Maya Kessler on the Power of Dialogue

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter— sign up here . Me: “What do you love about dialogue?” Also me: “The fact that only in a dialogue I can tell you to shut up!” When I find myself standing on stage in front of an audience, I know I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because the audience will not be conversing with me: it’s going to be me doing the talking and them doing the listening. With everyone looking at me, I need to say something like, “Why, isn’t this awkward… what was it? Oh, yeah…” I get closer to the mic and say, “Just picture me naked.” If I’m lucky, they’ll laugh, and I’ll get the feedback I need. Since the people in the audience aren’t going to reply, this is the closest I can get to feeling like we’re having a conversation. And that’s where I feel at best: in a dialogue. Composing my response according to what’s being said to me. Reacting. Retorting. Countering. I enjoy the challenge of finding the right way to talk to a person. It requires engagement and sensitivity—to mirror their words back to them while keeping my words true to me, so that I too get to reflect myself. Because otherwise, what’s the point? Nobody tells you where to go In my writing, dialogue often drives the narrative. The story doesn’t have an agenda, the characters do. I let them lead the way. It’s their motivation that shapes the plot. Put two people in a room together—it’s most likely that one of them is trying to achieve something. And the responses of the other will determine how far they can progress in that direction, how far they can push each other’s boundaries. What will they say to get what they want? How it usually works I’d start with a little piece of a sentence, for which I have zero context, like, “Can I have a word?” —I have no clue who said that to who, or why. But I can already feel something, a need. And then I […]

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