Guest Blogger ... Ben Whiting!

How to Use Goals to Drive Dialogue - Learning Fiction from the Bible, Part 2 (read part 1 here).

We're back in John chapter four again. For those who missed my last post, I recommend reading it before this one. The rest of you may want to read verses 1-12 as a refresher.

Last time we left the conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well with the Samaritan woman still confused. She thinks that the conversation is still about physical water, while Jesus is actually talking about eternal life, using water as a metaphor. In verses 13 and 14 he explains the difference between the two waters, but her response shows that she doesn't get it.

Real People Speak for a Reason

In verse 16 Jesus radically changes subjects, or seems to. As you follow the rest of the conversation, it becomes apparent that Jesus really has the same goal he had before, he's just pursuing it differently. During the discussion of waters, Jesus was pointing the Samaritan woman toward the fact that he is the Messiah, the answer to all of her problems. That's what he's doing here as well, this time by demonstrating his supernatural knowledge of her life. Same goal, different plan of attack.

The temptation has struck me before to insert random words into a conversation to create interest and tension—to use the unexpected to knock my protagonist off-balance. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, as long as you ground that randomness later with reason.

A real person has something they hope to achieve by speaking, even if that reason may not be readily apparent to the other person. The words your characters speak need to be internally consistent, not just with their train of thought, which I pointed out last time, but also with their driving desire in the conversation.

If dialogue is war, what does victory look like in the mind of each of your characters?

Real People's Goals Are Often Dynamic

The Samaritan woman's response to Jesus' command to bring her husband is revelatory as well. During this entire conversation she's been trying to figure out Jesus, first when he broke the Jewish mold by speaking with his cultural enemy, and again when he claimed he could give her better water than the well could.

Her goal changes here though, because Jesus just hit a nerve. As he spells out in verse 18, she has had five previous husbands, not including her current, live-in lover. She doesn't want that exposed, so she tries to cover it up with a half-truth—“I have no husband.” No doubt she still has questions about who Jesus is and why he's acting this way, but that goal temporarily falls to the side in favor of trying to hide her secret.

Your character may also have multiple desires driving her at any one time, but one of those must be primary and the others secondary. Those goals can switch positions, and she can even wrestle over which is more important, but ultimately she needs to choose to give one priority. And that goal, whatever it is, should be reflected in what she decides to say.

~o~

Ben Whiting is a full-time English student at the University of Texas at Arlington and co-general editor of the award-winning collegiate publication Marine Creek Reflections. He recently completed the rough draft of his suspense novel, Penumbra.