Delegate Guidebook

of Style” (Note for readers: an
American English writing style guide)
is the guiding principle here. You edit
dialogue by eliminating all unnecessary
words short of turning dialogue into
a telegram (laughs). One of the most
important steps is not only economy,
but the placement of the key word.
Every sentence, generally, has a word
or phrase within it that completes its
meaning. It could be the verb, it could
be the noun, but it’s a word or phrase
that if you took it out of that line of
dialogue it wouldn’t make any sense.
The key then is where you do you place
that key word—at the beginning, in the
middle or toward the end? I urge people
to use the periodic sentence. It’s the
suspense sentence. It’s the sentence
you cannot know the meaning of until
you hear the very last word. By delaying
the meaning until the end of the line the
audience then has to listen with curiosity
wondering “What is this character
saying?” When the last word or phrase
lands at the end of the sentence,
suddenly the sentence has greater
impact. If you do it the other way, if you
start the sentence with the key word,
then everything after it is a modifier. It
risks losing interest.
Now, you can’t have every single line of
dialogue end on its key word because
that becomes repetitious and it doesn’t
sound like conversation. You always
mix periodic sentence with cumulative
sentences in order to create a
conversational tone. Generally speaking,
withholding the meaning until the end of
the line gives greater weight or impact to
every single speech.
Does character determine dialogue or
the other way around?
Yes, character determines dialogue.
On the other hand, suppose you found
a wonderful style of speech that really
fascinates you and then it leads you to
ask the question, “What kind of person
would talk like that?” As a result the
inspiration you found in the dialogue
urges you to create a character who
actually would use that kind of dialogue.
In those cases the dialogue creates the
character, but they are rare. When you
write from the inside out, as I advocate
in my teachings, dialogue is the final
step, it’s the frosting on the cake. You
create characters, you bring them into
conflict, out of that you create story and
then ultimately you have to find ways
for them to speak. Ninety-nine percent
of the time as you create the character
the character then has to have a true
speech style. There are exceptions
when dialogue or speech style actually
becomes the inspiration for a character,
but those are the exceptions.
What advice would you offer a writer
starting a redraft, with particular
emphasis on dialogue?
First and foremost, eliminate all
unnecessary dialogue. Write as lean as
you can. At the same time you have to
think about the nature of the particular
characters and some characters
are loquacious, but they have to be
loquacious in the most economical
way possible. If there’s a fault in writing
dialogue that needs to be addressed as
you rewrite, it tends to be overwriting.
Say the absolute maximum with the
fewest possible words and yet retain the
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