Read Fiction Writer's Workshop for Free Online

of dialogue is interpolated into a far larger moment in the scope of the story than it is in the lives of the characters themselves. Take a simple, one-word response like "Sure." Lines like this pass our way again and again in dialogue, but think for a moment about ways to make this word tie in to the life of a character in some meaningful way. Our character may be saying it unwillingly and with a sense of resignation. To interpolate a moment like this, the narrative might step in, interrupting the dialogue on the page, to unwind the character's life in some way, perhaps touching on all the other times she'd simply given in like that. While this may sound intimidating, it ought to be the stuff writers rub their hands over, as it allows for direct connection from the external world of event to the internal world of the character.
    In Anton Chekhov's great story "The Lady With the Pet Dog," a moment of casual conversation becomes a looking glass into a character's soul. The story centers on Dmitry Dmitrovich, a Muscovite in late nineteenth-century Russia. His public life, and married life, leaves him unsatisfied and melancholy and, on vacation in Yalta, he meets a woman with whom he begins an affair. He is rejuvenated by the relationship, but as it would be destructive to both his life and the woman's, he must keep it a secret. His life is split in two, and while he discovers his humanity in his new love, he is trapped by the world in which he lives. At one point, he leaves a restaurant and feels the urge to share his secret. Read the passage below and notice how little is actually spoken but how much is revealed in the words and reactions of the characters. This interpolated dialogue, brief as it is, has a direction too. Its effect, however, is made clear through the narrative that precedes and follows it.
    Already he was tormented by a strong desire to share his memories with someone. But, in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one to talk to outside; certainly he could not confide in his tenants or in anyone at the bank. And what was there to talk about? He hadn't loved then, had he? Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, edifying or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And he was forced to talk vaguely of love, of women, and no one guessed what he meant; only his wife would twitch her black eyebrows and say, "The part of the philanderer does not suit you at all, Dmitry."
    One evening, coming out of the physician's club with an official with whom he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:
    "If you only knew what a fascinating woman I became acquainted with at Yalta!"
    The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and shouted:
    "Dmitry Dmitrovich!"
    "What is it?"
    'You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit high."
    These words, so commonplace, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manner, what mugs! What stupid nights, what dull humdrum days! Frenzied gambling, gluttony, drunkenness, continual talk always about the same things! Futile pursuits and conversations always about the same topics take up the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life clipped and wingless, an absurd mess, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a prison.
    Although Peter Abrahams would surely cringe at the comparison to a master like Chekhov, it's important to note ways in which this dialogue is completely different from the one cited from The Fan. This passage acts as one of the story's moments of clarity, an epiphany in which the character sees his life stripped to its most brutal essence. Yet, the dialogue itself is short and the explicit meaning of what is said would not appear to apply to the protagonist's life in any larger sense. It is a moment that, without the accompanying narrative, might