How to Write Dialogue When No One Is Listening

In The Moor’s Account, according to a New York Times review, “Lalami wants us to understand that storytelling is a religious act.”

At some point, every writer will hear this: Why don’t you write nice stories about happy people? Such stories are not impossible, but since all fiction requires conflict, and conflict often requires that at least one character behave badly, nice is difficult to achieve. The need for conflict is perhaps clearest in dialogue. Unlike in real life, where we strive for understanding, fictional conflict often works best when characters speak as if they don’t hear one another.

A great example of dialogue without understanding can be found in Laila Lalami’s terrific novel The Moor’s Account. The novel re-imagines the expedition of Cabeza de Vaca, the Spanish explorer who shipwrecked in Galveston and traveled across Texas, the American Southwest, and Mexico. Lalami tells this story from the perspective of a Moroccan slave who was one of four people to survive the journey but who only merited a single line in the official account.

You can read an excerpt set in the expedition’s early days in Florida at The Nervous Breakdown.

How the Novel Works

One of the best moments of the early part of The Moor’s Account comes when Cabeza de Vaca’s expedition (the leader is actually named Narváez, but if you read the entire book, you’ll learn why he’s mostly been forgotten by history) goes to claim the land of La Florida for Spain. The scene offers sharp-eyed commentary on the nature of imperial conquest, but it also offers a kind of primer of one way to write good dialogue. The expedition is alone on a beach, in the middle of an empty indigenous village. In other words, the only people present are the conquistadors:

The notary of the armada, a stocky man with owlish eyes by the name of Jerónimo de Albaniz, stepped forward. Facing Señor Narváez, he unrolled a scroll and began to read in a toneless voice. On behalf of the King and Queen, he said, we wish to make it known that this land belongs to God our Lord, Living and Eternal. God has appointed one man, called St. Peter, to be the governor of all the men in the world, wherever they should live, and under whatever law, sect, or belief they should be. The successor of St. Peter in this role is our Holy Father, the Pope, who has made a donation of this terra firma to the King and Queen. Therefore, we ask and require that you acknowledge the Church as the ruler of this world, and the priest whom we call Pope, and the King and Queen, as lords of this territory.

Notice that the prospect of speaking to no one doesn’t deter the expedition’s leader or its official voice, the notary. I once heard the writer Charles Baxter say that, in good dialogue, characters don’t speak to each other so much as declaim their opinions. In short, effective communication doesn’t make for effective dialogue. Instead, you want characters who will speak their minds even when no one wants to hear it—even when no one is listening.

You also need a way to validate the character’s speech. The character needs to believe that what he/she says is important or needed. Watch how Lalami does this with the notary:

Señor Albaniz stopped speaking now and, without asking for permission or offering an apology, he took a sip of water from a flask hanging from his shoulder.

I watched the governor’s face. He seemed annoyed with the interruption, but he held back from saying anything, as it would only delay the proceedings further. Or maybe he did not want to upset the notary. After all, without notaries and record-keepers, no one would know what governors did. A measure of patience and respect, however small, was required.

That’s a key line: “Without notaries and record-keepers, no one would know what governors did.” The novel has given the notary (and by extension, the entire expedition) permission to impose their views and words on an unwilling audience.

Lalami finishes the scene with a passage that succinctly sums up the goal of much dialogue:

Until Señor Albaniz had arrived at the promises and threats, I had not known that this speech was meant for the Indians. Nor could I understand why it was given here, on this beach, if its intended recipients had already fled their village. How strange, I remember thinking, how utterly strange were the ways of the Castilians—just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was. I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it.

The goal, then, is to write dialogue as if the speakers are using it to validate the decisions they have already made or the beliefs they already hold.

The Writing Exercise

Let’s write dialogue, using The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami as a model:

1. Decide who is speaking. You can use characters that you’ve already created, or you can start from scratch. Either way, you will need to know some basics about them: gender, age, general circumstances in life, and (more importantly) their concerns: the hopes and fears (or at least some vague sense of them) that keep them up at night.
2. Clarify what the character(s) believes (or wants to believe). In Lalami’s novel, this is crystal clear. Narváez has traveled across the world to discover gold and become rich and famous. Because the voyage is so dangerous, he needs to believe pretty firmly that this will happen—and that he has the strength and wisdom to make it happen. So, consider what your character wants and what personal belief is dictated by that want. For instance, a character looking for love will need to believe that he/she is worthy of such love. That said, you can also write in the opposite direction and create a character who wants something but doesn’t believe it’s possible.
3. Create a situation that challenges that belief. In The Moor’s Account, Narváez’s expedition lands in Florida and discovers indigenous villages containing only small huts, not the wealthy cities he expects. The situation clearly suggests that Narváez will not find gold, but because he cannot allow himself to believe this, he must behave as the gold exists and he must simply exert his superior will and wisdom in order to find it. So, the key to laying the ground for dialogue is to give the character reason to speak. What obstacle challenges the character’s beliefs or needs? A character in love, for instance, might experience the end of a relationship.
4. Write dialogue that pushes back against the challenge. If your character feels challenged enough, she will need to bolster her challenged belief. There are a couple of ways to do this is through dialogue. One: let the character state her belief in the face of the obstacle. It doesn’t matter the immediate circumstances of the dialogue. In fact, ideally the character would state her beliefs in the midst of a conversation that has nothing to do with the belief. As you no doubt know, when your beliefs are challenged, everything you see and hear reminds you of that challenge. Two: let the character tell a story that reinforces the belief. Think of the story as a personal history. Allow the character to create a narrative that suggests she will prevail or that she is right even when all evidence runs to the contrary. Again, it’s not important to have a receptive listener. Let the character declaim and then ignore any statements that people make that counter her own beliefs.

Good luck and have fun.

Tags: adventure stories, Cabeza de Vaca, creative writing exercises, creative writing prompts, Dialogue, historical fiction, how to write a novel, Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account