Five Essential Dialogue Tricks to Help Clarify Your Storyline for Your Readers

S2_E41: Five Dialogue Tricks For a Clear Storyline

EPISODE DESCRIPTION - Last week, we discussed the importance of getting to your main action and character quickly. This week I give you 5 dialogue tricks to avoid ‘the kiss of death’ in your story, confusion. If you confuse your audience, you automatically take them out of the story, which is the opposite of what you want to do. The rule of thumb in story is to always keep your audience invested.
 
TRICK #1: You always want to prefer clarity over cleverness, always choose clarity of the words over clever or flowery written  passages.

TRICK #2: Provide visual cues for your audience to interpret what is going on. 

TRICK #3: Provide dialogue. Remember, when it comes to dialogue, don’t rush, slow down, and let the scene unfold naturally. You also have to ask yourself, "How will my audience know this?”

TRICK #4: Create a device that allows dialogue to be a part of what is happening in that world. An effective instance of this would be Wilson (the volleyball), in the film Castaway. 

TRICK #5: Bring in a new character that wouldn’t know what was going on inside that world. This allows the protagonist to justifiably relay information out loud, that the audience needs to know. 

The key takeaway to remember is to give your dialogue a purpose! We must justify the dialogue for our audience to enjoy it, regardless of how it is created. 

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UP NEXT - Next week, we discuss the importance and necessity of understanding our own sin nature when creating effective characters and storylines.

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Transcript

THE STORYTELLER’S MISSION WITH ZENA DELL LOWE 

S2_E41: Five Dialogue Tricks For a Clear Storyline
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT 
Published June 9, 2022

00:00
INTRO: Hello, and welcome to The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story.

00:12
TOPIC INTRODUCTION: What I want to talk to you about today is something that every writer should be concerned about, because it is truly the kiss of death in story, and it is confusion. It doesn't matter if you're a screenwriter, or you're a novelist. If you confuse your audience, what you do is you automatically take them out of the story. And now they're thinking about that and they're checked out, they're checked out. And that is not what you want to do. That's the opposite of what you want to do. 

00:44
PRESENTATION: The rule of thumb in story is to always keep your audience invested, you want to keep them invested. You want to keep them believing in the reality of the world that you've created. You never want to undermine your own credibility. That's why believability is so important. 

01:03
So there are a couple of key ways that I see this rule of thumb being violated. And that's what we're going to talk about today. 

01:12
So, number one. One way that this is violated is when people try to write cleverly, or flowery, instead of clearly. 

01:25
TRICK #1: You always want to prefer clarity over cleverness, always choose clarity of the words over cleverly written passages or flowery passages. It means nothing if people are confused by your story. 

01:40
EXAMPLE: I can't tell you how often I'm doing a critique... I'll read something and all write, "I don't understand. What's going on here?" And then I'll ask the writer about it. And they'll say, Well, what I was going for was,"blah, blah, blah." And I'll say, "Then write that. Just write that. Write exactly what you just said to me. Because otherwise I don't get it." 

02:00
And a lot of times. This happens, not because people are trying to be clever or flowery. In all fairness, a lot of times it's because we're trying to follow the other rules, like - show and not tell. And so sometimes people think, "Oh, I can't just say, blah blah blah blah blah," when in fact, that's exactly what they should say.

02:21
So how can you tell the difference? Well, here's one of the tests I think you can apply to your story to figure out if this is a time where you can just tell me something. Traditionally speaking, what you don't want to tell me is how a character is feeling, or what a character is thinking, especially in a screenplay. 

02:40
Now, I know that we can get away with this and novels, though, I would recommend that you try to avoid it. Because it will make your stories better if you avoid it. 

02:49
TRICK #2: It will make the experience for the reader better if they get to interpret how your character is feeling or thinking based on either the visual images that you supply, or the behavior that they observe in the character. That is a far more fascinating, interesting, and engaging dynamic for your reader to be participating in. 

03:14
Having said that, where people sometimes error... is when they're actually describing something else, but they're afraid that it's too much telling. 

03:26
So for example, I recently had a client who was trying to describe something that happened digitally. This drone zeros in on some sort of cable that is attached to the bottom of the building. And as it zeros in and zooms in close to it, we enter the cable. We go inside the cable, and then we're sort of on this ride as we go through the cable itself as digital material. So, the way that he described that was very confusing, though he was trying to be clear. I mean, it is very difficult to do these things. And that is, of course, the acid test. Can you describe that in a way that's clear? 

04:13
But the way he had said this was very convoluted and confusing. And I really didn't understand. "Okay, what is it that you're trying to go for here?" And so what he said to me when I asked that, is he said, "Well, what I was trying to explain is that we go inside the cable, and then we take like this digital roller coaster ride as we go into the building itself. And there's all of these colors. It's like a rainbow roller coaster ride that we're on as we swoop and swoop and swoop and go inside the building." And I said, "Well write that. Just write that. Because that's clarity. We need clarity." We always want to have clarity, but he felt like it was being too on the nose. 

04:57
TRICK #3: Which leads me to one of the solutions here. A major solution, a lot of times this is what can work for you, is if you provide dialogue. 

05:09
I cannot emphasize enough how essential it is to use dialogue simply to help us understand the scenes. And I cannot emphasize enough how often I have writers who fail to communicate to the audience what's going on, because of a lack of dialogue. 

05:30
EXAMPLE: So here are some things that you need to do, you need to slow down and really let the scene unfold naturally don't rush it. A lot of times, I'll read stuff where the writer has written, "They talk for a bit about what's happening in the world." But then they don't give the actual dialogue. 

05:48
Well, they're missing a wonderful opportunity. Or they'll give trite or cliched dialogue instead of truly meaty dialogue, that could really matter. They don't take the time to allow the characters to truly speak, to truly talk about what is happening in their lives in the world around them or anything. They also don't give enough visual cues to justify the character speaking.

06:15
Example: So for example, in the scenario I provided, where the sheriff and the deputy sheriff go into the farmhouse to look around when they go into the bedroom, one of them should say, "Well, this is Buck's room and it doesn't even look like he slept here. Look, his bed is made." 

06:36
And then the other one can then respond, "Well, either that or he did sleep here, and he got up early and made it." And then the other one says, "Oh, unlikely, because (right across the hallway,) that's Hank's bedroom, and his bed isn't made. And I'm telling you, these are military guys. They never don't make their bed. So if Hank's bed isn't made, it means that there was an emergency in the middle of the night."

06:58
"So yeah, maybe Buck made his bed. But I doubt it. I betcha he never made it to bed, something emergency happened. And now Hank had to go after him." Now it's justified how they're coming up with their theories, and we get it and we get the logic, see, then it becomes logical, but it's because of the visual cues that are provided. 

07:17
You have to provide visual cues that will prompt the dialogue to come up, that will prompt them saying something. And it has to be organic and real, it can't be contrived. 

07:31
KEY PRINCIPLE: So the bottom line is to get to the dialogue, there's a couple of things you need to do, you need to not rush, you need to slow down, let the scene actually unfold. You also have to ask yourself, "How will my audience know this?"

07:42
So if ever you're writing a scene where you're describing something to us, you have to ask, "Well, how will my audience be able to interpret that based on what I'm writing?" Especially if you're writing a screenplay. Again, in a novel, you can tell, but try not to try to show me by justifying it in all these other ways.

08:05
So you really want you reveal more stuff through dialogue. So I've talked about creating visual cues that prompt dialogue to happen. 

08:15
TRICK #4: But there is another element to this, which is where you actually create a device that allows dialogue to be a part of what is happening in that world simply because without it, we won't know what in the world is going on. 

08:16
EXAMPLE: Let me give you an example. If you saw the film, The Martian. This is a movie where Matt Damon is alone on Mars. He's the Martian, he gets left behind. But there is so much technical information and so much stuff that we need to know that they had to create a device to allow him to speak that to us. But they didn't just have them talk out loud. 

08:57
There is nothing cheesier than having a character talk to themselves. It doesn't matter if you do it in real life, we feel like you're manipulating us. It feels contrived in story, when you have characters talking themselves. You create a device to give the character a chance to talk. In The Witcher, he talks to his horse, and we believe it because sometimes the horse would kind of respond and flick its tail and whinny or whatever. And he has this special power of connecting with his horse, therefore we believe it. That's a device.

09:34
In The Martian, he sends video messages through whatever system he has so that they are eventually being received by the people on Earth and they get to watch and then respond. And he's also keeping a digital diary of what's happening. He is keeping track, which a scientist would do. It's part of what he's doing to track his survival. My point is, that's what he does to convey to us certain things that we otherwise would never be able to be privy to. 

10:09
But guess what, they do it in a way where it's not just technical information. It's not just that. He makes it personal. Like he's talking to the actual people, right? But he also has a sense of humor, we're getting to know him because of the way that he delivers it. He makes jokes. But it's not him just talking to himself, they created a device that justified him talking into a camera to convey information that wouldn't be conveyed to us the audience in any other way.

10:44
So in the case of The Martian, they had to give him a reason to be recording messages on video. And then we can get all of the information we need. It gives the characters a way to reveal essential information, while also revealing who they are at the core. 

11:01
In The Martian, this guy has a great sense of humor. Here he is stranded on Mars, and yet he's still making jokes. That's amazing. It makes him heroic to us, we love him. It allows us the audience to emotionally connect to him because he's funny, in a situation that most of us would be scared out of our mind. The way he expresses whatever information he's sharing also reveals who he is deep down, which in turn forms a bond between the audience and that character. We like him. We're emotionally invested in his journey. 

11:37
But if we didn't have this device to allow him to communicate essential information to us directly, if we didn't have the opportunity for him to explain certain things in these video recordings that we the audience need to know, then we would have been very lost and confused. And we certainly wouldn't have felt so connected to the character, we wouldn't understand what was happening. 

12:01
There's just no way that the story would have worked. So sometimes you have to create a device, you have to devise something that allows actual dialogue to occur. Even if it's just one character alone, speaking.

12:15
EXAMPLE #2: So for example, one of my recent students in my college class at Covenant College, completed his final screenplay project. And it's a supernatural horror about this cloud of black fog that envelops its victims and renders them paralyzed and trapped in their psyches and forced to experience the worst fears of their lives. And they're taken to some sort of dream state where they're basically in this frozen terror state.

12:43
So the basic premise is that a former Navy SEAL packs up a bag to go on this solo backpacking trip to Yellowstone National Forest; because one of her fellow soldiers has gone missing, and they've never been able to find the soldier. 

12:57
And so this particular character is committed to finding this soldier. She wants to know what happened to her friend. Now, as the story unfolds, weird things start to happen, things that aren't normal and can't be explained. And yet things that we the audience need to understand if we're going to be able to track with what's happening.

13:19
But the problem was that the female soldier character was alone. So what justification would there be for her to explain stuff to us? Well, what I told my student is he needed to come up with a device to allow the character to say stuff, even though she was alone.

13:37
And as it so happened, he already had something that he could have worked with, it was a readily available solution. She was there looking for her friend, right? So, if she has a picture of her friend, which she retrieves at the campfire at night each night, and talks to him about what's happening in the day, I think we would have bought. That if you set that up sufficiently as part of her tradition as part of her ritual. 

14:04
Because keep in mind, soldiers are very ritualistic. So if each night part of a ritual when she sets up campus, she gets his picture out sets it on a rock over there, and then it's like she's there the campfire, you know? "I'm going to find you. I'm walking the same trail, except for I can't figure out where you went here because this isn't on the map, but I'm pretty sure that's where they found your backpack. So I'm going to take this same thing but I'm going a little different route and boy, you better have left me clues." 

14:32
Or whatever the case may be. And then she can also say, "...and by the way, what was with the such and such that happened? I mean, that was creepy. I'm hearing these noises, but I know what it is. Trees are falling, but what could be causing these trees to fall down?" 

14:46
KEY PRINCIPLE: The point is, we need a way for this character to justifiably, credibly, believably talk out loud with dialogue so that the audience knows things. But it has to be believable, or else it feels contrived, and we know it's just for our benefit. But it is for our benefit, or else we're going to be confused. So don't make it cheap and cheesy. 

15:09
Think about Castaway. What did they do in Castaway? Well, same thing. Tom Hanks on a deserted island, he's by himself. So they had to create a device to allow him to talk, and it was believable. They made it believable. Because what happens if you're on an island alone for too long? You start to go crazy, because we are made for community. So, he has the basketball and he creates Wilson.

15:36
Wilson became real to us. Wilson became real to us, just like he would have. So they made it believable. And he talks to Wilson, or else we wouldn't have known some of the things that are going on. It gives the character a reason to communicate things out loud, that are necessary for us the audience to understand. 

15:58
The last thing I want to say about this is that sometimes I have found that characters try to do this, then through prayer, they have the character pray to God and say all their stuff to God. 

16:09
Now, certainly this doesn't work in most contemporary stories. It just doesn't we don't buy it, it feels contrived, and cheap. It might work in period pieces. There are times in the series Vikings, where you either have the Vikings talking to their gods, or you have, say, King Alfred on his hands and knees praying to God out loud and speaking what he feels. Or the character of Athelstan talking to his god. We buy it in those types of scenarios, where presumably that's more acceptable. 

16:45
But when you do it today, it feels cheap. So I would recommend that you avoid that. Now maybe there's going to be a character that is very religious, who is maybe Catholic, and they do their, you know, their rosary beads or whatever, and they talk out loud to God. And that's a particular character trait. But you can't do that for all your characters. 

17:06
You can have maybe one character who does that. But that's probably not even going to be your main character. You have to find another way to do it. 

17:16
In the recent film, with Harrison Ford, Call of the Wild. He talks to the dog, right? He's one human being, but he talks to the dog and the dog understands him, and we buy it. Again, in the example of The Witcher he talks to his horse and we buy it. 

17:32
TRICK #5: Another trick on this front is to bring in a new person, someone who isn't already familiar with everything in that world with all the ins and outs and nuances of what's happening in the world at large. Someone for whom it becomes logical and necessary for another character to explain the rules to or explain the way things are or who's who around here. 

17:55
Sometimes you have to bring in that new guy specifically for that purpose... then it will feel organic and logical to us. That's the key. The catch is that then the dialogue has to be organic and high context. It has to be appropriate given the relationship of the characters and their familiarity with each other. 

18:19
KEY PRINCIPLE: So the character can only say what he or she would actually say to the person or the device that they're addressing. 

18:29
The minute someone explained something to another character, who would either already be in the know… or that it would be inappropriate for them to say that to - now we have a problem. So that's how you avoid making it a cheap trick. That's when we the audience buck and stop buying it stopped believing it. And when we stop believing it, then that's a problem. 

18:52
CONCLUSION: We must justify it for our audience to enjoy the dialogue that you have, regardless of how you created it. 

19:00
CALL TO ACTION: So I hope this has been helpful to you. And if you're enjoying this podcast, could I just ask you to rate and review the show. I'm going to be candid with you. I have not monetized this podcast yet. And yet I spend a lot of time presenting this material to you each week and creating the talks that I'm going to share with you each week. And I have to start figuring out a way to monetize it in order to justify the time that I'm investing in it. 

19:28
So one of the ways that could help, is if you would get the word out. So if you like this content and you want it to continue to be created, then please, please share the show with somebody else maybe rate and review the show help get the word out so that we can maybe get sponsorship. 

19:47
OUTRO: Thank you for listening to The Storyteller's Mission, with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.