How to write good dialogue

Yeah, you actually have all three points in your dialogue: an important information about the world, some character personality talking through their attitude towards hats, and setting up the situation: girls chatting while doing an "empty" thing - trying on the hats (this action isn't important to the story itself, unless it is about making hats , so it's just a nice background for the conversation that helps to promote metaphor they use in speech)

 

In Russian writing tradition, it's considered to be a "bad taste" if you start directly with character speech.
The most logically based argument I've heard on this is that it confuses the reader. Thus, if for short stories it may sometimes work (though you'd hear lots of complaints from "skilled critics" about that), it is an "absolute no-no" for larger forms, like a novella or a novel.
But from what I see, English stories are much more tolerant to the amount of dialogue you may have without breaking it with action/description parts...
So I wonder if starting with a dialogue is also considered to be a big crime for you, guys, or it's fine?

 

It’s fine. You’ll find people who say not to do it, but then you’ll see novels on the shelves that do it. Just make it interesting.

 

I don't think it's a crime to start a story with dialogue.

All I can do is offer my experience with my own stories. I've opened a few of them with dialogue, but it winds up getting either moved or removed entirely in subsequent drafts. It's not because I have an issue with it, though. I wind up changing it because I've never been able to not find a more interesting opener.

I think dialogue can be more evocative if the characters are contextualized prior to the dialogue. (This is just my experience, not a rule, and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone.)

Example:

"You gonna do something or stand there with your thumb up your ass?" Max's father said.

Okay, cool. We have something happening from the very first line. That's good.

Max's father rolled too fast down the wheelchair ramp leading from their house to the driveway. The wheel caught a stray rock on the pavement and sent the fat man to the ground. He lay there inert, looking as if he'd willingly prostrated himself. "You gonna do something or stand there with your thumb up your ass?" he said.

So, here, we have a father in a wheelchair. He crashes. That's interesting. There's something happening, and even better than the previous opening, we know what is happening. This opening also sets up the POV to be on Max, because of the "fat man" line, which also divulges that there are some issues between the two characters. Now, the same piece of dialogue is doing much more, but the words are exactly the same.

This is how it makes sense to me. I'm sure there are ways to make the dialogue do more, but, as I said, I've never been able to rationalize keeping dialogue as the opening sentence.

 

As long as it's done well it's completely fine, just like everything else when it comes to technical writing in my opinion

 

Yeah, many things changed since those times... Frankly speaking, I never understood what's that great in those "classics", especially when was forced to read them at school as a kid Now, there is an opinion (half a joke, half truth) that neither Tolstoi nor Dostoevsky would be published by nowadays publishers, they'd be rejected because of the poor quality of writing. Of course, this is a joke, but... Bunin or Nabokov are much better references to follow.

 

Well, Nabokov was brilliant. But Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is excellent. So, too, are many of the works by Joseph Conrad, Melville's Moby Dick, works of Jane Austen, and so on

 

Yos, there's a lot of these on our forum, proper whirlwind intros where the spittle runs down your chin - so I'm quite attuned, probably doesn't reflect the world of lit writ large, dunno.

...

tho' I found a forum dissing Carver - quite enjoyed that...

 

Dostoevsky... Maybe, "Idiot"... The only one I could read and enjoy it. I'm really not his fan.
Funny, I've realized that I've never read Moby Dick only when found this book left behind by people who rented our current apartment before us. And it was in Portuguese (Which I knew like a couple of phrases at that moment). Thus, it appeared to be my first book ever read in Portuguese, and I've used it as a home reading when learned the language. Even though Portuguese people tend to complain about poor quality of translations (most of them are into Brazilian Portuguese, which is pretty different from the continental one), I found it really well written. Need to read in English as well...

 

yeah, that was one of the reasons for me to ask. I noticed that there is quite a bit of these here, and wondered if this a general trend or just a local one

 

Dialogue's a good way to start off, get's the mind in scene, but generally, for me, I tend to build around my dialogue - heading to my greatest draft 836.
..
Sometimes people get excited and 'stick it on the forum' @ 2am. It's good trait, likeable.

 

In my old critique grounds this whole thing about starting or not-starting a story with dialogue became what we veteran members started to refer to as a 'dead horse topic', 'cause it came up so much and always had the same results.

There's the faction of folks who say doing it will send your story straight to slushes of hell; and there are those who say it can be catchy.
I don't do it myself. Just not my style I guess.

But in defense of it being viable I present one of my favorite openings from a book:

"They say that when your head gets chopped off, it can still see and hear for a few seconds, so I'll have go with beheading," said Spider Lee to Lulu Garou.
~Butcher Bird, by Richard Kadrey.

See, what I think is that the dialogue has to be saying something that will have a visceral reaction to the reader without having to know who said the line.
And it's not much different than starting a story with a characters inner monologue.

If I was still alive I would've been frightened to death at this very moment. But fortunately--or unfortunately?--I was, as my father commonly said about the t.v. remote, deader than a doornail. Yep. I'd run outta batteries and there were no Radio Shacks in Ghostland.
compared to:

"If I was still alive I would be frightened to death right now," Jim said.
"Well, Jim, you're dead. You're deader than a doornail Jim, so this might be your lucky day," said the Grim Reaper as he lit up another Marlboro.

But NOT this:

"Hey, Sally, what's for dinner tonight?"
"I don't know, George. I picked last time. You pick tonight."
"No. It's alright. You can pick again."
"I'm not picky. You pick."
"No. You pick."
This conversation went on for another three hours and fifteen minutes until finally Sally snapped and she threw a cast iron skillet straight at George's head. She missed but it was a close call.

Gotta know how to intrigue. Spark curiosity. Fiction is really a game you're playing with the audience in which you are attempting to make them smile, frown, cry, laugh, heart palpitate, any physical or emotional reaction but you only get to use tiny little black symbols on a page/screen.

 

I think @Max Redford has the crux of the issue: it's a good opening if it's a good line. IMO it's not a matter of whether it's dialogue or inner monologue or narrative -- it's a matter of whether it's a good line to start your story on.

 

I have a brilliant opening line. OK, I've presented it in morse code, but it's still bloody amazing so I'm good to go, right?

 

In my opinion, you can use any opening as long it's executed well, within reasonable context, and doesn't throw off the reader; a line of dialogue can make or break your story.

 

In English, it is much more accepted to start with dialogue. I use these grounding questions when I'm editing the beginning of a manuscript: Who? Where? What's unexpected?

• Who are we talking about? We need a name or something to cue us into the kind of character this is. Man or woman? Adult or child? Also, the faster you can clue us into the kind of personality they have, the better (like are they serious? whimsical? energetic? immature?)
• Where are we? Is this the real world or a fantasy world? Past, present or future?
• What's unexpected about the way this story opens? Why should I keep reading? (The hook)

I think dialogue can answer all of these questions really quickly. I've seen it used very effectively often. A tag can say succinctly who is speaking. The way they talk can reveal something about the way they think, to create interest in their character. A carefully chosen detail or two can say where and when the story takes place. And it's easy to make sure the characters are talking about something out of the ordinary that piques the reader's interest.

It's interesting that that's against Russian "writing rules." I don't know too much about the way different languages change your expectations when you read, and that makes me want to learn more. I'd say that opening with dialogue in English is totally okay though

 

Perfectly fine. I mean, if it irks you later, you can always rearrange it a little once you have the bulk of the story down.

 

In my mind starting a story with dialogue is an indicator of the author's lack of patience (or imagination, maybe even proper writing technique, even if it sounds harsh) to begin with exposition. I don't like dialogue to be the first thing I see on the very first page of a novel.

 

I absolutely can't stand a story of any kind that starts with dialog. In my opinion, it is the worst way to start anything. I know a lot of people dig this approach, but it sure isn't for me.

 

How do people who dislike this feel about first person POV, which is in essence all monologue/dialogue?

 

I love first person, but it's really not the same as dialog. A dialog is a conversation (for the most part) with more than one person engaged in the exchange. First person is not a conversation. It's an approach to tell a story. I think there's a lot of room to add personality into that "voice" when using first person, but I would still never start a story with dialog.

 

Agree it's not exactly the same. I included the word monologue--to distinguish one person talking from a conversation. However in first person the narrator is talking directly "to" the reader, just like a character in an opening piece of dialogue is talking directly to another character (presumably). For the distinction to have a difference that makes much sense to me, I'd need to hear a substantive arguments that distinguishes one kind of talking from another in terms of how an author opens a book. Otherwise, it seems to me that this is just one of those general rules that people have learned and repeat, and even have strong feelings about, but that doesn't hold up under much substantive scrutiny.

 

I'm not looking for an argument. I'm sorry that you can't make the distinction, but a lot of readers and writers can.