The Hound of the Baskervilles: Establishing Character through Dialog II

Moving slowly through Hound, I am discovering, Holmes-like, that there is much to discover. Last time I wrote about how the early dialog between Holmes and Watson quickly established the nuances of their relationship, and thus their characters. Now let's take a look at the spoken language of the first guest-star, one James Mortimer:

"Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull."

To which Holmes astutely responds:

"You are an enthusiast in your line of thought, I perceive, sir, as I am in mine," said he. "I observe from your forefinger that you make your own cigarettes. Have no hesitation in lighting one." 

Holmes helps the reader feel like a smartie here, by stating the obvious: Mortimer is an "enthusiast" (Watson prefers the term "strange")--an obsessive, in other words.

This leads me to the point of this week's reading. On a web site I recently visited, one agent said she particularly looks for stories in which the dialog is vivid and distinctive: that is, all the characters should not sound the same. I think this aspect of dialog-writing often gets overlooked; we get hung up on what the characters are saying, and making sure they say it in the least boring way possible. But, although all these guys all come from a single source--the author's brain--they must appear to reflect their own separate and distinctive development as human beings. For example, Mortimer is a phrenology nut--which means his language is peppered with the language of his profession, and also reflects the rhythms of obsession: his stated attempt not to be "fulsome" suggests he's been criticized for ranting on and on about skulls before, but his preemptive apologies only reveal his interest more strongly.

In other words, to be convincing and distinctive, characters need to use language in ways that reflect their particular physical and emotional circumstances. A doctor is going to use precise anatomical language, which means that if we are creating a doctor character, we have to become familiar with such language and the ways in which that particular doctor would deploy it. She might speak in a notably detached way about, say, the progress of cancer in a lung. Or, for a different effect, she might speak in peculiarly loving detail about it, unsettling her interlocutors and readers. Or she might convey an unusual capacity for empathy by constantly checking to see if her patient understands her terms. The point is, because the doctor is this particular doctor, she isn't going to sound like that other doctor over there. Mortimer and Watson are both men of science (Mortimer says he's a mere "dabbler,") but they don't talk the same way. On the other hand, neither Mortimer nor Watson is going to use a term like "that lumpy thingie on your head"; their scientific backgrounds enable them to know the contemporary, technical language for it.

See what I mean? This is not to say you should lard up your characters' dialog with "distinctive" (i.e. distracting) verbal tics and professional jargon. But it is worth thinking about different people you know in real life, and how they all express themselves a little differently, even if they're in the same profession. And if they're from different professions and backgrounds, their speech should differ accordingly, if still subtly. Finally, speech reflects temperament. If someone's impatient, don't just tell us that: have him speak impatiently.

The Hound of the Baskervilles: Establishing Character through Dialog

So it's the new year, and I resolve to be less lame. Which means that, among other endeavors, I am going to resume the Borrowed Fire series on this blog. In this series, I read works of classic literature, all available on Project Gutenberg, in order to see what contemporary writers like me can learn from them. So far it's been all dead white guys--a consequence, though not a necessity, of the whole public-domain thing, but they still have one or two things they might teach us. And since we've had our vampire (a super-dead white guy), we must now turn to werewolves, or potential werewolves, or at least large dogs, and so let us dive into The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!

Before we begin, I should mention that I had never read a word of Conan Doyle before about an hour ago. However, I have recently become obsessed with detective stories, spy stories, and stories of deduction in general, and have spent spent many hours watching both Jeremy Brett and Benedict Cumberbatch portray Sherlock Holmes. I also just saw the first Robert Downey, Jr. version on a plane, and it was better than I expected, but there was little attempt to make the character Holmes-like, at least as I have come to understand him. Jude Law's Watson is another matter, as today's rumination will, I think, bring out. Anyway, what I wish to stress here is that I'm coming to this novel with a bunch of pre-set expectations and at least some general knowledge about the characters--as is likely true of just about everyone who's had any contact with Western culture. Sherlock is an icon, on a par with, I dunno, Santa Claus, and Watson is his humble sidekick and sounding board.

But what is that genius-sidekick relationship actually like? Well, it's quite nuanced. Hound starts off with Holmes challenging Watson to use his "system" to deduce as much as possible about the owner of a walking stick, which has been left behind in their apartment. Watson gamely offers that it likely belongs to a country doctor, and deduces from the inscription on the stick that it was given to the doctor by a hunting club. Holmes then bathes Watson in backhanded compliments:

"Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt."

He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens.

"Interesting, though elementary," said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. "There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions."

"Has anything escaped me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?"

"I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal."

In this exchange, Conan Doyle conveys the light S/M dynamic that has clearly been going on between these two for some time. Watson, habitually humble, is embarrassed to admit to us, his readers, that Holmes's words give him "keen pleasure," especially in light of his usual "indifference to my admiration." He strongly desires Holmes's approval, and seems further driven to seek it the more Holmes dismisses him. Of course this means that he can't, or won't, listen to closely to what Holmes is actually saying to him, which is more along the lines of "thank you for being such an idiot; if you were smarter, I couldn't use you." In fact, I myself was a little caught up in rooting for Watson to receive some genuine praise from his hero; it wasn't until Holmes announced that most of Watson's conclusions were "erroneous" that I went back and marveled at the blithe condescension of Holmes's compliments. Watson is a little stung, and seeks reassurance, which Holmes rather patronizingly gives him:

"Then I was right."

"To that extent."

"But that was all."

"No, no, my dear Watson, not all—by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest themselves."

So Watson, his head duly patted, is back in line, ready to be slapped down again. We've got some serious co-dependence issues here. But this is precisely what makes these characters more than just a smart guy and the admirer of the smart guy. Watson makes an especially poignant stand-in for us readers. We see that the admirer's admiration, while genuine, also costs him emotionally; in this, we feel for him, because admiration is rarely pure, or purely rewarding, in real life. Watson is the unrequited lover, hurt by Holmes repeatedly but unable to quit him. This is an interesting analogy for readers of fiction generally. Like Watson, perhaps we, too, want something from literary characters--love, or at least acknowledgment--that they are utterly incapable of giving us. We are so close to them, yet they elude us in the end.

Through this early dialog, Conan Doyle has given us an emotional investment in the mystery that we'd otherwise be lacking. Why should we care, right from the beginning, about the provenance of this walking stick? Because of Watson's--and Holmes's--own personal investments in knowing, around which their whole relationship is structured. This relationship raises and complicates the emotional stakes of deduction, which would otherwise be a purely intellectual exercise.


Oh, about Jude Law as Watson. Partly because he's just too gorgeous to play it otherwise, Law eschews the fond, slightly doddering exasperation of other Watsons. He's sharp, witty, and gets seriously pissed at Holmes--rightly raising the question of why he sticks with him.

Tips on tightening dialog

I've recently received notes from two editors on two different pieces. And the gist of both was: tighten your dialog.

I've always thought my dialog was particularly scintillating. Also, lately, I've gotten it into my head that if a character (other than the POV character) has a big idea to present, it's best to do it as an extended dialog so that the character can use his or her own voice. Turns out that's not true. In literature as in life, lots of talking can be boring. In order to make the talk sound realistic, the writer might also start throwing in lots of "wells" and "you knows" and "really?s"--which go unnoticed in speech but really clutter up the written page.

What's the solution? Paraphrase. As a former academic, I still shudder at the word. You want the unfiltered voice whenever possible, right? But in this case, you paraphrase through the perception of either the interlocutor, or the overall narrator, if the later has a distinctive voice. You don't just paraphrase neutrally, relaying what the speaker is saying like some objective reporter. You say what the other person actually hears, and thinks about what he or she's hearing, which will be colored by their personality and prejudices. The filter doesn't fuzz things up, but adds information and nuance. You can then spice up the dialog with brief, actual quotes from both speakers, just to give the flavor their individual voices.

Obviously this isn't an issue for short dialogs, or for fiction in which dialog plays an unusually important structural role. But I myself have been annoyed by page after page of dialog in fiction--especially if I sense that the dialog is actually just exposition that the author can't think of another way to bring out. And I especially don't like it when the speaker pauses just so the other character can say "really?"--which is a lame way to break up long paragraphs. I am looking through my own work now for those "really?s" and "tell me mores," so I can replace them with something revealing about the character saying them. If the character truly has nothing more to say than "really?" then he should remain silent. The presence of "really?," more often than not, means the speaker is going on too long, and it's probably time for another paraphrase.

The Turn of the Screw: Dialog that does things

First, before we delve into this week's writing lesson from The Turn of the Screw, two fascinating and unrelated points:

1. You may be the sort of person who's relieved to know that, unlike in the first post, I've settled on italics for the novella's title.

2. While searching the e-text for the word "arm," because the section I want to focus on contains that word, I counted six instances of the word "charm" or its variants (charming, charmed, etc.). Mind you, that's in the first fifteen pages, which seems like a lot of charm(ing) in the early going. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest this is significant. The concept of "charm," I think, is an interesting and complex one, and I think everyone should take some time and reflect on its potential as a generator of fiction. That is to say, the intersection of beauty and creepiness should produce a lot of generative tension for storytelling. OK, done?

Anyway, my interest this week is in dialog, especially dialog in mystery-type stories. I myself am now writing a mystery-type novel, and am finding that these things seem to require large quantities of dialog. About 3/4 of the movie Murder on the Orient Express, I seem to recall, is a series of interviews between Hercule Poirot and a parade of famous actors in the dining car. In general, I suppose this is the way evidence gets uncovered in the real world. People get talked to, and they reveal stuff--whether they're witnesses, perpetrators, or some place in between that the detective has yet to determine. But the question--at least for the literary author using the detective story as a vehicle--is how how to make all these different dialogs interesting in their own right? In other words, how do we keep the conversations from simply becoming sources of information--though we need them to be that--and use them to develop character, tease out themes, ramp up conflicts, etc.? How do we make dialog (as some writing guru once said) do more than one thing?

One key, which Henry James does especially well, is that both characters in the dialog want something different. While they may, on one level, be on the same side, still their desires--particularly their hidden desires--come into conflict. And this plays out not only in the way they express themselves verbally, but in other behaviors that become part of the dialog.

Here's an early example. The narrator, a young governess, has recently arrived at her new post, where she's in charge of two exceedingly charming children. She has just received a letter explaining that the boy, Miles, whom she has not yet met, is being expelled from his school. Here, she describes the contents of the letter to the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose.

"They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning." Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on: "That he's an injury to the others."

At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly flamed up. "Master Miles! HIM an injury?"

There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the spot, sarcastically. "To his poor little innocent mates!"

"It's too dreadful," cried Mrs. Grose, "to say such cruel things! Why, he's scarce ten years old."

"Yes, yes; it would be incredible."

She was evidently grateful for such a profession. "See him, miss, first. THEN believe it!" I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. "You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her," she added the next moment—"LOOK at her!"

I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy of nice "round o's," now presented herself to view at the open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of Mrs. Grose's comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement.

Notice the volatility in the dialog (which the narrator attributes to Mrs. Grose's being a species of "simple folk," perhaps telling us something about herself--or about James, I can't be certain--in the process). It does not flow rhythmically back and forth, in a smooth, cooperative, boring Q and A. Even though the two women are apparently in agreement, the dialog moves in bursts, and Mrs. Grose's "flame-up" lights the governess on fire, too. But notice, also, what is not said, what is omitted: "she forbore to ask me what this meaning might be," "I needed nothing more than this..." The governess and Mrs. Grose are both hiding certain feelings or suspicions, not only from each other, but from themselves.

Then, in the very next line:

Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, holding her there with a hand on her arm. "I take what you said to me at noon as a declaration that YOU'VE never known him to be bad."

She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very honestly, adopted an attitude. "Oh, never known him—I don't pretend THAT!"

I was upset again. "Then you HAVE known him—?"

"Yes indeed, miss, thank God!"

On reflection I accepted this. "You mean that a boy who never is—?"

"Is no boy for ME!"

I held her tighter. "You like them with the spirit to be naughty?" Then, keeping pace with her answer, "So do I!" I eagerly brought out. "But not to the degree to contaminate—"

"To contaminate?"—my big word left her at a loss. I explained it. "To corrupt."

She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. "Are you afraid he'll corrupt YOU?" She put the question with such a fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match her own, I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule.

But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in another place. "What was the lady who was here before?"

Though it's a long way from ending, this dialog stays compelling because of all the ways it gets interrupted. It stops and starts over the course of several days, as the narrator steps back, regroups, and "crops up" again in a way that turns Mrs. Grose into her prey. Also the speakers interrupt each other and themselves in this second section. The whole thing proceeds by fits and starts--it's action. It is also exposition, and it does reveal clues, but it does so obliquely and unpredictably. We see that the narrator is conscious of her own motivations--she likes Mrs. Grose and already senses she'll need her as an ally, but she can't stop herself from coming back after her--going so far as to clamp onto her arm, and tighten her grip as Mrs. Grose tries to get away. For her part, Mrs. Grose seems more desperate; since she can't get the governess to release her physical grasp, she resorts to a kind of verbal jiu-jitsu, which both of them seem aware of, but are unwilling to openly resist.

So, a few take-aways here for improving our dialog, especially dialog functions as exposition:

• The characters in the dialog have hidden desires that run at cross-purposes to their apparent desires.
• The dialog may productively be interrupted by action, internal monologue, etc., so that the pursuit and/or avoidance of the dialog (by one character or the other) becomes part of the drama.
• Physical actions can and should be motivated by the content of the dialog--as opposed to "beats," like smoking a cigarette, taking a sip of coffee, or--god help us--"pausing a beat."

I'm sure there are more.

Borrowed Fire: Making children interesting

Dostoevsky's portrait of Kolya Krassotkin in The Brothers Karamazov offers a clinic in creating a smart and complex young person. Child characters, especially if they're minor characters, are often little more than allegories of adult hopes and fears, rather than individuals in their own right. Dostoevsky himself is given to sentimentalizing children, for instance by having them die slowly while bathed in an angelic light (a la Evangeline in Uncle Tom's Cabin). In fact, our acquaintance with Kolya comes about through this very circumstance, the dying being handled by Ilusha, whom we've met earlier.

Dostoevsky spends a great deal of time revealing the extremes of Kolya's character, because, at thirteen (nearly fourteen, as Kolya insists on pointing out), his soul is in the balance. Kolya is intelligent, and that means he's at great risk. Dostoevsky doesn't worry much about the fate of unintelligent people; they are bound to be either holy innocents or brutes. However, the smart can get themselves into serious trouble, and do serious damage, if their intellect outstrips or stifles their spiritual development.

Kolya is a convincing adolescent because he has embraced adult concerns (religion, politics) with all the enthusiasm of the new convert. But he is (pardon the anachronism; I just can't let it go) like a novice driver behind the wheel of a Ferrari. His mind is a powerful engine, which he doesn't have the faintest idea how to control, and so he's constantly crashing. He tricks a peasant into killing his own goose to prove a theory; he lies on railroad tracks and lets a train pass over him (fainting in the process, but developing a reputation as a "desperate character"); he finds and hides a stray dog--Ilusha's lost dog--for a month, in order to train the dog and surprise Ilusha. Kolya's training methods border on cruel, as does his notion that it's better to wait and surprise Ilusha, rather than just give him the dog back as soon as he finds him.* In all cases, Kolya's theories on the superiority of the intellect (especially his own) distort his good, or at least benign, intentions. But Kolya's goodness still comes through: he really does want to make Ilusha feel better, and he does, though at some cost to all concerned.

For this reason--the goodness showing through the cracks--Kolya attracts the attention of Alyosha, who functions as a true angel for the boy. Alyosha's at his most appealing in his interactions with Kolya, which shows us another benefit of creating complex children as characters: they allow your adults to show more interesting sides of themselves as well.

As Kolya recognizes, Alyosha treats him as an adult, which is what an intelligent child desires, and deserves, above all. And by this means, Alyosha gently makes Kolya aware of his errors:

“What do you think the doctor will say to him?” Kolya asked quickly. “What a repulsive mug, though, hasn't he? I can't endure medicine!”

“Ilusha is dying. I think that's certain,” answered Alyosha, mournfully.

“They are rogues! Medicine's a fraud! I am glad to have made your acquaintance, though, Karamazov. I wanted to know you for a long time. I am only sorry we meet in such sad circumstances.”

Kolya had a great inclination to say something even warmer and more demonstrative, but he felt ill at ease. Alyosha noticed this, smiled, and pressed his hand.

“I've long learned to respect you as a rare person,” Kolya muttered again, faltering and uncertain. “I have heard you are a mystic and have been in the monastery. I know you are a mystic, but ... that hasn't put me off. Contact with real life will cure you.... It's always so with characters like yours.”

“What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?” Alyosha was rather astonished.

“Oh, God and all the rest of it.”

“What, don't you believe in God?”

“Oh, I've nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but ... I admit that He is needed ... for the order of the universe and all that ... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented,” added Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly fancied that Alyosha might think he was trying to show off his knowledge and to prove that he was “grown up.” “I haven't the slightest desire to show off my knowledge to him,” Kolya thought indignantly. And all of a sudden he felt horribly annoyed.

“I must confess I can't endure entering on such discussions,” he said with a final air. “It's possible for one who doesn't believe in God to love mankind, don't you think so? Voltaire didn't believe in God and loved mankind?” (“I am at it again,” he thought to himself.)

“Voltaire believed in God, though not very much, I think, and I don't think he loved mankind very much either,” said Alyosha quietly, gently, and quite naturally, as though he were talking to some one of his own age, or even older. Kolya was particularly struck by Alyosha's apparent diffidence about his opinion of Voltaire. He seemed to be leaving the question for him, little Kolya, to settle.

“Have you read Voltaire?” Alyosha finished.

“No, not to say read.... But I've read Candide in the Russian translation ... in an absurd, grotesque, old translation ... (At it again! again!)”

Kolya's pomposity is obnoxious and funny at the same time; and his flustered self-awareness makes us care about him. With Alyosha's help, we forgive his blunders and feel genuine hope for his future.

So, in creating child characters, it might help to think of the child as a person at a crossroads. At stake is the kind of adult he or she will become. The child is trying on adult ideas and ways, playing dress-up, only the game is serious. The child lacks whatever adults possess that enables us to wear our grown-up costumes more successfully...which raises the question, what is that quality, exactly? Is that quality always desirable? In Kolya's case, through the conversation with Alyosha, we learn that empathy--which requires, according to Dostoevsky, belief in God--is the key to a meaningful life. Many adults don't have empathy, and Alyosha is determined to cultivate it in Kolya. Alyosha is like an author developing Kolya's character, acknowledging his cruel and awkward tendencies while drawing out his humanity. We, as authors, could try doing the same.

*I am still not a hundred percent certain that this dog is in fact Ilusha's lost dog. Because Ilusha's ill and also wracked with guilt--he thinks he killed his dog by tricking him into swallowing a pin (a stunt Smerdyakov, the villain, taught him)--Kolya may only be fooling him with a different dog. Either way, Kolya is doing a nice thing for Ilusha, but in an unintentionally mean way.

White Noise revisited

I finally replaced my lost copy of Don DeLillo's White Noise, which I lent to a friend, oh, fifteen years ago. (You know who you are, Friend.) I suppose one reason I did not replace it sooner was that I came to think of it as an artifact of the 80s. When I first read it, way back then, I was thrilled to discover that a mere fiction writer knew what the coolest literary critics knew, about simulacra, the omnipresence of television (television!) and data, and the bland toxicity of American life. Somehow that stuff no longer seems so compelling, though it's obvious that we now live amid white noise multiplied by a googol (get it?). We should probably be more alarmed.

Anyway, as I'm rereading the book, I do keep thinking 80s, 80s, 80s. But why should that past be any more off-putting than other eras? I read books from other decades and centuries without thinking of them as relics of their time. Is the problem that I have come to take all the book's concerns in stride? Was the 80s the last time it was even possible to notice media and other toxins as still potentially separate from daily existence? Have I surrendered to white noise?

And here I am, making more of it.

That said, I am really enjoying the book. It is funny as hell. And nobody does dialog quite like DeLillo. The writer's workshop guidelines on dialog are: Dialog is something characters do to each other. Dialog should do more than one thing at a time. Dialog should characterize. DeLillo follows these guidelines and violates them at the same time.

"It's going to rain tonight."
"It's raining now," I said.
"The radio said tonight."
[...]
"Look at the windshield," I said. "Is that rain or isn't it?"
"I'm only telling you what they said."

The conversation goes on in this vein, sounding very much like a real conversation, but also making the act of conversation itself seem absurd. The son resists his father's appeal to what seems to be an obvious reality, but not because of some problem in their relationship, as would be the case in a more conventional story. DeLillo is less interested in these characters as human beings than in their roles as walking containers of white noise. Everyone's brain is a porous, swirling mass of electrified sounds and imagery; there is only a slight variance in how this condition gets expressed.

Still, what the father, and also the son, really seek here is contact, in a world in which real contact seems impossible. They keep talking past each other; the son spins theories about why what we see before us may not be reality (and therefore not contactable), etc. The important thing, we begin to understand, is that they keep talking. Despite the fact that these characters are barely individuated, we can feel their human yearning for connection. DeLillo makes us sympathize not with individual characters, but with humanity as a whole--which is really cool, if you ask me.

I do love this new cover:


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