Captured by Characters and Dialogue
FEATURE: Author Peggy Bayless Gustave on character development and dialogue.
When Peggy Bayless Gustave asked me to edit what would become her first published novel, Wooden Angel: The Guardian, I was amazed at how easily I was captured by Claudette, a character that, given my gender and reading preferences, shouldn’t have interested me at all. Since then, I have reveled in the responsibility and privilege of editing her books and being recaptured by her engaging characters and their sharp, realistic dialogue in her stories.
I asked Peggy to share her insights with us—starting with character development. When Peggy first creates her characters, she says she may have a sketchy outline in her mind about the person, but nothing written down in the form of a profile. “Generally, I draw my characters from people I know, and I often combine two or three people into one character. This creates characters that are more realistic than they would be otherwise,” Peggy said.
In her second book, No Blossoms on the Pistachio Trees, character Professor Elias Jabril “is really a composite of about four people from my actual life. Two of them are of an age to be professorial, and two of them are much younger. With the exception of one, none of the four are Christians. One of the younger ones is militaristic and adventurous,” Peggy said. All of them inform the personality of the character, and all shine through the character at various stages of the story. “It was easier for Elias to be a living, breathing human being rather than working off of a tool such as a character wheel” to create him, Peggy said, adding that for every asset a character possesses, they must also have a liability. Deep compassion can be offset by a quick temper. A character that is cooperative can also be critical.
As she writes, Peggy finds that her characters start talking to her. “I become much more of a scribe than a creator. I love it when they speak to me; it puts me in their circle instead of me trying to put them into mine,” she said. “This contributes, then, to dialogue, because I can see them, hear them, and watch them react to one another. It’s like a movie; all of a sudden, the curtains draw back and I write what I’m seeing, hearing, and feeling.” Peggy has found that some of her characters actually insinuate themselves into the story at unlikely times, such as with Claire, a character in the now-being-written prequel to Wooden Angel: The Guardian. “I’ll be going right along writing about her sister Lille, and all of a sudden I hear Claire’s voice. ‘Hey, what about me? I’m still here.’ I’ll say, ‘Yes, you are. What are you up to?’ She’ll tell me, and I’ll put her in.”
When Peggy writes dialogue for her characters, she writes fast in the first go-round. She doesn’t bother with putting in emotional tags or dealing with action steps at this stage; the key is to “get it out,” she says, and she believes this is when her dialogue is at its most pure and genuine. “Next I’ll review it aloud for fluidity and realism, and then I’ll read it aloud a second time to note where the voice inflects and to insert emotional tags and action steps,” she said.
Instead of excessive narrative or an information dump, Peggy uses dialogue to allow the character or set of characters to reveal their own back story. One such case occurs in the prequel when Lille and Charlie have a conversation reflecting on how they first met. It is almost entirely dialogue and presented much like a flashback, but in real time. In No Blossoms on the Pistachio Trees, the character Yara had several instances where vital background information was revealed through dialogue.
Finally, Peggy finds that descriptive words within the dialogue help to convey the emotion the character is experiencing and expressing. For example, “Instead of, ‘I’m so angry with you right now,’ use, ‘I’m so infuriated that I think I’m ready to combust into a giant fireball that would singe the hairs right off that detestable moustache.’ Then immediately follow with inner dialogue: I know that’s demented, but somehow I relish the thought of his face on fire as he slaps his own face to extinguish the blaze,” Peggy explains. She adds that inner thoughts further deepen the reader’s emotional bond with the character, but writers must be careful not to overuse them.
Peggy’s books are published by Adam Colwell’s WriteWorks and produced and available in print and eBook through Amazon CreateSpace.
I want to hear from you!
As a writer, has a character ever spoken to you? How did you respond?