Layering Scenes

Now, I've talked a lot about dialogue and it's importance. It's a vital aspect of just about any book, but that being said there are a lot of aspects that go into it and other tricks you can do with it. One really fun thing to do in your writing, especially when you feel your dialogue is to straight forward or doesn't get the point across enough, is to layer your scene. Add a second interaction, either conscious to your characters or not, that adds to their interaction and follows a similar motif. Take a look at this piece I did for example, and take note of the second interaction that happens and how it goes together with the dialogue.

“The doctor’s said you’d be alright,” Alex said over the noise of the heart monitor. Brody looked out the window into the small hospital waiting room, in which there was a lone woman sitting, back straight, chin up, clutching an old, faded pair of army fatigues like her life depended on it.

                “Not for long,” Brody said.

                “You’re alive, isn’t that what matters right now?”

                “Maybe,” Brody muttered.

                “We survived,” Alex said, “and I don’t care what comes next, that’s good enough for me.” The woman sitting in the window was visited by an even older, more faded looking doctor. The type of person who has the faint wrinkles and kind eyes that says he’s seen what this world has to offer, good and bad. He broke the news, his gaze never leaving that of the woman’s.

                “Alex, you don’t understand.”

                “No, Brody, you don’t understand,”

                “Alex! My lungs are done, you get it? Done! I have hours left before they die out-,” A fit of coughing over took him, sprinkling the hand that covered his mouth in blood.

                “For my lungs to kick out, here, now? You know what needs to happen next.”

                “A surrogate. You need your surrogate.”

                “Yes,” Brody said. Outside, the doctor handed the woman two or three dead medals to go with her army uniform. She sobbed, her small frame shaking rigorously with the fragility of a house of cards. She accepted the medals regardless; wiping a tear out of each eye before reaching out to take them. Without any further apologies or thanks, she left.

                “I… I never thought… I mean… I thought I would be able to live. I thought something like this would never happen.”

                “I know, Alex, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. And I have no right to ask anything of you.”

                “No,” Alex said, “I get it. I know what has to happen.”