Dialog

THE CONVERSATION
DIALOGUE
dialogue brings out the character of the speakers far better than a cumbrous description would do. One is frequently surprised by what a man does, but one is very rarely surprised by his way of saying anything. It is in his talk that every man gives himself away. The writer of stories notes this and uses it. 
Dialogue is one of the best and easiest ways of conveying essential information to the reader without awaking his suspicions. In a previous chapter we dwelt with the case of the well at the bottom of the garden. A passing allusion to it in the dialogue of the characters would have been sufficient for the purpose. 
Again, good dialogue is easy and fascinating to read. At its best it has a wonderful power of giving an air of reality. Many times the rightness of the dialogue has sufficiently concealed the wrongness of the construction and the feebleness of the plot. It distracts the critical attention with a momentary illusion of real life. It is useful to the novelist, and it does not bore the reader. It must be understood that I am speaking of dialogue done in the best possible way. 
Dialogue is done in the best possible way when the author sees his characters so clearly that he cannot imagine the possibility of their saying anything other than what he puts down. 
But the beginner falls very short of this. He uses dialogue as a vehicle by which he may make his characters express his own opinions. When the character has to tell a story, he forgets to make him tell it in the way the character would tell it. And quite
commonly, of course, his dialogue is not illuminative ; does not show character ; and is not consistent. He has got to think about this very seriously, because the way his characters speak is going to be the most important thing in his story. 
I pick up the first volume by Mr. Meredith that comes to my hand—it happens to be Sandra Belloni—and turn a few pages. The eye falls on this
Giving a semicircular sweep of his arm : Here you see all my little estate, sir, ' he said. You've seen plenty bigger in Germany, and England too. We can't get more than this handful in our tight little island. Unless born to it, of course. Well ! we must be grateful that all our nobility don't go to the dogs. We must preserve our great names. I speak against my own interest. '
I think that leaves a clearer and fuller impression of the speaker's character than any description could have done. The reader is aware at once that the speaker (Mr. Pole addressing a 'courtly poor man ') is weak
rather than bad-natured, that he tries to cover an inextinguishable brag with slabs of humility, that he is without tact or taste, that he has the kind of mind that remembers and enjoys out-of-date phrases, and that he has no sense of humor. The reader knows it, and passes on, not knowing how he knows it. 
You may follow that book all the way through, and almost every page will provide you with a lesson in the art of writing dialogue. Take special note of chapter six. There Sandra is telling her own story. A double melody has to be kept up. The dialogue has to give information to the reader, and it has to be characteristic of Sandra all through. It is done in a way which is absolutely masterly. The common writer, when the heroine tells her story, is extremely likely to reduce her to his own common style. Those who are slightly more advanced are still likely to make the story that the heroine tells the predominant factor. But with George Meredith it is quite different. Sandra's chattering—it is she all the way through in every moment. At the
end of the chapter it occurs to you that you know the whole of her history, as far as you need to know it. Do not go to books for your inspiration, but it might be worth your while to note the magnificent technique of Sandra Belloni. Do not try to imitate it. Try to get a glimpse at the principles which underlie it. Blind imitation is futile and worse than futile, but it is splendid to understand a little how the thing is done. 
The writing of dialogue is very difficult, and there is a reason for the difficulty. Here especially you must transmute and you must not report. If you had a shorthand note of everything you said yesterday you would probably commit suicide. That, from the point of view of this book, is of comparatively little importance : what is of importance is, that if you showed the transcripts of that shorthand note to any man who knew you intimately, he would not recognize you in it. 
You must not go to the other extreme. In the old-fashioned historical novel it was no uncommon thing for the hero to speak two
pages and a half without a break. The heroine then generally expressed approval of his noble and generous sentiments. If you can accept that convention it is all very well, but personally I cannot. It is not because it is remote from life. Alice in Wonderland is remote from life, and I accept it with joy. It is because it is much more remote from life than the rest of the story is. It is not pitched in the same key. It is not in the picture. Your remoteness from life must be an even distance all through. Take any ordinary girl and say seven hundred and fifty words to her without a break. Pick out the finest sentiments that ever animated any man and clothe them in the finest language that has ever been used. Then wake up the girl and see if she expresses approval of your noble and generous sentiments. 
The art of writing dialogue is to a great extent the art of compromise. 
Here is the real reason why the conversation actually spoken must be studied but cannot be copied literally. The spoken conversations that one hears every day are judged rapidly
through the ear alone, with the critical faculty more or less in abeyance, without the inclination or opportunity, as a rule, for further examination : the written are judged through the eye, that may dwell if it will on the written words, with the critical faculty wide awake and every opportunity to exercise it. The author must allow for these differences in the conditions. 
It is for the above reasons that good plays often make poor books, and good novelists poor playwrights. There is a great difference between dialogue written to be spoken and dialogue written to be read. 
Let us take as an example this quotation from the second act of The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, by Pinero :—
LUCAS. Why, what has brought about this change in you ?
AGNES. What !LUCAS. What ?AGNES. I know. LUCAS. You know ?
AGNES. Exactly how you regard me. 
LUCAS. I don't understand you
And probably the reader does not understand either. But it was all perfectly intelligible, and every word seemed inevitable when it was spoken by Mr. Robertson and Mrs. Campbell at the Garrick Theatre. 
In what way is the compromise to be carried out ? How is transmuting to take the place of reporting ? There are many ways, and the few that I am going to suggest will perhaps suggest others to you. 
Printed words have more strength than spoken words. What seems merely flippant or a little slangy when one hears it spoken, seems absolutely impossible when one reads it in print. Here then the writer must tone down a little. 
The wit and humor of ordinary spoken conversations are, as a rule, wretched. They are welcomed, or at any rate forgiven, because they have no pretensions. Now print has an ineradicable pretension. The feeble retort in spoken conversation makes no effect, and is forgotten in a flash. The feeble retort in printed dialogue lies gaping on the page
like a dying fish, and is painful to contemplate. Therefore if your written dialogue is to seem amusing the author must improve a little on real life. The face must be made up to stand the footlights. But of course such improvement must not be overdone, as it certainly was in the days of the epigram novel. 
Spoken conversation contains very many unfinished and broken sentences. In print these must be far fewer, or an unpleasant and jerky effect will be produced, which is not noticeable in the spoken conversation. Remember here as elsewhere that it is not part of your business to put down real life on paper : what you have got to do is to produce the effect of real life by what you put down on paper. 
In a spoken conversation there is much more than the mere words. There are expression of face, tone of voice, and sometimes gesture, all of which have a modifying effect on those words. You must allow for this in one way or another. A frequent mention of the expression, tone, or gesture, becomes tiresome, and in some cases you will find it better and easier to alter the words to the required effect. 
These are instances of the way in which you must modify from real life when you are writing dialogue, but be careful that you do not carry this modification too far. Probably no spoken conversation, accurately reported, could properly be introduced into the printed story, but the converse by no means holds good. Your printed dialogue must sound all right when it is spoken, and you will find it of great assistance to you to speak your dialogue aloud as you write it. It will show you at once if you are slipping out of a conversational into a literary style, and whether the words are in keeping with the character who speaks them. 
Never attempt to remember all these hints while you are writing a dialogue ; you must have absolute concentration for the creative effort. You can use them afterwards when you are correcting and improving what you
have written. If any of them are of any service to you, you will gradually become sufficiently familiar with them to use them unconsciously. For instance, you will not consciously remember that it is a good test to speak your dialogue aloud as you write it, but you will find yourself speaking it. 
DIALOGUE
DIALOGUE
The use of quotation marks does not convert a passage into dialogue. — Aai. oBATES, Talks on Writing English. 
It is not necessary to say that a woman is a snarling, grumpy person. Bring in the old lady and let her snarl—Arrorrvmotrs. 
If in the characters is involved the profounder fiber of the story, from the management of the dialogue comes largely its more buoyant and popular effect. Uncritical readers — whose preferences, in fact, ought to be consulted — like a story " with lots of conversation in it. " The dialogue serves, as it were, to aerate the movement, which else might grow ponderous and slow. In the give and take of conversation, too, character itself appears, to speak for itself; and many accessory and descriptive elements slip in lightly and unobtrusively in the words that are said. And through it all is traceable the forward movement and the approaching end or crisis. — J. F. GzrruNG, The Working Principles of Rhetoric. 
Conversation belongs to the short-story because it belongs to life. There have been good short-stories without dialogue, as there are brilliant folk who are deprived of speech, but happily both are exceptions. The normal, cheerful mind loves speech, and since the short-story is sought after mainly for diversion, the reader will turn in his lighter moods to the conversational short-story, just as for sheer recreation he will prefer the rapid-fire
dialogue of the elder Dumas 1to the heavier descriptive passages of Scott. 
The beginner does not usually put much conversation into his fiction, for conversation is hard to write. He reasons that little dialogue is better than poor dialogue ; and so it is. Only, when it comes to that pass, why write at all? Good conversation is a vital element in the story-teller's art, and its mastery often spells success. The Fifteenth Idyll of Theocritus depicts the " smart " life of Alexandria in the third century B. C. with such sure and swift conversational strokes that it still lives as a classic. Nowadays it is difficult to sell story whose long paragraphs of unbroken description and explanation would, the editor feels, surely repel the casual buyer. A page of dialogue attracts the eye, and so gives the author a chance to please the mind. 
1. The Proportion of Dialogue
It will be interesting to examine the following table of ten more or less famous short stories, selected quite at random from American, British and French authors, covering a period of about seventy-five years. Someone might profitably compute the proportion of conversation in, say, five hundred representative short-stories, classifying them as to type, and then give us the figures. While no writer would recognize any such result as con
1"It [Dumas' Dialogue] can unfold action, character, emotion, description, and stage directions, and it can make all these seem natural even when they are most extravagant, convincing when they are most false. "—}lomE, The Technique of the Novel, 
stituting a standard for him, it would at least tell us something definite as to good usage. 
STORY AND AUTHOR. 
"The Outcasts of Poker Flat, " Bret Harte. 
"The Diamond Lens, " Fitz-James O'Brien 
"The Ambitious Guest, " Nathaniel Hawthorne 
" Mrs. Protheroe, " Booth Tarkington 
"A Lodging for the Night, " Robert Louis Stevenson
" Many Waters, " Margaret Deland 
"A Venus of the Fields, " "Georg Schock" 
" Without Benefit of Clergy, " Rudyard Kipling 
"La Grande Breteche, " Honore de Balzac 
" The Gold Bug, " Edgar Allan Poe
Average proportion of conversation	CONVERSATION
II per cent
13
30a CC
38le{. 
 46 C‘
4339
 6C CC
45 " 66
54
55 "
 64CI de
39 "	
		
It has been asserted 2that present-day usage tends to the dialogue form more than did the practice of Poe and Hawthorne. I doubt this conclusion, especially if the fictions of these masters be compared with those of our best living story-writers. The lighter the story the stronger the swing toward the dialogic method, so the statement may be true of stories of this type; but the short-story of depth, yesterday, to-day, and always, will not average fifty per cent, conversation. As an English expert, Mr. Frederic Wedmore, has pointed out, 8the writer is unwise to deny himself the freedom of the pure dramatic form when he chooses to tell a story wholly in dialogue. He simply makes his work more difficult and, at the same time, less effective. Though the drama
may be studied with much profit by the writer of short stories, the two types are likely to remain distinct. 
2. The Office of Dialogue
There is no narrative effect which speech cannot compass, but it must never be introduced for its own sake. Its office is to tell the story, and this it does by several means, one of the chief of which is :
(a) The revelation of human character. Just as human interest is the heart of narrative, so human speech is its most vivid expression. In everyday life we do not know a man until we have heard him speak. Then our first impressions are either confirmed, modified, or totally upset. To adapt Dr. Talmage's pun, many a man, in life as in fiction, puts his foot in it as soon as he opens his mouth. The worth of many another is perceived only when he speaks. 
The more prominent the character in the story, the more significant must be his every word. Figures in the middle-distance and the background may talk more or less alike, but the leading persons must utter every word " in character. " They must be so individual that the only words they could speak are just the ones they do speak. And they must preserve this personality consistently — so consistently that throughout the whole narrative the reader will recognize their language, feelings, thoughts, likes and dislikes, in fact their entire individuality, as being distinct from their fellow characters. Many a story puts the words of men into the
mouths of babes, labels women as wise yet makes them spout twaddle, and so hopelessly confuses the reader that he could not, if he cared to try, discover who is speaking. No one ever thus confused the words of Mrs. Gamp with those of any other participant in the dialogue, nor imputed the sentiments of Sam Weller to someone else. They are always delightfully themselves. 
The trouble just here is that too many writers thrust their own personalities into their stories. Their characters are simply lay figures, or at best, made-up actors, masquerading as real persons. Their whole business in the story is to declaim their author's views. No error could be more egregious. If its source is ignorance, it should be enlightened; if it is vanity, the rejection-slip may help to puncture it. To be convincing, a fictional character must be somebody, not anybody. His personality and his actions must be of one piece, and his talk cut from the same cloth. But you must know your cloth, its size and its texture. So long as writers persist in choosing their characters from walks of life of which they know little or nothing, so long will their dialogue lack individuality. 
1 The moderns have taken big strides ahead in this respect. Even Poe put uniformly stilted speech into the mouths of his characters, while Hawthorne offended similarly. Dickens was the great modern innovator here, Kipling being the present-day master. " Wee Willie Winkie "thinks as a child, and his speech is of a kind with his baby thought. Mulvaney, Ortheris and Lea
royd never look at things from quite the same view-point, and so we seldom need a " said Mulvaney " to tell us who says what. 
Now, this matter is worth study. The average amateur does not individualize the speech of his characters, and the best story-writers always do. And there you have a tremendous difference. 
It is worthwhile inquiring what things in actual life vividly color a man's manner of speech — I mean, influence his choice and arrangement of words and his manner of utterance. They are five: his antecedents (including habits of speech acquired in childhood), his character (subtly influencing all he says and does), his motives (both general and particular), his present emotion, and his environment (including the influence of the personalities about him). Each of these forces must be weighed by the author when he writes dialogue, as judicially as the judge weighs the conditioning antecedents, character, motives, moods and circumstances of a defendant. 
See how utterly Pecksniffian are all the words of that arch bluffer, Mr. Pecksniff . 4His words and his character coincide. 
" Why, the truth is, my dear, " said Mr. Pecksniff, smiling upon his assembled kindred, "that I am at a loss for a word. The name of those fabulous animals (pagan, I regret to say) who used to sing in the water, has quite escaped me. "
Mr. George Chuzzlewit suggested " Swans. "
" No, " said Mr. Pecksniff. " Not swans. Very like swans, too. Thank you. "
Martin Chia:davit, Charles Dickens. 
The nephew with the outline of a countenance, speaking for the first and last time on that occasion, propounded "Oysters. "
" No, " said Mr. Pecksniff, with his own peculiar urbanity, " nor oysters. But by no means unlike oysters; a very excellent idea; thank you, my dear sir, very much. Wait! Sirens. Dear me I Sirens, of course. "
Dickens has given us another interesting humbug, Mr. Wegg, whose speech could no more be mistaken for that of dear old Mr. Boffin, to whom he was engaged to read aloud of evenings, than it could be confused with the words of the historian he read. 
Wegg at length arrives at " Boffin's Bower, " and is introduced to Mrs. Boffin. On a table lie the eight volumes of Gibbon in red and gold bindings, with a " purple ribbon in each volume to keep the place where leave off. " After indulging in a meat-pie and a swig, Mr. Wegg settles down to his task. 
"Hem I" began Wegg. " This, Mr. Boffin and Lady, is the first chapter of the first wollume of the Decline and Fall Off —" here he looked hard at the book and stopped. 
" What's the matter, Wegg?"
" Why it comes to my mind, do you know, sir, " said Wegg, with an air of insinuating frankness (having first again looked hard at the book), " that you made a little mistake this morning, which I had meant to set you right in, only something put it out of my head. I think you said Rooshan Empire, sir?"
" It is Rooshan; ain't it, Wegg?"
"No, sir. Roman. Roman. "
"What's the difference, Wegg?"
"The difference, sir?" Mr. Wegg was faltering and in danger of breaking down, when a bright thought flashed upon him. "The difference, sir? There you place me in a difficulty, Mr. Boffin. Suffice it to observe that the difference is best postpones
to some other occasion when Mrs. Boffin does not honor us with her company. In Mrs. Bon's presence, sir, we had better drop it. "
It appears, then, that the sense of reality in dialogue will be produced if the characters possess individuality and speak out their true selves. A second consideration is scarcely less important:
Dialogue must bring out the incidents, and this it must do by harmonizing with them. Will a man make long speeches in a crisis? Will a time of hurried action admit of much speech at all? If the one character in the dialogue would not have time to listen to the other's windy words, neither will your readers. Ask yourself what is natural — though not what is commonplace — in the circumstances, for circumstances alter speeches. 
I may merely touch upon two other functions of conversation in fiction, both deserving of fuller treatment. 
Dialogue is used to convey the setting. See how in the extracts cited on pp. 128-9 this effect is secured; and the same device is often used not only in the introduction but throughout the story. 
(d)The entire action, the incidents, the story itself, may be told quite as effectively by dialogue as by description, and usually with much more life and interesting effect. 
3. The Subject-matter of Dialogue
The limits of dialogic subject-matter are, all that is strictly contributory to the story. No retailing of curious
information, no witty but irrelevant epigrams, no argumentation for its own sake, no pretty talk that leads nowhither, no moral preachment, no impassioned invective, no excursions into inviting by-paths — not one word, in short, that does not urge on the action to its climax. 
All these liberties we allow to genius at its best, because the story may be so fascinating that it can carry a load of extraneous comment and still be counted as well told — like Kipling's Mulvaney stories ; or it may be so nearly a sketch that the tone really demands a discursive style — like Hearn's " Chita " and Stevenson's 1' Will 0' the Mill. " Such literary privileges, however, are not won by beginners. 
On this subject there are some sound words in Anthony Trollope'sAutobiography:
" The unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe. When a long dialogue on extraneous matter reaches his mind, he at once feels that he is being cheated into taking something that he did not bargain to accept — he does not at that moment require politics or philosophy, but he wants a story. He will not, perhaps, be able to say in so many words that at some point the dialogue has deviated from the story; but when it does, he will feel it. " g
4. The Manner of Dialogue
Short-story dialogue must be suggestive, not exhaustive. The dialogue of the short story is not that of the
novel. The former can no more take time fully to reproduce the small talk of a ballroom or of a salon than it can afford space for the minute description of my lady's gown. No, compression, always compression, and a high degree of selection, are what the yarn-spinner must set ever before his mind's eye. What is omitted is quite as important as what is reported. A whole history must be hinted in a sentence, processes of arriving at conclusions struck off in an epigram, the heart of a sentiment packed into a phrase. True, speech will often be idealized — the lofty mood will be symbolized by words more lofty than those of real life; the passionate hour will demand an intensity and compactness of language rarely heard among real folk. But be careful not to overdo this permissible exaggeration. 
Conversation is a lost art — except in fiction, and there it is usually more flippant than brilliant. The trouble is that, in book and in life, talk is likely to become stilted the moment the writer or the talker becomes self-conscious. Many a writer suggests Tom Birch, of whom Samuel Johnson said, " He is as brisk as a bee in conversation ; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties. " Colloquial speech is precisely what dialogue needs — the short, free, unconscious, rapidly shifting speech of everyday life ; everyday, that is, in manner, but selected and exceptional in matter. It is well for the literary person to deplore the admitted decadence in the tone and quality of our social converse, for it is painfully evident to the observing, but the short
story must not be turned into a text-book for use in the university conversation course, once proposed half laughingly by Professor A. S. Hill. The meaty talk of Dr. North and His Friends' needs the desiccation provided by The Dolly DialoguesTand " The First Hurdle. " Let it be repeated: dialogue reports characters in their perfectly representative, typical, characteristic moods. Therefore their speech must show not so much what they say, as what they are. 
Of course this brings up the whole question of real, ism, which I need not again discuss. Much that has been said about its limitations in general may be applied particularly t. the speaking character. His words must be truer to ideal truth than to actual talk. To reproduce even the most brilliant conversation just as we have it would result in disappointment. The pivotal and suggestive speeches of your characters are what you must set down s that every word may add some significance to the portrayal. How else should character exhibit individuality? Suppose that all the people in a story were to utter such equally brilliant epigrams as (it is safer to draw these illustrations from novels) they do in parts of Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler's Concerning Isabel Carnaby, and in Bulwer's Parisians; the effect would be as unconvincing as any other lot of unvaried fireworks. But, really, there is little danger here. There is greater fear of perpetrating the unrelieved dullness of absolute
	
fidelity to conversational reality. Conversation must be neither too subtle nor too gross, too learned nor too silly, too involved nor too simple. It must idealize the actual speech of men in so far as to discard both the prosings of heavy virtue and the blatancies of flippant vulgarity while typifying both most deftly. 
The moulds in which conversation is cast are of forms As various as those of everyday speech, but the manner of reporting them requires some art. 
Do not think it necessary to put " he saids " after every remark made by a character. So long as without them the reader understands clearly and easily just who is speaking, such additions hinder rather than help dialogue. But when you do add the explanatory verbs, use some ingenuity in getting away from the conventional forms. Do not discriminate against such good expressions as " he acquiesced, " " admitted, " " argued, " " asked, " " assented, " " boasted, " " called, " " cautioned, " " chuckled, " " corrected, " " cried, " " croaked, " " crowed, " " declared, " " drawled, " " droned, " " ejaculated, " " emended, " "enjoined, " " enumerated, " " exclaimed, " " exploded, " " flashed, " " frowned, " " gasped, " " growled, " " grumbled, " " grunted, " " hinted, " " inquired, " " insinuated, " " intimated, " " jeered, " " jested, " " laughed, " " leered, " " maundered, " " mumbled, " " nodded, " " opined, " " pronounced, " " puffed, " " questioned, " " rejoined, " " retorted, " " returned, " " simpered, " " snarled, " " sneered, " " snickered, " " stammered, " " stipulated, " " stormed, " " suggested, " " urged, " " volunteered, " " wondered, " " yelled, "— and a whole dictionary
ful besides, " each precisely suited to the shade of mood to be depicted. 
Perhaps it should go without saying that the speeches in dialogue should be brief — yet it doesn't. It will pay to remember that the old man and the boy who " ca'mly drinked and jawed " took sips between remarks. 
The baldly " leading question, " introduced palpably to help a character to tell some necessary bit of information, is a practice too amateurish to need more than this single word of warning. 
A useful conversational device is to make comment both before and at the end of the speech. Either alone is the more common form. 
Nora rose, trembling like a leaf (trite). "Ye bought me Mike's vote, ye say? Ye bought it? Oh, Misther Dale, it isn't thrue, is it? Say it isn't. Oh, say it isn't!" The rising wan of a breaking heart spoke in her cry. 
Sometimes the author will interrupt the speech of a character to interject an explanation — a dangerous device if the interruption is either long or abrupt. In this example the method is well handled :
John Gearing was at her side in an instant. "My poor little girl, " he murmured, lifting her with all possible gentleness, "are you much hurt?"
The unfinished sentence is often used with good effect:
" At all events I have not sprained my ankle, " said the girl with a faint laugh. "But I slipped once before to-day, and —"
10See exercises at the close of this chapter. 
The effect of hesitating speech produced by the dash is still another emotional device in dialogue:
"They will search for us —certainly, and find us?"
"If they know — that is, if you — if —I must tell them that I took the spool to — to find you, I could not face them — I could not bear it
The " expressive pause " in dialogue is indicated either explicitly, as:
"I really wonder, " murmured Betty. Then, asfer a pause, "I suppose you are right, after all. "
Or by the use of the dash:
"I see no other alternative, " admitted Buxton. "Either you meet the note on Monday or—The Tombs. "
The choice of sentence-forms is an important expedient in dialogue. The short, sharp, rapid sentence fits in with a mood quite different from that suggested by the easy-flowing long sentence. The flippant youth would hardly speak in the periodic sentence, which rises in power by suspending its full meaning until its close. 11No more would the dignified judge habitually use loose sentences— the balanced form would more clearly suggest the judicial mind. Yet no one would use one form to the exclusion of others. Remember that in conversation even the most cultivated talk colloquially. 
Suiting the sound to the sense is a capital conversational expedient. Note these examples:
u For sentence-forms see Appendix G. 
258 DIALOGUE
" Janet!" The loud, jarring voice, etc. 
" Um! " he purred, softly stroking the hat in his hand, " we
shall see, we shall see!"
The use of dialect in dialogue has aroused a furor of discussion. Some editors hold the dialect story as taboo, others allow a few dialect passages, while a few discriminate against it not at all. All are agreed, however, upon one point : dialect must never be used solely for its own sake. 
As local color, the vernacular of the New England villager, the Maine woodsman, the Southern " cracker, " the negro, the habitant, the cow-puncher, the Creole, and all the rich and varied types of American life, require the use of dialect in moderation. But when the spelling is altered to no purpose by such nonsensical perversions as " iz, " " sur, " " sez, " " bizness, " " peeple, " the alleged dialect becomes a nuisance. The short-story that needs a glossary will go down to posterity in manuscript form. 
Another abuse of dialect is to over-emphasize characteristics of speech — such as a college man's slang or a broker's technical talk — so as to produce an unintentional caricature. 
The language of child-life offers peculiar pitfalls for the fictionist. As an experiment, see in how many different ways you can spell a child's pronunciation of " just the same. " In fact, all our common speech is full of softenings and elisions, but it would not do to be faithful to them all in reporting conversation. Each calling, each stratum of society, has its vernacular, much to the detriment, or much to the enrichment, of our English —
according to how you look at it. Just how much of this colloquial, sporting, slang, and " patter " speech you will use in your writing must depend upon your good sense. Four things, however, you will want to avoid : obscurity of meaning, inconsistency of spelling, making the dialect hard to read, and the use of too much dialect. 
In writing stories foreign in setting, or in depicting the speech of foreigners when they would naturally use their own language in whole or in part, have a care as to introducing foreign words and expressions. But remember also that certain idioms are especially awkward and strained when done into English. The use of Monsieur and Madame and Mademoiselleis of course desirable, and perhaps the occasional use ofvoila, n'est ce pas, and the like; but, on the whole, it is more effective to salt the speech with a foreign savor by the literal translation of such quaint idioms as are at once characteristic and pleasing, in the manner of the following extract :12
Three nights later Gilbert Hannaway sat at dinner in one of the most famous restaurants of Paris. His companion — he had many friends on that side of the channel — touched him on the arm. 
" My dear Gilbert, " she said, "you ask me to point out to you what I should recognize as the real Parisian type, the absolutely smart woman. Look! I show her to you. There! The girl in the black dress, and the hat with white feathers. Believe me, that is the last thing which Paris can show you. Her shoes, her jewels, her furs, the cut of that long jacket, the little dog she has under her arm, with the gold collar— they are all of the moment, the latest thing. There is your type for you. "
12Passers-By, Anthony Partridge, Cosmopolitan, Oct. , 190ll Somewhat in contrast is Thackeray's method in The Ballad of Bouillabaisse. 
A somewhat similar use of idiom as dialect is illustrated by the following passage from " The County Seat, " Elsie Singmaster's Pennsylvania German story : la
A little farther on he stopped at the opening of a narrow street. 
"It is here where we shall live. "
"I see where, " screamed little 011ie. 
Their goods were being unloaded before the door of a tiny frame house. 
"I too, " echoed Louisa. 
Oliver unlocked the door and let them in. 
" It is not a nice house, " said Louisa. 
"It ss a nice house, " reproved her mother sharply. "It is while it is not yet fixed up that it don't look so fine. " Then she waved back her husband, who came into the room with a roll of carpet in his arms. "Don't bring it in yet. Did you think I should put down carpet when the house is not yet cleaned?"
"But I must go Mondays to work, and Sundays it is no working, and rcan only help to-day and to-moirow. "
Susannah lookedathim. 
"Do you mean I should put down the carpets before it is everything washed up?" she asked. 
" No, " he answered, meekly. " But you shall wash this room first, and then I can move the things right aways in. "
" Begin at the bottom to wash the house!" gasped Susannah. "And go up! I guess not. I begin at the top, like always. "
She went upstairs and looked about her. She could not suppress an exclamation of horror. Then she went to the head of the stairway. 
" You shall just come up once and see how dirty it is here, " she called. " It will be dinner till I make the garret done. "
" But the things? Shall they stand all the time out?"
" You can watch them so it. don't anybody carry anything off, " she replied. " I —" The rest of her sentence was lost in the sound of a stiff scrubbing-brush, pushed swiftly across rough boards. 
13Atlantic, May, Igo&
OUTLINE SUMMARY
DIALOGUE
r. Proportion of Dialogue
2. Its Office
•	Revelation of Character
•	
•	To Bring Out the Incidents
•	
•	To Convey Setting
•	
•	To Develop the Entire Action
•	
3. Subject Matter
4. Manner
Suggestive
Characteristic
Diction
Sentence Forms
Dialect
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES FOR CLASS OR
INDIVIDUAL STUDY
r. Select from some magazine a short-story containing little dialogue and rewrite it, substituting dialogue wherever possible. 
Examine the short-stories in a magazine of high quality and make a list of the excellencies and the faults you may discover in the conversations. 
Take one scene of a play and rewrite it in short-story form. 
Rewrite in dramatic form one of your previous short stories, conveying all the facts by dialogue, excepting only stage directions and outlines of scenes. 
Write a brief character sketch, or short-story, relying mainly upon conversation to display character. 
Write a minute report of the most interesting actual conversation you can recall having heard, leaving wide space between the lines. 
Without rewriting, edit the conversation in the foregoing so that it might be included in a short story. 
& Criticize the dialect in any available short-story. 
262 DIALOGUE
so. Write a story told largely by dialogue. After the first few paragraphs, do not say who the speakers are, as " said Tom, " etc. 
Write the opening of a short-story, conveying the setting solely by dialogue. 
1. Enlarge as much as possible the list of past participles on page 255. 
12. Take about fifty lines of dialogue from any short-story and reconstruct the dialogue by using new explanatory verbs, and by breaking up the dialogue, introducing brief comments at various points in the speeches of the characters. 
x3. Write a short, exciting dialogue, using crisp, short sentences. 
54. Follow this by toning down the same dialogue, forming your sentences in harmony with the changed mood. 
DIALOGUE
DIALOGUE
SPEECH in short stories and novels must, first of all, reveal character. It is by speech as well as by action and analysis that personality is made real to the reader. As the people of the story differ one from another, so must their speech be in character. The newsboy must not speak like a poet; the sincere man must speak sincerely, and the false friend reveal—to the reader at least—his duplicity. This is not to say that every word need bear, always, the stamp of individuality. There are many occasions in which the speech of one differs not at all from the speech of another, in which no characterization is possible. There is a common ground of utterance of which all that is asked is that the speech shall not be out of character. But in many instances it must be something more, be accurately significant and individual, conveying unmistakably the personality of the speaker, who differs from Everyone else in the story. That it should do this implies, of course, that
the writer enter truly into the hearts and speak through the mouths of his characters. He must be an actor skilled in many parts, which he can lay aside at will. This power is fully realized by Shakespeare, whose characters usually reveal themselves with marked individuality, and are eternally different one from another. Othello and Iago differ not only in their deeds, but in their speech as well. Act and word are alike characteristic. 
Yet the record of characteristic speech does not suffice to constitute dialogue; the writer must also advance his story. If he becomes absorbed in his dialogue he may devise conversation which interests the reader, but which, none the less, retards the action. The proportions, the true emphasis of his story, will suffer thereby. The characters must set forth certain preconceived situations. These must be adequately developed; neither must they be overemphasized. Once a situation is clearly revealed the story proceeds to the development of a second. The shorter the development, if adequate to the needs of the story, the better. To achieve this dual purpose of speech, characterization and development of situation, is a difficult thing; yet in a good story it may easily be remarked. The passage from Markheim quoted in an earlier chapter is a fine instance. There we saw not
only the character of the prospective murderer, but were also enlightened by every speech as to the impending action. Character development and action proceeded hand in hand, mutually interdependent. 
In the accomplishment of bis story purpose through dialogue, the writer must meet and overcome several difficulties if he is to be dear, swift, and at the same time achieve an effect of naturalness. In conversation we rely not upon words alone, but upon tone of voice, gesture, and play of feature. From these we interpret the implications of the thing said, the spirit which animates the words and gives them significance. These are, so to speak, the context of the spoken phrase. Herein lies one of the problems of the story writer: he must learn to make his dialogue convey not only superficial meanings, but the very intent of the speaker. It is true that the writer may describe the tone of the speaker, and may even declare the intent, thus illuminating the utterance, but to do this overmuch would be to make the story tedious and slow. Instead he must, for the most part, so phrase his dialogue that without explanatory comment its meaning and intent are unmistakable both to the other persons of the story, and to the reader. This, however, is but half the difficulty. 
If we were to make a phonographic record of
the conversation we hear in public places, or at social functions—on the street-car, in stores, or at receptions and dinner parties--we should be struck on rehearing it with its general inadequacy. From many words would emerge but a slight kernel of meaning, and this often not clear and unmistakable. We are poor speakers, most of us, unable to express precisely what we mean. Ours is not a rifle which pinks the bull's-eye of meaning, but a shotgun aimed in a general direction, and from our scattered remarks perhaps but one attains its proper objective. Our speech is repetitious and inaccurate. 
Were the story writer to take his conversation unchanged from life, he would be longwinded. It is his task to clarify the turbid and wasteful flow of speech and direct it into exact channels. His characters must speak to an end, and that end must be swiftly and accurately realized. In so far as dialogue attains this artistic perfection it differs from the language of every day. It is selective and interpretative rather than literal. 
The writer should, then, set himself the task of conveying in concise phrase the speaker's thought, the intended meaning, rather than of reporting with plausible accuracy the inadequate spoken words. That he shall fail to do this is a real danger if he is endowed with some gift of auditory imagination, and can start his characters conversing with a degree of naturalness. They will, then, too often take the story into their own hands and talk to no profitable end; the dialogue will become an end in itself. It is a danger which besets young and clever writers who are carried away by the reality of their own creations. As a check upon this tendency the writer must keep constantly before him the purposes of dialogue—character revelation and the advancement of the story action. 
LITERALNESS OF SPEECH
Let us now turn to another aspect of the problem of effective dialogue, that of literalness of speech. A phonographic record of chance conversation would reveal, we said, the general inadequacy and wordiness of normal speech. It would reveal yet more; peculiarities of pronunciation and diction, which we pass unheeding when our attention is centered rather on the meaning of speech than on its manner, would on our record be apparent. There is a normal pronunciation varying in different classes of society, and a normal vocabulary, likewise variable, which we individually approximate but to which no one of us exactly conforms. All are possessed of mannerisms to a greater or less degree. What heed must the writer pay to these individual or class differences? The question is not simple. 
for there are several considerations which must be taken into account. 
We may safely generalize to this extent: in a story any departure from normal speech attracts attention to itself; therefore all departure must be intentional, must be for a legitimate purpose. It may be that I have the bad habit of pronouncing my a's flatly or of slurring the final g of my participles. This peculiarity reveals a slight departure from the best usage of English speech, and bespeaks some inadequacy in my training, or, it may be, only an imperfect ear, which makes it difficult for me to realize my own defects. Were my conversation recorded with phonetic accuracy in a story, my mistakes of speech would attract attention. Is it legitimate that they should do so? It is possible to conceive instances in which so accurate a record might be within the story's intent, but generally it is an irrelevant and unimportant matter. Specialists in phonetics are concerned with such matters. The story-writer has another
Purpose. 
But let us take an extreme case. One of my characters is a plantation negro who speaks a marked dialect. Shall I record his utterance accurately or shall I not? Perhaps I should, first of all, consider my audience. If these are Southerners, to whom this dialect is familiar, I
may be as literal as I please. If my audience is a broader one, containing those unfamiliar with the dialect, the task is more complicated. To them the negro dialect is a strange tongue, known, if at all, but slightly, and they must puzzle over much of it. In any case it is sufficiently novel to distract them from the story, from the content of speech to a mannerism. If the story action is of importance, its effectiveness is impaired thereby. What must be done? Shall my plantation negro be made to speak simple but correct English, or shall I modify his speech somewhat? If the first, his speech is untrue to reality; if the second, it is still untrue, but in less degree. 
Let us, for argument, select the second half of the alternative, and endeavor to contrive a dialect neither obscure nor bizarre, but sufficiently characteristic to differentiate the speaker from the other persons of the story. How must we go about our task? The more difficult obscurities must be modified, and but few mannerisms retained, enough to suggest the nature of the true speech, to give it flavor, but not sufficient to make us pause as we read. The meaning of the words should be apparent at a glance, so that we may proceed with the story undeterred. Such a dialect as we have devised must, of course, be consistent with itself, and must be devoid of
peculiarities foreign to the original speech. Our method has been to make it approximate normal speech, while retaining a tincture of the original. It is as though we should dilute it with a neutral element; its character remains the same, its potency is not so great. 
It requires few and slight variations from the normal to produce this distinctive quality of dialect. The majority of writers who treat of Scotch, Irish, or negro life err on the side of literalness. What, to a Scotchman, is simple and intelligible enough, is to anyone else largely obscure. Thus we have the so-called "kail-yard school" of Scotch realists. Their method is not that of Stevenson or, to a lesser degree, Scott, both Scotchmen, but writers not for their countrymen alone. That the story should be intelligible to his readers should be the writer's chief concern. If, to accomplish this, he must depart from actuality, let him do so. His story is not a literal transcript from life, but an artificial rearrangement of life. 
Yet we must not conclude from our generalizations thus far that dialect and class speech are never to be accurately recorded for others than those to whom that speech is familiar. There are stories which have as their chief purpose to portray background, manners of life, and speech. These stories are seldom of the first rank, and
bear to the best stories about the relation that a good photograph bears to a good painting. Photographs, however, have their place and so, too, these literal records of life. Their value lies in the accuracy of the observed detail. To the reader they are interesting chiefly by reason of their novelty. Nowadays energetic, though often unoriginal, writers seek out the less known corners of the earth for the simple purpose of exploiting a fresh background. But stories possessed of this quality alone cannot long command a hearing, and already the public wearies of dialect, save, perhaps, as a device for the creation of humor. Just as we find fantastic dress amusing and the habits and dress of foreigners, so do we find dialect humorous. We do not speak as these people; their speech being unlike ours is, therefore, absurd. 
It would, perhaps, be interesting to trace in English or American fiction the growth of literalness in recording speech peculiarities. We have not here the space for so lengthy an examination. It will suffice to point out that Washington Irving and Hawthorne make no attempt to catch dialect, with perhaps some consequent loss in realism, and perhaps, some gain in unity of impression. The negro dialect of Poe differs considerably from that of Joel Chandler Harris or Thomas Nelson Page—these last it seems to
me are on the whole too painstakingly accurate, and are rather hard to read. I cite two examples of Scotch dialect, the first from Scott, and the second from Barrie. Scott seems to me to have retained the flavor of the speech, and yet to have made its understanding swift and easy. Barrie's is closer to the soil, but attracts more attention to itself. How true either is to life I cannot say. The selection from Kipling illustrates the possibilities of humor inherent in realistic class speech. Again, just how true to life this may be I do not know, nor is it a matter of any importance:
Sir Robert sat, or, I should say, lay, in a great arm-chair, wi' his grand velvet gown, and his feet on a cradle; for he had baith gout and gravel, and his face looked as gash and ghastly as Satan's. Major Weir sat opposite to him, in a red-laced coat, and the laird's wig on his head; and aye as Sir Robert girned wi' pain, the jackanape girned too, like a sheep's head between a pair of tangs—an ill-faued, fearsome couple they were. The laird's uff-coat was hung on a pin behind him, and his broadsword and his pistols within reach; for he keepit up the auld fashion of having the weapons ready, and a horse saddled day and night, just as he used to do when he was able to loup on horseback, and away after ony of the hill-folk he could get speerings of. Some said it was for fear of the Whigs taking vengeance, but I judge it was just his auld custom—he wasna glen to fear onything. The rental book, wi' its
black cover and brass clasps, was lying beside him; and a book of sculduddery sangs was put betwixt the leaves, to keep it open at the place where it bore evidence against the goodman of Primrose Knowe, as behind the hand with his mails and duties. Sir Robert gave my gudesire a look, as if he would have withered his heart in his bosom. Ye maun ken he had a way of bending his brows that men saw the visible mark of a horseshoe in his forehead, deep-dinted, as if it had been stamped there. —(Scott, Wandering Willie's Tale. )
"Leeby kent perfectly weel, " Jess has said, "'at it was a trial to Jamie to tak her ony gait, an' I often used to say to her 'at I wonder at her want o' pride in priggin' wi' him. Aye, but if she could juist get a promise wrung oot o' him, she didna care hoo muckle she had to prig. Syne they quarreled, an' ane or baith o' them grat (cried) afore they made up. I mind when Jamie went to the fishin' Leeby was aye terrible keen to go wi' him, but ye see he couldna be seen gaen through the toon wi' her. 'If ye let me gang, ' she said to him, 'I'll no seek to go through the toon wi' ye. Na, I'll gang roond by the roods an' you can tak the buryin'-ground road, so as we can meet on the hill. ' Yes, Leeby was willin' to agree wi' a' that, juist to get gaen wi' him I've seen lassies makkin' themsel's sma' for lads often enough, but I never saw ane 'at prigged so muckle wi' her ain brother. Na, it's other lassies' brothers they like as a rule. "— (Barrie, Leeby and Jamie. )
"I'm going out to say adoo to my girl, " said Lew to cap the climax. "Don't none o' you touch my kit because it's wanted for active service, me bein' specially invited to go by the Colonel. "
He strolled forth and whistled in the clump of trees at the back of the Married Quarters till Cris came to him, and, the preliminary kisses being given and taken, Lew began to explain the situation. 
"I'm goin' to the front with the Reg'ment, " he said valiantly. 
"Piggy, you're a little liar, " said Cris, but her heart misgave her, for Lew was not in the habit of lying. 
"Liar yourself, Cris, " said Lew, slipping an arm round her. "I'm goin'. When the Reg'ment marches out you'll see me with 'em, all gallant and gay. Give us another kiss, Cris, on the strength of it. "
"If you'd on'y a-stayed at the Depot—where youought to ha' been—you could get as many of 'em as—as you dam please, " whimpered Cris, putting up her mouth. 
"It's 'ard, Cris. I grant you it's 'ard. But what's a man to do? If I'd a-stayed at the Depot, you wouldn't think anything of me. "
"Like as not, but I'd 'ave you with me, Piggy. An' all the thinkin' in the world isn't like kissin'. "
"An' all the kissin' in the world isn't like 'avin' a medal to wear on the front of your coat. "
"You won't get no medal. "
"Oh, yus, I shall though. Me an' Jakin are the only acting-drummers that'll he took along. 
All the rest is full men, an' we'll get our medals with them. "
"They might ha' taken anybody but you, Piggy. You'll get killed—you're so venturesome. Stay with me, Piggy darlin', down at the Depot, an' I'll love you true forever. "—(Kipling, The Drums of the Fore and Aft. )
I have endeavored to make dear thus far that speech in stories seldom corresponds literally with the speech of every day. It is selected and improved—standardized. Individual and class peculiarities may, to be sure, be suggested to some degree, this depending upon the character of the story; but the color we bestow upon the individual utterance is seldom more than a tincture suggesting the human original. How far this standardization may be carried in an individual instance cannot, of course, be made the theme of a generalization. It is worth noting, however, that we must at times almost completely standardize the speech of our characters, and all writers might resort to the expedient more frequently than they do. Consider the instance of the foreigner speaking his native tongue. 
What must be the writer's method when the Grand Duke accosts the heroine in Russian? Give the exact words of his greeting? This is sometimes inconvenient ;. not all of us are familiar with Russian. But the writer knows the Duke's
thoughts, and may, therefore, translate for us. If the Grand Duke speaks good idiomatic Russian there is no reason why his remarks should not be rendered in idiomatic English. Too often the author translates idiom literally, thus producing a laughable and un-English dialect. Competent writers, familiar with French or German, are sometimes guilty of such a practice for humorous purposes—a humor strictly analogous to the misspellings of Josh Billings The truly artistic writer, however, translates into simple, idiomatic English, which serves easily and clearly to reveal the speaker's thoughts. Is not this translation of a foreign tongue analogous to the translation of a dialect of one's own tongue?
In the employment of a standardized language as common to characters drawn from all dasses of society and various environments, are we not, however, losing something of the flavor of reality, the true quality of life as we experience it? There is justice in such a demurrer. Certainly it would be unwise to dogmatize overmuch, for the exceptions to the rule would be outstanding. We must make clear some principle upon which to base our practice; and this, I think, has been implicit, if not explicit, in our discussion: the degree of literalness advisable in the speech of story characters is dependent always upon the audience and the aim of the story. The audience may, or may not, be so familiar with the form of speech employed as to grasp its content easily and wholly Further, the theme of the story and its tone must determine the character of the speech. If the writer is concerned mostly with manners, with external and superficial things, the form of speech he permits his characters may be as near that of reality 13 he sees fit to make it. The more his story co icerns itself with deep and universal themes, the less should the manner of speech distract our attention from these. Contrast is, however, always possible, the gravity of the theme contrasting with the inadequacy of the speech, and gaining in power and suggestion thereby. 
After all, it is not by class differences in speech that we chiefly distinguish the servant from the capitalist. The difference lies in the attitude of mind, the one deferential and the other lordly; and this attitude may be best caught not by superficial differences in word and intonation, but by the thought and emotion expressed. The transportation official on boat or railway may speak the same English as I, but his spirit is haughty and intolerant, and mine is humble before him; my deference is shown best by the stumbling question which I put to him, his disdain by the hard-clipt reply. There is here a difference in attitude and phrasing, though none
in the pronunciation or the selection of words. It is a more vital difference, one both individual and functional. The skilled writer can convey a man's class and personality in a phrase, and this in nowise peculiar as English. A single fine example occurs to me from Maupassant's The Necklace. The husband of the heroine is given to remark with satisfaction as he seats himself a dinner, "Ah, the good stew!" Could any phrase be more enlightening? We conceive the man to be hopelessly middle-class and uninspiring, content with his shabby lot, content with his home, with himself, and with his wife. He is both an individual and a member of a class, for in his exclamation he reveals both unmistakably. Immediately we understand the irritation of his ambitious wife. He was not one to be caught by the glamour of fashion! Doubtless this is a striking instance, but it illustrates the possibilities of suggestion lying within common speech, speech unmarked with dialect or class peculiarities. 
THE KEY OF DIALOGUE
It is but a step from the foregoing discussion to what Stevenson calls "the key of dialogue, " by which is meant the tone of conversation—whether it be base, commonplace, or elevated, realistic or romantic, tragic or in the vein of
light comedy. Thus in Shakespeare the comic characters speak usually in prose and employ the diction appropriate thereto. Prince Hal, in the earlier scenes with Falstaff, talks the language of the tavern; later, when he becomes king, his words are kingly. Something the same is true of a story. The writer endeavors to make his dialogue in keeping with the theme of his story, and this appropriateness involves to some degree subject matter, and to a greater degree manner of speech. 
It is difficult in seeking illustrations of subject matter, to cite instances which must always be in point. Conceivably any subject may be a fitting theme of discussion in some story or play. In the plays of Brieux, for example, topics are discussed which are usually considered fit only for medical books. Yet in these plays we do not feel that the discussion is out of place; the themes are essential to the play, and the manner of their discussion is such as to provoke grave interest. Any theme, we might declare, will serve for discussion if in the right place. The difficult thing is to determine the right place. What flagrant offences to taste may be committed in story and drama the literature of the day attests. The drama in particular is guilty. It resorts persistently to the problem of sex relationships; yet in comedies how seldom is the
subject discussed in good taste. It is not that the relations of men and women, married and unmarried, do not afford capital themes for comedy, but there are many graver aspects which may be approached only with caution. A false turn to the dialogue and the result is vulgarity, not humor. 
If the story is concerned with lofty action the hero may not appropriately speak of the toothache. Not that the tooth-ache is a thing to make light of, but we feel that it is essentially trivial in its ultimate significance, whereas many a thing seemingly less important may be significant and so in keeping. Thus a bizarre dream may be appropriate for discussion, for a dream is to some degree significant of thought, and so, it may be, prophetic of action to come. Or a point of etiquette may not be trivial, for manners may indicate character or signify amiable or hostile intent. In short, the theme of conversation must be in the tone of the story. If the story is light and trivial it may not deal with the problems of the universe. If serious or tragic there must be no admission of trivial or petty subjects—save perhaps for contrast, and, occasionally, pathos, which may be so secured at times. This is no more than to say, perhaps, that the writer must be possessed of taste. 
Yet life is notoriously in bad, or at least mixed, 
taste. You attend a funeral. Your mood is one of grief; your thoughts are upon conduct and religion, and kindred themes. All the time you are conscious, in the scene about you, of absurd and incongruous details. The accoutrements of death, the absurd hearse with its plumes and mock curtains, the hideous garb of mourning, the attitudes and expression of those in grief—all these clash with the genuine though not overwhelming emotion which you feel. Your own personality is not subject altogether to its dominant mood; unconsciously you note the incongruities about you, and your mind suggests humorous possibilities and irrelevancies. This is true, is it not, unless one emotion is so dominant as to exclude all else? Life is mixed of all emotions and of congruous and incongruous things
The writer improves on life in that be frees action and emotion, and so, consequently, speech, of irrelevancies. It is his function to make life congruous. Therefore must his characters speak upon topics in harmony with the central theme and not of things which will arouse conflicting emotions. The writer is seeking to make a unified impression, and so he takes care that everything shall contribute to that impression, no touch suggesting incongruous associations hostile to his aim. He may, of course, wish to create a
mixed impression and so adopt a mixed style. This is legitimate, and therein lie possibilities of contrast. Usually, however, his object is simpler, and his danger that of incongruity. He must guard against themes which may arouse in the reader emotions hostile to the one he seeks. He cannot, of course, do this with certainty, for some of his readers will have the most unexpected and unconventional emotions associated with common objects. Whereas pine-trees are usually regarded as somber and funereal, the mention of them may evoke in some the utmost hilarity. Against this individual variant there is no defense, but the writer should be sufficiently wide-awake to the associations which various topics will arouse in the average mind. Thus Coleridge's poem upon the young ass has never been reverently approached by the majority of readers. 
More subtle and difficult is the problem of the speech itself. Language, besides denoting specific thoughts, is a tissue of connotations; that is, of associated meanings, and of these the writer should have a broad and accurate knowledge. A mere range of vocabulary does not make a stylist. He must know the current values of speech, its colloquial and slang uses as well as its noble and its poetic implications. No writer can afford not to read good English, nor, I believe
can he afford not to know colloquial and even bad English. All are but forms of expression, as both violin and jew's-harp are instruments of music, both capable, perhaps, of effective employment in the hands of Richard Strauss. But the writer must know very accurately what is good and what is not, what is slangy, and what is colloquial but sound. Thus the phrase "to start something" means in slang to make a disturbance or trouble, though in their natural state the words have no such idiomatic meaning. A careful writer would, in a serious passage, seek to avoid this form of words in its literal meaning, even were it not unfit by reason of its vagueness. He would seek at some inconvenience to find an adequate substitute happily free from incongruous meanings and associations. 
This is a trivial instance, but typical enough. Any writer who wishes a command of his native speech must master such values, as well as distinctions more elegant. The study is endless, for the values of speech are ever changing. His ear must be trained to speech as that of the musician is trained to gradations of tone, for upon his nice use of words in their connotation as well as their denotation, depends the tone and significance of every utterance. 
The classes of words are various and many We have slangy speech, colloquial speech, localisms, 
dialects, various types of professional speech, learned words and popular words, poetic words and prosy words. And the problem of mastery is made more difficult in that many words belong at one and the same time to several classes, and in combination take on various shades of meaning. What Stevenson doubtless meant, when he declared that the writer must pitch his dialogue to a certain key, was not only that he must select suitable and congruous themes for discussion, but that he must select his words to harmonize. In a story of exalted action or poetic theme, slang and colloquialisms are out of place. In a story of quiet realism the speech may be homely and colloquial. Here exaggerated or poetic diction would be as much out of keeping as would be slang in the first instance. 
The young writer is as prone to err in one direction as the other. In his simple story of rural life he makes his characters talk as do the kings of Shakespeare; in his fairy tale he imports the language of the street. The remedy lies in reading, in training the ear to an appreciation of the subtleties of speech. Only from a knowledge of the practice of the best writers will he be able to select words which are harmonious and appropriate in every instance. 
Our discussion has, it seems, transcended the question of dialogue, and treated of diction in
somewhat broader terms. But stories are not told in dialogue alone. The writer telling the story in his own person is subject to the same restrictions. His narrative must be in key with the speech of his characters. A final quotation from Stevenson's Letters will serve by way of summary to emphasfre the point:
Yes, honestly, fiction is very difficult; it is a terrible strain to carry your characters all the time. And the difficulty of according the narrative and the dialogue (in a work of the third person) is extreme. That is one reason out of half a dozen why I so often prefer the first. It is much in my mind just now, because of my last work, just off the stocks three days ago, The Ebb Tide: a dreadful, grimy business in the third person, where the strain between a vilely realistic dialogue and a narrative style pitched about (in phrase) "four notes higher" than it should have been has sown my head with grey hairs; or I believe so—if my head escaped, my heart has them. 
DIALOGUE ANDACTION
DIALOGUE ANDACTION
DUOLOGUES-BROKEN SENTENCES-GETTING INFORMATION TO THE AUDIENCE-PLATONIC AND SOCRATIC DIALOGUE-DISCUSSIONS AND ARGUMENTSNARRATIVES-LOCAL COLORDIALECT--TECHNICAL PHRASEOLOGY
IN the last chapter we considered the planning of the scenario in such a way as not to have the opening scenes a series of duologues, and also learned why: which brings us by a natural transition to the actual writing of these scenes. 
Duologues. The advice is only against a tiresome series; many times in the progress of a play you will have recourse to duologue, or dialogue between two people. This is legitimate. But a long scene in which two people sit or stand and merely tell each other things which could be better presented in another form is out of place in the theater. A play made up of such situations, one following another, is a badly constructed play. 
A duologue of any length at all must be very dramatic or interesting, full of action in the play writer’s sense. Even if the conversation or argument appears quiet, there must be something—an undercurrent—which keeps the play moving in the mind of your audience. In Henri Bernstein's The Thief is an act of nearly forty-five minutes, in which appear only two characters, the man and his wife. The act is one of ever-increasing drama and intensity, until the curtain. It is a masterpiece in its way. Again, in Mrs. Dane's Defense, by Henry Arthur Jones, we have a similar scene between the Judge and Mrs. Dane—one of harrowing interest, as the woman is caught in one lie after another, and finally breaks down. In Bernstein's Israel is a scene between mother and son of considerable length and power, one which puts great strain on the acting abilities of both players. These three examples will point what I mean by "dramatic, full of action. "
As you begin your dialogue and the actual use of the play-form, never let one important fact escape you. Your play will be presented solely by the actions, manner, and speech of actors. Not a word of yours, except what may legitimately find place in the printed bill of the play, will reach the public through any other medium. 
The "lines. " All that the actors speak in the course of a play is known to the profession as "the lines. " An actor "studies his lines, " he " forgets his lines, " or, more colloquially, "goes up in his lines, " et cetera. By the "lines of a play" is meant, therefore, what the laity calls the dialogue. 
In modern drama, these lines are as nearly like the language of everyday people as the writer's skill will allow. The difference between what one writer calls "conversational sloppiness" and good dramatic dialogue is a very strong dividing line between tyro and expert. The latter writes as people talk, but he always "picks up his sentence by the right end. " That is because entirely natural speech may become prosy or incoherent. Unless the tedium or incoherence have value for the plot, no dramatist desires either the one or the other in his play. Almost everyone who writes can give a fair imitation of the conversation of a number of people collected together at one place. Almost anyone can present such a conversation in an entirely natural manner. But when each sentence, each movement, however natural it may appear, is in reality carrying the plot directly forward, is in addition showing the personality of the character who is moving or speaking, it is a vastly different affair. 
It is because of this expository, building quality of the dialogue that the naturalness of the lines is only a seeming. It must appear spontaneous, when it is really deliberate. Here, as usual, the "art that conceals art" produces the most realistic effect. 
Broken sentences. One very successful methnd
producing a semblance of everyday life is by means
of broken sentences. That is, a character starts
to say something, then turns his sentence and re
phrases it—a thing real people do every day. It
gives the impression that the speaker is really talking
just as the thoughts occur to him instead of voicing
a cut-and-dried speech carefully studied and, rehearsed. Like all effective methods, it must be used properly, and can be easily overdone. A character can interrupt himself or another break in on his remarks up to a certain point. Beyond that point it grows as tiresome as constant interruptions in a real-life conversation. A certain dramatist, who much advocated the use of broken sentences as a means to conversational realism, so far offended in this respect in one of his manuscripts that his people gave an impression of positive rudeness. The interruptions from other characters could have been caused only by ill-breeding in real life. The writer himself was far from being either boorish or careless ; he merely had carried a good thing too far. 
Getting information to the audience. Writers often struggle with this effort to be entirely natural while wasting no unnecessary time in getting information to the audience. George M. Cohan graphically describes such a struggle. "In the third act of Get-Rick-Quick Wallingford I had placed Wallingford in his office, and at the opening of the act I wanted Judge Lambert, his attorney, to come in and tell him that he, the lawyer, had just received a call from the Board of Directors of the Tack Company, and that they had just left his office with the avowed intention of coming there (to Wallingford) to denounce the promoter. The problem of explaining the presence of the attorney in Wallingford's office in advance of the directors who had started ahead of him, and doing it without taking up time, kept me guessing for one whole night and the best part of the next day, when I solved it by making Lambert say : 'Yes, they left my office five minutes ago, but I took the short-cut through Pearl Street. ' "
There you have it : a whole explanation in one short, simple sentence, in keeping with the character and the situation, seemingly spontaneous, yet costing this author many hours of anxious thought. 
On the other hand, in the work of the novice we have the following result: This author realized that it was necessary for the audience to know that his heroine was possessed of broad sympathies, since much turned on the fact. Here was a case where this characteristic could be developed in several different ways, since it was part of the plot and necessary to our understanding. Thus far, the author was right ; he felt the necessity for the information. But, instead of showing it with seeming naturalness, he chose a method out of keeping with the woman's position and dignity, with the situation, or with reality, because he tried to do it in one or two sentences, where the point was of sufficient consequence for larger development. Though the wife of an important official, and duly impressed with her husband's importance (she always spoke of him by his title), her creator permitted her to practically ask a poor suppliant—a woman of whom she knew nothing, whom she had never seen before—to call her by her Christian name within a few speeches of their meeting. Here was a psychologically wrong method used with most commendable intention; with all the
character's benevolence, she was a society woman and probably used to being addressed, even by old acquaintances, by her married name. What she was called was a point that really would not have counted with her at all. Emphasis on it conveyed another impression than the author wished. 
Platonic dialogue. Since the lines must be entirely pertinent to the subject of your play, two methods in frequent use among amateurs are to be decried. Play dialogue is not a series of simple questions and answers along the lines of the old Platonic and Socratic methods of imparting knowledge. Dialogue is conversation between ordinary human beings so arranged by the writer as to tell his story. Not that a series of questions and answers may not be intensely dramatic—especially if the person questioned is answering against his will—not that, if dramatic or effective, it is anything but legitimate and proper. When compatible with human procedure, it is all these. But many writers have an idea that if they have written something which is told in dialogue form—first one person speaking, then another—the result is a play. It is no more dramatic than any student's book of questions and answers. A novice's play, with a big story, was told almost entirely by this method. Five or six of the characters sat around while they asked each other questions, which drew from the questioned . the answers which informed the audience of what had taken place, what was taking place, and what might, could, or would take place. All the characters knew the answers as well as the interrogator, but "Clarence, tell us again what happened yesterday, " was followed by Clarence's account, and so on, ad nauaeam. The effect was precisely that of a teacher and her class at a recitation in history. 
Discussions and arguments. An audience hates to feel it is being taught something; instruction must be administered in homeopathic doses. A discussion which has a definite point in the mind of your audience may sometimes be used to advantage. That is for you to judge. It must be interesting and not too long. Incidentally, beware of riding any hobby by such means. If you have a hobby, dress it up, disguise it, be subtle. In any case, use such methods sparingly. Which brings us to the other fault mentioned, the permitting of entirely irrelevant discussions in the course of the dialogue. One play to which reference has already been made was " padded " to make it of prop0 length by one such discussion or debate in each one of the five acts. When the one in the first act was read—it was a racy, humorous description of a scene in the Orient—the reader felt sure that there was a dramatic purpose in the episode ; someone sooner or later would come into relation with the anecdote either as to place or time—but it was only an anecdote. No further reference was made to it. Now, even an unallied anecdote may have dramatic value, if the telling or appreciation of it in any way presents or explains a character-personality, or shows the spectator the
atmosphere in which those characters move. But this one took up several pages of manuscript and, though interesting to read, led nowhere. So with each succeeding act. Please re-read in this connection what has been written on the propaganda play in the chapter on the plot. Since discussions are part of the dialogue, both anecdote and propaganda arguments belong under this heading, and are to be handled with equal care and discretion. 
Narratives. The narrative form is fast dropping out of modern plays. The excited , description of a horse-race—after it is over—has been done to death. To-day, if such descriptions are necessary, they are given while the race is going on—off-stage--by someone supposedly watching it. Descriptions of past events, when absolutely necessary, are given dramatically, but as briefly, simply, and naturally as possible. 
By means of the lines and 'action, you are telling your story. Be sure all A that story is transferred from your mind to the play. I have said that before, but now is the time, these are the means, by which you will do it. It is not at all infrequent for a scenario to present a better drama than the finished play. One such scenario recently won a prize in a competition. It was both novel and lively. The play fell down badly in one or two places—. places where the scenario held its own—almost as if two different people had written the one and the other. Yet the same brain constructed both. 
Ensemble. There may be places in a play where the author wishes several characters to speak at once, or where the cries of a mob are indicated by various suggested shouts. These we might call ensemble speeches ; the intention of their use is to give the " ragged " or incoherent effect of excitement. In such cases, the author may suggest the character of these exclamations or shouts by writing a number of them out in this fashion: "Cries of 'Well, I never!' ' Who ever heard of such a thing!' Nonsense! ' and the like, are heard from the group "— leaving to the stage-director the interpolation of other kindred expressions. In all other cases, the speeches must be written out in full. 
Left to the imagination. Plays by the novice frequently err in this direction. They are written as if in the old days of " Polichinelle " and the strolling players, when general directions were given, and the characters entered, made up their own lines, keeping them in character, yet varying them with the different audiences and players. I have read whole scenes blocked in this manner—not in the scenario, where the method would be correct, but in the finished play supposedly ready for production. 
Also, such a direction as the following will be given, "Goes to the telephone and talks, " when the telephone is indicated as being in sight and hearing of the audience, and no one else is on the stage. There are times when to do this in " dumb-show " is correct ; but someone will have to write the conversation—if it is meant to be heard. It might just as
well be the author, and the lines should, of course, be pertinent to the matter in hand. 
There is all the difference in the world between this neglect and what might seem a similar stage direction in The Woman. But, in the latter case, the silent conversation has a constructive reason. The man enters a telephone-booth, and before shutting the door, asks the operator to remove the headpiece so that not even she can hear him. The pause is very brief but dramatic, because while the audience knows in a general way what he is saying, there is suspense in the fact that the person to whom he is speaking is part of the mystery. As you see, the stage-instructions might have been similar to those with which I have found fault. But the actor's lines regarding secrecy make it not even a parallel case ; the conversation is not intended for the audience. 
Local color, and dialect. One more suggestion before we get down to the actual speeches and their relation to the characters. This has reference to local color and dialect. The latter is better understood if not too exact in its resemblance to the original. A Scotchman playing a Scotch part in The Little Minister told me that if he were really to break loose in the actual dialect which he was supposed to be using, not ten people—supposing there were so many native Scots in the audience— would know what he was talking about. He got his effect more by his accent than by any real dialect. 
But, aside from dialect, there are other matters
in regard to presenting local color which must be taken into consideration: the use of slang words and sentences which are unintelligible outside of their own place. A sample from a play will explain. The word strike in mining localities has reference to a discovery of ore: the miner has "made a strike, " and talks of a "pay-strike, " et cetera. It so happens that the more usual understanding of the word is associated with labor agitations. Therefore, when a dramatist has a character speak of the " strike " in the Daisy Mine, the layman is a little uncertain as to which is meant, since either might be the cause of excitement. Now, the dramatist must not offend any miners who may slip into his audiences, and if there is no other word possible under the circumstances, strike he must use. But it must rest in such a context and among such incidents as to leave no doubt in the auditor's mind, unless drama rests on that very point—the misunderstanding of the two meanings. 
Always remember in presenting a play of strongly local color that if it is successful, it will be presented in cities far from its playground. You must carry that local color to each of those cities ; but you must also make allowances for the fact that a majority of your auditors will know nothing of the place and the people, except as you show them. You will not have the novelist's advantage of long explanatory descriptions. 
Technical phraseology. In your audience will be people of all kinds of minds and interests. Therefore, 
you must not only be careful in the use of local color and dialect, but in the employment of expressions too technical in form to be understood by anyone not accustomed to their use. If your play is written around Wall Street, for instance, use enough of the phraseology of the Street to color your play, and give it atmosphere ; but do not bury it idtickertape, or else numbers of people, especially women not interested in stock speculation—and they make up the major part of our audiences—will be at a loss as to your full meaning. It is apt to be so in any subject upon which you may be an enthusiast. You let the theme run away with you, forgetting the uninitiated. Write your play around what subject you wish, but remember those of us unfamiliar with it, and so present it in character and language that all will understand. An example outside the theater will point my moral. Two men were to lecture— to two different audiences—concerning a certain piece of machinery, the invention of one of them. These audiences were composed of men interested in the purposes for which the machinery was to be used, but of all trades and professions. The inventor was an engineer of wide technical knowledge, his education along these lines covering study abroad as well as at home. The other knew this piece of machinery by practical association with it, and a thorough working knowledge of its uses. He had never so much as looked inside of an institute of technology. But, when it came to the lectures, the engineer was almost unintelligible to his audience, 
so academic were his explanations, so purely technical his expressions. The other man was simplicity itself. His audience understood, because his lecture, of necessity, was free of phrases incomprehensible to the layman. 
FORM OF DIALOGUE
THE SOLILOQUY-THE ASIDE-FACIAL EXPRESSIONPANTOMIME-SPEECHES SUITED TO CHARACTERS-ACTIONS SUITED TO CHARACTERS-DESCRIPTIONS OF ONE CHARACTER BY OTHERS-SPEECHES EASY OF RENDITION LITERARY SPEECHES COMEDY LINES-LONG SPEECHES
Two once popular methods of imparting information to an audience, the soliloquy and the aside, have of late years dropped into almost complete disuse. In the chapter on the Theater you were told why the method was once so popular : the audience was actually on the stage with the players. 
The soliloquy and the aside. With the exception of some sudden exclamation, people in real life do not "think out loud" as a general rule, unless there is something the matter with them. Always bear in mind the fact that you must have your actors talk and behave in your play as the characters would speak and act were they alive. Your audience plays an important part in your drama, but its part is a mental one. A modern audience prefers to see its actors think, rather than hear them. It may require more facial expression, it is certainly more difficult
for the player, but it is more nearly like life. In that excellent play, The New Sin, "Hilary Cutts" receives a letter, which he reads when alone in his sitting-room. This occurs in Act Four, which is not contained in the published edition, but was added for American production. Not so much as an exclamation escapes him, but we know from the expression of his face, and the comfortable way in which he settles back in his chair after he has finished it and put it in his pocket, that it has contained good news. Later on, in its proper place, we learn the actual contents of the letter. Of course, it was a case where the dramatist had to put his faith in what the actor would do with the scene. But recall Alfred Sutro's remark in an earlier chapter in regard to the relationship of actor and author: the dramatist must trust the actor with work worthwhile. 
The audience is no longer directly addressed by the characters, except in the various forms of musical pieces, from grand opera to burlesque. Anything you want the audience to know must be told to some other member of the cast. 
Clayton Hamilton makes a very apt distinction in soliloquies, dividing them into constructive and reflective. The former are used by the unskillful writer to help tell the story or explain some missing factor which the author feels he cannot get " over " any other way. The reflective soliloquy, on the other hand, used carefully, has its place and is humanly and dramatically possible. In real life there might be some tense situation in which a person would not
be his entirely sane self and would be more than likely to talk his thoughts half audibly. It would be more akin to muttering than actual speech, though it might culminate in a viva voce ejaculation ; wherever your guide is real life you are fairly safe. Or a moment or so of silent thought might terminate in an audible "I'll do it" or some kindred phrase. Therefore, it cannot be said that the soliloquy is absolutely never used in modern plays. But that it is used sparingly is true; that it requires skill to write with complete naturalness is even more true ; that an unskilled actor is liable to spoil it for you even then, because of the difficulty presented in making the unnatural appear the natural, is truest of all. As a rule, the best writers avoid it altogether, unless for definite dramatic reasons. As always, the sudden, half-audible exclamation is exempt from this criticism. The reason is simple : the characters in the play should be aware only of themselves and their problems. They are supposedly unaware that their affairs are being watched. Therefore, though actually his voice and gestures are adjusted to its hearing and sight, the actor must appear utterly oblivious of his audience. A concrete example will illustrate: In Brewaterits Millions, Harrison, who has been speculating with Brewster's money, enters his office to find no one there but the stenographer. He goes rapidly to the ticker, picks up the tape, muttering the figures under his breath. What those figures are does not matter. Only the drawn face, the trembling hands of the actor tell that the quotations
are going the wrong way, and the audience is prepared for the tense exclamation, "Wiped out ! " as Harrison drops the tape and hastily leaves the office. Here is a natural, audible aside, spoken in a stage whisper, so that it is easy to imagine the stenographer does not hear. The aside, though meant by the author for the audience's information, is not so intended by the character. We are to suppose the exclamation addressed to his own stricken conscience. 
In the olden days of the drama, Harrison's scene would have been so written and played that the presence of the girl would have been completely ignored, while the actor raved over his losses in long emotional speeches, and the audience kindly agreed to believe the stenographer stricken temporarily deaf, dumb, and blind. 
Since the soliloquy and the aside, incorrectly used, are almost invariable faults of the novice, digest the comparison carefully. 
An intrusion. Of late, in certain articles, especially those written by critics who feel the influence of the Continental schools, we find a tendency to prediet the return of soliloquies to the modern stage. We can only hope it is a false alarm. The prediction has come about through certain recent revivals in which stage-asides to the audience have been used. Yet every time they were so used, they intruded, and in every case a better way of conveying the information could have been found. It is at best a clumsy makeshift, showing that the writer lacked the skill to land his point in a more natural way, or
at the time of writing his play felt no necessity for trying. To be entirely natural, in art, is the real difficulty in being artistic. And a long soliloquy, no matter how beautiful its language, is an unpardonable intrusion of "fine writing" caused perhaps by the author's vanity and his own desire to be in his play. A modern actor is not supposed to be playing before an audience at all; conscious of its presence, he yet must give the impression that he has no concern with anything outside the mimic scene he is playing. A finely-written rhetorical speech brings the character speaking it out of the illusion of his part and reminds us he is only acting. The best future of the drama does not consist in going backward. 
Speeches suited to characters. All the foregoing has reference to general directions regardless of the nature of the play or its people. It is now assumed that your characters are ready to speak for themselves. Your preliminary work on the scenario has helped you in this. You are no longer speaking ; they have become your means of expression and, as has been said, must have for you a very real existence. It is, therefore, most necessary that no speech be given to any character to which that character, were he alive, would not give voice. If certain facts must be made known to the audience, speeches concerning them must be given to the right people in the play. For example : To emphasize some matters you wish presented, you have decided that certain
opinions must be uttered by someone, to prepare the minds of your audience for those facts. We will say that these opinions are worldly-wise, sophisticated, possibly daring. You would, therefore, put the speeches into the mouth of the character most likely to hold such opinions—possibly a widow, a married woman, certainly one not too young. Also, you would have her say them, not to just anyone, but to the person most apt to be interested, or in line with your plan of development. Unless you have a deliberate intention in so doing, it would be psychologically false to have them repeated by an innocent village maiden to her bucolic swain. 
Speeches must also be written after the manner, according to the personality, of your created character. Take the previous example. If the woman who is to speak these lines necessary for your plot development is an embittered woman, you would write them seriously, with the tang of disappointed hopes. If, on the other hand, she happens to be a dashing widow—a type dear to the stage—they would be written in another tempo, gay, impudent, daring. 
From this you will see that, though these characters are your medium, they are not mere mouthpieces for your thoughts and ideas. As water takes the shape of the vessel which holds it, so these new-born beings must give " shape " or form to your thought. If they do not, send them to Kipling's Inferno of Departed Creations at once, and create new ones who can express your ideas as you wish. Your people will then be human and not puppets. 
Actions suited to characters. Not only the speeches but the actions of your people must be in harmony with their personality and characteristics. If you want someone to leave an important letter on top of the upright piano, give the act to some character whose carelessness you have established, and not to the precise old-maidenish person who would not be likely to allow an important paper out of his hands, much less place it on anything so frivolous as a piano. The exception only proves the rule. If you wish to show that our precise gentleman is for once terribly upset and excited, the act mentioned is just about the sort of thing his distraction would cause him to commit. All of which was said in another way in the chapter on the characters; it cannot be too often repeated. 
One character described by another. Do not allow your people to be described at length by other characters while the person is not present or has not yet made his first appearance. Mark, I say "at length. " The characters should speak for themselves, and remarks made about them by other characters should be only enough to arouse our interest or curiosity, and should give no sign that such remarks are for our information. His actions while on the stage, his lines, the attitude toward him of others in the cast, all express his personality to much more purpose than the old-fashioned method. You may even hurt your play if you have caused your audiences to expect something totally different from the effect produced by the actual performance. Why tell
us, for instance, of the wonderful courage and strength of a character through the mouths of others in the play, if he is never given an opportunity to display his courage, or the part is played by an actor who does not look as if he could push the dining-room table across the floor ! Such a description might do in farce, when the character was obviously not meant to live up to it; but in more serious plays all we ought to learn about a character from others should be just enough to whet our interest. 
Speeches suited to the emotion. If it is necessary to suit your speeches to your characters, it is doubly necessary to suit those speeches to the emotion. If the situation is one of great intensity, what the player calls "a good acting scene, " the speeches must be adequate. This does not mean that they must be rhetorical. You could hardly make a worse dramatic error. People in real life, under strong or violent emotion, do not pick and choose their words. 
Easy of rendition. Your phrases and sentences should be easy of rendition, so the tongue will not
. . / trip over them. "She sells sea-shells" is funny in its place, but a phrase of equal alliteration in the middle of a big emotional scene would spoil it for the greatest actor on earth. A good plan is to read every sentence in your dialogue aloud as if you yourself were speaking to someone else ; a sentence that does not read with the utmost ease must be twisted until it does. You may have to eliminate what you consider the gem of the play, but cut it out ruthlessly if it is not " talkable. "
Literary speeches. Of course, you may have a character to whom it will be in keeping to give didactic, " literary " speeches. But the actor who plays such a part will, of necessity, render those lines slowly. Pedantry in ordinary people is tiresome. A certain play had for one of its opening scenes something like this : A farmer entered, and began to search his pockets for a match, without success. Now, most of us can guess what the average farmer would say under the circumstances. This was not a bad play, and yet that unfortunate man was made to remark : "I ever need a match, and yet I ever fail to find one. "
A really fine play presented a short time ago in New York was ruined because the translator had adapted it into University English, and the poor actors struggled with words of three and four syllables through speeches which read like a treatise on literature. 
This is one reason why a play which acts well very often does not read well, and the reverse. And the test of a play is its acting quality. One has to mentally act it to get its effect, and this takes experience ; which is why, as has been said, one's nonprofessional friends are such incompetent critics of a play-manuscript. If it reads well, they think it a good play; on the contrary, from the theatrical standpoint, it may be a very bad one. 
Comedy lines. If emotional scenes can be spoiled by unemotional speeches, or speeches not quite equal to the scene, comedy is ruined by " uncomic " lines. 
The comedy relief in most plays to-day is as much a part of the story as the serious scenes. Therefore, it must never be forced. I remember reading a scene in which the situation was really funny. The author was aware of the situation, since he had purposely created it, yet the characters had to speak some of the saddest lines I ever read. It would have been better to let the episode speak for itself than to snow it under with talk. 
To be flippant or facetious in dialogue one must also be snappy. A speech of this nature, too long drawn out, will fail of its effect. It will be much like the story whose comic features a bad raconteur insists on repeating. Incidentally, facetiousness in dialogue is not always funny; it is so easy for it to become clownish or tiresome. 
Long speeches. Try not to have your speeches too long. A speech which would not seem long in a story is really so in a play, because it must be rendered aloud, and that method takes longer. Break it up in some way—by action, by interruptions, or by any natural means. It is a rare thing in real life for a person to talk 3traight ahead for five minutes or more without some movement, or expression, or remark on the part of the other person or persons. Unless of an unusual quality, long speeches have much the effect of the missionary sermon of which Mark Twain told. At the beginning he was willing to give several hundred dollars—but when the missionary finally finished his long-dragged-out address, his tired listener stole two pennies from the plate. 
The long speech puts you very much at the mercy of mediocrity in acting. If used, its content should be so dramatic in interest as to make it "actorproof. " To go to real life for examples : I have known a group of ordinarily restless people listen in utter silence to a soldier of the Spanish-American War describing the march through Bloody Bend, and all that he personally saw of the campaign in Cuba. His telling of the story was simple, in many instances almost emotionless. He could have told the same story in bad English—it would not have mattered. He was an eye-witness, the war was just over, his subject was of thrilling interest to his auditors. Yet, even here, an occasional exclamation of horror or amazement, a quickly-drawn breath, perhaps a hasty question, were frequent interruptions. Again, another group of the same mixed variety was held with absorbed attention listening to a woman's description of the experiences of a survivor of the wrecked Titanic, a relative of her own. These were subjects on which it would have been well-nigh impossible to be uninteresting. 
But how many of us have known the experience of hearing some trivial episode described by two different people? One has made us shriek with laughter, because his quick wit had seen all the humor of the situation and his gift of telling a good story has made an ordinary affair exciting. The other does not know how to tell an amusing tale, and we are bored—though the subject is the same. 
Carry these experiences directly to your play
dialogue. If your long speech has a dramatic reason for existence, use it and it will "get over. " If it is trivial or badly written, a good actor may conceal the fact for you ; a bad one will certainly "show you up. "
Suppose you have created a chatterbox for special reasons. Long speeches to show this fact would not only be exceedingly tiresome, but really unnecessary. The constant talking of the character is rather indicated than acted out. He or she enters as if just finishing a long speech, or exits, in the midst of
. J one supposed to continue after the exit—talks rapidly and with the effect being given that there is still more to come; but, if the playwright knows his business, the audience is not inflicted as are the friends of the talker. 
IDIOSYNCRASIES OF THE DIALOGUE:
EMPHASIS
UNWIELDY WORDS-EXCLAMATIONS-CONSISTENCYTRANSITIONSLANGUAGESLANGPUNSYULGARITY-EMPHASIS-" PLANTING'S
Unwieldy words. I have spoken of the use of " untalkable " sentences ; avoid also unwieldy words. The tongue is apt to trip on them, especially if they find place in speeches intended for rapid delivery. Use the shorter, simpler words wherever your characters permit you to do so. Give your people phrases and sentences made up of every-day expressions. 
Exclamations. It will perhaps appear curious to many that I should feel impelled to take space just here to say a few words about the use of exclamations. These are so free and spontaneous with people generally that instruction on the matter would appear superfluous. Yet I have been forced frequently to correct the misuse of exclamations—ejaculations as unsuited to the emotion as inadequate speeches for intense scenes. For instance: In a very good little one-act play, a man exclaims : " My ! The very air seems filled with gloom and forebodings ! " The average man, under similar circumstances, op-
pressed with fears and a guilty conscience, would be more apt to exclaim, "God! What a night ! " or some equally strong yet simple exclamation. But the use of the trivial " My ! " is farcical under such conditions. 
Also, we have the unusual, the individual exclamation. When the play is written around some historical character who had an idiosyncrasy in the shape of a particular exclamation or oath, the author makes use of it. Who ever read a play or story of Henry of Navarre without meeting frequently his famous "Ventre Saint Gris ! "? Or, in a modern play, an author may intentionally give a character some such peculiarity ; the effect produced is usually that of comedy. But in dealing with characters of your own creation in scenes of serious or tragic intent, avoid the unusual or odd exclamation. Such expressions are used to produce an effect, to show some kind of emotion—that is all. There is no necessity for attracting attention to the exclamation itself. One such ejaculation was uttered in the midst of a very strong scene in a play read a little while ago, and so different was it from the common expressions of people in the grip of such feelings it positively interrupted the action. Thus, instead of being the exclamation wrung from a man under strong emotion, as the author intended, it failed of its purpose because of too much originality. 
Lines that impede. Always your story must be a-marching. If it impedes the action, clever talk is not clever. Cut out your most cherished lines, if
they do not belong. Treasure them in a book if you like ; leave them out of the play. What does belong will be all the stronger for its appropriateness. 
Incidents or particulars necessary to the development of the story must not be related by one character to another in the play who would naturally know as much as the narrator of those matters. It spoils the illusion. If your audience must know of them, they may be told in a more natural manner; the person addressed must be someone supposedly ignorant of them. Sometimes, in a scene in which two people are recalling facts by way of reminiscence—a natural method—it might be permissible, though not to any great extent. In any case, there must be reasons why the narrator chooses his particular auditor. This emphasizes a previous remark about addressing speeches to the proper people. I frequently repeat myself to keep certain rules always in your mind. Look upon such repetitions not as accidental, but as a matter of emphasis. 
Consistency. In your dialogue, which is by way of being your expression of your character-drawing, be consistent. To present even the most important ideas, do not allow your people to suddenly change their individuality and general viewpoint, and express opinions utterly at variance with anything their previous acts and utterance would have led us to expect. If you have purposely created a character given to sudden and inexplicable mental gymnastics, well and good. In such a case, the audience understands your intention. Otherwise, the more intelligent will simply think you have forgotten your own people ; the others will be bewildered by your complete change of base. 
Transitions. Make your transitions with some semblance of the natural order of things. If you are writing a quarrel scene, you can work it up a trifle more rapidly than in real life ; but, unless you have previously presented one of the participants as quick of temper, give them time and cause for anger and the quarrel. Take them by carefully arranged transitions of mood, step by step, to the climax. It is wrong to keep them level on one step and then drop them with a thud to the bottom of the flight so suddenly and unexpectedly as to force on your audience a kaleidoscopic change of impressions. The exceptions will suggest themselves easily : the caddish insult with the quick blow in response, and similar situations. But in many a novice's play, where it is designed to have two characters quarrel, the fight is what grips the mind of the author. The causes and development seem to him unnecessary. It is like turning the page on one set of people to find another group on the other side. You may apply this example of a quarrel-scene to any other big emotional climax to which you have led your characters too suddenly. 
So much for the manner and method of the dialogue. Something must be said as to the form. 
Language. Language has not the rhetorical importance in the acted drama that it has in the purely
literary or poetic play. But it has a very live importance in the matter of its relation to your contemplated effect. By its use you intend to express your characters, the atmosphere in which they move, and the plot which they are developing. Therefore, the language used by each character should be only such as would be natural to him. By its means we receive an impression of his personality, whether he is clever or foolish, ignorant or educated, a boor or a gentleman. He cannot appear as an uncouth country yokel and converse in Addisonian English. Neither can he be a recently landed Scandinavian peasant and make his remarks in the correct terms of upper Fifth Avenue. He cannot be an impassioned boy and use the coolly deliberate phrases of a lecturer. Thus the language of your dialogue expresses the type of people and their surroundings, aiding materially, by this means alone, in establishing your exposition of plot. In this matter of the form of the language, consistency and naturalness are paramount. Many writers, especially those just beginning, have a dread of writing as they would talk. In fiction this is a fault, but it is one which in many instances passes us by in the rush of the story. In playwriting, it is a calamity. 
In dealing with plays laid in other times and places than the now and here, this consistency must be carried to the language of your characters so that they do not offend our knowledge of those times and places. The New Yorker of two hundred years
ago did not talk as does the Gothamite of to-day. Here again your language assists in the creation of your intended effect. Try to use the language of the particular period as it has come down to us. Any attempt to be distinctly modern and colloquial in a play laid, for instance, in the London of Elizabeth is an anachronism, permissible only in broad burlesque. This very modernism on such a subject in itself creates the atmosphere of burlesque, and again the language used has served its purpose. For instance, a Biblical play written on a serious subject by a young amateur offended grossly in this respect, by the use of absolutely local slang and distinctly modern and new expressions. These had crept in in conjunction with attempts at the dignity of the beautiful phrases of the Bible narrative. Charles Rann Kennedy succeeded where an amateur failed. In The Terrible Meek he has the soldiers at the foot of the Cross speak with the harsh and homely language of the man-in-the-ranks of to-day. But there is no loss of dignity, because it is done intentionally to bring a great subject into the hearts of the present generation ; while the language is modern, it is not trivial. Also, as the entire scene is played in the dark, the contrast between the uniforms of Roman soldiers and the language of Tommy Atkins is not forced on us. The whole effect is intentionally mysterious. 
The writer should follow the language of a particular period closely enough to create atmosphere and character, without copying it so abjectly as
to be unintelligible to modern ears. It is a point where a nice balance is necessary. 
Slang. We have spoken of slang. Judiciously used, when put into the mouths of the proper people, it has value in creating the effect of everydayness. But do not try to create a slangy character if you are comparatively unfamiliar with the slang of the day. It is a curious fact that when attempted under such circumstances, the author will go to lengths that would make George Ade sit up. This is especially true if the slangy character is a woman. Since all kinds of slang look alike to him, the writer, knowing little of how much and what kind of slang a nice woman can use and still be nice, will give her speeches of which a Billingsgate fish-wife might be ashamed. It is truly surprising how often this mistake occurs. It moves me to repeat my advice : do not write of things outside your experience and comprehension. 
Beware of puns ! I mean, your puns. If you have created a character whose sin is punning, make him, for that reason, the butt of the other characters. Only then will he be funny. In one play which never saw the footlights, the greater part of the comedy depended entirely on puns : good puns, bad puns, silly puns—and nothing else !
Vulgarity. A question came to me not long since as to how to express a big and serious situation without being risqué or vulgar. It brings us back to the effect you wish to produce. Such a matter can only lie in the mental outlook of the writer. 
When one is handling a big or bold subject it must be handled bravely and boldly. If there is no nastiness latent in the situation or in the mind of the writer, if his intention is to treat the matter seriously, it will be difficult for him to be vulgar. Vulgarity and the risqué in themselves imply nastiness. You remember the statuette in Hichens' novel, The Woman with the Fan? Without the fan, it was simply a classic little figure of a nude woman ; with the fan, it became a naked woman, all the classic suggestion gone. It is so in your dialogue. The subject in both is apparently the same—the woman. The effect depends on your deliberate intention. 
The important scene. Following a carefully planned scenario, it is possible to write the scenes of the play just in the order they occur. But many dramatists have found it advisable to write the, to them, most important scene or scenes first. For those who can do it, it has this advantage : after its completion it is possible to go back over the scenario, revising it in many places to help the building toward this scene. Even if you write your scenes in order, you will go back again and again to " plant " the lines or situations necessary. By " planting " a line or situation, we mean any preliminary emphasis on information or characterization. 
Emphasis. It is, therefore, necessary for the dramatist to emphasize or plant facts necessary to the development of the plot. There are many ways of doing this. It is not enough to have some slight allusion made to such a matter several scenes or even
acts before the information is required, else it is lost and forgotten. "Most dramatists, " says Clayton Hamilton, "in the preliminary exposition that must always start a play, contrive to state every important fact at least three times : first, for the attentive; second, for the intelligent; and third, for the large mass that may have missed the first two statements. "
Planting a situation. Without too apparent insistence, important matters must be driven home; the way must be prepared for the denouement. It may be managed by speeches here and there, or by stage business, or movements. For example, in Augustus Thomas' The Witching Hour, an absolutely unpremeditated murder is committed by a boy, in the home of a friend, the uncle and guardian of the girl he loves. The implement of attack is a large and very heavy paper-cutter. To emphasize the lack of premeditation, or deliberate intention to kill, Thomas has various members of the cast pick up that paper cutter, play with it, lay it down—until the audience becomes acquainted with its appearance and weight, also with the fact that it is an ordinary feature of the room's furnishings. Then, when the boy picks it up and blindly attacks his tormentor, the audience realizes without any further explanation the suddenness of his rage and the instinctive seizing of the first thing under his hand. 
A good and simple example of how a situation may be planted can be drawn from an episode in Within the Law. The third act is laid in the millionaire's
library. A very dramatic surprise is caused by a sudden flash of light through an open window of a darkened room, which reveals a dead man on the floor. To have no preparation for this flash would leave the mind of the spectator divided between interest in the scene and the query as to what had caused the sudden light. The interest must not be divided ; to guard against it and satisfy the audience with an explanation, a scene is prepared earlier in the act. Two men are talking, the host and a visitor. Suddenly the light flashes through the window. "What was that?" asks the visitor. "That's the searchlight from the Metropolitan Tower ; it flashes around here every fifteen minutes. It won't trouble you again. " And he draws the curtains. The situation is "planted. " No need for us to see the flash every fifteen minutes. We can even forget all about the light. But when again we see it at the crucial moment, we share in the dramatic shock of the situation ; the interest is entirely on the plot, and not on the light. 
Following is an example on the negative side from an unproduced play-manuscript, where emphasis is not laid on the exposition. The play is on occult lines, and in the last act the hero suddenly sees a picture in a crystal which tells him of a tragedy which touches him nearly, occurring some distance away. Now, " crystal-gazing " is not an everyday affair; many people know nothing about it. Yet the only previous reference to it was in the first act, when one character presented the crystal in its
ivory setting to the hero's sister, with a few comments and an effort on the part of the hero to "see. " There were many places where his increasing ability in this line could have been shown, or even a few lively discussions on crystal-gazing between a skeptic and himself—anything of dramatic interest to prepare the audience for an understanding of his horror at the final image.
Category:dialog