Jazz Trio and Dialogue

Writing my first novel, The Memory Room, which is psychological and introspective, I pictured the book as a long sustained musical composition for solo cello, because the cello is so good at being introspective. I specifically thought of Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello. I didn’t know anything about “being a writer” or that literature was supposed to be the thing that inspired me the most. This was never true and still isn’t true for me. But these Bach Suites were, for me, a perfect translation. My main character, Barbara, sitting alone on a stage playing the Suites for 500 pages. And lots of silence in between. Lots of the white of the page.

When I began to add other characters, the story seemed like a concerto. One instrument with a small orchestra. Barbara now with her neighbor Josephine, the therapist who remains unnamed, her mother, father, siblings, boyfriend, two nuns living in the nearby convent. I thought the book was finished. Then, by happy accident, I discovered the astonishing poetry of Paul Celan. My text demanded I include his voice. So I did. I added phrases from his poems. And with Celan’s deep ambivalence toward his own Jewish faith, and his biblical vocabulary, I found a bridge back to the Psalms I’d grown up with and added Psalm phrases to my text too. It all felt natural. And necessary. Now I had many voices all talking to each other! It was a full orchestra. Once this all happened, I realized the book was finally finished and ready to go out into the world.

Let’s remember two things about dialogue.

First, dialogue is not the same thing as conversation in real life. Dialogue is not just a transcription of what we hear people say to each other. Instead, on the page, it is a made thing. It’s a construct, a thing we build. It’s something we fashion. Second, the purpose of dialogue is not to advance the plot. E.g. “Do you want a glass of lemonade?” “Sure, I want a glass of lemonade.” “Here.” “Thank you.” This is horrible.

Instead, the purpose of dialogue is to reveal character. To reveal the personality, concerns, wounds, aspirations, varying moods of each speaker. And it is used to reveal the nature of characters in relationship to each other. E.g. “Would you like a glass of lemonade? You have that tired look you get on Fridays.” “That would be heaven, my sweet friend!”

If we use dialogue to push the plot along, we make is noise. If our dialogue reveals character, we can make music!

Let’s begin…

Imagine you’re walking around Barcelona. You come upon street musicians and stop. You notice they’re a group. They’re making something together. The accordion player looks at the bassist and the flute player in the middle is aware of his friends on either side. They are speaking and listening to each other and you realize this is the essence of dialogue.

You close your eyes to get closer to the sound, to learn from it. What happens?

Effortlessly, you hear each instrument. And you track how the focus in the music moves from the bass to the accordion to the flute. Sometimes all three play at once, sometimes two, sometimes one. In all those configurations, you are able to easily recognize each instrument, even with your eyes closed. Nobody has to stand next to the musicians on the sidewalk and announce, “That was the accordion,” or, “Here comes the flute!” You don’t need to be told. You know because each instrument sounds entirely unlike the others, even when they all three play the same note. And this will always be true. No matter what music they play.

At this moment you know that you want the characters in your current writing project to possess this same uniqueness when they each speak. They have to be recognizable. They have to have their own sound, whether your project is a novel, memoir, short story, piece of flash fiction or a poem. It’s true whether you’re writing a slim YA novel, a 600 page historical novel, a graphic novel or a 14 line sonnet.

We aim, then, to write dialogue that totally does not need attribution. Dialogue where we do not need to be told, “he said,” and “she said.”

To achieve this, we can do many things. We can vary the vocabulary used by each character. This can be slight but it helps. We might give pet phrases or a certain kind of slang to one character. Or swearing. Or joking. One might be pushy and always interrupt. Another shy, reticent, saying almost nothing in words but lots in gesture and action. One might be ribald and often use innuendo, another self-correcting or judgmental, either outright or as a subtle undercurrent. The length of their sentences might vary. Their tendency to be verbose or compact, loud or soft, gentle or harsh, repetitive or lean.

And then, depending on the action going on in the scene, the characters, each sounding distinct, each being like the accordion, the flute or the bass, can also do what musicians do. Their sound can be loud, soft, rapid, slow, staccato or languid depending on the occasion.

So we can do a great deal to differentiate our characters in dialogue and to differentiate them when they are each in different moods or circumstances.

And, last, let us not forget that in every single kind of music there is a super value to silence, to no sound at all. The composer fashions the silence as much as the sound, and on the page, so we should too.

To me, this silence is the very most important aspect of ALL music. And in our dialogue and our stories as a whole, our poems, memoirs, novels, we can and should let silence have its voice too. The pause. The hesitation. The walking out of the room that ends an angry conversation with nothing said. To create that hanging- in- the- air feeling for the reader. Or to create the reverential silence that happens when the character feels awe or wonder or gratitude and there are no words that can possibly be found. We orchestrate this as well. We find silence in the white of the blank page. For me, the white contains all that the ink can ever deliver. For me, my finest book is a ream of plain white sheets. What we put in the ink we apply must relate to that white, must be as beautiful as that white. And so we shape that white, that silence. Because in it, in the voice of silence itself, all music is found.

Exercises:

#1 (you may consult the complete image on “photo credits” page)

Select some music you like that is instrumental only, no voices, no singing. Whether it’s live music on the street that you stop for, or music performed in a hall, or a piece you download at home, close your eyes. Answer the following questions:

-Can I tell which instruments are playing this music? When one is solo, can I tell which one it is? Can I imagine my character at a party? Can I hear several voices all talking at once? Can I hear my own character’s voice in the party?

-Are there repeating phrases in the music? Then does one instrument improvise on one of these phrases? Can I imagine one of my characters doing this kind of monologue in the presence of another character?

-Does one instrument take the phrase from another and then hand it to the third? Can I imagine my character saying something and having it repeated by another? And then a third? Is it accurately repeated? Is it part of an argument? Is it part of a tease? A joke? Is it repeated reverently by another character who remembers the words spoken years before?

–Does one instrument ask a question and another instrument seem to answer it, either right away or later in the piece? Can my character be challenged by a question at the start of my story and answer it two hundred pages later?

-Can I locate the silence in the music? The pauses? The rests? Does this seem important to me? Does silence add to the shapeliness of the sound?

-When I look at my pages, have I shaped the text with an awareness of the white of the page? In the dialogue sections, have I utilized the power that not answering, not speaking, not listening can have to create drama in the scene?

Print out a piece of dialogue from your project. Remove all the attributions (“he said,” and “she said”). Answer the following questions:

-When I read this out loud, can I tell who is speaking? Would a reader be able to tell?

-Does the dialogue merely advance my plot or does it reveal character?

-Do all the characters in this piece of dialogue seem to be playing the same piece of music? Is there something at stake here that is shared by all? Why are they talking and listening? What is at stake? How does my dialogue show that?

-Revise this piece of dialogue along the suggestions above that appeal to you. Take your time.

-When finished, read the piece out loud. Is it better? Do I like it more? If not, revise again.

Walk around your city, your suburb, your rural neighborhood. Bring a small notebook, your phone, some way to take notes. Listen to music you encounter. It can be a single saxophonist near the muni stop, music piped into the cafe where you often work, a church service you drop into at noon, booming music from the radio of a car driving by.

-What is the sound like? How can you notate this? Is it soft, gentle, bombastic, harsh, playful, mournful, etc. What scene does this remind you of in the work you’ve already written? Or does it suggest a new scene? Who will be speaking? Who will be listening? Is it interior monologue? Is it two people? A group? Jot down these things.

-When back to your writing place, take your notes and work with your text. Revise an old piece of dialogue. Or write something new.

-Put yourself back into those moments when you stopped to listen to the music, however long or brief you were there. Remember it. Bring what you felt and thought and imagined now onto the white of the page.

– Ask yourself, have I moved this piece of dialogue from being just sound to being music? Have I made this piece of dialogue art? Revise until the answer is yes. And when yes, celebrate!

To work together contact Mary here.