Tag Archive for Ann Patchett

ADDENDUM: A Closer Examination of Dialogue in Ann Patchett’s TOM LAKE, Pt. 2

In a previous post, I explored one scene from Ann Patchett’s novel, Tom Lake. I omitted all of the spoken dialogue from a kitchen table scene in order to highlight all the other written aspects that bolster such a scene: the attribution, the descriptions, the interior thoughts, the stage directions, and so forth. 

Now in retrospect, I realize that I should have included the dialogue, too, as a footnote. That will follow here. To me, it’s another interesting way to appreciate what a “real” writer does to make a talky scene come alive in the mind of the reader. 

Typing out the dialogue now, I find myself really missing those little stage directions throughout. Emily draining the wine glass. Emily balancing the fork. Lara’s interior musing. Joe stepping outside to look at the cherry trees. In fact, it could be argued that it’s not so much about the details to support the dialogue, but that the primary work is in all the stage directions — for lack of a better term — while the dialogue itself is the secondary character. 

More might be said by what is unsaid. 

To me, that’s a profound lesson for a writer. Because that’s life, isn’t it? We don’t always have the words. 

Here’s the dialogue only, from pages 142-144:

EMILY

“Or not.”

JOE

“Or not what? Not enough time? Is this going to be a very long engagement?”

BENNY

“We’re not having children.”

JOE

“You don’t know that.”

EMILY

“I know that.”

LARA

“You don’t want children?”

EMILY

“I don’t know if I want them but I’m sure i”m not going to have them.”

[pause]

EMILY

“I know this isn’t the way you planned things. I know it’s not what you want.”

LARA

“It isn’t about what we want.”

BENNY

“Crops used to fail once every fifty years. The crops have failed twice since I was born. The winters are milder, the lake is warmer, the trees aren’t staying dormant long enough. They bloom too early, the freeze kills the buds.”

JOE

“Why are you saying this? What do you think we don’t already know?”

BENNY

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to stop putting in cherry trees.”

JOE

“No.”

MAISIE

“I really cannot stand this.”

BENNY

“It’s not going to be cold enough for them anymore. We’re going to have to start thinking about wine grapes, strawberries, asparagus.

JOE

“So plant the grapes. It doesn’t mean you don’t have children.”

NELL

“It sort of does. Once you think about it.”

JOE

“You, too? Have the three of you signed a pact?”

NELL

“I have no idea what I’m going to do. But I’ll tell you, I think about it.”

MAISIE

“Who doesn’t think about it?”

EMILY

“I can eat vegetables and ride my bike and stop using plastic bags but I know I’m just doing it to keep myself from going crazy. The planet is fucked. There’s nothing I can do about that. But I’ll tell you what, I’m going to spend my life trying to save this farm. If anybody ever wonders what I’m here for, that’s it.”

 

 

 

ON WRITING: A Closer Look at the Dialogue in TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett — But Absent the Spoken Words

The other night, in a Level 1 writing class for adults that I guide for Gotham Writers, we were talking about dialogue. I asked the students to try an exercise where they wrote only the spoken words, nothing else. No attribution, no exterior description, no stage directions, no interior thoughts.

Focus entirely on what’s said out loud.

Later I asked them to go back and include those missing features, a strategy that builds awareness of the available tools, turning that spoken conversation into a fully rendered scene that readers can picture in their imaginations. And also, hopefully, help my students notice the power of all the unspoken messages that are delivered outside of, and beyond, what’s (merely) said out loud. 

Coincidentally, after that class I came across a sweet little stage direction while reading Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake. I underlined it, as is my habit. I put a star in the margin. It’s the bit about Emily and the fork (below), which struck me as brilliant. And I thought: that’s it, that’s some of what I was trying to convey

What follows represents one way of looking at a scene from Chapter 10, omitting all the spoken words.

I want your focus to be on all the small ways that Patchett brings this conversation to life. The attribution, of course. The way the narrator offers a deft but significant touch on the entire scene: she is clearly telling us this story, coloring it in for us. There’s the stage directions: Maisie’s arms tightening across her chest, Benny’s hands on Emily’s shoulders, Joe holding up his hand, etc.  Additionally, there’s that one key passage where our narrator, Lara, muses on the dresses and quilts (interior), and the closing paragraph (exterior) that’s pretty much straight description. 

You can also locate a conversation on a miniature golf course — or move it to a coffee shop — or shift that same conversation to a walk along the shore. One thing is clear: we don’t want to have an entire book of two people talking at the kitchen table.  A different setting can make all the difference.

NOTE: This particular conversation is set in Joe and Lara’s farmhouse kitchen, involving their three adult daughters, Nell, Maisie, and Emily, along with Benny, a neighbor who is Emily’s fiance. Hazel is the dog. 

The three dots represent any spoken passage, of any length, contained within quotation marks. 

 

TOM LAKE, pages 142-144: Dialogue without Words

* * *,” Emily says.

* * *,” Joe asks, teasing her. “* * *.”

Everyone is waiting now. Hazel is waiting. Emily opens her mouth but nothing comes out.

* * *,” Benny says

Joe shakes his head. “* * *.”

* * *,” Emily says.

We should have one night that is not about the future or the past, one night to celebrate these two people and nothing else but we’ve blown it. “* * *,” I ask her.

Emily tips back her wineglass. She drains it. “* * *.”

I am making our three daughters quilts from my grandmother’s dresses, from their grandmother’s dresses and my dresses and the dresses they wore when they were children. I started collecting the fabric when I was a child because even then I knew I would have daughters one day and I would make them quilts. My daughters will give these quilts to their daughters and those daughters will sleep beneath them. One day they will wrap their own children in these quilts, and all of this will happen on the farm.

* * *,” Emily says. “* * *.”

* * *,” I say, but that’s a lie. These children we’ve never spoken of? We want them very much. We long for them.

* * *,” Benny says, his voice quiet because all of us are silent. “* * *.”

Joe holds up his hand. “* * *.”

But Benny doesn’t stop. His voice comes without drama or demand and still, he keeps talking. “* * *.”

* * *,” Joe says.

* * *,” Maisie says.

* * *.”

* * *,” Joe says. “* * *.”

* * *,” Nell says. “* * *.”

* * *,” Joe asks. “* * *.”

* * *,” Nell says. “* * **.”

Maisie tightens her arms across her chest. “* * *.”

Emily sits down on a kitchen chair and Benny stands behind her, his hands on her shoulders. We are all so tired.

Emily picks up a fork and balances it on one finger. She looks at nothing but the fork. “* * *.”

Nell reaches across the table and takes her sister’s hand, and Joe, Joe who never walks away from us, goes out the kitchen door. He is standing at the edge of the garden, his back is to the house. He is looking at the trees.

 

ADDENDUM: Readers can click here to see the full dialogue that’s missing in this post, plus a few more observations from me, as I struggle to understand how this writing-thing works.