential enough to leave out. The solution is writing the dialogue indirectly.

In essence, indirect dialogue is the term I use for dialogue that is told, not shown. A speech that’s shown is reproduced in full, word for word, with quotation marks around it. On the other hand, a speech that’s told is summarized in a few sentences of prose. What would take many pages to cover if you were writing dialogue word for word can be neatly reduced to a brief paragraph.

DEFINITION

Indirect dialogue is the act of summarizing dialogue.

When the final paragraph of summary is over, simply return to the “real time” of the scene at hand and continue as normal—as though the preceding 10 minutes of conversation had not been condensed into 30 seconds of narrative summary.

Note that you do not have to summarize an entire long speech using indirect dialogue. In fact, the process might proceed something like this:

1. You, as the writer, can have the character start to tell his or her tale by writing the dialogue word for word.

2. You then slip into narrative summary (i.e., indirect dialogue) for the middle section.

3. You return to writing dialogue word for word again toward the end.

Similarly, you can use this technique to summarize part or all of a lengthy conversation between two or more characters. You could summarize the uninteresting small talk at the start of a conversation, for example, but render the meatier or more profound second part of the conversation in proper dialogue.

Whenever you have a long speech given by a character in your novel, or a lengthy exchange of dialogue between two characters, just remember that you don’t have to reproduce the dialogue at length. Sometimes writing dialogue indirectly is a much better choice.

WRITING PROMPT

Go back to excerpt, and identify every instance of indirect dialogue. Then go back again and determine which can be effectively cut or revised into direct dialogue.