Dialogue Definition, Examples and Observations

(1) Dialogue is a verbal exchange between two or more people. (Compare with monologue.) Also spelled dialog. (2) Dialogue also refers to a  conversation reported in a drama or narrative. Adjective: dialogic. When quoting dialogue, put the words of each speaker inside quotation marks, and (as a general rule) indicate changes in speaker by starting a new paragraph. EtymologyFrom the Greek, conversation Examples and Observations Annina: Monsieur Rick, what kind of a man is Captain Renault?Rick: Oh, hes just like any other man, only more so.(Joy Page and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, 1942)How are you? I said.As you see, old Hernandez said, and he pushed his cap back on his forehead and smiled, alive.(Martha Gellhorn, The Third Winter, 1938) Eudora Welty on the Multiple Functions of Dialogue In its beginning, dialogues the easiest thing in the world to write when you have a good ear, which I think I have. But as it goes on, its the most difficult, because it has so many ways to function. Sometimes I needed a speech do three or four or five things at once—reveal what the character said but also what he thought he said, what he hid, what others were going to think he meant, and what they misunderstood, and so forth—all in his single speech. (Eudora Welty, interviewed by Linda Kuehl. The Paris Review, Fall 1972) Dialogue vs. Talk [T]he dialogue is selective--finely polished, and arranged to convey the greatest possible amount of meaning with the least use of words. . . . [Dialogue] is not a phonographic reproduction of the way people actually talk. It’s the way they would talk if they had time to get down to it and refine what they wanted to say. (Robertson Davies, The Art of Fiction No. 107. The Paris Review, Spring 1989)Talk is repetitive, full of rambling, incomplete, or run-on sentences, and usually contains a lot of unnecessary words. Most answers contain echoes of the question. Our speech is full of such echoes. Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes. Some people mistakenly believe that all a writer has to do is turn on a tape recorder to capture dialogue. What hed be capturing is the same boring speech patterns the poor court reporter has to record verba tim. Learning the new language of dialogue is as complex as learning any new language. (Sol Stein, Stein on Writing. St. Martins Griffin, 1995)Once captured, words have to be dealt with. You have to trim and straighten them to make them transliterate from the fuzziness of speech to the clarity of print. Speech and print are not the same, and a slavish presentation of recorded speech may not be as representative of a speaker as dialogue that has been trimmed and straightened. Please understand: you trim and straighten but you do not make it up. (John McPhee, Elicitation. The New Yorker, April 7, 2014) Harold Pinter on Writing Out Loud Mel Gussow: Do you read or talk your dialogue out loud when youre writing it? Harold Pinter: I never stop. If you were in my room, you would find me chattering away. . . . I always test it, yes, not necessarily at the very moment of writing but just a couple of minutes later. MG: And you laugh if its funny? HP: I laugh like hell.(Mel Gussows interview with playwright Harold Pinter, October 1989. Conversations With Pinter, by Mel Gussow. Nick Hern Books, 1994) Advice on Writing Dialogue There are a number of things that help when you sit down to write dialogue. First of all, sound your words--read them out loud. . . . This is something you have to practice, doing it over and over and over. Then when youre out in the world--that is, not at your desk--and you hear people talking, youll find yourself editing their dialogue, playing with it, seeing in your minds eye what it would look like on the page. You listen to how people really talk, and then learn little by little to take someones five-minute speech and make it one sentence, without losing anything. (Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Random House, 1994)[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start. (P.G. Wodehouse, Paris Review Interview, 1975)Just as in fiction, in nonfiction dialogue—voices talking out loud on the page—accomplishes several important dramatic effects: It reveals personality, provides tension, moves the story along from one point to another, and breaks the monotony of the narrators voice by interjecting other voices that speak in contrasting tones, using different vocabularies and cadences. Good dialogue lends texture to a story, the sense that it is not all one slick surface. This is especially important in a blatantly first-person narrative, since it offers the reader relief from a single, narrow viewpoint. The voices in dialogue can enhance or contradict the narrators voice and contribute irony, often through humor. (Philip Gerard, Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life. Story Press, 1996) Pronunciation: DI-e-log Also Known As: dialogism, sermocinatio