Overheard, scrambled, partial dialogue, concurrent conversations -- presentation?

[LupusDei]

I'm wondering a bit what would be the best practices for presenting partial dialogue, usually between some third parties, especially when it intersperse another dialogue in the foreground.

I may be smashing three very distinct questions into one here, yet I see them as related. Or alternatively, they present gradual increase of complexity hopefully better explaining the final situation.

1) phone call. We only ever hear and see one participant, but usually reliably and often with them knowing were hearing, so there's their monologue interspersed with various lengths of pausing. Sometimes it's possible to assess both are talking at once, but rarely hear something over. It's sometimes possible, but very unreadable to offer guessing of the exact content of the distant remarks, but their emotional impact is often obvious.

Borderline case: a girl talks on a phone, and her part of the dialogue is confined to more or less word "dad!" repeated in various intonations and emotions, but it's still quite possible to assume she's being dropped out of her (his) house. How to present the pausing, emotional and body language?

2) distant or partially obscured conversation. We may or may not see both parties, can more or less reliably hear one of them, but only some part of the other, and may miss bits of the first. The participants may or not be unaware of being eavesdropped on, but typically would make no effort to either help to receive or further scramble the signal.

Situation: girlfriend runs over the street to talk with her father who remains sitting in his car. We hear 80%+ of her speech, but don't see her face, while we see his head and some hand gestures, but only hear maybe 30% of his louder points. We may be able to reliably guess about 20% more. So...

Then she said something on what he asked, "...and does she know that?"

...could be a line, and perhaps a good enough one, but the problem could be to avoid too many of the same type.

3) concurrent conversations. Say, there's one conversation that the POV is directly participating and another conversation in the background they are eavesdropping on concurrently, and it may or not influence or inform the foreground conversation or be otherwise relevant to the story.

Situation: imagine perhaps ten people walking along a country path in a column of twos-threes.

POV character John and Wendy are having a conversation as the penultimate pair.

Immediately behind them, Mary is telling a raunchy story to Melissa. That story has thematic parallels and explanatory power of some of both women's past and future actions in current context even if not related to it, and more directly, it apparently does modify Wendy's attitudes, even though there's no clear evidence within the scene she too was listening in.

In front of them walks a trio including Betty, who's a bit performing for John knowing he's looking at her, and immediately falls back in a pair with him when Wendy runs forward, and rather blatantly reveals she had overheard some of what John said to Wendy. She also now hears Mary's story, and that by then is pure porn that has no context to her. Neither Betty nor John directly comment on it, but the background does intersperse and possibly modify the dialogue they are having.

Melissa is not a silent participant either, especially at first, but perhaps is most embarrassed by what is told, and may be reduced to trying to hush Mary down, but we don't reliably hear her by then. There might or not be omissions of what we hear of what Mary said either.

The clearest possible presentation could be to untangle John and Wendy's conversation and Mary's story as there's minimal direct interplay, but the moment Betty comes in range of that signal is at least fun if not important. Also that first conversation is a slow one, and the walk long. Dumping that background context in front or end would possibly help comprehension, but potentially destroy the ambience.

 

[MrPixel]

I do the phone call bit quite often since a lot of what I write takes place in an office. The third party is drawn into the conversation and can be heard in the background reacting to what is being said on the side that they can hear. Frequent scenario is an incoming call interrupting "things" (MMC and FMC are infamous for office sex), the third party says something, and the caller is compelled to comment "Oh. I hear [X]. Are you guys...?"

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm wondering a bit what would be the best practices for presenting partial dialogue, usually between some third parties, especially when it intersperse another dialogue in the foreground.

I'm not sure there is a definitive best practice for these cases - it may be necessary to tailor the approach to the individual requirements of the story. But the answers below would be my first thoughts:

1) phone call. We only ever hear and see one participant, but usually reliably and often with them knowing were hearing, so there's their monologue interspersed with various lengths of pausing. Sometimes it's possible to assess both are talking at once, but rarely hear something over. It's sometimes possible, but very unreadable to offer guessing of the exact content of the distant remarks, but their emotional impact is often obvious.

For this, I'd structure as dialogue but just not show the lines that can't be heard:

"Hello?"

"No, I can talk, I'm—"

"In the HOSPITAL?"

Borderline case: a girl talks on a phone, and her part of the dialogue is confined to more or less word "dad!" repeated in various intonations and emotions, but it's still quite possible to assume she's being dropped out of her (his) house. How to present the pausing, emotional and body language?

As above, but narrating the body language, and any emotions that aren't adequately conveyed otherwise.

"Dad?"

"No, Dad - Dad?"

"Dad - Dad - no, Dad, I—"

"DAD!

Punctuation, caps, etc. give some scope for conveying the tone of the conversation, but this is a hard one to pull off in a text story.

2) distant or partially obscured conversation. We may or may not see both parties, can more or less reliably hear one of them, but only some part of the other, and may miss bits of the first. The participants may or not be unaware of being eavesdropped on, but typically would make no effort to either help to receive or further scramble the signal.

Situation: girlfriend runs over the street to talk with her father who remains sitting in his car. We hear 80%+ of her speech, but don't see her face, while we see his head and some hand gestures, but only hear maybe 30% of his louder points. We may be able to reliably guess about 20% more. So...

Then she said something on what he asked, "...and does she know that?"

...could be a line, and perhaps a good enough one, but the problem could be to avoid too many of the same type.

I would format as regular dialogue but with ellipses ... as necessary, including fully ellided lines for the unheard speaker:

"...and does she know that?"

"..."

"Yes, but she ... just like last time, I..."

This is one that probably works better if you have a POV character who hears that partial conversation. Otherwise, if there's no POV character or if that's the speaker, it's hard to justify to the reader why the conversation is incomplete.

3) concurrent conversations. Say, there's one conversation that the POV is directly participating and another conversation in the background they are eavesdropping on concurrently, and it may or not influence or inform the foreground conversation or be otherwise relevant to the story.

This is something that works well in a comic format. In text it can be challenging, but one option I've used is to italicise the secondary conversation. This is from a scene in "The Floggings Will Continue" where the protagonist and his rival Kelly are having their own private conversation, while Ashley turns her attention to the rest of the group in the same room. In this case I only gave Ashley's side of the secondary conversation, because that was all I needed to convey what was going on, and I didn't want to distract too much from the primary.

A few seconds later, the music started up, and I felt Kelly tensing up even further. "Enya. Why did it have to be Enya?"

"Not a fan, I take it."

"It was good the first ten thousand times or so."

"Well," said Ashley, "let's leave them alone for a while. The rest of us are going to work on a group exercise together."

"That why you left Ireland?"

"Na. That was more Bono's fault."

"Really?"

"No. Joking."

"Clearly there are a lot of strong feelings about Alistair, and it's important we address that. Don't you agree, Alistair?"

 

[Zenith77]

I'm wondering a bit what would be the best practices for presenting partial dialogue, usually between some third parties, especially when it intersperse another dialogue in the foreground.

A really interesting challenge. One assumes the POV is a third party.

Borderline case: a girl talks on a phone, and her part of the dialogue is confined to more or less word "dad!" repeated in various intonations and emotions, but it's still quite possible to assume she's being dropped out of her (his) house. How to present the pausing, emotional and body language?

Carly recognised the number and answered her phone. "Hey Dad."

I saw her frown as she listened. "Dad..." she seemed to be hesitant, evidently not liking what he was saying.

She looked at me as she held the phone to her ear, an expression of helplessness on her face as he continued to talk to her. "Dad!" she protested, but he spoke over her. I saw tears slowly forming in her eyes, and my heart went out to her. I had no idea what he was saying, but whatever it was, Carly was distraught.

"Ok, Dad," she said in the end, and that seemed to be it. She lowered the phone, not looking at it, her focus on the floor between us.

Situation: girlfriend runs over the street to talk with her father who remains sitting in his car. We hear 80%+ of her speech, but don't see her face, while we see his head and some hand gestures, but only hear maybe 30% of his louder points. We may be able to reliably guess about 20% more. So...

Then she said something on what he asked, "...and does she know that?"

His car pulled up across the road, and Carly ran across to greet him.

Emily was going to follow but at that moment a truck pulled around the corner, and she was forced to wait. She watched as Carly leant in through his open window, kissing his cheek in greeting.

Her dad said something to her, but Emily wasn't able to hear what. The truck drove past, momentarily obscuring them.
"...and does she know that?" Emily heard Carly say, her tone surprised, and her dad's response was inaudible. He seemed hunched in his seat, his body language radiating unhappiness. Emily stood and watched; she thought it would be intrusive to cross over to them now.

"But surely she can't think..." Carly seemed to be arguing with him, albeit not in a confrontational way. She seemed to be trying to support him.

Her dad's reply again went unheard, but Carly reacted as though she'd been slapped, one hand flying to her mouth in shock.

I wonder what that bitch has done now, Emily thought.

Situation: imagine perhaps ten people walking along a country path in a column of twos-threes.

POV character John and Wendy are having a conversation as the penultimate pair.

Immediately behind them, Mary is telling a raunchy story to Melissa. That story has thematic parallels and explanatory power of some of both women's past and future actions in current context even if not related to it, and more directly, it apparently does modify Wendy's attitudes, even though there's no clear evidence within the scene she too was listening in.

In front of them walks a trio including Betty, who's a bit performing for John knowing he's looking at her, and immediately falls back in a pair with him when Wendy runs forward, and rather blatantly reveals she had overheard some of what John said to Wendy. She also now hears Mary's story, and that by then is pure porn that has no context to her. Neither Betty nor John directly comment on it, but the background does intersperse and possibly modify the dialogue they are having.

Melissa is not a silent participant either, especially at first, but perhaps is most embarrassed by what is told, and may be reduced to trying to hush Mary down, but we don't reliably hear her by then. There might or not be omissions of what we hear of what Mary said either.

The clearest possible presentation could be to untangle John and Wendy's conversation and Mary's story as there's minimal direct interplay, but the moment Betty comes in range of that signal is at least fun if not important. Also that first conversation is a slow one, and the walk long. Dumping that background context in front or end would possibly help comprehension, but potentially destroy the ambience.

[The brief is a little long for a short reply, but something like...]

"Can you hear what Mary is saying to Melissa?" Wendy asked me, her voice pitched low for my ears.

I listened. There was much chatter from the group before us, and I had to focus to hear the voices behind.

"...his cock wasn't very big, if I'm honest, but boy did he know how to use it!" I heard Mary say. She was giggly and breathless as she spoke to Melissa. I looked across at Wendy, raising my eyebrow.

Up ahead, Fred was talking to Betty. "...plans for this Saturday?" I'd missed the first half, focused as I was on Mary's gossip. Betty glanced back at me, looking past to Mary and Melissa, before focusing on me again.

"...various positions over the course of at least thirty minutes..." Mary was saying, and her conversation was proving to be far more interesting than Fred's. Betty clearly thought so too, as she dropped back to walk with Wendy and I, leaving Fred trailing off in mid-sentence.

 

[Djmac1031]

I would think it all depends on story and character point of view.

If it's told in First Person, than the narrator would only ever hear one side of someone else's phone call.

But if it's told in Third Person, our omniscient narrator can relate both sides of the call.

It also depends on how much info we as the author want to relate to readers at the moment. Do we give them everything, or hold pieces back for a later reveal?

 

[tenyari]

I look at it only from the point of how it might advance the story.

My characters won't ever overhear all the random stuff that we all get to hear standing in line at a coffee shop. But they will hear the parts that give me a hook to have them think about something or that reveal some plot element.

And I will just splice those in with a little bit of dressing so it looks like a random 'drive by comment' even though it's actually story.

 

[ronde]

I would think it all depends on story and character point of view.

If it's told in First Person, than the narrator would only ever hear one side of someone else's phone call.

But if it's told in Third Person, our omniscient narrator can relate both sides of the call.

It also depends on how much info we as the author want to relate to readers at the moment. Do we give them everything, or hold pieces back for a later reveal?

I agree that the POV determines what the reader will see. I'd also add that in third person, over heard conversations can quickly become very confusing to the reader. What I prefer to do is either use wording like, "from somewhere a voice said...", or to have the main character who heard that voice relate what that voice said, as in, "Did you hear that? It sounded like...". I do the same with the main character in first person. That way you don't have to introduce people who have little if anything to do with your plot, but still get the information into your story.

If that information is a phone call, I only write what one of my characters said, but try to leave the reader with the impression of what was spoken, like, "Mother, why would you think I ever stopped taking them?"

 

[Djmac1031]

Just an example of how it can be done, from a chapter in my Jenna series.

The story is told First Person, so the male lead Tom is listening to his girlfriend Jenna's conversation on the phone:

"Really? That's wonderful news! Thank you SO much, Mr. Rivers...okay, okay, thank you Ted. You have no idea how much I appreciate your help....Yes, I'll talk to Tommy, see how soon we can arrange it. How long after do you think... Oh, really? That fast? That's so awesome!...Yes, yes, I'll call you back and let you know. Thanks again, Mr. Riv...um, Ted. Send Mary my love, will you?....Okay, you too. Bye!"

While we the reader only get one side of the conversation, we get enough to learn who she's talking to, and that it's important news.

The next paragraph then fills in a few gaps as she explains to Tom and thus the reader:

Jenna was bursting with excitement as she hung up the phone. "He did it! He got my trust fund released to me early! I just need to sign some papers, and the funds will be deposited into my account!"

 

[HectorBidon]

For overheard phone dialog I've tended to use Bramblethorn's approach:

structure as dialogue but just not show the lines that can't be heard.

But a technical question arises: Is this considered continued speech since it's the same speaker speaking, in which case all the paragraphs except the last one should only get an opening quotation mark but not a closing one?

"Hello?

"No, I can talk, I'm—

"In the HOSPITAL?"

Or is this considered discontinuous speech since the action is interrupted by the gaps when the person on the other end is speaking, even though those gaps aren't indicated explicitly in the text? Is this understandable to the reader when there are both opening and closing quotation marks on each paragraph?

"Hello?"

"No, I can talk, I'm—"

"In the HOSPITAL?"

Another option, especially when the individual speeches are short, would be to put them into a single paragraph with ellipses to indicate the gaps. In one of my stories I used separate paragraphs with no closing quotation marks, but it probably would have looked better on the page, and maybe even have read better, if I'd put it all into a single paragraph:

Trying to date a seamstress

"Hullo? . . . I forgot my key. I tried to call you. . . . At Hector's. . . . No! He was helping me with my project. . . . Yeah, finally. . . . It's too messed up. I'll have to do it myself. . . . That's OK. You can still come and watch. . . . OK. Bye."

Of course dialog-only is only appropriate when the call is not very dramatic. A more dramatic scene calls for more dramatic writing:

She looked at me as she held the phone to her ear, an expression of helplessness on her face as he continued to talk to her. "Dad!" she protested, but he spoke over her . . .

 

[Zenith77]

But a technical question arises: Is this considered continued speech since it's the same speaker speaking, in which case all the paragraphs except the last one should only get an opening quotation mark but not a closing one.

IME, the typical reader has absolutely no clue of this concept. Many years ago I wrote a story that I'm really quite fond of - more for a challenge than for any other purpose - and it was heavily dialog without any reporting speech identifiers. It was predicated on the premise that a lack of closing speech marks means it's the same speaker. It remains to this day my worst-scoring story, by far.

I received a lot of feedback that it wasn't clear who was talking, even though those who know their punctuation have told me it was perfectly clear.

Still quite fond of it though

 

[Bramblethorn]

For overheard phone dialog I've tended to use Bramblethorn's approach:


But a technical question arises: Is this considered continued speech since it's the same speaker speaking, in which case all the paragraphs except the last one should only get an opening quotation mark but not a closing one?

I closed the quotes at each line specifically to imply the other half of the conversation. That said, I agree with @Zenith77 that many readers don't know the convention for continued speech and will miss that subtlety.

Another option, especially when the individual speeches are short, would be to put them into a single paragraph with ellipses to indicate the gaps. In one of my stories I used separate paragraphs with no closing quotation marks, but it probably would have looked better on the page, and maybe even have read better, if I'd put it all into a single paragraph:

Yes, I might use that rather than have a long passage of very short quotes.

One of my principles of writing is that punctuation suggests timing. A line break feels like a longer break than an ellipse, which feels longer than a dash, which is still longer than no punctuation at all. As long as I'm avoiding something that's glaringly incorrect, I'll often let the tempo guide my choice of punctuation in such matters.

The dash also feels more staccato than the ellipse, conveying an interruption rather than just a pause, which can be handy in suggesting an argumentative/chaotic conversation.

 

[HectorBidon]

3) concurrent conversations. Say, there's one conversation that the POV is directly participating and another conversation in the background they are eavesdropping on concurrently, and it may or not influence or inform the foreground conversation or be otherwise relevant to the story.

You say that both John and Wendy are POV characters, but when Wendy runs forward you stick with John. So I'd say that John is the POV character of the scene. I'd think that you could write the scene in chronological, stream-of-consciousness order of his experience: what he hears and says and thinks and does. It will be essential that the other characters are already familiar enough that the reader can keep track of who is who and can understand the subtexts of the different conversations. Optimally, the reader should be as curious and interested in overhearing the other conversations, and as able to read between the lines, as John is.

Of course if there are three conversations going on simultaneously, you can't hope to transcribe every detail. But John can only attend to one thing at a time, and so that should be what you relate. So maybe he starts off involved in his conversation with Wendy. But at the same time he's looking at Betty and thinking about her. But then Wendy makes a point that requires him to focus back on her. Their conversation is the main narrative background. Then, because of a rough spot along the trail, Mary and Melissa catch up a little and John starts to hear some of what they are saying. He and Wendy exchange a look. And so on.

It will require some craftsmanship to keep things flowing smoothly and understandably without too much clumsy narratorial explanation, but I'd imagine it can be done. Trust the intelligence of your readers (but don't expect them to be able to read your mind).

 

[LupusDei]

You say that both John and Wendy are POV characters,

Did I?

POV character John and Wendy are having a conversation as the penultimate pair.

Well, perhaps that could have been better as: "POV character John is having conversation with Wendy as the penultimate pair."

Yes as intended, John is the POV in that scenario, and is or at least attempt to multitask quite heavily. It's first person and pretty much all in his head with the outside world just as a stream of stimuli.

The group had assembled in the yard and is walking out to a lake perhaps not much than a quarter mile away, but they do it at the slow pace of a (very) old woman and with some goofing around going on. Meanwhile Mary somehow manages to tell what's written out aside amounts to a 2k word story spanning several years of her life, with while all fun and thematic is at most tangentially related to the current events otherwise than setting up mood.

Split up and fragmented as I may, it still threatens to swamp out the foreground conversations that even between Wendy and Betty together amounts to considerably less in words and immediate drama. And while more influential in the second than first, it's not active part of either.

While I have a bit of dislike for formatting, @Bramblethorn suggestion to provide that background noise in cursive to de-emphasize and separate it, as an aside it is, maybe isn't a bad idea to consider indeed. As a convention it could perhaps be useful in the next scene too, where he drifts from conversation to conversation in what's eventually thirteen people swim party at the lake.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I'm wondering a bit what would be the best practices for presenting partial dialogue, usually between some third parties, especially when it intersperse another dialogue in the foreground.

I may be smashing three very distinct questions into one here, yet I see them as related. Or alternatively, they present gradual increase of complexity hopefully better explaining the final situation.

1) phone call. We only ever hear and see one participant, but usually reliably and often with them knowing were hearing, so there's their monologue interspersed with various lengths of pausing. Sometimes it's possible to assess both are talking at once, but rarely hear something over. It's sometimes possible, but very unreadable to offer guessing of the exact content of the distant remarks, but their emotional impact is often obvious.

Borderline case: a girl talks on a phone, and her part of the dialogue is confined to more or less word "dad!" repeated in various intonations and emotions, but it's still quite possible to assume she's being dropped out of her (his) house. How to present the pausing, emotional and body language?

2) distant or partially obscured conversation. We may or may not see both parties, can more or less reliably hear one of them, but only some part of the other, and may miss bits of the first. The participants may or not be unaware of being eavesdropped on, but typically would make no effort to either help to receive or further scramble the signal.

Situation: girlfriend runs over the street to talk with her father who remains sitting in his car. We hear 80%+ of her speech, but don't see her face, while we see his head and some hand gestures, but only hear maybe 30% of his louder points. We may be able to reliably guess about 20% more. So...

Then she said something on what he asked, "...and does she know that?"

...could be a line, and perhaps a good enough one, but the problem could be to avoid too many of the same type.

3) concurrent conversations. Say, there's one conversation that the POV is directly participating and another conversation in the background they are eavesdropping on concurrently, and it may or not influence or inform the foreground conversation or be otherwise relevant to the story.

Situation: imagine perhaps ten people walking along a country path in a column of twos-threes.

POV character John and Wendy are having a conversation as the penultimate pair.

Immediately behind them, Mary is telling a raunchy story to Melissa. That story has thematic parallels and explanatory power of some of both women's past and future actions in current context even if not related to it, and more directly, it apparently does modify Wendy's attitudes, even though there's no clear evidence within the scene she too was listening in.

In front of them walks a trio including Betty, who's a bit performing for John knowing he's looking at her, and immediately falls back in a pair with him when Wendy runs forward, and rather blatantly reveals she had overheard some of what John said to Wendy. She also now hears Mary's story, and that by then is pure porn that has no context to her. Neither Betty nor John directly comment on it, but the background does intersperse and possibly modify the dialogue they are having.

Melissa is not a silent participant either, especially at first, but perhaps is most embarrassed by what is told, and may be reduced to trying to hush Mary down, but we don't reliably hear her by then. There might or not be omissions of what we hear of what Mary said either.

The clearest possible presentation could be to untangle John and Wendy's conversation and Mary's story as there's minimal direct interplay, but the moment Betty comes in range of that signal is at least fun if not important. Also that first conversation is a slow one, and the walk long. Dumping that background context in front or end would possibly help comprehension, but potentially destroy the ambience.

I actually can’t actually say but this reminded me of a conversation I heard recently in a noisy crowded restaurant.

The place was packed and busy, people were talking, eating, clattering cutlery and there was a ton of noise coming from the kitchen.

But…at the table next to me where a man and a woman and the guy asks “are you a dirty slut?” to the person he was with, and I remember thinking “did I just mishear that?”

Then as I got to the end of my meal and he said “titties. Am I gonna see those titties later on?” I then realised “nope! I really did hear him say that earlier”.

He must have worked in finance.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

As far as phone calls, if it's important, I'll write the whole thing, if it's not, then it's just one-sided. I never even considered the idea that other people might hear it. I just did a scene where a character had their phone on speaker, so everybody heard the whole thing, but typically I do one-sided, because it's not that important to hear(read) the whole thing, it might be there to move the plot some and/or filler. I guess you could call it laziness, too.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

If one person is speaking, then it's all in one set of quote marks unless you're interrupting it with some commentary.

An example listening to someone else's call, from Smoking Hot Ch.14. Dan lived with his friend Max, but recently moved in with the narrator, an older widower, who he's in a relationship with, partly to escape Max's annoying girlfriend:

"I should call my sister soon, too. Find out what she wants for her birthday." He tracks down his mobile from the other room. "A'right, our Jen? Grand, yeah."

I bet he didn't call anything 'grand' three months ago. I'm clearly a good influence.

"Your birthday coming up. You going out, or what? Yeah, could come up for the weekend, I suppose. Yeah... about that... Why, what's Max's mom been saying? 'Kind of me to let her move in?' Ha!"

I can't help laughing at that.

"Background? No comment! Seriously, I had to move out or I'd have killed that bloody Gemma... I don't know where Max's brain's gone... his trousers, you're right. No, not a houseshare..."

The clipped voice on the phone sounds like a military investigation. That's sisters for you.

Dan looks at me and I give the wee nod. He's clearly going to have to 'fess up.

"OK, wench! I'd been kinda seeing this guy what lives downstairs from me, so he suggested moving into his spare room... No, you're right, I've never slept in it..." Dan swaps ears and gives me a wry grin, as well as squeezing my hand. "Some months. His name's Adrian... He's Irish, from near Omagh... Yes, he's good-looking! He's right next to me! Oh, god..."

He rolls his eyes at me. "Jen wants 'a word'."