In one of my practically feline array of former lives, I taught writing.
OK, I assigned, read, and offered up constructive criticism of writing. (I’ve more or less concluded you can’t actually teach writing, in the same way you can’t really teach people to become stand-up comedians. Some people have it, some people don’t. And in rare instances, some people who don’t have it but want it are willing to work like a colony of ants on getting better at it. Those were the very few people I taught anything about writing.)
Once the mandatory Personal Experience Essay, Persuasive Writing, and Literary Analysis assignments were (thankfully) out of the way–and here let me pause to swear I shall I never again read an 18-year-old’s argument about why Jonathan Swift was a terrible person for advocating that we eat babies–we got around to a bit of creative writing toward the end of the semester. Fiction. The opportunity to create and tell a story.
The worst part of the fiction assignments (and there were plenty of bad parts to go around) tended to be the dialogue. If a first-year writer were attempting workplace conversation, it would probably come out like this.
John: Jane, sometimes I think you’re the only one around here who really understands what we’re doing here.
Jane: Hmmm…so you’re looking around this place, seeing a lot of peeps appearing to be lost or perhaps not seeing the big picture…and that’s quite discouraging for you.
John: Yes, you’ve pretty much nailed it. I mean what is up–don’t they get what our purpose is here for crying out loud!? I wish more people here could follow your lead–you seem to “get it”, you know? What’s your inspiration?
Jane: It’s frustrating for you them not to be on board like I seem to be. I tell ya what I do, John. I read the Mission Statement every morning before I start work. I find it helps to ground me.
John: You’re a good egg, Jane. That Mission Statement was written by my father when he started this Zombie Extermination company, and it’s the very embodiment of his legacy.
Jane: Unless you count that unfortunate zombie body he ended up in as the “embodiment” of his legacy…
John: We don’t like to talk about that.
This dialogue is, of course, patently absurd. But not for the reasons you might think.
It’s absurd because these two fictional characters are actually listening to and responding to each other. In real-life, un-coached situations, that pretty much never happens. Realistic dialogue is full of lulls, miscues, non-sequitors, and suchlike. If I wanted the dialogue to sound more real, I’d rewrite it this way:
John: Jane, sometimes I think you’re the only one around here who really understands what we’re doing here.
Jane: Thanks. Hey, did you see Dancing With The Stars last night? I thought Danny DeVito was awesome.
John: You know, I’ve been thinking. Dad was never big on women in the Active Kill department, but…
Jane: You know who else was good? That chick who used to play Cindy Brady.
John: …I’ve been thinking, you’re a hard worker. Maybe Dad was wrong. He was wrong about the zombie-proof armor, after all.
Jane: But really I think the knockout performance of the night was Mary Matalin and James Carville. They totally rocked the tango.
C’mon, admit it. You’ve heard variations on that conversation before. Probably at your own workplace or around the dinner table. (Not the part about the zombies, obviously. The “two-different-conversations” part.)
While leadership training gives people effective tools to shape real-life conversations into productive ones, those conversations are no more “natural” than that first draft of dialogue above. Active listening and I-messages tend to take people by surprise, and usually people don’t even know why. They just know that this isn’t how normal conversations go.
If I were teaching creative writing today, I’d still advise that writers create fictional dialogue in which nobody really listens, everybody’s single-mindedly pursuing a secret personal agenda, and the whole shebang is wrapped up in heightened emotion.
Good fiction relies on conflict, and conflict relies on lousy communication. (If Othello had been able to slow down and listen to Desdemona for just a minute or two, he could have avoided that whole unpleasant killing her thing, for example). I’d do that because that’s what makes drama work. (Imagine how different the ending of Othello would have been had he actually taken sixty seconds to listen to Desdemona when she tried to tell him no, really, she hadn’t been up to hanky-panky with his best bud.)
But I prefer my drama on the page (or the stage, or the screen), and not in the workplace. So I’m glad to be able to speak–and write–both kinds of dialogue.