Reed Richards, Fizz, D’Artagnan and Ringo – A Fictive Pattern for the Gang Of Four

In November 1961, Marvel Comics published a new comic book, created (with credit later disputed) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. It was called The Fantastic Four. It featured four superheroes, at first glance having little about them that was unique or special. Reed Richards was a scientist who gained the power to stretch his body. Susan Storm could become invisible, and generate force-fields. Her brother Johnny could burst into flame, unharmed. Their friend Ben Grimm gained enormous strength, but became hideously deformed. Nothing that hadn’t been seen before.

However, the relationship between the characters was unusual, and perhaps unprecedented. Reed and Sue were clearly going to be a couple, thus tying Reed to Johnny. Reed’s need to cure Ben from his deformity linked all four together – becoming not a group, such as the Justice Society or Legion Of Super-Heroes, but a family – held together for life whether they wanted it or not. In many ways, a gratifyingly dysfunctional family.

Each character could be defined by their flaws. Reed, by turns obsessive and reckless. Sue, superficial, vain and attention-seeking. Ben, surly and violent. Johnny, an offensive brat/hoodlum. Nevertheless they all clearly depended on and loved each other.

The group became one of the most successful in comics. In spite of numerous attempts to change the line-up, the same four characters remained, continuing to be at the heart of not only the magazine, but the entire Marvel Universe. In a medium where everyone seemed trapped in perpetual adolescence, Reed and Sue were allowed to grow up and get married. Perhaps the lack of passion and anguish in their courtship meant that settling down wasn’t the end of the story.

Some years ago I happened to be watching the BBC children’s show, the Tweenies. It dealt with the adventures of four children (portrayed as giant creatures sculpted from coloured foam rubber) in a day care centre. I noticed that the relationship between them precisely mirrored that between the characters of the Fantastic Four. Bella, the bossy one; Fizz, the girl who loved to dress up; Jake, the baby, prone to tears and tantrums; and Milo, the rough boy who didn’t know his own strength.

Clearly, there’s a world of difference between a day-care centre and the Negative Zone. Nevertheless, the interaction between the four felt familiar, once the character mappings were established. Surprised, I wondered if other groups followed the same template.

Looking at the example of the four main characters in The Three Musketeers, I found that the same mappings existed. Athos is clearly the boss, Porthos the muscle, D’Artagnan the kid, and Aramis, while not effeminate, is undoubtedly the dandy of the four.

I even saw the same relationships in real-life groups of people, such as The Beatles – at least in their public personae. John and Paul acting as father and mother to baby George and burly Ringo.

It was something of a relief to find that the template is not, after all, universal. The four March sisters in Little Woman don’t fit the grouping, and nor do Richmal Chrompton’s Outlaws. It’s a way to assemble a group of characters that interact in potentially interesting ways – but there are many ways.

What’s the lesson for a writer? It’s a tool that can be used, and if done subtly and ingeniously, it can bring a set of characters to life – but if used clumsily and overtly, can appear forced and clichéd – as we seen in endless series where the same characters march on the same Heffalump Hunt.

The Familiar Made Strange

“The picture he was cleaning showed an armoured figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure’s helmet was entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection, and nothing more.” – The Shadow Of The Torturer, Gene Wolfe

The above quote is an illustration of a technique used in science fiction, which is, as far as I know, almost unique in the genre. The viewpoint character is interpreting something that to us is entirely familiar – in this case, a photograph of the Moon landing – but due to his different background and knowledge, he sees it as something entirely different. His reaction to the picture indicates that he lives in a quasi-medieval era, so far in the future that the technology it describes is forgotten. The Moon itself is now cultivated.
Clearly this is a trick which can be used to tell us what kind of world we are dealing with. It’s an economical trick, which if performed well (as it is here) is an excellent replacement for the “as you know, Bill, there are two moons on Mars, which makes my werewolf cycle very complicated” type of exposition in dialog.
I’m more concerned with it’s more profound effects. Once one has read a passage like the above, seeing the Moon photograph will be a different experience. One will simultaneously see the astronaut planting the American flag, and an armoured warrior conquering a desert. Learning to see things in this way is a mind-altering drug. Its effects are permanent. When Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to an art exhibition as a sculpture entitled “Fountain”, he was endeavouring to produce a similar change in perception. His frivolity is now regarded as a turning point in art. Perhaps we should have similar respect for those pulp paperbacks which did the same trick over and over.

From The Desk Of The Headmistress

Wellington Wells Sorcerous Recruitment,

Crumble St,

Edinburgh

Dear Sir,

I am writing with respect to the selection of Professors you have been sending us over the last seven years, with the specific requirement of teaching students to protect themselves against evil magic. Having reviewed the situation, we have found them sadly wanting.

The first candidate, send to us in 1991, spent much of the year attempting to murder one of our most promising first year students. It later appeared that not only was he thoroughly evil himself, he was actually possessed by **** *********.  This should have been readily apparent due to the large evil-smelling lump on his head, inadequately concealed by a strip of cloth. Perhaps we should have been more careful, but in the letter you sent us you assured us that “his mild manner conceals a steely determination”. If you had informed us that this determination included the total victory of dark forces we might have reconsidered our decision to employ him.

The second candidate, according to your description, was “an outstanding enemy to evil in all its forms, famous throughout Europe.” In retrospect, we should probably be grateful that while the man was a complete fraud, with no applicable knowledge whatsoever, at least he is the only person you have sent us who never attempted to harm staff or pupils. Why he decided to make his total ignorance apparent to the entire school, I have no idea. Again, perhaps more vigilance would have been appropriate.

The third candidate in contrast, had an excellent knowledge of evil magic, and is still regarded as the best teacher you have sent  us. Had he not transformed later in the year into an uncontrollable beast form, and attempted to kill several students, we might have retained him. Your letter assured us that “his bark is worse than his bite. Not a month will go by without him demonstrating his special qualities.”

The fourth candidate showed an equal in-depth knowledge of the most evil and dangerous magic. We were saddened to find that this was due to him being another evil wizard, who did, in fact, murder a student. Your letter stated “If you keep an eye on him, you might be surprised.” We were indeed.

The fifth candidate did not, as far as we can tell, plan to murder any of the students. She did, however, have no interest in teaching any useful information, and showed a regrettable inclination to torture.

We then decided to recruit in-house for the position. I asked for you to cast an eye over the list of candidates. The person you selected then murdered and replaced the headmaster. On the other hand, I have to say that in general, his work was excellent.

I was not involved in the selection of his replacement in the position, but on perusing your letter I have to credit you with honestly stating that “his psychopathic and sadistic tendencies tend to obscure the depth of his devotion to discipline and cruelty.”

Of all the various candidates you have sent us, one is insane, two are in prison and the rest are dead. This is a very poor record for a firm that proclaims “total satisfaction or a complete refund.” Needless to say no such refund has been received.

I am hereby giving warning that if there is no improvement in the standard of candidates over the next three or four years, we will have to give serious consideration to making use of one of the many excellent English magical recruitment agencies, though I would be personally sorry to do so.

Yours etc,

MM (headmistress)

Heroes #1 – Gene Wolfe

I’ve just finished reading George R. R. Martin’s Song Of Fire And Ice series. I was thoroughly engaged by it. There’s a cast of literally hundreds of characters, sympathetically portrayed. The plot is complex but not afraid to move forward. It’s almost everything that a fantasy novel, indeed, any novel, could hope to be.

So why am I talking about George Martin when Gene Wolfe is the author I want to discuss? Well, to start with, everything that George Martin does in SOFAI, Gene Wolfe does in The Book Of The New Sun. A complex fantasy story with a complex plot and a vast array of characters? Of course. The difference is that just at the point where George Martin – and any number of other fine authors – stops, Gene Wolfe begins.

There can be few authors for whom the re-reading is more important. On first reading, TBOTNS is a fantasy quest story. Second time around, one begins to realise that it’s actually science fiction. Looked at more closely, it’s a religious allegory. In the end, one can’t characterise it as any simple genre piece. It’s unique in and of itself.

The language is astonishing. It’s a common trope in fantasy and SF to drop in exotic words, either created or obsolete. Wolfe has an entire new/old vocabulary which has the double purpose of obscuring and illuminating at the same time. Each strange new word appears meaningless at first, before it is clarified at a later stage, but the sound and presentation of each new word hints at a far deeper meaning.

There’s a strangeness to the book, an eerie otherness which only a handful of other books can sustain – David Lindsey’s A Voyage To Arcturus is one that springs to mind. This dream-like quality is never at the expense of the hard-edged realism of the characters, who express deep personal truths in a fantastic setting.

And yet the fact remains that Wolfe can be almost too intimidating to be read all the time. His prose is dense and layered with multiple meanings. One almost needs to pause after each page, almost every sentence, to appreciate all the possible levels of meaning. He’s an author I would hesitate to recommend. I would not dare to claim his influence as a writer. It would be almost impertinent. Perhaps it would be enough to claim that once one has visited his worlds, one looks at this one a little differently.

 

Psychopaths 2: Tolkien, Orcs, Evil and the Sex Life of Elves

Where do Orcs come from? This is in the context of Lord Of The Rings, of course. Tolkien’s Orcs are the definitive humanoid monster. Interchangeable and disposable, malign and brutish.

Tolkien left a number of hints for us, scattered across various works. The definitive explanation is probably in The Silmarillion. The chief villain, Morgoth, captures a number of Elves, and does something unspecified (but terribly evil) with them. The Elves are gone, but after a while, hordes of Orcs emerge – monstrous and ugly, but in some way derived from the Elves.

What is never explained is how Morgoth does this. It’s a given, from the start of the Silmarillion, that fundamental creation would be impossible for Morgoth. He’s made them from something else. But how does he make Elves – the highest, noblest beings on Middle-Earth – turn so horribly wrong?

There’s a clue given in the very nature of Elves. Elves are immortal. They live forever – or at least, until the world ends. Even when they die, their souls are held in a metaphysical bonded warehouse until they are reborn.

So while Elves seem superficially like humans, it’s clear that they can’t reproduce in the same way. They remain young, and presumably fertile, for millenia. Even a very slow birth rate would result in Middle-Earth being over-run with immortal Elves. We can see from the examples Tolkien gives that in fact Elvish families tend to be small.

The reason for this may well be simply that there are only so many Elf souls to go round. They don’t get created anew each time like human (or Hobbit) souls. There was a pool allocated at the start, and it never increases or decreases. This would explain why Elf relationships seem for the most part to be quite passionless. Galadriel and Celeborn? No particular wildness or extravagance. The only time that Elves seem to become excitable is when one of them falls in love with a human – Luthien  with Beren, or less happily, Finduilas with Turin. The rest of the time, they are cold and restrained. So they ought to be – if they know that a new Elf can only be produced when a soul is ready to be embedded. The rest of the time, they have to just wait.

However, what would happen if they didn’t? This is where conjecture entirely takes over. Suppose what Morgoth did with the captured Elves was to make them reproduce? What would have happened? Assuming that Elves were biologically similar to humans, a new creature would be produced – but no soul would be available. Would that be how an Orc might be made?

Such a creature would have no soul. It would be a philosophical zombie – behaving like an intelligent being, but lacking experience or consciousness. It would be no more than a machine – able to be used by any controlling power capable of directing it.

This has the advantage, as a point of view, of resolving one of the ethical quandaries that a number of commentators find in Lord Of The Rings. From Auden to Pratchett, fans of the book have found the treatment of Orcs problematic. Can it really be right to condemn an entire species of intelligent beings to extermination in this way? If they are in fact nothing more than mechanisms, then there is no ethical issue.

However, this may be just a little too easy. While Tolkien himself abhorred prejudice, and wrote an anti-racist parable with the friendship of Legolas and Gimli, still any rationalisation of the treatment of the Orcs seems a little bit convenient. One can imagine Gondorian Nazis repeating this explanation to each other as they ride out to exterminate an Orc village, like Sherman’s cavalry wiping out the Plains Indians. The psychopath ignores the humanity of others. We have to be wary of stories that do the same.

http://lilywight.com/2012/11/07/a-month-of-middle-earth/

The Author As Psychopath

We all have an idea of what a psychopath is like. Everyone’s view is different, but there’s one overriding property possessed by the psychopath – he doesn’t care about what happens to other people. He’s only interested in what pleases himself.

People who consider only a small set of people might not be psychopaths, but we would consider them to have warped values. We think it right for someone to favour his own family and friends, but not to the extent that other people matter not at all, or to such a lesser effect that we think it reasonable to cause extreme suffering to a stranger for the mere convenience of a spouse or offspring.

Enter a fictional world, however, and this viewpoint becomes the norm. I’m reading George R. R. Martin’s Song Of Fire And Ice series at the moment. It has a vast range of characters, from a variety of noble families. We are definitely more in favour of some than others – but each of them is sympathetic to some extent, and we worry a little bit about all of them. Some of them we want to get their comeuppance – some we want to survive to the end, though with little expectation that they will.

 

The story is regularly enlivened with battles and massacres. Are we emotionally moved by this? Well, a bit. Mostly we care about it because it gives us a chance to see how clever Robb turns out to be, or how treacherous Littlefinger is. If we are worried about the people getting massacred, it’s because we know that Sansa will be upset about it. When her servant is killed, that’s sad – but not really as sad as when her pet wolf is killed. That’s possibly the saddest part of a very bloody book.

OK, but that’s just genre fiction. Literature with a capital L will be different, won’t it? Well, look at War And Peace, considered to be among the greatest novels ever written. Large cast chiefly of aristocratic families? Check. Huge war killing hundreds of thousands of people? Check. What do we care about? Natasha, how could you be so stupid! Running off with that scoundrel! The battle of Borodino has 70,000 casualties. What are we worried about? Whether Andrei will forgive Natasha before he dies.

Yes, but that’s big epic literature. What about small-scale works dealing with small communities, and the interactions between a handful of people. Jane Austen, for example. There’s nobody dying violently in her books. Well, not on-screen. Pride And Prejudice takes place during about the same period as War And Peace – but the war is simply ignored. Ditto poverty and oppression. What are we worried about? Lydia, how could you be so stupid! Running off with that scoundrel! Whickham, the villain of the piece, is a soldier. What do soldiers do? According to Pride and Prejudice, they chiefly exist to have moustaches and be admired by young women.

The trouble is – these are really good books. I mean, so good that they define what the novel is. They tell us an enormous amount about what being human is like. Still – they are, in essence, psychopathic.

Is there any way to avoid this? Can we have a story which regards everyone as of equal importance? Well… not really. It’s just not possible, it seems, to worry about people en masse. We can care about individuals, but as soon as a group appears, we stop worrying. Douglas Adams can destroy the entire planet for a joke – or Princess Leia can witness it, and as hilariously caricatured in Family Guy, give no emotional reaction whatsoever. Ten minutes later and brother and sister can forget the deaths of everyone they’ve ever known, and have a quick snog while escaping. Obi-Wan gets killed – and suddenly, that’s a big deal.

But I think at least it’s possible to give some thought to the problem. In Lord Of The Rings, there are effectively four protagonists. They are hobbits, which in the context of the most fully-realised fantasy world ever, means people of no importance – the typical background characters. Tolkien created a huge history for Middle-Earth, and it’s noteworthy that hobbits appear in it not at all. All of his background stories relate to the major heroes.

Of course, humble beginnings don’t make humble characters – but we are constantly reminded that these are people of no great importance. They blunder into important scenes, and make things happen by accident. They never demonstrate any great skill, wisdom or intelligence. They just stick to it. Meanwhile, big heroics are going on all around them.

Still, this wouldn’t be enough. We care about what happens to Merry and Pippin, but the few thousand massacred folk of Rohan and Gondor? Meh. Can we even remember who was massacred when? Probably not. When Aragorn is crowned and the ring safely destroyed, we’ve forgotten all that.

Tolkien is clever enough not to let us away with it. We think it’s all over– but it isn’t. The Scouring Of The Shire, unforgivably omitted from the film, takes the horrors we’ve been skimming over for three volumes, and inflicts them on the people we do, in fact, care about. It’s a reminder of what it all means.

Of course, this is my own personal reaction to these various works. I expect that different people will have a very different view. That’s to be expected, because ultimately, the way we react to these things – what we care about – is subjective. There’s a little psychopath in all of us.

Resumé For A Villainous Cost Accountant

Name: Sebastian Evillo Harkonnen-Lannister

Preferred Role: Cost Accountant, Sinister plans for world domination.
Educ:

Secondary: Slytherin House, specializing in finance, poison.
Tertiary: Miskatonic Univ.

Personal:

Married (1) Princess Fiona Naïve-Kingdom (of the Lancaster Naïve-Kingdoms). (By abduction). Two daughters: Vengeance Harkonnen-Lannister-Naïve-Kingdom (Bunty) and Vicious Harkonnen-Lannister-Naïve-Kingdom (Bubbles).
Married (2) Sinistress Witchberry. (Due to enchantment). One son: Chamfoster Cholmondley Harkonnen-Lannister. (Chuck).
Numerous illeg.

Career:

Galactic Empire:
Involved at a senior level in the planning for the Deathstar Imperial Planet-Buster. Achieved major savings related to the exhaust system for the hypermatter reactor. Ensured that the planned multiple exhaust vents with many convolutions were replaced by a single two-metre shaft. Savings from this alone permitted the construction of a new Imperial shuttle.

Mordor:
Retained by military organization to eliminate waste, feather-bedding among Orc armies. Discovered that an elite regiment had been retained to guard an active volcano in the heart of Mordor, in spite of no threat having been detected for five thousand years. Had them re-allocated on active duty, thus increasing numerical superiority over Gondorian army by 0.45%.

Lord Voldemort:
Part of the task force charged with choosing suitable Horcrux locations. The original plan involved using unobtrusive everyday objects buried without markers at widely varied locations. Found that this didn’t properly reflect the corporate identity and ensured that only items with proven customer recognition were used.

Professor Moriarty:
Previously, assassinations had been carried out using bombs, gangs of thugs, Gatling guns etc, etc. Found that use of an air rifle and single revolver bullets achieved similar ends with only minor reduction in effectiveness.

Adrian Veidt:

Mr Veidt had in place a long-term plan to achieve world peace via diplomacy, economic development and targetted bribery and blackmail. A detailed study showed that far quicker results would be achieved by murdering his former acquaintances and destroying New York with a giant psychic space squid. The reasoning used has become an industry classic, being part of the basic training of the Lexcorp accountancy department, and has supposedly been a key factor in convincing Doctors Fu Manchu, Doom and No that a scientific and engineering genius is far better served trying to take over the world than in designing products and selling them.

 

Professional Bodies:

As a member of the Villainous Speeches Planning Board, I have helped ensure that a healthy tradition of regaling captured heroes with a full explanation of all future plans remains a fundamental plank of evil activity. Retained tradition of black cloaks, glowing red eyes and made particular note of failure to ensure proper length of fingernails.

I feel assured that my experience and knowledge would make me a useful part of any despicable enterprise.

Asimov vs. Dick – What Does It Mean To Be Human?

In the field of SF movies, Blade Runner stands out as one of the top five in many people’s lists. Not many films would consistently place ahead of it. However, the book it’s based on – Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep – is, while highly regarded within the field, still largely eclipsed by the film that was made of it. I was surprised, when revisiting the novel recently, just how much had been left out of the book, and how little made it in. Almost every idea in the film was somewhere in the book. However, the book has so much more in it that couldn’t fit in the film. I can’t think of another SF novel more full of ideas. I won’t deal with all of these ideas in this particular essay – the constant entropic theme, the Jesus-figure of Mercer, the collapse of reality. Instead, I’ll look at PKD’s androids – not dissimilar to those in the film, but with an added depth.
The plot of the book centres around artificial beings created to be servants to man. There is one writer who stands out for robot stories – and that’s, of course, Isaac Asimov. He’s described his approach on numerous occasions. It was in many ways a reaction to the Frankenstein myth. So many robots had gone mad and turned against their makers. Reasonably, Asimov supposes that artificial beings would be designed in such a way that they would be safe, and thus invented his Three Laws of Robotics – fundamental design principles which would prevent a robot from being dangerous. This concept of how a robot should behave has been enormously influential on all subsequent authors. Anyone who wishes to write about robots has to decide, in effect, whether to have them behave according to Asimov’s design, or according to some other principle. He is honoured as much by disagreement as imitation.
The kind of stories that Asimov writes are, therefore, full of reasonable, sensible people dealing with mostly quite minor problems with their robots. Nobody concerns himself particularly with what it’s like to be a robot. That’s not an issue that concerns Asimov. Though his robots have personalities and behavior, he never feels the need to see the world through their eyes. He’s interested in people, and how they interact with their equipment.
Philip K. Dick has obviously taken quite a lot from Asimov – but his approach is very different. His artificial beings aren’t robots, for a start – they are androids, indistinguishable from human beings except using very specific tests. As with Asimov’s robots, the androids are forbidden to live on Earth, being confined to off-world colonies – in this case, Mars. Unlike Asimov, PKD gives no coherent reason for this. His post-Nuclear depopulated world could probably use some androids to clear up the kipple, but they aren’t allowed and that’s that.
The design of the androids is similarly inexplicable. They are made to be identical with humans. Why? Nobody says. It would be easy, one presumes, to give each android a tattoo on its forehead of a large “A” and problems of identification would be removed. But that is not what PKD wants. He needs there to be problems of identification, because the critical difference between humans and androids lies in the androids’ lack of empathy. A psychological test is used to demonstrate the lack of empathy, using unfalsifiable changes in dilation of facial blood vessels – the blush response.
I can imagine Asimov sighing over this (though I’ve no idea what he thought of PKD’s work). “Why would they do things like that?” he would ask. “It makes no sense!” In a way, it doesn’t. PKD really couldn’t be bothered with coming up with a credible explanation as to why anyone would build androids like this. Asimov’s robots are carefully designed to put humans first. PKD’s androids have a deliberately introduced flaw which is precisely what they need in order to murder their owners and flee to Earth. Want an explanation? Make one up yourself. PKD is on to the next idea. This is more a fable than a realistic depiction of a future Earth.
The Earth in DADOES is quite different to the over-populated, bustling, slightly clichéd world of Blade Runner. PKD has set the story in his familiar post-nuclear world. The world is massively underpopulated, with most of the population killed by clouds of radioactive dust, or fled to Mars. The cities are full of empty apartment blocks, available to whoever wants to move in. Additionally, and of vital importance, nearly all the animals have died, from insects to the larger mammals.
In this world, humans have an enormous sense of loss, and a desperate need to be close to animals – real if possible, and if not, artificial, like the electric sheep of the title. The cleverest thing in this clever book is to make this attachment to animals an essential component of being human. Rick Deckard, whose pursuit of rogue androids drives the plot, administers the test which is considered to be an infallible marker of humanity – something that all humans will pass, and all androids fail. It’s clear – though PKD never points it out – that the situations described in the test, dealing with a shocked response to ill-treatment of animals, would not elicit the required response for a contemporary human. We would all fail the test, and be considered mere artificial creatures.
We don’t get the easy let-off of having the humans of the future being better than us, either. The most harrowing scene in the novel occurs when a captured female android pleads with Deckard to buy her a book of prints of Edvard Munch paintings. Another hunter kills her out of irritation. When Deckard is horrified – as we are – he casually tells Deckard that it’s only a matter of sexual attraction. We see that in their way, these humans are as uncaring as us. Or as the androids themselves, who demonstrate in many little acts of cruelty their lack of feeling.
In the end, PKD doesn’t give any answers. The questions he asks, however, remain as pertinent today as when he wrote the novel, fifty-five years ago. Questions that Asimov, despite his genius, would never think to ask.

“Writing dialogue is tough. Real tough,” I wrote, hammering the keys of the cheap typewriter so that the desk rattled. “Part 3,” I growled.

How accurate should dialogue be? How close to how people really talk? There’s precedent here. A vast number of novels have been written, most of them packed with dialogue. Millions and millions of imaginary conversations. How many of them could be taken as transcriptions of a real conversation? I would say, approximately none.

It’s an interesting thing about fiction. A serious writer about modern social issues might sneer at your novel about vampire kittens on Mars, but his conversations are every bit as other-worldy. They don’t correspond with the way people really talk. He might spend years observing how people behave, how they walk, their little gestures, how they wash, how they get dressed – but once they open their mouths, it’s fantasy land.

Nobody in a book talks like somebody out of it. However – dialogue can still be realistic – in a way.

When people in real life talk to each other, they are exchanging ideas. But it’s in real time, and it’s highly interactive. When I say something to you, I have no idea what you will reply. I can’t have a clever answer ready. I have to react to what you said – and I have to do it instantly. You have to do the same. Considered reasonably, it’s surprising that conversations make any sense at all. In fact, objectively, they often don’t. It’s not what I say that matters, it’s what you hear. If we are talking about something of mutual interest, we pluck the meat out of the other person’s words, and grasp the meaning.

When we try to write a conversation, we need to write what people hear, and what they mean – not what they say. When we listen, we filter out the stammering, the misspeaking, the sentences that stop in the middle and start again. Try remembering a talk you had with someone. You’ll remember the substance of it, not the false starts and mistakes. Then try to notice what somebody says when you’re talking. It will be very different.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have hesitations in a conversation. It’s just that they are there for a reason. If someone speaks slowly, or trails off a sentence, it’s to tell us something about him. It’s almost never because that’s how people really speak.

Here’s this week’s example. I thought I might use someone of genuine stature this time. The best writer of the twentieth century, king of the modernists, chronicler of the American South, master of the historical novel, creator of some of the longest sentences ever outside of Joyce – William Faulkner.

“What’s this, corporal?” the American captain said. “What’s the trouble? He’s an Englishman. You’d better let their M.P.’s take care of him.”

“I know he is,” the policeman said. He spoke heavily, in the voice of a man under physical strain; for all his girlish delicacy of limb, the English boy was heavier – or more helpless – than he looked. “Stand up!” the policeman said. “They’re officers!”

The English boy made an effort then… “Cheer-o, sir,” he said, “Name’s not Beatty, I hope.”

“No,” the captain said.

“Ah,” the English boy said. “Hoped not. My mistake. No offense, what?”

“No offence,” the captain said quietly.

And so it continues. Faulkner has five pages of conversation. There’s two American officers, and a drunken young British officer arrested by an American military policeman. After a couple of pages, a British policeman appears.

All five characters are talking, but Faulkner arranges it that the conversation revolves around the captain, even though the boy gets to drunkenly ramble, and the American policeman gets to have a lengthy monologue. We aren’t surprised when the policemen disappear from the story. They’ve done their bit. In the course of the conversation, they mutate.

The first policeman is identified as an American Military Policemen. Then he’s just referred to as “the Policeman”. Then, when the British Policeman arrives, they are both identified by nationality. The captain starts to refer to the American policeman as “corporal”. When the American policeman leaves, the British policeman is just “the policeman”. However, through all the changing, where some speech is almost monosyllabic, and sometimes it’s paragraphs long, we get the steady beat of “the captain said,”, “the captain said,”, reliably inserted. We know that when we’ve finished with these interchangeable policemen, and the mostly silent lieutenant, we’ll have some kind of interaction between the captain and the English boy.

Good dialogue will do all this. When it’s done by Faulkner, he can convey multiple meanings and many layers of information with the simplest of language. In a way, he does it almost too well to be a good example.

“Writing dialogue is hard, Part 2” he said. “No it isn’t,” she asservated. “Which do you mean?” he rasped.

Most conversations will be two way. It makes it so much easier if a man is talking to a woman. Then it’s just a matter of referring to he and she. When two men, or two women, are talking, then it’s all too easy to get muddled as to who did what, who said what, who this is supposed to be about. However, if it’s just the two of them, then it gets dull very quickly when you have to use their names. Using descriptions – the Russian agent, the gambler, the spy, the American criminal – becomes too obviously contrived. I have no solution for this that fits all situations. I’ve found myself in a tangle over a brief exchange of words and actions where what’s going on is very simple, but the language gets itself into a tangle, and I can’t bring it out smoothly.

Here are some more example from real-life books. I’ve unpacked most of my boxes now, but I’ve stayed with the handful I originally selected. These are therefore reasonably random, apart from the selectivity inherent in picking books I own.

Next up is a John Grisham. He’s a plain man’s writer – nothing too convoluted there. The story, atypically, is about an NFL player who’s moved to Italy. He’s talking about another team with a couple of fellow players, both Italian, There’s a bit of setting up, then we kick off with a “Sam said”. Then a “Trey asked”. The next speech is an answer to the question, so we know it’s Sam – so we have no need to have any ‘said’ at all. Then there’s a “Rick asked”. Again, we know it’s Sam replying, so his phrase doesn’t need a ‘said’ attached. Then we get a “Rick said” and another block of text without attribution, that we know must relate to Sam. But then, cleverly, we get another block of text, and we know, because the last “said” was attached to Rick, that this must be as well. This is a risky strategy when it’s a three-way conversation, but we have no trouble following it. The sentence attached to “Rick said” is short, as is Sam’s response, so when the next sentence comes up, we know it’s Rick speaking. However, Rick has a lot to say – six sentences. By the time he’s finished, we need to be told who replies. We get a “Sam said” and the conversation finishes.

Here’s the actual segment.

Rick and Trey hung around, and when all the Italians had left, they opened another bottle with Sam.
“Mr Bruncardo is reluctant to bring in another running back,” Sam said.
“Why?” Trey asked.
“Not sure, but I think it’s money. He’s…four sentences total.”
“Why does he do it,” Rick asked.
“Excellent question… three sentences total.”
“The answer is Fabrizio,” Rick said.
“Forget him.”
“I’m serious. With… six sentence infodump.”
“I’m tired of that kid,” said Sam, and Fabrizio was no longer discussed.

The last sentence in a block of text, if followed by a “said” is terminated by a comma. If there’s no “said”, it gets a period. (What we in the East Atlantic call a full stop.) If the quoted text is a question or exclamation, it is assigned a “?” or “!”. The above shows how this is done.

The most important thing, of course, is that we always know who’s speaking – unless, for some odd reason, the writer doesn’t want us to know.

More examples next week.