As some of you reading this might know of, a while back a discussion got started in various online forums concerning the realism, or lack thereof, of dialogue in certain stories. One example that was brought up was the familiar TG tales of Bill Hart. Now right off the bat I have to make one thing clear: I think Hart is a very good writer when it comes to plotting, humor, style and the basic mechanics. The only real problem I have with him is his dialogue: His characters just don't speak like real people. They're too verbose, too... well, to be honest, it's hard to describe. However, a brilliant flash of insight just occurred to me.

I'm typing this on an aircraft somewhere over northern Ontario. The in-flight movie is Pride and Prejudice... and that's what his characters sound like. People from Victorian and Edwardian literature. People from a Regency tale who have just woken up in world of magic and random gender changes. Veddy propah dialogue -- and very much out of place in the way people talk now. There's nothing wrong with what they say; rather, it's how they say it.

"Good morning, Miss Parker," smiled J. Jonah Jameson as he chewed on the short end of his cigar. "I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever see you around the 'Bugle' again."

"It's been a slow week for picture taking, Mr. Jameson," replied Pamela. "Interesting subjects have been few and far between. One can't be off and about taking pictures of jailbirds like the Vulture all of the time."

"How very true, Miss Parker. However, since you are here, should I assume you have a picture or two you think I might like to buy from you?" Jonah tried not to look overeager or too excited or anything else that might make the girl raise her asking price. Somehow, this mere snip of a girl always had fabulous pictures, but he wasn't about to tell her that. "I hope you aren't wasting my valuable time, Miss Parker."

Pamela smiled at Jonah. "Have I ever wasted your time, Mr. Jameson?" He didn't need to answer the question. Pamela opened the manila envelope she was carrying. After taking out two of the pictures Fawn had taken as she'd returned from the Baxter Building, she laid them out on the publisher's desk. "What do you think of these two shots, Mr. Jameson? They're quite interesting. Don't you think?"

(from What If: Whence Came a Spider, part 4)

Now, this isn't to say that some people don't talk like that. I've been known to myself, on occasion. The problem in many Bill Hart stories is that everyone speaks like that all the time! It's if all the characters aren't speaking but reciting their pre-scripted dialogue. That simply isn't realistic, and after a while it starts to irritate the hell out of me. If I was reading a Regency period bit of fiction, not a problem. If it were being used to indicate that one character is speaking another language (and thus being translated for the reader), no problem, either. If it were spoken by a snooty blueblood, or someone trying to impress others with his loquaciousness, no problemo. But used by contemporary English-speaking North Americans (or Australians, or Britons, or whoever) in everyday conversation? Sorry, but it just gets under the skin. Perhaps there is a place where people go around speaking like that these days, but I've travelled fairly extensively and I've yet to see it (in assorted languages, even). Hell, even back in the Regency period, everyone didn't talk like that all the time!

It's particularly notable in this case because one of the characters has been around for a few decades and he has a rather solidly-established manner of speaking. Of course, different writers have their own voices they bring to the character, but whatever different versions there are in the accepted canon, the character Hart wrote above does not sound like J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the Daily Bugle, constant thorn in Spider-Man's public image, demanding boss. Jameson is a loud, aggressive newspaper guy with rolled-up sleeves, a loosened tie, and the stump of a cigar clenched between his teeth as he bullies and bellows his way through the day; the character Hart wrote his dialogue for is a genteel gentleman sitting properly in a large chair, with nary a hair out of place or button undone, regardless of what the narrator describes him as wearing.

Compare the excerpt above to some of the dialogue from the Spider-Man movies. J.K. Simmon's portrayal of old JJ, and the dialogue the writers gave him, has been pretty much universally lauded as being right on the money for perfectly capturing the character.

"No jobs! Freelance! Best thing in the world for a kid your age. You bring me some more pictures of that newspaper-selling clown, maybe I'll take 'em off your hands. But I never said you have a job. Meat. I'll send you a nice box of Christmas meat. It's the best I can do -- get out of here."

"Hoffman, run down to the patent office, copyright the name 'Green Goblin'. I want a quarter every time someone says it."

J. Jonah Jameson: Come here. Parker, what do you know about high society?
Peter Parker: Oh... well, I...
J. Jonah Jameson: Don't answer that. My society photographer got hit in the head by a polo ball. You're all I got. Big party tonight for an American hero, my son the astronaut.
Peter Parker: Mr. Jameson, can you pay me in advance?
[Jameson laughs hysterically for a few seconds]
J. Jonah Jameson: You serious? What, pay you for just standing there? The planetarium, 8:00. There's the door.

Peter Parker: Mr. Jameson, please, isn't there any of these shots you can use? I really need the money.
J. Jonah Jameson: Awww. Miss Brant?
Miss Brant: Yeah?
J. Jonah Jameson: Get me a violin.

"Flowers? How much? If you spend any more on this thing, you can pick the daisies off my grave! Get plastic!"

In both examples (the section from Hart's story, the snippets from the two Spider-Man films) you see Jameson being a skinflint -- but the two portrayals are worlds apart in what they tell you about the character. In the latter, Jameson isn't worried about appearing a cheapskate; he proclaims it. He's in your face with it. You know walking in that if a character gets any more money out of him than Jameson was originally willing to pay, it's a huge triumph. You don't need anyone to comment on Jameson being tight with money or having an internal monologue.

That characteristic just doesn't come through in Hart's dialogue at all. Yes, he's trying to save money, but he's doing it by playing a friendly game of poker rather than daring you to try and take it from him. And the only way you know what game he's playing is because the author tells you. Without that interjection into the character's mind, you wouldn't know his action is an attempt to keep the price down.

Don't agree?

"How very true, Miss Parker. However, since you are here, should I assume you have a picture or two you think I might like to buy from you?" Jonah had quietly admired her fantastic work but had not expressed it openly; good photographers were hard to come by and as good as she was, he couldn't afford to be seen showing favoritism over his other free-lancers and risk losing them. "I hope you aren't wasting my valuable time, Miss Parker."

Completely different motivation, not one change in dialogue. To me, that suggests there is a problem with the dialogue; it has not been integrated well into the story.

Dialogue in fictional form is a tool to move information from creator to the audience, either directly, through what is said, or indirectly, through how it's said. Sometimes the latter is the more important thing. A classic example is the person on the verge of a breakdown after some trauma who is babbling on about something totally irrelevant. The information isn't the words that are being used, but, rather, that the person is babbling because they're on the verge of a breakdown. You could switch out what they're talking for anything (because, after all, it is irrelevant) and it wouldn't make a change in the thing that's really important: This character is babbling because they're losing it. The how is more important than the what.

On the other hand, the information content of the dialogue can be zero, with the 'how' and the 'what' both totally useless. And unfortunately, the example I picked comes close to that. The dialogue that is shown isn't important at all to the reader; the two sentences in the middle which tell the motivation are. The author states it explicitly. In fact, you could pull the dialogue out of that paragraph entirely and it wouldn't make much difference in the story at all. Don't believe me?

Here's the same excerpt, where I've done just that.

"Good morning, Miss Parker," smiled J. Jonah Jameson as he chewed on the short end of his cigar. "I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever see you around the 'Bugle' again."

"It's been a slow week for picture taking, Mr. Jameson," replied Pamela. "Interesting subjects have been few and far between. One can't be off and about taking pictures of jailbirds like the Vulture all of the time."

Jonah tried not to look overeager or too excited or anything else that might make the girl raise her asking price. Somehow, this mere snip of a girl always had fabulous pictures, but he wasn't about to tell her that.

Pamela smiled at Jonah. She opened the manila envelope she was carrying. After taking out two of the pictures Fawn had taken as she'd returned from the Baxter Building, she laid them out on the publisher's desk. "What do you think of these two shots, Mr. Jameson? They're quite interesting. Don't you think?"

Story moves along pretty much the same, doesn't it? The missing dialogue doesn't actually provide anything new or useful that we, the readers, need to know -- or, more critically, care about.

Compare this with the apparently inane dialogue between Jules and Vincent when you first meet them in the film Pulp Fiction. What they call 'a quarter pounder with cheese' in Paris is totally irrelevant to the rest of the movie, but the information passed on to the viewer isn't what they're talking about; rather, it's about the people having the conversation. These are two men who are, if not friends, at least comfortable enough with each other to have that sort of inane conversation. More importantly, as you quickly learn, these are two hitmen who can have that sort of conversation while on their way to whack somebody. No brooding, introspective killers, these two. It's important for the audience to know this to understand their characters. Information has been passed.

Thus, the irony: You can have dialogue concerning the subject of the story that is utterly pointless, while dialogue that can at first glance seem to be utterly pointless is critical to the story.

Some might argue that it's unfair to compare visual with written fiction, because visual usually depends on dialogue more to express character and motivation, while written fiction can 'cheat' in a sense by getting inside a character's head. I'd argue that more writers should take the cue from visual media, to escape the 'telling and not showing' trap that 'close third person', the most common point of view these days, leads them into. In the excerpts from the two Spider-Man films, you don’t need to see what's going on inside Jameson's head at all. The dialogue itself provides all the data you need.

That said, for that approach to work you need the right dialogue. Which means you need to take care of what the characters are saying, to give them each an individual voice: Distinctive mannerisms, verbal tics, and vocabulary. Otherwise the data flowing from author to reader is corrupted. When your characters lack identifiable 'voices', you're making the reader work to try and figure out who is saying what, instead of simply recognizing (once they are far enough into the story) who is speaking and thus being able to pay attention to what is being said and how it's being said. I realize this is easier in fiction with a soundtrack, because the actor can convey information with tone and accent, but it's still possible in written fiction.

Analogy time: Imagine a radio drama where all the actors spoke through a voice distorter so they all sounded the same and they all expressed the same emotion at the same time and so on. It would be impossible to follow, unless you were paying ridiculously close attention to everything so that you could figure out who was saying what to whom. It wouldn't be enjoyable, it would be work.

So, basically, it boils down to this: If you want to get information out to the reader dialogue is a perfectly acceptable way to do it, but, and this is the big but, you have to remember that effective dialogue is more than just putting words down on the page.

One last example from the first Spider-Man movie -- specifically, the scene where the Green Goblin blasts open the window of Jameson's office and demands to see Peter Parker. Jameson immediately says he doesn't know anyone with that name, just a few seconds after Parker has left his office.

That one little bit of dialogue, very brief and over in mere seconds, also told you something about J. Jonah Jameson. He isn't easily intimidated, and he won't throw someone else in harm's way just to save his own skin, even someone that he apparently doesn't think a whole lot of.

Not bad for a single sentence, huh?