The beauty of Big Time – and a dialogue request
I was going to talk dialogue this week, only then I noticed the date. The last Friday of August, a tipping point for the year. The last golden breath of summer. The last week of vacation, before:
- Return to school
- Blackberry collecting
- Apple scrumping
- Hello again to socks
- Hedges gather little jewels of purple and red (haws, sloes, damsons, crabapples, all of which are abundant near me)
- Tints of yellow in the leaves
- The long poles of cow parsley have dried out
I live rurally in the fine county of Oxford and – if you have the misfortune to live anywhere else at all – my experience of late summer and early autumn will be different from yours. So, I don’t know, if you live in Australia, you probably associate this season with even more massive spiders than usual, yellow dust storms that last a month, the croc vs kangaroo Olympics, and the chatter of wallabies high up in the eucalyptuses. (Disclosure: I have never been to Australia, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got the country nailed.)
Now we’re talking about time this week, but first a little announcement:
Dialogue
We’ll talk about dialogue next week, and we’ll do that via your own submissions.
Give me some chunks of dialogue to examine next week. Here are the rules:
- Drop your offerings into the comments below this post.
- Max 300 words per submission, please.
- One submission per person.
- Make sure you give us a line or two of explanation first off, so we can understand the context of your scene.
- Don’t email me anything. If it ain’t on Townhouse, I ain’t looking at it.
- If you pop anything in the comments below, I’m gonna assume you’re OK me RIPPING YOUR WORK APART MERCILESSLY IN PUBLIC. If you’re not, then keep your tin hat on and your head below that sandbag parapet.
- Specifically, your work and my comments on it may appear in an email to a lot of people, here on Townhouse and potentially one day in a book. If you don’t want that happen, then please see above in relation to tin hats and parapets.
I only pick work that I basically like, though, so if I pick your work, you’re doing OK.
Okiedoke …
Now back to time:
Movies struggle with Big Time. They can do day to day stuff easily. We see a character going to bed. We see them eating a croissant and drinking coffee. The audience easily conjectures that this is the morning after. Boof.
But Big Time? For movies, that’s hard. The old Hitchcock era movies used to handle those things by pages flipping off a wall calendar, shots of the changing seasons. (Wind! The universal signal of autumn. Snow! The universal signal of winter. And so on.)
Now all that’s a bit crass, a bit heavy. These days, movie makers attempt something slicker, even if it’s just a caption at the bottom of the screen or a speeded-up, CGI of the wind-snow-crocuses model of passing time.
You, a novelist, don’t have the same problem. If you want to tell the reader it was two years later, you can just say “Two years passed.” That’s simple, clean narration. It doesn’t have that CGI, calendar flying clunkiness. No one will resent your simple captioning.
But time offers so much more. It’s not a problem to be dealt with, but a dimension to be embraced. Think of it like place, a silent character, a huge extra richness in your broth.
Here are some examples of how you can use it – but there are a million more. Think of these examples as mere appetite prompters.
Cold Time
Changes in weather is a technique so obvious, it could come close to a flipping calendar in terms of crassness. But it really doesn’t have to be like that. The novel of mine that made most use of the weather was Love Story, with Murders. There, I carefully seeded the earlier chunks of the book with hints of chill and forecasts of something much colder on the way.
Then, before the cold had actually arrived, my character was fussing around with giant red snow shovels and the like, but in a context where those things felt odd and out of place.
Then – the snow arrived. Canadian levels of snow and cold in a country that doesn’t normally get much of either. The snow wrought huge changes in the landscape, but also in Fiona’s life.
Alone in a remote cottage with inadequate provisions, she is forced to adapt her diet:
Make tea. There’s nothing herbal here, so I make do with a regular tea-bag. No milk either, so just brew a pint of hot, black tea in a huge pottery mug. Contrary to my usual habit, I add sugar, to take away the taste of the metallic mountain water, the strongly tannined tea. It tastes like sweetened bog-water, but is nevertheless somehow welcome. A comfort against the cold.
That’s not strictly about either weather or time, and yet it is both. By compelling us to register change, we notice both the cold and the time. And those changes register not just in feelings-of-being-chilly and making-of-log-fires, but also in unexpected ways – earthenware cups and sweet, tannined tea. Time and the cold become multidimensional: they disrupt habits, force giant earthenware cups into our hands, change the taste of tea.
And then, of course, time and the story proceed.
Fiona almost dies in the cold. And then the snow melts, and she encounters her normal landscape, post-snow with its dirty urban water and gritted streets.
Because the changes of weather were viscerally felt by the character herself, the timescape in the book also registered acutely. And the felt passage of time is so close to the actual experience of story, the reader ends up having a deeper experience than they otherwise would. It’s kind of magical, but it definitely happens.
Big Time
My Lieutenant’s Lover began a love story in St Petersburg in 1917 – separated the characters for a quarter of a century – then brought them together again in post-War Berlin.
Any love story needs to achieve the ache of longing, and there are probably more subtle techniques than the one I used. But dropping two world wars, one revolution, plenty of gulag, and a thousand miles of separation between the two characters certainly did the trick. A character only had to glance back over that past – a sentence, two sentences – for the reader to feel the scale of the loss and the longing.
And all those little markers of age – an attractive seventeen-year-old girl turning into a middle-aged Red Army sergeant – made that weight of time present on every page
Also, my choice of time and place meant that the physical world always reflected the passage of time. The Berlin of my love story was a place of rubble. The factory that had once belonged to my male protagonist was so completely bombed out that virtually nothing remained. A youth using its slim remaining shelter christened it the Nichtsfabrik, the Nothing Factory.
That book with its huge, tragic timescape, just felt big to a reader. It wasn’t (by my standards) massively long, but the love story took on an epic quality simply by virtue of the passing years – and the weight with which the readers felt those years.
Precise Time
One of my books, some time back, was struggling in its near-to-final draft. Everything that needed to be there was there. The story had no fundamental problems, but it didn’t yet have the iron hardness of something ready to print.
A couple of things fixed that book. One was just hard editing. Literally, an edit that looked for and deleted spare words, eliminated unwanted sentences. My character’s voice is always taut, even if my writing’s only at 95%. But that extra 5% brought that tautness to a line of constant tension. A glittering brightness.
But the other thing was: nailing the timeline. Figuring out if the gap between Event A and Event B was four days or five days and being explicit about it. The surprising thing about correcting that timeline was that I’d unconsciously been avoiding proper description, because I knew I was blurry about time. So if my character was out and about in central Cardiff, and I didn’t know what day of the week it was, I’d pull back from really describing the streets. A Wednesday quietness? Or a Saturday bustle? The hubbub of a rugby match at the Millennium Stadium? Or pensioners enjoying a discounted Thursday morning haircut?
The precision of timing didn’t just help my readers sort timings through in their heads. More important, it helped me. That last twist of the lens helped achieve that final, defining focus.
That book turned out a good ’un in the end.
***
That’s it from me. The blackberries are early this year, but not sweet. I think we need a day or two of sunshine. Which, oh my merry non-British friends, is something you can completely and utterly rely on in the fine county of Oxford.
Don’t forget I want to see your dialogue snippets. Chuck em below. Follow them thar rules above.
I am SUPER new to this website, so I hope this is right!
The following dialogue is the opening to my book. It follows a couple having a first date, with Grace, one of the two main characters, undoubtedly the most dominant voice at the table:
Grace smirked. ‘I think you can do better than that.’
‘How do you mean?’
Her eyes darted across his face, reading him in, playing. ‘Ask me something more interesting. Ask me something you really want to ask.’
Oh, he liked her. He liked her a lot. ‘You telling me we’re not playing by the rules?’
A delicate yet un-innocent giggle. ‘Some rules apply. Not all.’
Thomas appeared confused in all the right ways. I’d seen him with many girls over the years – some who’d made enough of an impression to warrant a second date, most who hadn’t – but this here was a woman. A woman, I hasten to add, who clearly had much to offer and, perhaps most importantly, wasn’t prepared to play all her cards at once. Shadows cast themselves across her elegant light-brown skin, an air of mystery oozing from her like a long unopened jewelry box. Her hair, darkest black, curly and captivatingly unkempt, fell just above the shoulders, framing her bewitchingly. Thomas had noticed it, too – all of it – and I could tell, even from where I was sitting, that his mind was racing.
He took a sip of wine – rich, indulgent. This was all a game… and it was his turn. ‘All right,’ he said, leaning back into a half-stretch, ‘I take it you ain’t gonna tell me which rules?’
‘Find out.’
A mighty quick turnaround. Well-played indeed. Leaning forward again in his chair, staring back into those mischievous eyes, he said: ‘Why tonight?’
Grace knew exactly what he meant. I could tell. He could tell.
Thomas continued: ‘It’s – shall we say – an unusual way to start a new year.’
‘I like unusual, don’t you?’
From The Last Enforcer: in a post-apocalyptic future, Xavier works as an enforcer in the Inner City. Tyrell is his handler. At their last meeting, Tyrell told him to leave his dog at the door next time.
Late Friday afternoon Xavier walked up the curved staircase to Tyrell’s library, Shadow padding at his heels. Though stone cold sober, he felt intoxicated: reckless and out of control. He didn’t care. Tyrell glanced up from his book, his eyes going from man to dog and back again.
“Yes?” His voice was cold.
Xavier sat back in the buttoned leather library chair, crossed an ankle over his knee and met Tyrell’s gaze. “The key. It’s a waste of time looking for it. I’ll never find it.”
“I want it found.”
“Why? It’s of no use.”
“That’s for me to decide.”
“I’ve looked in all the likely places.”
“Then look in the unlikely ones.”
“You expect me to search the Outer City like it’s an apartment? That would take decades. If it’s that important, then get the other enforcers to work on it too. With six of us, we might just find it before we die of old age.”
“Finding the key is your task, not theirs. They have their own work to do. Which they are currently getting on with, instead of wasting my time.”
Xavier looked at his metrics. Overall 55%. While he was looking it clicked to 54%. He almost laughed. Shadow didn’t have metrics, lucky dog. He extended a hand and stroked the dog’s ears, wasting Tyrell’s time.
Tyrell gazed stonily at him. At last he said, “I’ll give you a week to find that key. No more excuses. Fail and there will be consequences.”
“Yeah, right.”
They seemed to have covered everything. Xavier got up and left. Shadow followed.
Towards the start of a thriller set in Edinburgh. Margot and Anna have just viewed a flat which Margot – the main protagonist – wants to buy to use as a holiday let, using compensation from an accident. Anna thinks her friend should instead stay in teaching and worries about Margot’s current state of mind. Thinks she is acting recklessly and obsesses over the accident. She does want the best for her friend but is slightly controlling and of a more middle class background. Margot is prickly but vulnerable, especially since the accident.Close, third person narrative focused on Margot.
Anna was talking, asking her something.
‘Sorry?’
‘To put it into this. Is it sensible, I was asking. I understand how you’re feeling about school; just want you to be sure.’
‘Fewer worries, something I can do until I’m sixty eight or whatever. You talk about steeliness. Maybe I used to have it. Now, sometimes, I don’t quite know who I am. Maybe I need something new so I can find out. I’ve gone all through the money side. It’ll work.’
She hadn’t realised that was what had happened until she said it. In the last three years she’d been crumbling, like badly mixed concrete; shame and guilt freezing and expanding, causing her to partly disintegrate.
‘Less security, no pension. Seems to me the city’s moving against tourists.’ Anna paused, scrutinising Margot. ’Won’t it give you too much time to think? Just, you know, sometimes you seem to be letting things get to you a bit.’
‘Letting things get to me, Anna, really?’
Margot took a last gulp of wine and sat back. The taste was lost, only the tannin got though to her. Anna was bang out of order. She’d felt that all lunchtime. It was Anna, not her. Wasn’t it? Anna was sitting back in her chair, too, looking miserable. She’d make friends again.
‘Anyway, I might not get the flat. They’re all going fast. But that view, eh? And the Grassmarket. Can’t go wrong with a location like that. C’mon. Anything’s got to be easier than Swanston High.’
I’m ‘sweet’ sixteen and an orphan. I meet with the careers advisor to seek vocational guidance. Part of a scene from my memoir.
The middle-aged man who would play a part in guiding which route life would take me, pointed me into a chair on the other side of his desk. We’d exchanged perfunctory greetings in the seen-better-days surroundings of the vocational centre, and he got down to business.
‘Finished your O levels, then?’
‘Yep.’
‘How many?’
‘Nine.’
‘How’d you do?’
‘Alright, especially history.’
‘Specialist topic?’
‘War.’
‘Army signing-up centre’s in Woking.’
‘I’m a thinker, not a fighter.’
‘And what interests you – apart from historical war?’
‘Making money.’
‘How?’
‘That’s what I’m here to find out.’
‘And I’m here to help.’
‘How?’
‘Brochures.’
‘Brochures?’
‘Brochures.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘Johnny, you took nine O levels. You think you did well. Why no college?’
Fuck. This is the ‘my mum’s dead part’. And now the ‘my dad’s dead part’ too.
I told him.
He looked sad.
Working with my hands was not part of my destiny. I’m shit at making stuff, which left one option, my view being black and white at the time. ‘What have you got in an office?’ I asked.
The careers officer browsed a drawer, pulled out a handful of brochures and pushed them across the desk.
‘These companies are worth considering. Have a look through and see what you think. They’re looking for brain not brawn,’ he eyed my skinny arms. ‘You can apply directly; the details are in the pack. I’m very sorry about your mum and dad. Let me know if you need anything else.’
Jake has been in a motorbike accident which left him paraplegic. He is trying to recover emotionally.
‘Trouble is, Mike, despite everything they taught me in the hospital, I still have doubts about my ability to father a child. I feel like I’ve been cut down in my prime.’
‘But I thought you told me you could still get an erection.’
‘Well, yes. And I can still enjoy sex to some extent. But it’s not the same when you haven’t got a clue what’s going on between your legs and you have to make it up in your head.’
‘But have you ever managed to . . .’ Mike waved his hand around in little circles, ‘you know . . .’
‘You mean ejaculate? Your guess is as good as mine. A sex partner could tell me anything and I’d have to believe them.’
‘Can’t you just look?’
‘Oh, sure. Stay there, love, while I find my doctor’s spatula and a pen-torch.’
Mike didn’t laugh. He obviously knew this was no joke.
‘I don’t know,’ Jake continued, ‘I guess I’m going to have to put myself to the test, see if I’ve still got what it takes. Otherwise it’s celibacy. No happy families for me.’
‘Come off it, mate. You don’t have to become a monk in a Tibetan monastery. One day, the right one will turn up out of the blue and . . .’
‘Mike? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Worse than that. I’ve just seen the wrong one. Walking into the bar.’
‘Who?’ Jake asked.
‘Maria.’
‘Oh, shit. I’ve told Ev I got rid of her.’
‘Then I suggest now’s a good time to get Scotty to beam you up. She’s coming over and she’s plastered by the look of it.’
My sixteen-year-old protag, Luke, is struggling with his gender identity. This is him talking to a friend at a party:
I hide in the kitchen. That’s where all the cool kids hang out. Obviously, that’s why I’m the only person there.
That’s where Dean corners me. I think he’s a bit drunk. ‘Look, Luke, whatever’s going on with you – you’ve got to get it together.’
‘You mean the panic attacks?’
‘No, you can’t help those. It’s all the rest of it … You’ve been changing, man. You’ve gone all soft. Alright, like, you’re gay or whatever, but you can’t show it. You’re, you’re – pretty, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Why should pretty be an insult, Dean? Why should I have to feel scared of being pretty, or soft?’
‘Luke, this is not cool. We’ve been mates a long time, so I hang with you and your geeky friends even though you’re not all that. But you’re going too far. I’m not ok with you being this freaking weird.’
‘You’re not ok with it? What about me? You think I like being a total mess?’
‘So, just stop being so…’ He kicks the dustbin. It sounds like our friendship breaking.
Yeah, that’s it. Stop being me. ‘You think I haven’t tried?’
‘How hard can it be to just be normal?’
‘Normal like you? You used to get in a fight in the playground every week when we were at primary school – is that normal? Boys being boys. Who made up these rules?’
I only notice I’m crying when a tear splashes onto my hand. All those rules are stacked up behind Dean’s eyes like artillery. He doesn’t even need to speak for me to feel the bullet. Boys don’t cry. Yeah, well, I’m not much of a boy, am I? Why can’t everyone just be ok with that? Why can’t I?
Triangle of Time: Context: Stefan (19) is reliving the same life over and over again and must convince PJ (19) of that fact in order to gain his support and help in solving the mystery of his own death – which resets time 100 years. PJ has just read a note Stefan showed him that accurately describes the conversation they just had in the coffee shop with the waitress.
A quizzical expression appeared on his face as he refolded the letter and placed it back in the envelope. ‘That was quite accurate, up to half-way.’
‘We’ll discuss that shortly. You know the game Paper, Scissors, Rock?’
PJ nodded. ‘An open hand is paper, two extended fingers are scissors, a fist is a rock. Scissors cuts paper and wins, paper wraps rock and wins, rock smashes scissors and wins. Why?’
Stefan held out his right hand. PJ mirrored his action.
‘On the count of three,’ Stefan said.
Their eyes were locked together. From afar it would have appeared as if the pair were about to fight, such was the intensity in their faces.
Stefan counted slowly, his half open hand rising and falling in time with the count. PJ followed like a shadow. ‘One… Two… Three.’
Stefan didn’t need to look. He knew they both selected scissors.
‘Again,’ he said. ‘One… Two… Three.’ This time both Rock.
‘One… Two… Three.’ Scissors again.
‘One… Two… Three.’ Scissors for a third time.
Two more attempts and both times PJ and Stefan selected Scissors.
PJ was looking extremely uncomfortable by now.
‘Last one PJ. One… Two… Three.’ This time they both chose paper.
Stefan pushed his notepad and pen towards PJ. ‘Pick a number, write it down.’
‘Any number?’
‘Any number you like.’
PJ let a subtle smile settle on his face and scribbled on the paper, his hand shielding it from Stefan.
‘The 17th prime number is boring. Try again.’
PJ’s eyes bulged in shock. His eyes narrowed. He bent to the paper again.
‘Zero is not technically a number PJ.’
PJ didn’t speak. He picked up the knife and sliced his scone in half as he always did and slopped jam and whipped cream across the surface before taking a large bite.
The protagonist is an English engineer working in Liberia. he has found a bag of cannabis in the cab of a million dollar truck that runs on rail tracks as well as on the road. He confronts the Liberian driver…
“Hi man, you always drive the Brandt truck?”
“Yeah sir”
“Anybody else drive it?”
“No sir. We had special training for this vehicle. I drive this one. My friend drives the other truck.”
“So it’s your weed I found under the seat.”
“No sir, not my grass. Somebody put it there.”
“I don’t believe you my friend. Come now, let’s speak truth to each other.”
He hangs his head and looks sheepish. It’s time for a small sermon.
“You have an important job, yes? Driving that truck on the rails. Apart from the fact that if you get caught you would lose your job, if you lost control you could kill yourself and other people. You know there’s sometimes hand carts on the track. What if you were weesie (stoned or drunk) and couldn’t stop in time? How would you feel if you killed one of those hand cart guys?”
He is looking worried now. Time to ease up.
“OK my friend, I won’t go to the bossman this time. Enjoy your weed at the end of the day. But if I hear that you been driving weesie, the bossman will hear it.
“Yes sir, sorry sir, you got a white heart.”
I take his response as a comment on the purity of my actions rather than any racial connotation and we part as friends.
The main character, Cate, is almost 30 and has decided that it’s time to be more responsible. She has no savings, despite a great job and not too much spending on rent or going out all the time. This is part of her first meeting with a financial advisor.
He pulled up the Canadian Tire website and pointed out two coffee makers. One brewed coffee, one had all the bells and whistles and ground the beans, made cappuccinos and americanos and other frothy things. It was $800.
“That’s crazy. I can’t afford that,” I said.
He pulled up a calculator. “Your $3 latte—” his eyes flicked to mine. I made a “higher” motion with my thumb. I tend to get a large. “We’ll stick with a small for our purposes,” he continued. “Add in two new travel mugs, a bag of beans every month, and some fancy syrup—”
“And whipping cream,” I added helpfully. Another reason that I work out a lot.
“…and whipping cream, and a dusting of cinnamon and chocolate shavings.” He was obviously the sort of man that took his coffee black and looked down on the rest of us. “And you will still have paid the whole thing off in less than a year.”
“So you’re telling me to buy it?” I asked.
“I’m telling you that you are spending more than $1000 a year on coffee. If you’re getting a large—”
“Grande,” I corrected him.
He looked pained. “If you’re getting a large cappuccino every day, you are spending upwards of $1500.”
Karen, this is interesting. As Harry analysed, the dialogue itself here is strong, with reams of subtext. But…
For me, there is a separate element you have conveyed which works against the stroy. You told us that Cate has decided it’s time to be responsible. And in this snippet, you delve deep into ehr character. The problem, as I see it, is that in the deep-dive, you paint a picture of a shallow character – a shallow protagonist. Indeed, one who revels in the depth of her own veneer.
Why do I say this? It’s primarily in the large.
Start with this bit: “Your $3 latte—” his eyes flicked to mine. I made a “higher” motion with my thumb. I tend to get a large. Which in itself is perfectly fine. However, a moment later, you throw in this: [“]If you’re getting a large—” / “Grande,” I corrected him.
This is what alerted me to the issue. Cate tells us she tends to go large, then corrects a large to grande.
The big issue there isn’t that Cate contradicts herself, but the pride she exudes in showing us how shallow she is.
Likewise, when she offers “And whipping cream,” There is no shame, no remorse at how image-obsessed she is.
Is that the personality you are trying to put across? Are we supposed to see Cate as shallow and conceited? Are we supposed to find her unlikable?
Now, as I said in reply to Harry, what we read into an author’s work is entirely subjective, contextual. So maybe others won’t see what I did in your description. But it is there, in case you want to counter it by giving her a touch of self-respect.
Charlotte is about to move to London to live with fiancé Sam when her father dies suddenly of a heart attack. Grief-stricken, she stays home for a year to care for her mother who has MS, and her disabled grandmother Evie. Charlotte sees a bereavement counsellor, starts to play the piano again and enjoys a flirtation with a charismatic French pianist. But Sam is still Mr Safe, and one evening over an Indian take-away in his London flat Charlotte gets pissed and agrees to set a date for their wedding. At four o’clock the next morning her phone rings – Evie is very seriously ill and has been rushed to hospital. Sam drives Charlotte to see her.
On they sped. Hatfield, Welwyn Garden City. Knebworth. The landmarks of Charlotte’s childhood. Sam drove faster and faster, the speedometer crept up to 90. She hoped he wouldn’t get caught by a speed camera. he already had six points on his license. Poor Sam. As if she hadn’t put him through enough.
By the time they reached the Stevenage turning the silence between them had become unbearable.
‘I know what you’re thinking. It’s happened again’, she said.
‘Yes.’
Grim-faced, Sam swung out to overtake a lorry.
‘That is exactly what I’m thinking. I know you’re only doing what you feel you have to do. But yes. Since you mention it, it’s happened again.’
He pulled back into the middle lane.
‘And just as we’d set a date, too.’ Sam’s voice was terse, angry. ‘You do remember, I hope?’
‘Oh Sam of course I remember.’
Was she so awful – did he really think she’d been so pissed – that she would forget?
‘May 8th. We are getting married.’
Sam slowed the car and moved into the left hand lane. Then he reached out a hand and stroked Charlotte’s leg.
‘Promise?’
Then just as she was about to reply that of course, they would be getting married on May 8th come what may, the van in the middle lane swerved in front of them. Sam put his hand quickly back on the steering wheel and braked abruptly.
‘Bloody Hell.’
He honked the horn as the van disappeared round the corner.
‘Just as well there wasn’t anyone behind us – there’d have been another disaster.’
They lapsed into silence again until they arrived at the hospital.