How to Write Dialogue (for Introverts)

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I'm a writer in the Story grid universe. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of Storygrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 30 years experience. In this episode, we take a look at a question about writing great dialogue. How do you write great dialogue and how do you do it if you're an introvert? I think most of us writers are introverts, so it's a great question. It's one that I think we all deal with, and Sean has some really good feedback on it. So let's just go ahead and jump in and get started. So, Sean, this week we got a question in from Adrian. He says, I'm struggling with dialogue. Any tips for an introvert writing extroverted characters?

Well, I think it's a good thing to just sort of formalize what. What you mean by dialogue. Dialogue is not just words that you use to fill out the blank page. Dialogue is action. It's motion. It's verbal action. When you're writing dialogue, if you find yourself just sort of riffing and like. Good morning, Jim. Oh, hi, Bill. How are you? Good. How you doing? Not bad. How's the wife? She's good. That's all baloney. You don't want that.

Is that like the speaking version of shoe leather?

Yes.

Okay.

Now you can certainly write that in a draft and then just cut it later. But my point is that remember that a story is hyper real. So what you want to do is edit out all the stuff that nobody cares about, because they can already put that in. Right. So if somebody is conversing with another person in your story and they're doing shoe leather, verbal action, you're just going to alienate the audience because it's boring. So. Oh, geez, then what do I put in for the dialogue? Might be the next question. Well, you've got to consider what the purpose of each sentence that somebody is uttering is. So I'm going to have a goal state when I'm having a conversation with someone. And the goal state is going to vary depending upon what I want from them. Right. Or what I need from them. So if I'm in a position where I'm writing a story and I've got one character who desperately needs to borrow somebody's cell phone so that they can call the office and let them know that they're late for the big meeting, they're going to have an intention when they use their mouth, they're not going to go, hey, how you doing? What part of the world you from? They're not going to do that. They're going to try and figure out the minimum viable language to get that other person to turn over their phone to them. You see what I'm doing here? I'm creating a moment that will help me write, write the dialogue organically as opposed to, oh, this is the way people talk. Let me just bang out some stuff and see what happens.

Well, is this the same problem of like writing a scene that's not going anywhere?

Yeah.

As you started talking, I was thinking yesterday I was working on a scene where there's a man and a woman. You know, there's. The protagonist is a woman and there's a man in the scene. And he's extremely, he's like a, he's a, not a servant, like a butler at this place, but he wants to get in the girl's pants. Like that's his long term want. One of the very last dialogue lines of the scene was him basically walking out of the room and saying one more thing to her before he left. And I wrote, the first version I wrote was, if there's anything else you need, just let me know. And then I was like, well, if he's. His goal state is trying to get in her pants, right? So what could he say that gets him closer to that? And I was like, I think it ended up being like, let me know if there's any other way I can service you. I was like, that's what a kind of creepy dude that wants to get in this girl's pants, but he kind of works for like, he doesn't work for her.

Plausible deniability.

Right? Exactly. Right, yeah. And so I was like really happy with that line because it's like that's him getting closer to his goal state by using that line instead of just saying, hey, if you need anything else, let me know.

Right. That's a really good example. And those are the, those are the joys of writing, is when those things come to you. Because the more of that you have in the dialogue, the more you rivet the attention of the audience. Why? Because there's subtext underneath that text. So we can intuit when people say things like this, they actually mean things like this. But there's a gap which enables them to deny that by saying, well, I just said, you know, best of luck, break a leg.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I was just kidding. Or a lot of people say that when they insult someone. Hey, I'm just kidding. You're so sensitive, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So dialogue is really about moving the story forward as opposed to two people jabbering at each other until the big event arrives.

Yeah. You know, when I saw the question, it reminded me, because I'm an introvert, too. Right. So I remember, like, there was this funny time at a conference, and me and Josh Kaufman, who, you know is an author, and we got invited to this party, and we literally, like, walked in and, like, slid along the wall, stood there for, like, five minutes and slid back along the wall and left, you know? But anyway, I was talking to a guy, and he's like. And he was like, a really good networker. And I was like, yeah, you know, I'm an introvert. I'm not very good at networking. He's like, networking's easy. He's like, it's easier for introverts. I was like, what are you talking about? He goes, the best networkers don't talk at all. All they do is ask questions and get the other person to talk. And I was like, oh, that's so interesting. And, like, once I learned how to network, it's the truth. He's like, actually, the worst thing is when you get two networkers together because all they try to do is get the other one to talk, but the other one doesn't want to talk. They want the other person to talk. And again, it became. When I was thinking about, in this context, it's that thing of, like, being really, really clear on what you want. And that tends to help just to sort of.

The introvert angle is something that's interesting because what I would say is that when you're an introvert, you're very sensitive to environmental changes. Right. You're constantly tracking and paying attention, which is a really great skill for a writer. So when you are doing that, you're feeling sort of negative affect and you just want to escape because it's. It's draining your energy to do that. So, like, when you go into a party and you don't know anybody there, the introvert is scanning the room at really high resolution. They're looking at every single face. They're looking. They're getting. Trying to get a vibe of everything. So if you're writing dialogue, what you can do is do the magical what if? Like, what if the character is able to say what they want whenever they want? What would they say? You know, what is it that they want? How would they say it directly and then you can back away from it. So in the example that you brought up about, so that character could say to the other character, I want to sleep with you. Right? And then the other character would react to that and say, you're disgusting. Get away from me. Right? So what would he do to back away from the direct? He would get indirect. He would use subtext. He would do the things that we do to let people know we're interested. He would look deeply in her eyes. He would accidentally touch her on the arm or whatever, right? So the introvert has the capacity to analyze behaviors in a way that extroverted people kind of just let wash over them. So I think it's kind of an advantage when you're an introvert to write the dialogue because you're attuned to to the things that people do with their behavior to get what they want. Lastly, I will say there's a book that I worked on with Robert McKee years ago called Dialogue, and I highly recommend it. We worked on it for a long time and it's the Art of Verbal Action. He analyzes a bunch of dialogue in that book that should be enlightening. It's worth reading and thinking about.

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