Two top tools for professional dialogue

Effective dialogue grabs readers or viewers and moves a story along in an entertaining way.

Effective dialogue is usually about “power” and power grabs.

Two professional tools accomplish a power tussle:  1) SECRETS, and 2) POWER-AND-RANK.

Before you write that next scene, ask:  What does the character want to keep SECRET?

Knowing that helps a writer build tension into the dialogue of a scene. Characters striving to uncover secrets need to ask interesting questions. Parrying might unfold. One character asks a question and the other character ignores it. Or the second character delays answering until later in the scene, or doesn’t answer the question directly. Or, a character answers a question with a question.

Secrets are precious gold, and rooting them out creates wonderful dialogue.

Who holds the secret? Does that character hold the power? Sometimes, but not always. Play with it. We’ve all seen movies or read novel where a lawyer, a sheriff, a mother, or anybody who NEEDS to know something is willing to needle the other character effectively for the secret.

Secrets can create entertaining “cat-and-mouse” conversations. A perfect example is in the play and movie, Arsenic and Old Lace, where the man asks questions of the two elderly aunties to find out the secret regarding what is really going on in that basement. Humor, irony, scary truth come out in a great dialogue cocktail!

Unearthing secrets doesn’t always depend on questions. A character might “make nice” to gain the secret or a confession, guilting somebody into spilling the information.

POWER-AND-RANK is a term for the type of dialogue we often see in court scenes, or a street scene with thugs versus our hero, or where a kid faces a bully on the playground. Power-and-rank scenes exist in all good literature and genres.

A character “pulls rank” or uses their power to get information or keep a secret. When you set up a scene, decide who is going to be willing to show their power through the dialogue. Sometimes “power-and-rank” turns into famous lines delivered by actors such as Clint Eastwood: “Go ahead, make my day.”

Characters can grovel or beg, too, or consciously show a lower rank in a bid to win favors and information or save their own life in a story.

Improve your dialogue today by employing SECRETS and POWER-AND-RANK.