By Emmie Dark

It’s a strange recommendation to make, I know. Why would I urge writers – especially romance writers, whose key tool of trade is dialogue – to go see a silent movie?

If you haven’t heard about it, “The Artist” is a new release movie that’s not only filmed in black and white, it’s almost entirely silent. (It has a beautifully orchestrated score.) At its heart, it’s a love story between a fading silent-movie hero, George Valentin, and a rising talking-movie diva, Peppy Miller.

As I was watching the movie, I was struck by how the actors and all the things surrounding them (the set, lighting, costumes, music, etc) had to work so hard to tell their story in the absence of dialogue. How do we know George Valentin’s wife is unhappy in their marriage? Amongst other things, she draws fake moustaches and blacks out his teeth in the photos of him that appear in the newspaper. She doesn’t ever say, “I’m not in love with you anymore.” But we see it, clear as day, through her actions.

I loved the opportunity to observe, without the distraction of dialogue, all the elements that go into telling a story. Facial expressions, body language, habits, tics. All the vital things writers need to use to envelop a reader in their story, to immerse them in the life of their characters.

Without giving away any spoilers, there is an important scene, a turning point in the story, that is beautifully shot on a multi-level staircase. Apart from the obvious symbolism of George going down the stairs while Peppy is going up, there is acres of meaning in their postures and expressions that tell us what is going on for each of them at that point in their lives. There is a tiny amount of dialogue in the scene – provided through captions on the screen – from each of them, but many layers of meaning behind their otherwise superficial words.

Perhaps it was because the actors had to deliberately exaggerate their expressions and movements that I was suddenly noticing elements of movie making that I don’t usually pick up in the average Hollywood blockbuster. Perhaps today’s movies are so much more subtle than those of the silent era that we don’t notice the characters in quite the same way. Or perhaps it was simply that without the audio queues of dialogue I had to rely on my other senses to “feel” what was going on. Whatever it was that was happening, I was constantly amazed at the level of meaning the story managed to convey.

I couldn’t help thinking that it was just like a good book, when there’s more happening than what appears on the page. When an author has skilfully shown you their characters, has drawn you into their lives, you feel their pain, share their excitement, cry when they grieve. And this occurs without the author telling you what’s happening, without queues that say “feel sad now”.

“The Artist” manages to tell a fascinating story without actually “telling” you very much at all. That’s a trick most of us writers can learn from. 

By Serena Tatti

It’s likely that at some time most of us have skipped paragraphs of narrative and only read the dialogue. That’s because dialogue can move a story along more easily than loads of description. You can learn a lot about characters from their speech.  

Some suggestions that might help:

*Be true to the times: If you’re writing a book set in the past, research the language and the topics of the day. Inaccuracies can pull a reader out of the story.

*If your setting is contemporary, listen to people around you. Take notes if you have to (much easier nowadays with touchphones with inbuilt voice to text applications). Take note of the way people of different ages speak. What used to be groovy, hot, radical or mad, is now bad. Or maybe there’s another word.

*Remember to take into account the character’s upbringing and line of work.

*Dialogue gives us a sense of time and place by the words and phrases used.

*We can gain insight into the nationality of a character by using a few techniques from their native tongue. Perhaps if an Italian man is frustrated and searching for a particular item he might revert to not using contractions (because English is his second language) and using the order of words as he would say them in his native tongue. Instead of, “I’m searching for a large green box. It was unfortunately delivered here” he might say, “I am searching for a large box green. Was delivered here by misfortune.”

*A man who speaks in short, clipped sentences probably leads a busy life and needs to get on with it.

*A Regency hero who comes out with, “Cowabunga, dude!” is seriously out of his timeline – or perhaps a time traveller?

*A contemporary heroine who says things like, “Psychedelic!” or “Groovy baby” is either a child of “Flower Power” parents who grew up on a commune, or addicted to “The Brady Bunch” (or maybe “Dharma and Greg”?).

*Listening to “real dialogue” is very useful, but to make speech flow in your manuscript, it must also serve some purpose. Does it establish tone or mood? Does it help to reveal something about the character or the plot?  Does it add to the conflict?  

We often use pleasantries in everyday speech that would make your novel quite boring: “Hi, how are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“How are your parents?”

“They’re fine, too. How are yours?”

“Mum is fine but Dad has the flu.”

You can bypass this sort of thing by stating, *They exchanged pleasantries* or something similar. Get to the crux of the matter! Never pad out dialogue.

*While correct grammar is essential to good writing, people usually don’t speak in complete sentences. They speak in incomplete sentences, at times using only phrases. People interrupt each other. People tend to use *umm* and *aahh* a lot, but perhaps avoid doing this all the time because, again, it slows the pace.

If you pay attention to these little details, it can only make your manuscript stronger.