How do you make a dialogue-focused scene feel active?
In an early Novel Study post I listed the components of fictional scenes—action, summary, dialogue, character description, setting, introspection, and backstory—and analyzed a scene from Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House to see how one author used the tools available to her.
Color key
Chapter 5 of Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House
As you can see from the image, Patchett relies heavily on summary, character description, and introspection—largely tools of telling. As I discussed in the post, this works well for a novel that is focused on uncovering a complex history of interpersonal relationships to understand how they are impacting the characters’ present lives.
Let’s apply the same technique to a more action-oriented novel, Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties, to see how an author might use the same set of tools in a different combination.
You can read my analysis of the novel’s opening chapters in this post, but to recap, we’ve learned that Meddy is a wedding photographer, in business with her mother and aunts. On the eve of their biggest event ever, Meddy goes on a blind date with a man her mother has set her up with by impersonating her on a dating app. The early chapters have also established that Meddy loves her mother and aunts but also wishes for more independence from them, and that she had an intense college relationship with a man named Nathan—a relationship she has never really gotten over.
Chapter 7 shows us the aftermath of Meddy accidentally killing her date with a Taser after he tries to assault her (no spoiler here since this plot revelation is in the blurb!). Here are the first twelve pages (of fourteen total) of the chapter, with every sentence categorized.
Chapter 7 of Dial A for Aunties
At a quick glance you can see that the chapter is dominated by dialogue (pink) and action (yellow), with a healthy sprinkling of introspection and character description (blue and turquoise), and a couple summary bridges (orange). The spaced-out lines highlighted in lavender (backstory) are dating-app messages Meddy’s mother had exchanged with the dead guy before the date.
Compared to Patchett’s backward-looking, meditative scene, Sutanto’s scene is firmly grounded in the present moment. This fits their respective subjects and is solidified by their narration choices: both novels have first-person (I) narrators, but Patchett’s is in the past tense while Sutanto’s is in present tense.
Let’s look at some of the details of how the scene unfolds and see how Sutanto is using her palette to move the plot forward and bring us closer to the characters, especially her protagonist, Meddy.
As the scene opens, Meddy is sitting in her garage, the body of her date in the trunk of her car, trying to understand how she got to this moment. Suddenly, her mother is there, and we get our first bit of dialogue:
She frowns at me. “What is it, Meddy? What’s wrong?” I wasn’t planning on telling her anything. Of course I wasn’t—the last person I want to tell is Ma. She wouldn’t know what to do, or say, or—
“Ma, I killed him.”
This first exchange sets up the internal conflict that fuels the whole scene: Meddy wants to keep her mother (and aunts) at arm’s length but can’t stop herself from accepting their comfort and help—which they are all too ready to provide. There is intergenerational conflict here, doubled or tripled by the cultural gap between Meddy and her family.
Sutanto, however, plays the conflict for laughs throughout much of the scene, adding a deeper note only occasionally. For example, after surprising Meddy by announcing she’s called her aunts, who are on their way over, she tells her to cut up some mangoes for them:
“If we don’t offer any food very ngga enak.”
“Seriously, Ma? You care about saving face right now? I think we’re kinda beyond that, aren’t we?”
She gives me a look as she bends down to open up the fruit drawer in the fridge. “Meddy, how can you say that? Your aunties coming over, so late at night, coming to help us get rid of body, and we don’t even offer them any food? How can? Oh, we have dragon fruit, good, good. Big Aunt’s favorite. Wah, got pear too. Very good. Help me peel, don’t be so rude to your aunties, you will bring shame.” [* see note at bottom of post re. language]
“Oh, right, it’s the lack of fruit that’ll bring shame, not the dead body in the car.”
But, as happens again and again throughout the book, Ma turns out to be right and the ritual of preparing and sharing the food provides a moment of comfort and bonding before the group has to confront the reality of the dead body and decide what to do next. This sequence happens over page 5 and 6 in the illustration above. Sutanto uses the fruit business to get the aunts into the scene and continue establishing the basics of this family dynamic.
Note the orange summary sections on these pages, which speed us over information we already have. See, for example, this chunk from the middle of page six:
“So,” she says, turning to me and switching to English. Behind the kindly wrinkles that I know so well I could sketch them in my sleep, her gaze is eagle sharp. “Tell Big Aunt what happen. Start from beginning.”
I don’t hesitate. There’s just something about Big Aunt, a mix of firm authority and motherly warmth that nobody can say no to. I’m feeling so guilty about having them rush here in the middle of the night—to help me with a dead body, no less—that I try relaying the story in Indonesian. But not even one sentence in, Second Aunt tells me my atrocious Indonesian is giving her a headache and I should just stick to English. With some relief, I tell them about my date with Jake, about how he insisted on driving me home, and the things he said.
My aunts and mother cover their mouths with horror and shake their heads.
“How could you set Meddy up with such a douchebag?” Fourth Aunt snaps at Ma.
Ma’s face is as red as a Louboutin sole. “He was so nice online! Perfect gentleman, even offer to cook terong for me—er, for Meddy.”
The summary section sets up the next revelation, cued up by the mention of the text conversations, but Sutanto doesn’t waste the chance here to give us more insight into Meddy’s emotional state and her complex feelings about her relatives as well as the cultural and linguistic misunderstandings that led to the dead body in the trunk. Note how weaving in just a few sentences of narration mixed with introspection doesn’t slow down the scene. Very quickly we are back to dialogue and the feeling of forward momentum.
In a laugh-out-loud-funny sequence, Meddy learns that her mother was sexting with Jake, the date, without even realizing it:
I slam the phone down and stare at Ma. Fourth Aunt is literally lying on the floor, laughing.
“What? What is it?” Big Aunt says. “He sound like very nice boy, offer to cook eggplant for you.”
“Right?” Ma cries, gesturing wildly. “I read that and I think, wah, this boy is so lovely, so caring for my daughter, even ask her, is she thirsty?”
I bury my face in my hands. “Nooo! Ma, those emojis—the water droplets and the eggplant—they’re sexual innuendos!”
But the hilarity leads to a deeper message that this family, despite their many conflicts, are fiercely loyal. It’s now Meddy’s mother’s turn to feel guilty as she wonders if her naiveté led to Jake’s death—a question that is quickly answered by the rest of the group:
I open my mouth to answer, but my aunts beat me to it, shouting, “NO!” in unison.
“So what if you say you want eat eggplant?” Second Aunt says. “Maybe one day you want eat eggplant, but then another day you don’t want, is okay you change mind.”
“Yes, he is very bad boy, very bad,” Big Aunt says.
The overall emotional arc of the scene is from a Meddy who is alone and frightened in her car, unsure of her next move, to a Meddy who is affirmed, comforted, and supported by her family. When she resumes her story and alludes to Jake’s intentions once more, her family erupt in curse words in various languages and her mother declares, “It is good thing he already dead, otherwise I kill him.” It’s joyful, funny, and cathartic all at once. And we know that there must be more such scenes to come because they are only at the beginning of the problems they are going to have to solve together—among them, getting rid of a dead body.
* Note: Sutanto has a long author’s note at the beginning of the novel explaining her family’s complex linguistic heritage, their mixed fluencies in Indonesian, Mandarin, and English: “Some of the aunties in Dial A for Aunties speak the sort of broken English that my parents’ generation does. Their grasp of the English language is not a reflection of their intelligence, but a reflection of the sacrifice that they have made for us. They are, in essence, trilingual, and I am so proud of this heritage. I’m aware while writing this that I’m straddling a very fine line between authenticity and stereotype, and it’s my hope that this book defies the latter. It is by no means representative of the Asian community as a whole; no single book can possibly represent such a large community of individuals.”