Dialogue Lessons: The Big Picture, Part 5

During September I'll be sharing some notes here on my blog from my "The Art of Writing Dialogue" workshop that I've presented to many writing groups. I presented the first three lessons on Mechanics, the nitty gritty little details of writing dialogue, last week. This week and next, I'm discussing The Big Picture, using character traits, conflict, and emotion to infuse a real-life feel into dialogue, to make it pop off the page. The goal is to drag readers by the throat right into the book. Here are the fourth and fifth of ten "rules of thumb" for The Big Picture:

4. Avoid long passages of foreign language, and for short passages, use context to explain them. If a dialogue is supposed to take place in a foreign language, you can preface it with something like, “Roger conversed with Hilda in perfect Swedish,” then write the dialogue in English. If a foreign phrase is important, such as it being a clue in an ancient cipher, have one character translate it to another who doesn’t understand the language, just like the reader.

     Bad:
     Jorge looked around. “¿Dónde está el baño?”
     “Vuelta de la esquina,” Nancy answered.

    Good:
     Jorge asked in Spanish where the bathroom was, and Nancy answered in Spanish, “Around the corner.”
     Or:
     Jorge looked around. “¿Dónde está el baño?”
     “The bathroom is around the corner,” Nancy answered in Spanish.

Then continue the conversation in English, allowing the reader to assume the characters continued to speak in Spanish.

5. Dialogue in fiction should sound like real conversations but have a much higher level of content than normal conversations. It should also be precise, with the meaning as clear as possible. It should always move the story forward in some way. Summarize the salt and pepper dialogue in narrative so you can get directly to the good stuff—emotion and conflict.

     Bad:
     “Hello, Sally, how are you?”
     “Okay, I guess, and you?”
     “I’m fine,” Mary replied. “But why’d you just say you were okay. Is something wrong?”
     Sally wrung her hands. “My cat is missing.”
     “Oh dear, for how long?”

     Good:
     After greeting Mary, Sally wrung her hands and said that her cat was missing.
     “Oh dear, for how long?”