Quick tips for starting stories with dialogue

Three vintage olden days telephone hanging on the wall for public use. Original public domain image from Wikimedia Commons

In the beginning, there was . . . nothing

As a storyteller, you create your world from nothing. The reader comes to your story like a newborn baby—groping around, trying to understand what's what. That gives you, the storyteller, a lot of power. But just like in Spiderman, your great power comes with great responsibility. When words come out of nowhere, the reader lacks context. The reader wants to know: How should the words sound as they play in my head? Should the voice be pitched high or low? Is the tone sincere or ironic? Am I catching the story in its very beginning, or am I joining the action in medias res?

Portolan atlas of the Mediterranean Sea, western Europe, and the northwest coast of Africa World map drawn on an oval projection (ca. 1590) by Joan Oliva. Original from Library of Congress.

Readers like to be oriented—and, whether you like it or not, they will be oriented. You want to make sure they're taking their bearings from your compass. (Beware! If you don't sufficiently orient the reader, they'll be oriented by the best they can do with the random compass within their own minds. You want to avoid that, and so does the reader, who comes to a story hoping to be immersed in a world. Give them a world to be immersed in.)

A master’s example

Here's an example from the opening of William Trevor's story "A Meeting in Middle Age":
      "I am Mrs da Tanka," said Mrs da Tanka. "Are you Mr Mileson?"
     The man nodded, and they walked together the length of the platform, seeking a compartment that might offer them a welcome, or failing that, and they knew the more likely, simple privacy. They carried each a small suitcase, Mrs da Tanka’s of white leather or some material manufactured to resemble it, Mr Mileson’s battered and black. They did not speak as they marched purposefully: they were strangers one to another, and in the noise and the bustle, examining the lighted windows of the carriages, there was little that might constructively be said.

Mrs da Tanka and Mr Mileson, AKA The Married Couple Müller (1919) print in high resolution by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Original from The National Gallery of Art.

Part of Trevor’s orienting is being done by the title—it's a meeting in middle age, after all, so the reader is primed to think (sensibly, and correctly) that the story will start with a meeting. And it's reasonable to think that the two people will be strangers, or at least unfamiliar to each other—so that the rather prosaic, almost awkward first line makes total sense. The second paragraph fill in the gaps just enough to keep us moving and unconfused. I'll let the Chicago Tribune (which calls this great story "the modern world at its most bleakly ignoble") summarize the rest:

Mrs. da Tanka and Mr. Mileson, who are strangers, meet at a train station with the apparent intention of going off to spend a night or a weekend together but really, it transpires, to perform a charade of adultery in order to obtain Mrs. da Tanka’s divorce from her second husband ''while there is still time'' for her to hope for something better. That she has already run out of time becomes apparent from the bland detestation of her by Mr. Mileson, a bachelor going through these motions for a fee, who in 1931 ''had committed fornication with the maid in his parents’ house. It was the only occasion, and he was glad that adultery was not expected of him'' now.

The differing vacuums of both their lives, as they goad each other through the eventually pointless process of imitation love, seems to make the title ironic—her derision drives him from her bed, foiling the plan to provide even that pro forma ''evidence'' of adultery for the maid to see in the morning. Yet a real, unexpected meeting does take place when she, tracking him down at the station, bitterly asks what flowers he would like at his funeral ''because I might send you off a wreath. That lonely wreath. From ugly, frightful Mrs. da Tanka.''

Taken off guard, because his funeral ''was an image he often saw and thought about,'' he answers, ''Oh well—cow-parsley, I suppose.'' And in each of them this homely flower evokes such specific memories that for a split-second in a noisy train station—she thinking how ''she had walked through it by night, loving it,'' he that ''once on a rare family outing to the country he had seen it and remembered it''—their minds and feelings meet.

Arachne (1884) by Otto Henry Bacher. Original from The MET Museum.

A second master’s example

However much you respect William Trevor’s technical prowess, you may be thinking, "That’s all fine and well, but what about stories that are all dialogue?"

Here's the opening of Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman:

—Something a little strange, that’s what you notice, that she’s not a woman like all the others. She looks fairly young, twenty-five, maybe a little more, petite face, a little catlike, small turned-up nose. 

—What about her eyes?

—Clear, pretty sure they're green, half-closed to focus better on the drawing. She looks at her subject: the black panther at the zoo, which was quiet at first, stretched out in its cage. But when the girl made a noise with her easel and chair, the panther spotted her and began pacing back and forth in its cage and to growl at the girl, who up to then was still having trouble with shading in the drawing.

—Couldn't the animal smell her before that?

—No, there's a big slab of meat in the cage, that's all it can smell. The keeper drops the meat near the bars, and it blocks out any smell from outside, that's the point, so the panther won't get excited. And noticing the anger of the wild animal the girl begins to work more feverishly, with faster and faster strokes, and she draws the face of an animal that's also a devil. And the panther watches her, a male panther, and it's hard to tell if he's watching to tear her to pieces and make a meal of her, or if he's driven by some other, still uglier instinct.

—Nobody else at the zoo that day?

—No, almost nobody. It's winter, it's freezing. The trees are bare in the park. There's a cold wind blowing. So the girl's practically by herself, sitting there on the folding chair she brought out herself, along with the easel to clip her drawing paper to. A little further off, near the giraffe cage, there's some boys with their schoolteacher, but they go away quickly, the cold's too much for them.

—And she's not cold?

—No, she's not thinking about the cold, it's as if she's in some other world, all wrapped up in herself drawing the panther.

—If she's wrapped up inside herself, she's not in some other world. That's a contradiction.

—Yes, that's right, she's all wrapped up in herself, lost in that world she carries inside her, that she's just beginning to discover. She has her legs crossed, her shoes are black, thick high heels, open toed, with dark-polished toenails sticking out. Her stockings glitter, that kind they turned inside out when the sheen went out of style, her legs look flushed and silky, you can't tell if it's the stockings or her skin.

—Look, remember what I told you, no erotic descriptions. This isn't the place for it.

Now, without knowing anything about this novel (one-sentence summary: "It depicts the daily conversations between two cellmates in an Argentine prison, Molina and Valentín, and the intimate bond they form in the process") you can notice what's going on with this dialogue. It's true that there are no "tags"—there's no "said Molina, as he reclined in his prison bunk" or "said Valentín, as he rattled his tin cup against the Argentine's prison's iron bars," so you have to be a little patient before the setting is revealed. But what Puig does beautifully here is orient the reader in a kind of psychological setting, and that's what you care about most. A dynamic quickly establishes itself between two characters. A humorous rapport, a probing intimacy, a beautiful image that builds its gentle intrigue from the opening lines. Something a little strange, that’s what you notice, that she’s not a woman like all the others—and this story isn't like all the others, either. But as a reader you know exactly where you are, and Puig makes it a place you want to be.