In their studies, linguistics undergrads learn about Paul Grice‘s work on conversation, considering the Cooperative Principle and its maxims – four unwritten rules for successful verbal interaction:
💡 Quantity: Judge the right amount to say.
🌐 Relevance: Keep your words pertinent to the conversation.
🗣 Manner: Be clear, precise, and maintain order in communication.
🤥 Quality: Tell the truth.
Do fiction writers need to follow these rules? It depends. In works of fiction, not all conversations need to be successful. Conflict in a story may arise from breaking these maxims.
But it’s not just in-world dialogue that needs consideration. Think above the scene and consider the whole novel as a dialogue with the reader.
For this to be successful:
✂ Trim the excess
Real-world conversations have established norms, for example, opening sequences with greetings and small talk. Should these be in your scenes? Your reader’s time is precious; they want to get at the story. Characters who say too much are breaking the maxim of quantity – and your readers won’t thank you for it. You’re in control of your structure. Focus on dialogue that’s key to the scene’s essence.
📍 Relevance matters
What characters say needs to be relevant to the reader (the maxim of relevance), even if it isn’t relevant to the character they’re talking to. They could be muddying the waters (violating the maxim of quality), deflecting attention away from themselves. Great, if that’s the point! But characters who go off on tangents for no perceptible reason will get on readers’ nerves.
🗝 Authenticity is key
Be precise. Characters should be a natural product of their environment and upbringing, not just by their physical appearance and mannerisms, but by their speech patterns too, down to their individual word choices. One person’s word choice will not be the same as another’s. Vocabulary is key to characterisation. If this is inappropriate, you’ll flout the maxim of manner, and readers will feel something’s off.
I’m shoe-horning Grice’s maxims from real-life interactions into a fictional context, but there’s a lot we can learn from them. Consider:
✔ Word Choice: Choose words carefully for characters and their emotions, time and place, and relationships.
✔ Shared Knowledge: Decide what to reveal or leave unsaid.
✔ Structure: Understand turn-taking and floor-holding dynamics. How much is too much?
💬 Craft dialogue, not a transcript
Trust your characters to express themselves authentically, and then give them an edit. Engage readers by crafting conversations that reveal character and move the story along.
CherryEdits 