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.
This from a creative non-fiction book about being a carer. I’m trying desperately to get through the busiest day of carework I’ve ever had, during the worst day’s weather of the year, on a minimum wage and having had no sleep the previous night.
To be honest, I was looking forward to Pete’s usual refusal to get up. But, today of all days, Pete was a changed man. He wanted get out of bed and have a shower and wear his support stockings and eat and take his meds. It was unprecedented.
“Jesus, that’s everything we’re s’posed to do. What’s got into you?”
“Brenda’s coming over. What you been up to?”
“Nothing.”
“It doesnae look like nothing to me. You look fucked.”
“Charming. What do you want for breakfast?”
“Eggs.”
“There’s no eggs.”
“Get eggs, Kate. Go on. And brandy. You can have some. Looks like you need it.”
“If there was ever a chance I was going to, it’s gone now, mate.”
“Ah, away an’ boil yer heid.”
“Ask Bren’. Anyway, I prefer gin.”
“Gin’ll do,” he winked.
“Not a hope.”
“Useless, you are.”
“You want breakfast or not?”
“Bampot.”
“Muppet.” I went for the eggs.
The tasks, the eggs and the bickering made me fifteen minutes late for Doug. He’d received a text message. It would only have taken ten seconds to read it to him, but Doug was learning to read texts by himself and he’d only had two, so we couldn’t miss this vital opportunity to practice.
“Press menu.”
“Where?”
“There.”
“Scroll down. It’s boiling in here. Do you need three blower heaters on?”
He stabbed at the keypad as though it might electrocute him. “This weather’s going on forever. Now where?”
“There.”
“I can’t see.”
“Put your glasses on.”
“Ah. It says Phone Book.”
“Do you want that?”
“Do I?”
“No. You want Messages. Scroll down.”
“Call Log. Do I want that?”
“No. You want Messages. Scroll down.”
“Where?”
“There. What’s it say? Aren’t you hot?”
“No. It says Messages.”
“Well? Do you want that?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
On the streets of Victorian Liverpool, a poor and naive youth called Robin is speaking to a young newspaper vendor called Mercury about the possibility of joining a gang. Knocky, a hardened member of the secretive Devils overhears the conversation.
‘Wish I was in a gang,’ said Robin.
Mercury’s jaw dropped. ‘Why?’
‘To have some money,’ came the blunt reply.
‘Why don’t you become a Devil?’ asked Knocky, trying to keep his face straight. ‘They’re always looking for new lads.’
‘How do you join?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m not a member myself. But I’ve heard about them.’ Knocky squirted a jet of tobacco juice in lieu of a chuckle.
Before Robin could ask for more details about the gangs, Mercury turned to Knocky. ‘Show him your back.’
Knocky removed his coat and pulled up his shirt to display his mashed and mutilated flesh.
‘That’s what you get for being in a gang,’ said Mercury.
‘No,’ corrected Knocky. ‘That’s what you get for being caught.’
Mercury prodded the lad’s back and grimaced. The weals, still red and weepy, resembled a washboard.
Robin closed his eyes in revulsion and ran his own fingers over the contours of the welts, as if he was reading braille.
Knocky was keen to expand on the full breadth of his bravery. ‘I got a scroby.’
‘A what?’ Robin frowned.
‘Sixty stripes of the “cat-o’-nine-tails”.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Nine strings of whipcord. Each string has nine knots. What’s nine times nine times sixty?’
Robin had no idea but imagined the ordeal to have been agonising. ‘Sixty lashes?’ he said, amazed that anyone could bear so much pain.
‘Not all at once. I got twenty lashes at the beginning of my sentence, twenty in the middle and twenty before I got out.’
‘Think I’d die,’ said Robin.
‘Sixty licks of the rope’s end. Flogged till my back was like minced beef and my boots filled with blood – but I took it like a man. Still wanna join a gang, Robin?’
‘Er, maybe.’
1646, Suffolk, UK. My protagonist, Ann, has been accused of witchcraft for the first time and is protesting her innocence to the Justice
‘And the last accusation, Madam, more serious, that of bewitching your husband?’
His face is grave, impassive.
‘Sir, I am innocent of this charge also. I have been married to my husband these thirty-two years and am a good wife to him. I have served him faithfully, borne him six children.’ My rage is growing now, at the insinuation, and I try to keep my temper in check. ‘Rebecca Whitton has long been jealous of me. I was a servant, as she once was. Thomas and I became close and I became his wife. Am I to be tried because she has made a poor choice of husband, that her husband is not as mine? And what of a second accuser?’ I am angry now, close to tears, my words flowing out in a fury. ‘I have read the pamphlets, heard the stories. Does the law not say that there must be two accusers. Where is the other ?’ You have no proof, Sir…’
There is a sudden sharp intake of breath from those seated in the hall and I realise that I have spoken to strongly, that this is not godly and submissive, that I have spoken above myself.
‘MADAM…’
Master Corbett half rises from seat. His face is tight with fury, his voice raised.
‘…do NOT seek to lecture me on the law of this land. I AM the law of this land and I will not be spoken to in such manner, and certainly not by a woman. You are a termagant, Madam, and I wonder your husband does not beat you for it’. He is beside himself with anger, veins standing out on his sweating forehead, his face red and meaty.
I have gone too far
Shadowsister by Lucy Grace 292 words (dialogue)
The main character Ash, 14 is escaping from captors when she comes across a younger girl Mirie, 9. Both are without parents, surviving in a wild hillside island environment. Ash does not want to care for another person, but in reality she is lonely. Mirie is lost and frightened, and relying on Ash. Up until now they have had only two stilted and sharp conversations.
Ash is telling the story.
*
It is fully day when I open my eyes. My knees and ribs are stiff against the sandy soil. I try to flex my body but am trapped underground. I panic, turning my shoulders against the tunnel until I remember. I am a sniper. Carefully, I slide forward, pulling myself on my elbows until I am out into the day, and sure I am alone.
“Ash?”
For a moment I am stopped. Mirie says my name again, a small voice.
“Ash. I thought you were dead.”
She is sitting against the trunk of a tree, her small knees pulled up against her flat chest and her pack on the ground. Her skin is coldpale, ghostlike. I wonder how long she has been there.
“Did they come?” I ask.
She shakes her head, mutely. Her eyes are swimming.
“I thought you were dead,” she repeats.
“Well, I’m not, am I?”
I rub down my clothes and pack before swinging it onto my back. It is daylight, and too late for travel. I am furious, we were so close to getting back.
“Come on. We’re not staying here.”
I don’t know why I say that, here is probably as good a place as any. It feels safe, safe enough that I’d fallen asleep. I cover my eyes with my left hand.
“Did you sleep?” I ask.
If she is too weak, I won’t take her back. It is too dangerous for me.
“Yes,” she says. “I think so.”
At least that’s something. Although I don’t want to have to drag along a weakling, I’m not sure I can kill one either.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
Together we climb the sandstone bank and look out through the trees.
“We’ll go home,” I say.
*
This is a snippet from my novel One for the Road. Protagonist Juliet, a driving instructor who is having fertility problems with her long term partner, has just had an illicit kiss with one of her learners, Nathaniel, who she has been growing close to since her entered her car at the beginning of the story…
‘Sorry about that,’ he said, letting out a breath.
Juliet was shaking slightly, mild panic rising in her.
‘I want you to know, that was not premeditated,’ he added. She found herself watching the Adam’s Apple move in his slender neck as he spoke, wanting to touch it.
‘I mean, obviously I fancy the pants off you, but I didn’t intend to do anything about it.’ Juliet couldn’t help smiling at his turn of phrase. ‘I know you’re…’
Juliet silenced him before he said ‘attached’ or ‘in a relationship’. The reminder made her want to throw herself down the caravan steps. ‘Nat, I know it wasn’t intentional – although it’s what they all say, it really did just happen. Anyway, I hardly fought you off, did I?’
‘Well, not exactly…’ Nathaniel took her lightly in his arms again, smiling. ‘You’re a good kisser, missus.’
‘So are you,’ she reciprocated, and against her better judgement let him kiss her again, before forcing herself to pull away. She heard someone shouting across the caravan site. Reality was starting to filter back in. ‘But lovely as this is, it isn’t right, is it?’
‘I guess not. I’m a bit spontaneous, and I just couldn’t resist, but I will try harder next time, I promise. If it’s what you want, we can forget it ever happened.’
‘Maybe…’ Juliet bit her lip. Forget it ever happened? A kiss like that? ‘Anyway, I have to get back to work.’
‘You haven’t drunk your tea,’ Nathaniel pointed out trivially.
‘Oh, right…’ Juliet reached for her mug, which was almost full, and gulped down the lukewarm liquid in a rather more unrefined way than would be the norm for her, reluctantly washing Nathaniel off her lips. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘What, the tea?’ He asked impishly.
Lisa (61) is at home in Ontario, Canada, when the doorbell rings.
“Leonard?” It was an involuntary response. The same long straight nose, almost-black eyes and dark leather coat with the collar turned up. But this was the Leonard she’d met at uni, over forty years ago.
“I’m his daughter.”
The girl had a London accent. Her skin was paler but the features were his, slightly finer. The same eyebrows, hair cropped exactly the way Leonard used to wear it, the same way of standing – legs apart. This person was definitely made from Leonard’s DNA. Lisa went cold inside. “He isn’t here, he … died.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want to know about him, what he was like.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
“I’ve got no one else to ask. Mum’s dead.”
“How did you find me?”
“Mum used to go on about you when she was off her head. She knew your name and the place in London where you used to work. There was an old bloke there who remembered you, said you’d gone to Canada. It wasn’t that hard really.”
“And you just came? Why didn’t you write or phone first?”
“So you couldn’t say no.”
Emma held open the door and stepped aside. “You’d better come in.”
Sitting in the kitchen, her army surplus rucksack by her side, the girl looked smaller, younger.
Lisa stood on the opposite side of the table. “How old are you?”
‘Twenty.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“November 17th, 1983.”
Lisa’s stomach clenched. That meant the girl was conceived around the time of her wedding to Leonard, 21 years ago. This was more than she could handle. “Look, you can’t stay with me, if that’s what you’re planning. I’m going to call a cab to take you to the hotel in town.”
“I’m skint, I can’t afford a hotel.”
“How did you get here?”
This is a conversation between a man and his mother-in-law as a result of her leaving a message on his answer machine. Originally it appeared further into my novel but I wondered if it might make a better opening, to create a sense of mystery?
“Richard? I wasn’t expecting you. You never call us.”
“You left a message.”
“I was expecting Angela.”
“What do you mean, you were expecting Angela?”
“I was expecting Angela to call.”
“I understand that. But why?”
“Because she always calls. You never do.”
“But she’s not here — she’s with you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She came over on Monday. Oh, how’s Frank, by the way?”
“Frank? He’s fine. We had a lovely time.”
“Sorry?”
“He’s fine. Now can I speak to Angela please?”
“Angela came to see you. And Frank. In hospital.”
“What are you talking about? Frank and I have been in Italy for ten days. We just got back – well yesterday evening. What’s all this about a hospital? Where is Angela?”
“I don’t know, Caroline. I really don’t know.”
This comes from my first chapter of a spy thriller. Sarah – my protagonist, a rookie spy who makes up for a lack of experience with an excess of determination and grit – is sparring with Chris, a more experienced colleague who has been sent to ‘look after her’. They are on their way to meet a merchant of death, mesmerised by their mutual contempt.
They stalked on, following the Thames Path through Battersea Park. The mudflats exposed by low tide twitched with crabs and freshly exposed organic matter ripening in the summer morning. The golden buddha of the Peace Pagoda gleamed, spreading rosy-hued serenity through the park.
“You need to get lost now,” Sarah repeated through clenched teeth.
“I’ll follow behind.”
“No. If I get a whiff of you so will they.”
“Michael told me to stick to you.”
“And Michael told me to follow my instincts.”
“Did he really? That doesn’t sound like him.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t trust your instincts?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Michael has far more confidence in me than in you. The only reason you’re going in is that I wasn’t nuts enough to pop a cap in Skarparov.” Chris had a well-tuned radar for Sarah’s weak points. Her first kill, a heat-of-the-moment revenge shot, was an obvious target. But he’d used that button too often now. Sarah had learned to disassociate.
“Michael can smell your raw ambition,” she said. “Even through that aftershave. He knows you’re after his job. I’m less of a threat.”
“You are aware of how this works?” Chris said, labouring the words. “This unit is nothing without Michael. He built it. He is it. I doubt anyone in HQ even knows who I am, let alone you.”
“So if Mr Chen tries to take me out-”
“You’re on your own. That’s why you need me.” He gave his most winning smile, one eyebrow slightly lowered, pale blue eyes narrowed, dimples artfully folded into cheeks.
“But it must have crossed your mind?” Sarah said, sensing her own moment to dig at Chris’s tender core. “Michael’s getting old for this game. One of us is going to have to take over eventually.”
Norway WW2. Two sisters looking out over the fjord at Narvik.
‘I’ve always loved sitting here this time of the day when the rocks are still warm from the sun; and it’s quieter than down by the port.’
‘And here at least we’re not gazing at burnt out wrecks scattered across the fjord.’
‘Papa says the wrecks are dangerous for the fisherman and – hey, look down by the water. Isn’t that the girl from the book shop, with a rather handsome German soldier. He probably smells of cologne rather than fish, like –’
‘Oh, for God’s sake – ’
‘Alright, sorry, don’t want to get you started off again.’
‘Don’t you think it’s wrong, then?’
‘Perhaps, but I don’t consider the girls tramps and traitors like you and Papa do. They just fall in love, that’s all.’
‘And that’s an excuse for betraying their country and bringing shame on their families?’
‘It’s not always as straight forward as that.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You’ve changed your tune all of a sudden.’
‘Not at all. I was thinking about Marion and how hard it must be, six months pregnant and shunned by everyone.’
‘You don’t like Marion.’
‘I don’t dislike her. We’ve just never been friends, that’s all.’
‘That’s an understatement.’
‘I wonder if she is planning to stay at home until the baby is born?’
‘I’ve heard she’s applying to some home run by the Nazis for unmarried mothers who prove the father is German.’
‘Really? What type of home? Where?’
‘My, God, Laila. How do I know? What’s this sudden interest in Marion?
‘None, really. Just wondering.’
‘How horrible for the mothers, everyone gossiping with delight, friends dropping away, and then some get news the father has died in action.’
‘The last fishing boats are coming in for curfew. Let’s set off home before Mama starts worrying.’
‘I’m concerned about Mama. So much grief the past years and now this dreadful war; She’s become so fragile, don’t you think?’
‘Let’s go home. I’m cold.’
Extract from a WIP novel. Gwyneth has left her husband and moved back to her family’s retreat in Wales. She keeps hearing a voice, guiding and advising her.
“Gwyneth, my lovely girl, when did you get back?” Bronwen Davies was standing by the kettle and two cups were set beside the teapot.
“A few days ago. Didn’t Mum tell you I was planning to come home.”
“No, she didn’t.” Bronwen was frowning. “Well, we haven’t been speaking recently. She and your father don’t approve of my new friends.”
“They don’t approve of a lot, Gran. Anyway, am I interrupting? Are your new friends coming for tea?”
Bronwen looked at the teacups and burst out laughing. “No, silly, that’s for you and me and I’ve made welsh cakes too – your favourite ones, with jam in.”
“But no-one told you I was here.”
“Including you, dear.”
“No, I’m sorry. I should have phoned. So, how did you know?”
“I felt it.” Bronwen indicated her heart. “I felt it, here. And the cards said to expect a pleasant surprise.”
The cards. The cards that had said, don’t go to London. The cards that had said, don’t marry Philip. The cards that Gwyneth had chosen to ignore because, as her father said, they were a woolly way to make a decision. Forget the cards, Gwynie, she told herself, but a whisper said, “Take note of the cards. They do not lie.”
She shivered and put her hand, palm down, onto the work surface. “Right then, Gran, where’s this welsh cake? I’m starving.”
“Coming up,” Bronwen said, “and when we’ve had this, how about a look around the garden. I’ve made a few changes since you were last here and I think you’ll like them.”
“Sounds a plan.” Gwyneth settled down into one of the two armchairs by the log burner in the corner of the kitchen. It had been her favourite ‘inside’ spot since she’d been out of a highchair.