I'm back after a crazy week or two or whatever. And my joints are back in working condition (just knock on wood and hope I didn't jinx myself by saying that).

Anyway, as I'm trying to get back into critiquing I keep running into a very familiar old problem that I'm constantly commenting on. And my comments raise a lot of questions, but since I make them so, so often, I thought I'd just address the question that has probably been on your minds if you've ever gotten a critique from me: Why I Hate Dialog in Dramatic/Traumatic Scenes

If you've ever gotten a critique from me and you've had a scene with abuse, violence, fighting, etc. then I have very little doubt that you've probably heard the suggestion from me to cut back the dialog immensely (if not simply delete it altogether). And that puzzles a lot of people. The most common replies I get are "but the dialog makes it more dramatic" and "the dialog explains the action"

To which I say: I still hate it.

And let me share with you all my reasons why.

1. It's too stiff and/or predictable

If someone is being abused, then the abuser is no doubt calling them "a bitch" and explaining to them how helpless they are. Listen, I know it's my biases kicking in, but I cannot stand this kind of dialog. For lack of a better explanation, I don't want to hear it.

I don't like when someone gets in a fight with their significant other and they are both shouting exactly why they are mad. That's what make fights so frustrating: you don't know what the other one is thinking or feeling. You completely eliminate that level of emotion when you lay everything out like that. Boring. Blah. Hate it.

Swearing isn't a sign of violence anymore. I do it all the time. It's just words.

2. It's an excuse to step outside the narrator's/character's head

I don't give a fuck if the kidnapper/r*pist/abuser is telling the MC "You're such a little, bitch. You deserve this. I hate you." Blah, blah, blah. Shut up.

I don't care what this villain is saying. I care what the MC is feeling. What are they thinking?

Okay, so if she tells anyone the bad man touches her where he shouldn't he'll kill her parents, but how does that make her feel? I don't get that. I get the dialog.

I would rather you tell me that's what he says then begin to describe the inner turmoil of the MC than for you to give me the exact words and complete ignore what she feels.

So he's going to kill her parents. Okay. That means nothing to me if I can't feel her palms sweating. I don't feel anything if I can't hear her heart pounding in my ears. I don't care about her if the words on the page don't start jumbling together because my mind is spinning just like hers with all these fears and thoughts. I don't care what he says. I don't care about him. I care about her.

I'm telling you, if someone is abused, 9 times out of 10 they aren't going to hang on every word of their abuser. They're going to hang on something they can control. They're going to focus on the fact that the sheets of his bed are baby blue and there are seventeen diamonds on the wallpaper above the door and there are three screws in the light fixture on the ceiling and there's a line of white paint around the edge of the door knob. If you want your readers to be upset about what happens you won't get there by stiff, stupid dialog. You'll get there by telling them all these stupid little details that the girl notices, because all these horrible things are happening to her and she just wants to think about things six year olds should be having too much fun to notice.

3. Actions speak louder than words

I remember when he was seventeen, my best friend's dad and his dad's first wife (sorta, but for the sake of confusion, we'll call her his first wife and my best friend's step-mom) got back together for a while. And it was one of the first times I can remember my best friend not hating living at home with his dad. He spent a lot more time there. He got to see his half-brother and his little brother a lot more. His whole family was pretty happy and I was happy for them.

Then one day I went over to his house and found my best friend home alone, frantically scrubbing at this dress. And as soon as I walk in, he looks up at me with this insanely crazy look on his face and didn't even bother to greet me. He just said "How do you get out wine stains?"

When I asked him why, he just held up his step-mom's dress and pointed to the wine stains around the collar. And I kind of thought it was funny for a lot of reasons, one being that it was his step-mom's dress and he hardly did his own laundry (his theory is if it smells okay then it's clean enough).

I wanted to laugh, because it was all kind of funny from the outside, but he had this look on his face that I didn't get to see a lot. His mouth was pressed in this really thin line and his eyebrows were kind of furrowed together and the scar above his left eye pushed into his eye lashes. And he just looked overall worried. It almost seemed like if I would have touched him, I could have felt him shaking. There was so much nervous energy in the house that it was almost buzzing in my ears.

It made me very uncomfortable and I asked him what the big deal was. I didn't bother to tell him that his dad and his step-mom drank. They were going out. Sometimes you spill when you get tipsy. I didn't get the big deal, but his actions were telling me that something about this was wrong.

And all he said was "he doesn't drink wine".

And instantly I knew. I knew everything and he didn't have to say anything at all. He didn't have to say that his step-mom was cheating on his dad. You could see that the way the wine stains started looking a lot like lips. And he didn't have to say that he wanted it to work out so badly between them for his brothers, because he wouldn't have been working so hard, pouring on every cleaning agent he could find and scrubbing until I thought his hand were going to start bleeding.

And when we couldn't get it out and I told him I was sorry all he said was "me too". And he didn't have to tell me why, because everything that had happened meant I already knew. She hadn't even tried to hide it. She hadn't tried to get rid of it or wash it out. She was done. And words couldn't have said it more clearly.

4. Less is more. Much more.

This is very much in the same vein as the last point, but think of dialog as poetry: every word has to count.

And sometimes saying very little says quite a bit.

For example, like everyone else, I like to pretend that my best friend and I have the perfect relationship, but anyone that tells you they have a perfect relationship with anyone is a dirty, dirty liar. My best friend fight. Everyone fights. I don't care how much you care about them.

And sometimes, when we lived together more and it was particularly nasty fight, we tried to get our space, but inevitably, at three am, I'd head for the bedroom and my best friend would just say "Night".

Not "goodnight" like he did every night when I'd head to bed at three am and try to get a few hours of sleep. Just, simply, "night". And I never cried during fights, but anytime he said "night" I knew he was really mad. And that really hurt. Just him leaving the "good" off of "goodnight" was worse than anything he could say during a fight. And every time I'd sit with my back to the door and cry my eyes out, because that hurt. That hurt worse than anything we fought about, because it said a lot more than words ever could.

It said that he was mad. It said that he didn't want me to have a "good" night. He wanted me to me mad. He wanted me to stay up and worry about everything. And it was one word.

We could fight about anything and it sucked, but it didn't hurt nearly as bad as when he just said "night". And he never figured out that it was that one word that made me cry and that would make him even madder, because he wouldn't know why I was crying when we'd barely spoken in-between the three am exchange. (And I know you're not supposed to go to bed mad at each other, but we're both insomniacs so us going to bed is like a joke.)

But it's always been the times when either of us said very few words that I remember the most.

I remember when we were hanging out and having a really good time one night. Then my ex called me and wanted to see me because of all these stupid reasons that a very desperate sixteen year old girl would listen to and believe in. And I knew my best friend was really, really hurt that I wanted to leave our perfect night to go see someone who was a complete ass to me. But he didn't yell at me. He didn't tell me how upset he was that he knew I was going to put him second. He just said "go". And that was the last thing he said to me that night. And I'll always regret going, because that one word said everything he didn't.

I remember when I was seventeen and I was pouring my heart out to him about all these secrets I'd kept and finally I just asked him why bad things always happened to me. And he just said "Because you're brave. You're brave enough to try anything." And ever since then, anytime something bad happens I just think of him telling me I was brave. And I just keep telling myself to be brave. And it helps. A lot.

I remember him driving me home after the first time I was hospitalized for my eating disorder and asking him if he thought it was all just a dream and him very bluntly telling me "no". And I asked him every time and every time he would just say no. Until the last time. The last time he said "I don't know anymore". And that will haunt me forever.

So that's why I hate dialog in dramatic/traumatic scenes. It takes away from what's actually happening.

And I hate to leave this rant on a sour note like that, with you thinking my best friend and I fight a lot, so I feel compelled to tell you how awesome he is. Because he's the best. Like, better than the best. He had to miss my birthday again this year and he felt so incredibly bad that he sent me the most epic gift I've ever in my life received. (I know I told you guys he just buys me a case of beer for all my birthdays and he does, but I deliberately left out the part where he's kind of really good at giving me sweet gifts in order to make my point (so sue me))

He spent two weeks in the studio after work (as in, he lived there for two weeks (went home twice!)) and made the most beautiful album I've ever heard. It was thirteen songs of pure magic. Eight of them were for the punk rock band we decided we were going to form as a midlife crisis when I was sixteen (because apparently I'm now old enough to have my midlife crisis), three of them were things we've been working on through this weird combination of text messaging and even weirder voice memos, and two he wrote himself.

And then, as if it weren't enough that he played all the instruments and produced the whole damn thing, he put it on a cassette tape. A goddamn, motherfucking cassette tape. Do you understand how sweet that is? (You guys are old enough to know what cassette tapes are, I know). But do you know just how amazing that is? I may or may not have cried a little. Okay a lot.

It's like the best gift I've ever gotten and I say that about everything, but seriously. Wow. There aren't words. So I'll have to invest in more batteries for my old school Walkman so I can keep listening to it over and over and over. So that's where I'll be if anyone needs me: in musical paradise.