Writing the dialogue of two travelers who dislike each other
I'm currently writing a journey-focused plot arc, and I'm struggling a bit with the character interactions. To give you some background, the protagonist is a lone wolf of sorts whose job is akin to a nomadic exorcist. He gets wounded at the start of the series, and a bar maiden nurses him back to health. She insists on joining him in his journey to the capital. He begrudgingly allows her to tag along, since he knows that in his weakened state, it isn't safe to venture in the woods alone.
However, the protagonist doesn't particularly like that the bar maiden has joined him, and he's a rather stoic figure so he doesn't say much in general. The problem is, since this is at the beginning of the story I have to allow the reader to get to know these characters... I find this harder to do when one of the characters doesn't really want to talk to the other one. I was hoping maybe someone can give good examples of featuring a duo who doesn't get along and yet, their dialogue still makes the journey interesting?
These characters are mostly traveling in seclusion, so there aren't many other characters who can prompt more conversation. I could make them enjoy each other's company in time, but I struggle with that buildup as well.
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You could play them as opposites. He hardly talks at all, she talks enough for both of them!
She is not unaware or oblivious to him, but she just chatters along, asking him questions that he doesn't answer, making up her own answers, telling about her life and things that happened and her family and her neighbors and adventures she has had, or heard about. Just an endless stream of consciousness, filling the silence.
Every once in awhile, he will answer a question, and she listens.
And he doesn't like it, at first. But he's not going to complain, she saved his life. He's got a code, he thinks of this as fair payment. But after a while, he grows used to it. Then he starts to listen to her, and curiosity gets the better of him: He asks questions. She answers, and once in a while trades him an answer for an answer; so he is answering questions.
Make your barmaid smart and perceptive, she understands people. She knows when it is okay to push forward with him a little, and when she should leave him alone. She can read his feelings, and know when he's irritated, or a topic pains him, or embarrasses him, or when he is secretly humored by her stories.
Being an uncommunicative stoic is a recipe for isolation and loneliness. He may have become numb to that loneliness, and think of it as solitude. But because he is that way, she will soon be the person that "gets him" better than anybody else in the world. If you want him to love her, in either a romantic or platonic sense, this can be the recipe for that.
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Augment your dialog with narrative and action.
What is the most extreme thing he can do and/or say to communicate his dislike of her? Would he hurt her? Verbally abuse her? Why or why not? Write such a scene.
What is the most extreme thing she can do? Go ahead and write that scene too.
Or turn it on its head, too. Don't make his feeling simple dislike--give it a layer or two of complexity. Maybe... He doesn't want to be around her for a reason. Ideally, it'd be something specific the reader can grab onto, not a vague generality ("lone wolf") but something specific. She smells like a decomposing corpse. She's better educated than him. Anything specific makes it more vibrant.
"You know Bob?" I say in disbelief.
"That's one way of putting it," she answers with a laugh.
"From Kilkenny."
"That's right. He even proposed to me once, you know. But he's not really a family man, not like you. I said no."
If that don't beat all. The dame knows Kilkenny Bob--the man who cheated me out of my fortune in a fixed poker game. And she says they were a thing, her and Bob, an item, for over a year, if you can believe it! So now I'm s'posed to be thankful to her for her 'gentle ministrations?' Sheesh. Not likely.
I pick up her suitcase and hurl it, hard, across the car, and it hits with a satisfying crack, and her jaw about falls to the floor. Now I'm the one laughing. She hurries over to grab it, and I think, not for the first time, the dame has gams that could rival Paltrow. I give 'em a hard look as she bends over the seat.
Take that, Bob.
Might not be my finest moment, but screw it. He's the reason I'm in this mess to begin with.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45784. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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