Who Am I?

Revealing Character Through Dialogue

By Mary Rosenblum

 

 

            We learn early on, as writers, how valuable dialogue is as a tool.  It is a great  way to feed the reader lots of concentrated information without intruding with our author’s  voice.  In fiction that is invaluable!  Even in personal narrative nonfiction, it is often much more effective to let the characters we have introduced share information with the reader.  It saves us from droning on endlessly about a topic or situation.

 

            But dialogue plays an even more critical role.  It is an excellent method of revealing character.

 

Open Your Mouth and You Fall Out!

 

            How, you ask?  What?  Are we supposed to simply have the character stand on stage and describe herself…I am a housewife, married for forty years, and I’m really really tired of my boring life…  No.  Not at all!  That’s exactly what you don’t want to do.   Think about meeting a stranger.  You’ve met somebody new in the past year, haven’t you, at a party, a meeting?  So, how did you figure out whether this was somebody you liked or not?  How did you decide if you could trust him,  or maybe even invite him out for a beer or to bowl a couple of frames? 

 

            You listened to him talk, right?  The way she talked to others, the way he treated the wait staff at the restaurant, what she had to say about politics…you processed it all, even if you didn’t do it consciously.  Then you came to a conclusion. 

 

            I like this person.

            I don’t like this person.

            She’s like me.

            He’s a total jerk.

 

            It doesn’t take us long to make that initial snap judgment.  By the end of that two hour meeting, by the end of the bowling club’s Christmas party, by the end of the neighbor’s barbecue, you know whether you ever really want to see this person again.  And that initial impression is very difficult to change.  If this guy is a jerk, if we don’t like her, we avoid her, we refuse to serve on the same committee with him.  And if we don’t like your main character….we put the book down and start a new one!

 

            So how do we make sure that the reader gets the right impression of our characters?  Well, every time your character says something, especially in our first encounter with him or her, we are adding that to a little file in our minds, keeping a running tally.  He likes kids, he’s ready to stand up for his friends, he’s loyal, he’s honest, he’s tolerant.  Yeah, I like him.  I’m going to keep reading and make sure he does okay here!

 

            It is what your character says in his dialogue that gives us this information.  If your character is strolling through a public park and some kid’s football bounces off his chest, how does he react?  If he winces, laughs, says, “That kid throws about like I did, when I was his age,” scoops up the ball and passes it back to the eight year old who threw it, we know he likes kids, and has a pretty easy going temperament.  If he snarls, Those kids shouldn’t be out here without supervision.  What kind of lousy parents do they have, anyway?”, we know that he’s not at all tolerant of people getting in his space, he’s not all that fond of kids, certainly, and if he was a parent, he was likely very strict and controlling.

 

            We have made this instant character analysis on the basis of one line of dialogue!  And it is a much more effective way of giving us the information about the character’s feelings about kids than telling us he doesn’t like kids.  This is showing.  We make the inference for ourselves…that this man either dislikes or likes kids.  Since that is how we determine character in the real world, this makes your story seem real.  We are not reminded by the murmur of your voice in our ears that we are listening to a story. 

 

            Yes, you could write:  Todd disliked children.  He thought they should be kept at home, or at best, allowed to play in public parks only under close supervision.  But this is your voice.  You are telling us and we have to take your word for it.  We don’t see it happening for ourselves as we do in the above examples.  Remember…the more your fiction and narrative non-fiction is interactive, the more real it will seem to the reader.  We interact with life.  Nobody murmurs Todd disliked children, in our ears as we walk through the park!

 

We’re All Experts Here

 

            Remember that every one of your readers is an expert on character.  While that does not mean that anyone who picks up your story or narrative can point to a particular scene and say, Your characterization broke down here…, it does mean that your readers can lay the magazine or book aside and say, I don’t know…his stories really don’t work for me.  And they won’t buy your next book, or the magazine with your next story or narrative.  We have been living with real people since we were born, and while we may not be able to analyze character behavior as a reader, we can certainly tell when a character is not acting like a real person. 

 

            Every time your character opens his or her mouth, we learn more about the way that character views the world.  While one person may call an unmowed and weedy field a ‘wasteland’, another might call it a ‘meadow’.  Our first speaker is an elderly farmer, who evaluates land from the point of productivity.  To him, that field might be growing hay, or potatoes, or grazing cattle.  But full of weeds it is a wasteland.  Our other character is a lifelong conservationist.  To him, that field full of wildflowers and native grasses is a triumph of recovery from overuse.  It is a meadow.  But if your farmer calls it a ‘lovely meadow full of wildflowers’  when he has just come from fighting with the town council over the regulations limiting his use of some wetlands on his property for farming, that ‘meadow’ will ring false.  This is not how this man thinks about a grassy and unused field!  So if you, the author, want us to see that beautiful meadow, you are going to have to do it from another Point of View.  Your farmer is not the one to use, or our ‘false’ alarms will go off loudly!

 

 

Limited Point of View

 

            First person is always the POV character’s perspective, of course.  This is also why third person point of view is often referred to as ‘third person limited’.  If we are in the point of view of a particular character, it is limited.  It is limited by the world view and perspective of that person.  Every item that character sees, every encounter and conversation she has, is filtered through her perspective on the world.  It is limited, and it must reflect that character’s feelings about what is before him.  So how do we describe the kids in the park if our character hates kids?  You, the author, might lovingly and lyrically describe the boy who threw the football as an elfin kid with an endearing grin, his face sprinkled with freckles, wearing a Snoopy tee shirt.  What does that description tell us?  It tells us that you think this kid is cute, and rather dear.  You like him, in other words.  You’d probably pick up that football and toss it back to him, maybe take the time to give him a tip on passing, if you were a football player, or ask him if he lived around here, if you don’t know anything about football.  But you clearly don’t dislike him and his presence in the park doesn’t threaten you.  That’s what you have told us with your description.  Now if your POV character is our cranky old man, this description is going to scream ‘Author’s Voice’, or else sound totally false! 

 

            So just what does our cranky old man see?  Well, he can’t stand kids.  Why not?  Hmm.  Give him a reason.  We all have reasons for our prejudices and opinions.  We are not born with them!  Well, his wife couldn’t have kids, so they never had any.  He’s an avid gardener who loves his plants like children, and kids run through his yard, trample his plants, pick his flowers and fruit.  So he sees kids as enemies, wild animals, predators!  They are no more cute than the rat in your garage!

 

            So how does our crank describe them?  We’ll call him Arnold.

 

            Arnold stared at the kid, the ball clutched against his aching ribs. “You little brat. You coulda’ hurt somebody.”  The kid just stood there staring, like he expected an apology for getting in the way of his damn ball.  “You’re just like all the others, figure you own the world any more.”  He threw the ball on the ground.  “You just take anything you want…my roses, apples  off the tree.  I saw you last week in my back yard, don’t pretend you weren’t there!”

 

            Gee.  He didn’t describe the kid at all, did he?  Huh.  Well, last time you saw a rat, did you notice its long, fine whiskers and its silky brown coat?  Bet you screamed, or flinched, or grabbed for a stick and all you saw was…a rat.  Well, these neighborhood kids are rats to this man, and that’s all he sees.  A rat.  A kid.  Hair, shirt, face…who cares?  He’s a rat. 

 

            Now later on, when these two become friends, when the kid comes to his yard to ask about plants because his sick mother loves roses and he wants to grow some for her…then Arnold at last will notice his blond hair and his freckles.  The kid might remind him of a friend or a dead sibling.  And because he notices the boy and no longer sees him as ‘a kid’, we’ll instantly realize that the kid has gone from being ‘a rat’ to being a real person.   That change in the way that old man sees the boy tells us how he feels about the boy, and it’s a big change.  You will have showed us a change in Arnold and you won’t have had to ‘tell’ us a word!  Remember…Arnold’s thoughts are part of dialogue!  We think at the same time we talk!

 

            So ask yourself in every scene…how would my character think about this?  What would he really say here?  Don’t just use your words to describe the setting or a person your character is talking to.  Whether you are using first person and your character’s voice, or third person and narrative, you are using your character’s perspective, and filtering every detail through the colored lens of that person’s feelings and experience.  That is one of the most important aspects of characterization.