Acquired from the Internet
A recent edit, I told an author that while it is okay to use “Alright” in dialogue, “all right” is needed for narrative.
Their response: “I continue to not understand this rule. There are all kinds of slang that is now accepted in the dictionary. Why is this a line in the sand?”
And my response to their response: “This is the difference between narrative voice and character voices. Narrative is more formal and “general” structure; while character voice gives you insight to their upbringing, education, personality, and occupation through word and grammar choices. One of the aspects of narrative is to be more understandable across the board; by using slightly stiffer word choices, it reaches more people. I hope this makes sense.”
Narrative is (slightly) more trustworthy. Dialog is through several filters: what the character KNOWS, what they have processed (UNDERSTAND/BELIEVE), what they are willing to SHARE with others, and what they are willing to SAY to others. In addition, dialog is more steeped in culture, education, and socialization. Narrative shares more and is more precise in the sharing.
“I had a great time,” she told her friend who paid for the trip, thinking to herself she would burn in hell before going on another cruise. The seasick patch was not effective enough.
“Y’all ain’t from around here,” the waiter asked, picking up the sweetened teas. No one had warned us ice tea came pre-sweetened in the South.
Information shared through narrative rather than dialog can have a completely different impact on the reader, as well as accessibility.
“Over here,” the real estate agent lead us yet another room. It was our fourth house that day. “Is the main bedroom, what used to be called the master bedroom. There is a bathroom with two sinks, the tub and toilet as you can see are separate.”
Like Jim or I want to brush teeth side-by-side. Whoever came up with that bizarre couple idea needed their head fixed. Oh, great, two more doors to open and close when I need to rush from the bed to piss when we try from our second kid. I looked at Jim, his brown eyes were glazed over. “Thank you, Sherry, I think we need to think things over for a bit.”
“I haven’t even shown you the best features, yet.”
Because dialog and narrative have different rules and different presentation, a tool you might want to try when writing is flipping narrative and dialog. Dialog running dry – maybe the information being share in dialog is better in narrative. Need to slow down the action (and dialog fall under action), switch the information being share through characters speaking to a more passive narrative – it will strangely both move faster, because dialog had a lot of structure supporting it, and slower, because it isn’t as immersive.
WRITING EXERCISE: Explore sharing different information between narrative and dialog. While working on this think about how is narrative voice different from the rest of the story structure. Should the character hide something in dialog but not in narrative? Are different emotions shown between the two? For the exercise itself, write a scene with dialog and narrative then flip the scene changing the information shared in dialog to that shared in narrative and vice versa. Show your results below in the comments.
My attempts:
“Alright, I can’t lie. The seasick patches were shit,” I explained. “I won’t ever step on a ship again in my life.” My friend’s face fell. I wanted to tell her I had a great time with her, and I wanted to thank her for the chance to see the Caribbean, but we were always brutely truthful with each other.
I gasped, after taking a sip of my ice tea. “What on earth? Did you dump a pound of sugar in here? Take this away and bring us iced tea; we can sweeten it ourselves to our taste with these little bags here.” I waved at the packets on the table. The waited looked at us in horror.
The real estate agent showed us the main bedroom. “Sherry, this is our fourth house today. Put a fork in us, we are done. And who in god’s name wants to brush their teeth beside each other? Nope, I’m outta here.” Jim, my long-suffering husband followed me out the door. Behind us, the real estate was shouting something about the best features of the house and how they could help us as we expanded our family.
