Dialogue should be action

What does this mean? I have a few ideas I'll write about, but I also want to expand my understanding of how dialogue pushes narrative and character interaction, and how it reveals the personalities of the characters involved. It can do all these things and more.

As for the more—dialogue, like just about any part of story, can provide exposition, it can be inert, static, or it can even work against the progression of the story. But I'll start with a few things I think I know about it. As always, when I start writing about things I think I know, it becomes clear how well I really do know it, and exposes areas I need to develop. That's part of the beauty of blogging about things like this. They say nobody learns as much as the teacher, and it's true, assuming you're honest when deficiencies of knowledge show up. You discover what you actually know, and what you don't, and if you're lucky you also discover some new ideas by simply writing in an exploratory manner. Writing forces you to think deeper into what you're writing about, if you allow it to.

So—what does it mean that dialogue should be action?

It means people should be doing things to each other when they're talking. Important things, things that advance the story and provide insight into the characters involved, their motivations and goals, hopes and fears, and their personalities and character traits.

How can it do this?

Several ways, but I'm probably only aware of one or two. I'll list them and see:

A conversation can be a conflict. A fight, argument, attempted manipulation, blackmailing, etc. Coaxing, wheedling, begging, pleading, angry assertions, it can even be tranquil acceptance of the way things are (which is pretty boring and doesn't advance story at all) (and all it shows about your character is that it probably isn't strong-willed enough for genre fiction) (at least as a major character, who need to drive the action forward).

Most of what I listed sounds pretty intense, but they all have levels. Everything has levels. Conflict doesn't necessarily mean car chases, explosions, and gun fights. Or even fist fights. That's only at the most extreme level. Conflict also includes very subtle coercion, quiet undermining of one character's confidence by another, tacit agreement or disagreement, and then there's subtext, where what's being said on the surface is not what's actually being said. My go-to example for this is an old married couple who argue all the time about the man leaving the toilet seat up, but really the subtext is about the affair he had decades ago, and leaving the toilet seat up has become a euphemistic symbol for it.

First, we know conversations should not be small talk. If your characters engage in small talk don't include it—UNLESS there's a more important meaning underlying it. For instance, if the conversation is going a way one character doesn't like, he or she may interject "So, how about this great weather we been having lately, huh?" as a way of trying to change the subject because they don't want to deal with the way it was going. In such a case the small talk is someone doing something to someone else. It's a form of verbal grappling or verbal Jiu-Jitsu. Maybe the character is a teenager living in his mom's house, and the mom was starting to ask him when he's going to find a job. Of course it's a clumsy and terrible way to try to shift the focus of the conversation. Using something like asking about the weather is a way of showing that the character isn't very good at verbal Jiu Jitsu. It might be a lot better if he instead said something like "Mom—I need to talk to you about something," and started indicating that he's depressed or something. Of course any mom worth her salt would immediately know what he's doing, but if his particular mom is extremely sympathetic and has a weak spot for her poor little Johnnie, maybe he's always manipulated her by pretending to be sick or hurt and knows how to push her buttons.

Things like this are best done in conversation, or in scene if possible, rather than through narration. Well, not always. If you've already established that he knows how to manipulate her and that she always gives in, then you can just say 'He pushed on those familiar buttons once again, put on his sad puppydog face, and she relented as she always did.' But the first time or two you should probably show it, do it through active dialogue or in scene through action. And if he's very clever about the way he does it, you might want to always show it in full detail, make it an interesting part of the action of the story.