Why Your Characters Should Never Tell the Truth—Until This One Important Scene

On-the-nose dialogue is the death of any good dialogue scene. Why? Because on-the-nose dialogue leaves no room for subtext. It leaves no room for the evolution of a conversation because it spells everything out right from the start, as I talked about in some depth in this post.

One of my favorite illustrations of the value of avoiding on-the-nose dialogue comes from behind the scenes of the classic sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show, which featured the all-time great screen romance between main characters Rob and Laura Petrie. Show creator Carl Reiner famously refused to have these two obviously in-love characters ever say the words, “I love you.” Instead, he let their actions speak for them. And the results are timeless!

But does that mean you should never let your characters say it exactly how it is?

Not at all. Aside from the fact that doing so will have you filling your book with one convoluted conversation after another, doing so will also rob you of a powerful tool.

The beauty of avoiding on-the-nose dialogue for the majority of your scenes is that you then get to actually use spot-on dialogue to hammer home important points. Matt Bird of the Cockeyed Caravan calls this “gutpunch” dialogue. This kind of dialogue offers up the truth that’s been hovering under the surface of your character’s dialogue all through the scene (or even all through the story). It’s what everybody knows, but nobody is saying—until it matters.

Then they say it, and the entire story world gets rocked around them.

A great example of this comes at the end of the Justified pilot. By this point, Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens has shot two people (killed one), beat up another, and threatened multiple others. He does all this quietly, politely, even kindly, and while other characters may comment on his judgment, no one comments on his motives.

Then the final scene arrives and he notes to his ex-wife that he never thought of himself as an angry man. The on-the-nose truth of her response gut punches both the audience and Raylan himself: “Raylan, you do a good job of hiding it. And I suppose most folks don’t see it, but honestly, you’re the angriest man I have ever known.”

That kind of great gut punch will never work if the majority of the dialogue leading up to it doesn’t offer a wealth of subtext. Save your on-the-nose dialogue for when it matters, and it just may end up offering some of the most powerful words in your entire story.