I am so honored that Lisa Tener interviewed me for her Spotlight blog on her How to Write a Book site.

One thing she said about the book was that the dialogue was great. I was surprised and pleased because I have felt I’m not good at dialogue.

I love reading good dialogue but, if you have read The Algebra of Snow, my earlier books shy away from it. I decided somewhere along the line that I had to learn how to write dialogue and it has been a long process. It doesn’t work at all to just listen to what people say in real life—that never sounds right in a novel. So I mostly give my characters a setting and a problem and let them loose, waiting to hear what they come up with.

Dialogue that is based on what real people say is almost always a complete failure.

That is because people rarely plan out what they are saying and they rarely have a chance to revise and tailor it to make it serve a purpose.

But in a novel, it must do all of these things.

It must express character and relationship, it must clarify the world in which it is happening, and it must move the plot forward.

Not a small set of challenges.

When my main character, Agatha Wells, wants to get some information out of her spy husband, she asks him a question that is based on information she got from her own secret relationship with the Speaker of the House’s mysterious wife. The conversation takes a sudden turn.

When the boys were in bed Clint headed for his study. I followed him there. He sat behind his big oak desk, facing the computer on the return, fingers already on the keyboard. He looked up, at the far edge of the pool of lamplight from the desk lamp. 

“So what’s up,” I said. 

He looked at me like I might have taken leave of my senses. 

“I know, I know,” I said. “I can’t ask that. Just—how are things going with you, yourself?” I tried to back up, leave him some space. 

He turned to face me fully, pulling up to the desk between us. 

“I’m tired,” he said. “How about you?”

“I feel like things are off kilter,” I said.

“There’s nothing wrong. Everything is fine. Is there anything wrong with the kids I don’t know about?”

“No, they are all great. You seem to be working really hard. It’s so hard not knowing what is going on with you. And there seems to be something going on. Even—” I was going to say Ana thinks so in my stream of babble, but I realized at the last second that would be a big mistake—“even Molly thinks so.” 

He laughed, letting me breathe. “Molly doesn’t miss much. She’d probably know before anyone else.” 

I sat down across from him, a supplicant.

“So what is going?”

“Aggie, you know I can’t tell you that.” He had shut down again, locked down tight.

A wave of heat washed over me. Menopause, I thought, on top of everything else.

I slammed both hands down on the front of the desk. “I am so sick of having half a husband,” I said. “I did not sign up for this. I knew you’d be gone a lot. But I didn’t know you’d even be gone when you are here.” 

Clint and I fought, for sure. We weren’t built for cold formality. We yelled and occasionally I threw a paperback, once a glass. But it was always over in minutes—a cleansing storm that blew through. We always ended up in each other’s arms. 

“You know I’m in the service of the country,” Clint said. “That was what I signed up for.” 

“And I’m supposed to be in your service?”

“You always have a choice,” Clint said.

We had never in all the years together once talked in any way about divorce. We knew from the beginning we were in it for life. We knew we would be married forever, as if we had been before we were born and would be after death. 

I didn’t have a choice—and if Clint thought I did, then my world was indeed tilting. 

I felt dizzy but stood up anyway.We looked at each other for a long time. And then I walked out. 

After a long time and much study, here is what I know about dialogue.

  1. It does not need to be in every scene. In fact, it should not be. It should ONLY be  in the important scenes, the ones that are crucial to moving the plot forward.
  2. You need to know your characters, give them a problem and a place, then set them in motion. You could be very surprised what comes out.