By Janice Hardy,
@Janice_Hardy
Dialogue is
usually fast-paced, but when it’s all fluff, it slows down the story.
Dialogue
is one of my favorite things to write. It lets me discover who my characters
are and how they interact with the world around them, and how they work though
solving their problems. My first draft of a scene is always heavy on the
talking.
Usually,
the conversations are good and keep the story moving, but sometimes, it takes
me a while to find the rhythm and figure out how the scene is going to unfold.
When that happens, a big chunk of the dialogue is pointless and empty.
And
empty dialogue will kill your scene, every time.
Empty dialogue feels like decent writing because
characters are chatting away and often interacting, but nothing is actually
being said.
At
best, empty dialogue bogs down the scene and slows the pacing. At worst, it
annoys readers. They skim through it and lose interest, because nothing is going on.
These
empty lines typically show up at the start and end of a conversation, though
they can happen anywhere. For example (exaggerated to make a point, but
conversations like this actually do
make it into scenes):
“Hey Hector, man,” a guy from work
called out. Chuck Something.
Hector
scowled. Like he had time for this. Chuck stopped and they shook hands. “Morning.”
“Good to see you.”
Hector
nodded. “You, too.”
“Some day, huh?”
“Sure is.”
Chuck
looked around, apparently in no hurry to leave. “I
love days like this,” he said.
“Sunny and hot?”
“Yep. Great boat weather.”
“Ah. Listen, I gotta—”
“How about you? Having a good
weekend?”
“To die for.” Hector twitched,
picturing the body in his freezer he still didn’t
know how to get rid of. Wait a sec… “Um, did you say you had a boat?”
That’s a lot of words that do nothing to advance the story, plot,
or characterization, and they also fail to set the scene or do any world building.
It’s empty dialogue and most of it isn’t needed at all.
Let’s look at how much tighter this would be (and more
interesting) if we got rid of the empties.
“Hey Hector, man,” a guy from work
called out. Chuck
Something. He stopped and they shook hands. “Some
day, huh?”
Hector
scowled. Like he had time for this. “Sure
is. Listen, I gotta—”
“I love days like this,” Chuck
continued, apparently in no hurry to leave. “Great boat weather. You having a
good weekend?”
Hector
twitched, picturing the body in his freezer he still didn’t know how to get rid of. Wait
a sec…
“Um, did you say you had a boat?”
The
narrative focus is tighter now, leading the conversation toward the boat and
the fact that Chuck is a little clueless and might make a good pasty to help
get rid of a body. There’s still enough of a dialogue “delay”
to give the impression that Chuck likes to talk and Hector wants out of there,
but not so much that the reader feels the same way.
Dealing With Empty
Dialogue in Your Own Work
If
you’re unsure if the dialogue in a
scene is a few quarts low or not, ask yourself:
1. If you took it
out, would the meaning of the conversation change?
Empty
dialogue is empty precisely because it adds nothing to the scene. In most
cases, you can accomplish the same goal with one line, as in my example. If you
take it out of the scene, the story loses nothing, let it stay out.
2. Could you
combine several lines into a single line that accomplishes the same task?
If
there are four lines that basically say “hello,
how are you, we need to talk,” or the like, skip the delays and get to the meat
of the story.
If
there are some important bits mixed
in (again, like my example), consider how you might trim out the words that do
nothing, and tighten
up the words that need to be there.
3. Are you trying
to delay the scene?
Sometimes
we add empty dialogue because we want the scene to feel as though someone is
dragging their feet. Instead of throwing in “useless” words, look for ways to
deepen the scene or add additional information while giving the impression of
awkward time passing.
Internalization
can help here, with the point of view character wondering when the speaker will
get to the point, or suggesting someone is prattling on without showing the
dialogue.
The tighter your
dialogue, the stronger your pacing will be, which helps hook readers and keeps
them engaged in the novel.
We
tend to look for boggy description or unnecessary backstory when editing, but
empty dialogue can be just as detrimental to strong prose. And it’s not uncommon for writers to miss it—we skim right over
dialogue we’ve read multiple times, because there’s technically nothing wrong
with what’s being said. It’s a realistic
portrayal of a conversation. It just isn’t doing anything to help the
novel.
So
don’t be afraid to fill those empty
spaces with conversations that matter, and use them to keep your story flowing
smoothly.
Are you prone to
empty dialogue? Where do you most use it? If not, where do you most often see
it?
Janice Hardy is
the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars,
including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper
Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban
fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing
fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written
multiple books on writing, including Understanding
Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure,
and the Revising Your Novel: First
Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter
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