Why You Want Unexpected Character Dialogue
Each October, I aim to reread Wuthering Heights. I love that book and love revisiting it. Meanwhile, I’ve also been thinking through and working on some manuscript revisions for my own book release scheduled for next October 2023. One of the things that I constantly question is the quality of my characters’ dialogue. So it came as a wonderful surprise that as I was reading Wuthering Heights for what must be the twentieth time, I realized that one of the things that gives this novel so much appeal is the power of unpredictable dialogue.
But why? And more importantly, how?
We all know that dialogue is difficult. We have to cut out all of the unnecessary things that people tend to say in real life: “Hi. How are you? Great. How are you? Fine. How’s your Mom?….etc.” But we have to leave in all of the subtext (and more) that people do tend to use. That means that we include all of the unspoken, implied meaning in their conversations as well.
This keeps us busy enough. But still, sometimes I look back at my dialogue or the dialogue in books that fall flat and I see that there’s still something’s missing. That missing component is the one that makes the difference between ho-hum characters and characters that grip readers.
The unexpected
We want characters to do and say things that surprise us. When they don’t respond the way other characters want them to. When they have their own (sometimes secret and, for a time, indiscernible) agendas.
Here’s an example of a scene in Wuthering Heights between Hindley Earnshaw and the story’s narrator, Nelly Dean. Hindley is in a violent rage and has just discovered that Nelly regularly hides his infant son in the kitchen cupboard to protect him from his father.
“There, I’ve found it out at last!” cried Hindley, pulling me back by the skin of my neck, like a dog…”with the help of Satan, I shall make you swallow the carving-knife, Nelly! You needn’t laugh; for I’ve just crammed Kenneth [the physician], head-downmost in the Blackhorse marsh; and two is the same as one – and I want to kill some of you; I’ll have no rest till I do!”
“But I don’t like the carving-knife, Mr. Hindley,” I answered; “it has been cutting red herrings. I’d rather be shot, if you please.”
p. 72 [hardcover – beginning of chapter IX]
I laugh out loud when I read this. It’s so indicative of both of their characters. Hindley is a bitter raging man, but he definitely did not killed Kenneth the physician. That’s not to say that he isn’t violent and troublesome, but Nelly, who grew up with him, knows perfectly good and well that he isn’t actually going to kill her.
At the same time, Nelly, who expresses a very wide range of emotions in the story, among them fear when it’s appropriate, has a very keen ability to discern the truth in each and every situation. Brontë uses this quality well in her narrator. Nelly often speaks to the heart of situations, characters’ motives and the effects of their consequences – good and bad.
My point is that this dialogue represents strong and accurate characterization. However, it’s still unexpected. Prior to this conversation, the author has built up the tension with Hindley’s drinking and angry outbursts so that readers fear for his son’s life. And immediately after this point, the boy nearly does die, but on accident. Thus, we don’t see Nelly’s response coming. Her nonchalant, mocking answer to Hindley’s murderous threat is the only thing that will disarm him. It flies in the face of everything he wants her to believe and contradicts the response he hopes to elicit.
Much of the book functions in this way. There’s power in this. It shakes readers, interests them, keeps them reading wondering what the characters will do and say. Because they don’t know.
When I look at some of my favorite characters – like Merricat in We Have Always Lived in the Castle – it’s that unpredictability that captures my attention so adeptly.
Realism in Unpredictability
Unpredictability also adds realism to your novel. This impressed me immensely when I read Kelly Mustian’s debut novel, The Girls in the Stilt House. The book spans a number of years in the lives of Ada and Matilda, two young women living together deep in the Natchez Trace area of Mississippi. These two women are so realistic that they practically materialize next to you as you’re reading.
It’s Matilda who really shines in this book. If there’s one thing Matilda never says or does, it’s what Ada (or readers) expect her to. We understand why later, when we see Matilda’s history. Her responses make sense in retrospect, but she has her own impression of every event; she comes from a very different background and set of circumstances; and she looks at people in different ways than Ada does. So she responds differently.
Here’s a section of dialogue early in the book in which Ada is discussing her father with Matilda.
[Ada] “He claimed I’m going to have a baby.”
[Matilda] “I heard.”
[Ada] “He had me all mixed up with my mother in his mind, but…” Ada trailed her hand over the bloodstained towel still around her waist, over the tight little bulge that she had thought was nothing more than her stomach knotting up like it always did when she was anxious. “Do you think it could be true?” Ada asked the question of the shadowy girl as if she might still prove to be a heavenly being.
[Matilda] “I think I saved your sorry ass and you ain’t said spit about that, is what I think.”
p. 62
As writers, we can learn a lot from this. I know I can. We read this type of dialogue and feel how realistic this is. Ada, consumed with her own situation, hasn’t considered how Matilda feels about all that has transpired between them. Matilda, on the other hand, has.
This is something that I always strive to remember. Each character has an entirely different perspective. Where dialogue fails is when the other characters simply respond to the character who’s speaking – usually our main character who’s perspective is generally the most defined in our minds. This reads as flat, if not false. It’s boring.
Interesting dialogue surprises because it implicitly lays each character’s prejudices, past history, and personal agendas on the table. Readers want to know more: where did that comment come from? How does a character’s impression of another character’s comment imply a history of disappointment and a root of cynicism? Why does a character’s response indicate an ulterior motive?
Unpredictable dialogue raises more questions than it answers. Predictable dialogue doesn’t.
The only way to accomplish this is to build unique characters whose motives and intentions are so well known to you that they take on voices of their own. Voices that are more a cry of their own hearts than responses to others. That’s the key. Creating unpredictable dialogue is an issue of crafting rich and multi-faceted characters.
Then, in each conversation, reflect on what they’re really thinking. Give them the air to say what they really think – sometimes directly, sometimes through subtext – in ways that are so true to who they are, but aren’t what the other characters and readers are expecting or necessarily looking for.
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