In the previous blog entry I described the five main purposes of dialogue in fiction, as I see them and practice them when writing. I'd like to focus on how important the first purpose, INTENTIONS, is to dialogue between characters. Stanislavski, the great Russian director, Chekhov-collaborator, and head of the Moscow Art Theater, called these intentions the character's "task." Actors often call them "motivations" (as in, "What’s my motivation in this scene?) and others call them character "objectives." Whatever you call them, a character's got to have them, and there have got to be obstacles to these objectives. or you don't have plot and you don't have drama.

When writing a critical scene between fictional characters, WHAT they are saying to each other is generally less important than WHY they are saying it. What are they hoping to achieve? What is their objective? (WHAT follows WHY). INTENTIONS are what you want to start with, building them into your character's actions/reactions, relationships, voice.

Take a look at two consecutive scenes in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Chapters 30 & 31. Keep in mind that the 3rd person omniscient narrator used here means that the author has full rein to get inside all the character's heads and hearts singly, or simultaneously, and Tolstoy alters his viewpoint-character as he wishes. A first-person narrator wouldn't have that kind of flexibility, so unless the intentions of another character are made very clear in the dialogue, or unless your 1st-person narrator is extremely sensitive to sub-text, the subliminal meaning behind spoken words (and most of them are!) you might not have such a comprehensive range of intentions laid out for the reader. That's why dialogue is so important.

In the first scene, Chapter 30, two passengers on a train traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg step out of their cars on to a rural station platform in the midst of a snowstorm. One is the title character, Anna. Anna is on her way home to her husband and young son following an extended stay in Moscow, where she was mediating marital problems between her brother and his wife. While in the city, she attended a ball as chaperone for her young cousin, Kitty, and became disastrously attracted to Kitty's suitor, Count Vronsky, a soldier and aristocrat. She cut her visit short as soon as she realized that this feeling she has for Vronsky is more than a harmless flirtation. After all, Anna has a lot more to lose than Vronsky, who is single, rich, and experienced in love affairs. A dalliance with a married woman would only enhance his reputation among his male friends, while even a whisper of such behavior would ruin Anna.

However, Vronsky's attraction to Anna runs deeper than he's accustomed to, and unbeknownst to Anna, in Moscow he impulsively boards the train carrying her back to St. Petersburg. Now, without planning it, both of them step out of the train at a fuel stop in the middle of nowhere while the snowstorm rages: the swirling, frozen isolation of the environment perfectly mirroring the emotional intensity they feel seeing each other on the platform, as if their need for each other drew them out of the warm familiarity of their rail cars and into a howling abyss where they exist completely cut off from the world, existing only for each other.

As Anna is about to go back into the train, Vronsky speaks to her, and after a few essential pleasantries, he comes right to the point. In this scene, the only sub-text is Anna's. Vronksy speaks from his heart: WHAT he says is closely aligned to WHY he's saying it. Anna asks him, "What are you coming for?" and he answers "What am I coming for? You know that I have come to be where you are. I can't help it."

She is too flustered to respond coherently, rattled by how direct he is being, and she is honestly confused by what she's feeling in response. In trying to express this, she manages to say "It's wrong what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man, to forget what you've said, as I forget it." (As if!) He responds by saying, "Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget."

The die is cast! There's no going back now, for either one of them. Vronsky has acted, and now Anna reacts, falling in love with a man she barely knows and, as a married woman and mother, is forbidden to know better.

In the next scene, Chapter 31, things change dramatically in terms of dialogue, because Anna is met by her husband in St. Petersburg and Vronsky barges into the reunion of husband and wife on the station platform. This awkward three-way exchange is necessarily conducted entirely in sub-text, and is a masterpiece of sublimation and verbal irony. In the next post, I'll address how Tolstoy crafts the dialogue in this scene.