tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post3900709744783190971..comments2024-01-06T10:36:04.084-05:00Comments on A Commonplace Blog: Fit and natural speechD. G. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-24727658608188690722011-01-19T22:19:07.577-05:002011-01-19T22:19:07.577-05:00Good dialog, like all well-employed story elements...Good dialog, like all well-employed story elements, advance the story. Direct dialog is part of the scene, not summary, and so it must help create the drama of that scene. It may have a lot to do, or not much at all to do. My fiction tends to be chatty, I suppose, because I'm chatty but I find it very interesting when dialog works, when it both hides and reveals, when characters show themselves (almost) and then through their actions or further interaction (spoken thought)make that scene deliver.<br />Dialog should not function as exposition. Thought can be a form of action (rather than always its enemy) and dialog helps reveal that thought.PMHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01848296275862900483noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-84290564294712399042011-01-19T14:24:46.085-05:002011-01-19T14:24:46.085-05:00Thanks; there were so many insights for me here, a...Thanks; there were so many insights for me here, and in your previous post on dialogue. Although, I found it hard to follow your advice and ignore both the ellipses and the unlikelihood of Holloway's speaking in such a way, once you had pointed them out. (What is that device called anyway? <i>Praeteritio</i>?)<br /><br />This post puts my own comparitively long and unrevealing <a href="http://guypursey.blogspot.com/2009/10/chequer-board.html" rel="nofollow">review</a> of <i>The Chequer Board</i>, which also in part addresses U.S. Army segregation during the Second World War, to shame. Not that I would expect anything less.... I've much to learn.<br /><br />And as further proof, I have to end with what might seem like incredibly naïve questions: What does good dialogue look like? Who does dialogue "best" (if anyone)?Guy Purseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03389223432095066078noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-34752349244175264842011-01-18T17:31:07.500-05:002011-01-18T17:31:07.500-05:00Too many fiction writers use dialog to advance the...Too many fiction writers use dialog to advance the plot or to explain what should be implicit, not explicit. And since most dialog is mere prattle, I figure one should use it as little as possible, just enough to add an inkling of character or a bit of atmosphere. What do you think of Hemingway's dialog? I mean his early stuff--not the heavily mannered late work. I saw it as a careful extraction of conversation, a few bits and pieces to suggest the whole. All dialog, I think, even the prattle, works on two levels, the minutiae of the actual words--which so often are drab, dull, dead--and a kind of subterranean swelling of archetypal emotion. Some writers are good at using a bit of (even inane) dialog to suggest the depths hidden beneath; most are not.D.N. Stueflotenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16175671369033647290noreply@blogger.com