The Rules of Dialog (Good and Bad)

  

I love writing--and reading--short stories. Almost everything about writing them is fun for me, though the things I most enjoy are the plotting and the dialog. For that reason, I'm often surprised to hear others (novelists, too) say they find those two things to be the hardest.

Easy or hard, plotting's a subject for another time. Today I'd like to rant awhile about what the characters say to each other, and how we convey it to the reader.

As for the title of this post, I think most advice about writing dialog is accurate and helpful--but not all of it.

Consider the following twelve points:

1. Some writing instructors urge their students to avoid the use of dialog attributes ("tags" like Joe said, Jane asked, etc.) unless absolutely necessary to identify a speaker. I agree to some extent, because ideally we should write dialog such that the dialog itself makes it clear who's speaking. But you can't take that to extremes. I've read a lot of student manuscripts, and several published stories, in which the writers were obviously going out of their way to treat dialog tags as if they were Kryptonite, to the detriment of the story. That total avoidance of tags, to me, was as distracting as using too many.

Even though I agree that dialog tags are mainly to identify the speaker, they can also be used for other purposes. 

- A he said/she said can serve as a way to change the subject in mid-speech. Example: "I'll sure be glad when this week is over," she said. "How's your dad doing?" 

- It can be used to isolate and put extra emphasis on a final sentence. Example: "I'll just tell you one thing," she said. "Don't trust him too much."

- It can create a needed break or pause, just to help the common-sense rhythm of a sentence or paragraph. "I coulda had class," he said. "I coulda been a contender."

2. I've heard writers say they dislike using the word said, to the degree that they usually substitute a synonym. I think that's wrong. I used to tell my writing students to remember that dialog tags such as he said and he asked (and maybe she replied) are so common that they've almost become transparent; the reader's eye goes right over them, while expressions like he exclaimed, she inquired, he interjected, etc., can interrupt the flow and distract the reader for a moment from the story, which is something no writer wants to do. (This is why Elmore Leonard famously advised writers to "never use a synonym for said," although I don't quite agree on "never.") Adding to the problem, tags like she explained, he insisted, she inquired, and he retorted are repetitive--the dialog itself should tell the reader whether someone is explaining or insisting or inquiring or retorting. 

Read, or re-read, Lonesome Dove sometime. Larry McMurtry used said constantly, regardless of whether an identifier was needed. If I weren't a writer, I would never even have noticed it. Not only was it not distracting, the book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

3. In a nutshell, (1) don't feel you have to use a dialog tag if it's clear who's speaking, (2) don't overuse possibly-distracting synonyms for said, (3) don't worry about repeating said or asked too many times, and (4) do use a dialog attribute or an embedded name if there is any question at all about who is speaking. Readers hate to have to count lines backward to identify who's saying what. (And yes, I know I shouldn't complain about repetition--there was plenty of it in this little summary.)

4. Here's something that's rarely mentioned but can be helpful: It's usually better, especially in informal writing, to place the name or pronoun first (Mary said instead of said Mary). The only times I find myself putting the name last is when I need to add some kind of phrase afterward, in the same sentence. Example: "I'm leaving," said Mary, putting on her hat and coat. 

5. I've seen beginning writers, in their efforts to avoid dialog tags, overuse characters' names in back-and-forth dialog between two people. "Hi, Tom, what's up?" "Not much, Jimmy. Taking a trip tomorrow." "Where to, Tom?" "Well, Jimmy, we're headed for the mountains this time." That's an exaggeration, but not by much--and people obviously don't talk this way. Same thing goes for the use of contractions. Nobody speaks like this: "I think I will go see Bill. I am sure he is fine, but since his wife is away, I will go check." Instead they use contractions like I'll and I'm and he's and wife's. If you read your dialog aloud afterward, you'll be able to spot problems like this right away.

6. To again paraphrase Mr. Leonard, try to avoid the use of "ly" adverbs. If the dialog's written well, it probably won't need adverbs after the tags (he said softly, she asked sadly, he replied angrily) to prop it up. And silly repetition can come into play here as well, if you write something like he whispered softly, she moaned sadly, he growled angrily.

7. Since I've already mentioned formal vs. informal, the use of semicolons in dialog can make the writing appear stiff and formal even if that's not your intention. I use far fewer semicolons than I once did, in all kinds of writing, and I never use them in dialog. Dashes, by the way, can be good substitutes for semicolons.

8. Something I do a lot in dialog is indicate interrupted speech. If it's an abrupt interruption and not a "trailing off," the best way to do this is to end the sentence with a dash (not a set of ellipses). Example: 

"What do you think you're--"

"You know very well what I'm doing."

It's especially effective because interruption happens so often when we speak to each other in real life.

9. Feel free to fragment sentences whenever necessary, in dialog. One trick I think I've mentioned before at this blog is to delete certain words, especially at the beginning of some sentences, to make the dialog sound more like the way we actually speak. Here's an example:

Original sentence: "Do you want to go see a movie?"

Better: "You want to go see a movie?"

Even better: "Want to go see a movie?"

10. Be careful about using dialect. The key, I think, is to ask yourself if it's really necessary. And if you do try to write dialect, remember that many editors hate intentionally misspelled words (sho nuff, etc.)--I've found those sometimes work if you don't do it too often. A better idea is to occasionally use slang or regional or ethnic expressions or change real sentences around a bit: (Where you think you headed? or You got mush in your ears? or Daisy says Jimbo has done shot Charlie or You best get over here, and quick.)

11. An ironclad dialog rule that often gets overlooked: Do not include closing quotation marks at the end of a paragraph in a speech that resumes in the next paragraph if the same person is speaking. A correct example: 

John said, into the microphone, "Thank you so much, Councilman Smith, for that fine presentation. We all appreciate your taking the time to visit us today.

"Our final guest is Dr. Susan Jones from the Carter Foundation. Please join me in welcoming her."

I still see this misused, probably by accident, in many published works, and I always find myself wondering if it was a typo or if the author and/or editor just didn't know better.

12. Try, when you can, to use what Sol Stein called "oblique" dialog. In other words, introduce something unexpected--have people reply in a way that doesn't answer a question or brings up new questions or changes direction in some way. Examples:

"Hey. How you doin'?"

"Wow--I sure didn't expect to see you here."

"What have you been up to?"

"Oh. You haven't heard?"

"Where you going today?"

"Believe me, you don't want to know."

"Looks like it's beginning to rain."

"What do you suggest?"

12. Last but not least, try not to construct paragraphs of dialog that look too much alike. Example:

"We're ready to go," John said. "You coming?'

"Hang on," Judy called. "I'm in the bathroom."

"Well, hurry up," Bob said. "We're already late."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she said. "Good grief."

That kind of writing looks and sounds amateurish. You need some tags here to ID the speakers, yes, but maybe some of those tags could be deleted or moved to the end of the paragraph instead of being in the middle--or maybe some beats of action could be plugged in. Example:

John picked up his car keys. "We're ready to go. You coming?"

"Hang on, I'm in the bathroom," Judy called.

"Well, hurry up," Bob said. "We're already late."

"I'm coming, I'm coming. Good grief."

So, what are your thoughts on all this? Do you like writing dialog, or do you find it difficult? Do you ever write plays or screenplays, which are almost nothing but dialog? What are your own personal "do's and don'ts"? Do you ever use dialog tags just to help regulate the sound or rhythm of a sentence? Do you ever read your dialog aloud to see if it "sounds" right? What are some of your own hints and tips?

There is of course much more that could be said about dialog and its rules, but I know (or I hope I know) when I've rambled long enough. So pick up your car keys, unless you're in the bathroom, and come on--we're already late. Go do some writing.

"What kind of writing?" she asked.

"Dialog," he said.

Rounding Third and Headed for Home

Source: Cincinnati Reds

Monday was a busy day, like any other. One might point out, as my manager did, that it was my work anniversary. I generally don't take notice. But I also always take my birthday off so they don't decorate my cube. (I hate that.) Had to help my car-impaired stepson and his wife get around while they wait for a water pump install. And my television's backend platform went down so I couldn't even watch broadcast or a DVD. I entertained my wife for two hours with my vast vocabulary of swear words and shaming Vizio on two social media platforms, both with GIFs of someone smashing a television.

Oh, and to cap it off, Pete Rose died at the age of 83.

To say my reveling in my technological misfortunes and hanging out with family ground to a screeching halt is an understatement. A big piece of my childhood just disappeared without warning. We had already lost Dame Maggie Smith and Kris Kristofferson over the weekend, along with a pair of lesser-known but well-regarded actors. But Pete Rose. Charlie Hustle.

Wow.

Pete is one of those guys who is complicated. And yet he's not. His gambling scandal in the late eighties came as a shock to those of us who grew up following the Big Red Machine. Even growing up in Cleveland's sphere of influence, we worshiped the mighty Reds. They had an all-star line-up: Rose, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, Dave Concepcion, Ken Griffey Sr. I had Rose, Bench, and Concepcion's Topps cards from 1976. Of course, my mom threw them away before I realized how valuable they were. But when you're forced to watch a foundering Cleveland Indians, who would go on to a decade under the ownership of a dead man, you latched on to the next nearest thing. And no Clevelander in their right mind would become a Pirates fan. Oh, we had Steelers fans. There's a reason the original Steelers-Browns rivalry worked so well. But the Pirates? Ew! The Reds, however, were from Ohio. And unlike cities like New York, Chicago, or LA, with two teams in the same city or very near each other, we knew the Reds were NL to our struggling AL team.

And Pete Rose was the face of that team.

As an adolescent, I sat at the edge of my seat as Rose chased Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak record. (He came up short, alas, but boy, was that great baseball.) As a young man, I was shocked when Pete beat Ty Cobb's hit record. I still lived on the fringes of the Cleveland exurbs back then, blasting Led Zeppelin from my Camaro while the wind blew through my mullet. I thought, "Wait. He's how old? And he's still breaking records?" He would retire from playing a year later and settle in as the Reds manager. That's when it happened.

It was discovered Pete bet on baseball. Eventually, he would admit to it, and he would even admit betting on the Reds, a big no-no. I was shocked. Mind you, juice ball was not really a thing yet.

I moved to Cincy not long after, and as I spent more time here, I also ran into people who knew Pete, met Pete, even did business with Pete. And I was not surprised. Or even disappointed. Pete is a product of Cincinnati's West Side, and it doesn't get anymore Cincinnati than that. This is old neighborhood, where you're born, live, and die within the same city blocks. Gambling in bars is a part of the culture there. Skyline Chili, an institution in the rest of the city, is sacred there. You don't drink craft beer; you drink Hudey or Natural Lite or Bud Lite. (The woke thing did nothing to dent Bud Lite's sales. The trans model who triggered it was a UC athlete, so Kid Rock could go hang. He's not even real Detroit anyway, 32-mile to Eminem's Eight Mile.) Gambling is a big part of West Side culture. It's at every church festival, in every bar, at the Eagles Club. It's Fred and Barney hanging with Joe Rockhead. Blue collar culture.

And no one was more blue collar than Pete Rose.

Was what Pete did that bad? 

Well, he broke the rules. In fact, it's a rule the NFL doesn't think twice about coming down on and with less fanfare. I suppose if Tom Brady had been caught gambling on football or Joe Burrow or Patrick Mahomes, it'd be career-ending. At the same time, there was a sense the lifetime ban and the exile were only the beginning, that Commissioner Bart Giamatti intended to rehabilitate this most revered baseball player. Indeed, the Reds and the city of Cincinnati refused to acknowledge the ban. Owner Marge Schott received less support than Pete over the years. In fact, it seemed only Johnny Bench, the one player as talented and beloved as Rose, could be a critic. 

But Giamatti died before the healing could begin. And Rose spent decades in exile. Only in the 2000s, after Marge Schott was run out of the MLB on a rail, after juice ball, after the botched attempt at contracting the leagues, baseball tried to meet him halfway. Pete confessed to betting, and baseball let him participate in the opening of Great American Ballpark as long as he didn't wear a uniform. (He wore a Reds cap with a suit.) Soon, he was in the Reds Hall of Fame. He was doing commentary on one of the baseball recaps. One wonders if he might not have been a viable replacement for Joe Nuxhall, the Hall of Fame broadcaster who retired from Reds color commentary in the 2000s. Of course, Bud Selig, a saner commissioner than Faye Vincent, might not have suffered that line to be crossed, but Pete Rose was back in baseball. But he wasn't. And Cincinnati didn't care what MLB thought.

Pete Rose is a great noir character, one Shakespeare might have loved and Twain would have poked gentle fun at.  But Pete didn't need Will or Mark. He was already larger than life just showing up for work. Even when it all went sideways.

Headline Junkie

by Eve Fisher

"Minnesota man gets 33 years for fatally stabbing his wife during Bible study."
(SOURCE)

"California Gets Earliest Snow Advisory in Nearly Twenty Years" (And it's bringing a month of rain with it! (SOURCE)

"For 57 days this fall, Earth will have a second moon"  An asteroid is expected to make a “horseshoe path” around Earth over the next two months. (SOURCE)

"Jurors help detain a man who flees a Maine courthouse in handcuffs" - GREAT video. (HINT: Fleeing in handcuffs is harder than it looks)
(SOURCE)

Absolutely brilliant:
Florida Man hides in chest, uses whiteboard to evade deputies: PCSOCredit: PCSO

Good news, for once:
"Boy abducted from California in 1951 found alive more than 70 years later" (LINK)

"Kentucky judge shot and killed in his chambers by sheriff, officials say."
So far, no idea what they were arguing about, but it must have been a doozy...
(SOURCE)  

Meanwhile, this is another irate sheriff's way of dealing with the judge situation.  Dyer County, TN, from 1983:

BTW, I remember that, at the time, there was another article about it, which referred to the sheriff having stolen the judge's "favorite sheep".  Not even gonna go there...

"This Mummy Cheese is Full of Ancient Secrets" (LINK)

Okay, fine it's kefir made from sheep and/or goat's milk.  But what inquiring minds want to know is why was it sprinkled on and around mummies' heads and necks?  

"Is Morder Based on the Himalayas?"  (LINK)

"In Tolkien’s world, the Himalayas transform into Ephel Duath, the Mountains of Shadow; and the Tian Shan into Ered Lithui, the Ash Mountains. And the circle-shaped Pamirs are the same shape and in exactly the same corner as the Udûn of Mordor, where Frodo and Sam originally tried getting into Mordor, via the Black Gate.”

And after all, this was all part of the British Empire until the late 1940s...  

Headline Junkie will be back again!

Fooling the Professors; Schooling the Professors

 

I recently came across the strange story of an unusual brand of criminal - a literary forger.  He committed his crimes almost two centuries ago and yet, oddly enough, you may be familiar with some of his work.

John Payne Collier* (1789-1883) was an English  journalist and drama critic, with a somewhat erratic career.  His incorrect report on a speech by a member of Parliament had him chastised by the House of Commons.  It took him eighteen years to be called to the bar because of a book he wrote criticizing lawyers.  

With that promising start he dove into scholarship on Shakespeare.  His critics found much to complain about in his work but generally found it valuable.  In 1847 he became secretary to the Royal Commission on the British Museum.

Five years later he claimed to have discovered a copy of the Second Folio, the 1632 collection of Shakespeare's plays.  His copy was called the Perkins Folio because of a name inscribed on the title page.  Any copy of that book would be considered important but this one was full of handwritten annotations and corrections, apparently in a seventeenth century hand. A remarkable find!

Collier published a book of the annotations and later put out a new edition of Shakespeare with the Perkins version of the text.   

You've probably guessed that this didn't end well.  A scholar/friend of Collier's described the changes in the Perkins Folio as "ignorant, tasteless and wanton." By 1859 scientists had proved that the annotations were modern scribblings in the old volume. No one could prove that Collier had done the deed and he was, remarkably, allowed to continue to publish scholarship. No cancel cuture then!

His other works included dubious lecture notes  by Coleridge, forged additions to old letters, spurious annotations supposedly written by Milton, and so on.  Nonetheless he also produced scholarship the professors found useful, when he could find sources to work from.  It appears that, like not a few modern scientists, when he couldn't find the results he wanted he made them up.

I have taken most of this information from the Wikipedia article and the anonymous authors/editors there said: "No statement of his can be accepted without verification, nor any manuscript handled by him, without careful examination, but he did much useful work."

But remember  I said  that you might be familiar with some of his work.  Here's the deal:  In 1828 he published The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Punch and Judy. While the  Punch and Judy show traces its origins to the 16th century Italian comedia dell'arte, Collier's is the earliest existing script for it.  To some extent every modern "professor" (the traditional name for the P&J puppeteer) is improvising from Collier's text. 

He claimed to have  copied it down from a performance by an Italian puppet master, and maybe he did.  But he was as untrustworthy as Mr. Punch himself, so how can we know? 

 

* Not to be confused with the great and more recent John Collier.

Helene

Michael dressed appropriately
for a murder mystery event.

Helene disrupted many people’s lives in ways far worse than it disrupted mine, but when the hurricane caused postponement of SleuthFest, I found myself with five empty days. I had scheduled my workload to accommodate time away from the office by finishing some projects early and working far enough ahead on others that time away would not cause missed deadlines.

So, I spent the first three unscheduled days—Wednesday through Friday—doing something I haven’t done in quite some time: I reviewed story partials.

I have several hundred partially written stories on my computer (more than 300 of them are crime fiction). Some are little more than a sentence, while others are full outlines or are opening scenes with notes about what might follow. Some partials are much further along than that.

I didn’t make it through all the partials in three days, but what I did is open and read as many files as possible. Sometimes I added a sentence or a scene. Sometimes I made notes about what the story needed, and sometimes I did nothing but read, close the file, and move to the next.

During this process, two stories caught my attention. One was missing only the final scene, which I wrote. The other was missing bits and pieces throughout the entire ms., and I filled in the gaps. I now have two short stories that are almost ready to submit. The first needs the last sentence or last paragraph tweaked and the other needs a final proofread. Now that I’m back to wrangling deadlines, it may be awhile before I can put the finishing touches on these stories, but I already know where I intended to submit each of them.

WHY SO MANY

A common question early career writers ask experienced writers is where we get our ideas. There are many facetious answers—I get mine for a dime a dozen from a PO Box in New Jersey—but the truth is that ideas come from everywhere.

What I learned long ago, though, is that if I don’t capture the ideas, I lose them. That’s why I have so many partially written stories on my computer.

Some are unfinished because I can’t resolve a plot problem, others remain unfinished because they require research I have yet to do, and others remain unfinished because there are no appropriate markets. (Trust me, if anyone ever resurrects True Story or any of the other confession magazines, I can single-handedly fill several issues by finishing all the confession partials I stopped working on when the last two confession magazines ceased publication.)

And I don’t consider my files an idea graveyard. Several times I have completed and sold partials that were years—even decades—old because a new market surfaced or because I finally resolved a plot problem that had vexed me.

Hurricanes don’t usually prompt a dive into my files, but any excuse to review the partials has the potential to reap rewards.

It did this time.

HELENE REDUX

Helene didn’t just cause postponement of my trip to SleuthFest last week, it also caused Temple and I to cancel next week’s trip to Asheville, NC, where we planned to visit Temple’s daughter. Luckily, her daughter, her daughter’s roommate, and both of their pets, are safe.

I hope everyone else we know in the hurricane’s path are also safe and that all y’all’s lives will soon return to normal.

Scaring Myself: The Challenges of Writing a Dual Time-Line Thriller

It's always nice to know many fellow mystery authors, either personally or at least via social media, because then I often can contact someone to ask if they'd be kind enough to write an article for me.  It happened just the other day, after I'd finished reading Lee Goldberg's latest title, Calico.

As a writer I was fascinated by the idea of writing a story, involving two different genres, and two different timelines in the same book. With Calico he's done something I think maybe only a handful of authors today could do successfully.  
Lee's an amazing best selling book writer but is also a TV screen writer, producer and developer, from Diagnosis Murder to Monk, to Bond & Goldberg Terrorize a Nursing Home. Okay, he lied about that last one or perhaps I lied. Honestly, he's written numerous books, including five with Janet Evonavich. He is a two-time Edgar nominee from MWA, a Shamus nominee from PWA, and a 2024  SPur nominee for contemporary western from  Western Writers. He's also a book publisher. I just have no idea when he sleeps, eats or enjoys family time. Unless, he's like Asimov and has a basement of trained monkeys banging away on keyboards.

So when I contacted, my pal, he happened to already have written about the origins and evolving of writing Calico, and which he immediately sent to me. Now it's with great pleasure, I present Lee's article, "Scaring Myself."  - Jan Grape


Scaring Myself: The Challenges of Writing a Dual Time-Line Thriller 

by Lee Goldberg
 
My thriller Calico, out this week in a new paperback and deeply discounted ebook editions, is both a contemporary police procedural…and a traditional western set in 1883. What the two storylines share is a body, buried in a shallow grave in California’s desolate Mojave desert.

I’d been thinking about the story for years… but put off writing it because I had too many contractual commitments and not enough time in-between them to do it. Those are lies, of course, excuses I told myself to justify not writing the book.

The truth is, the story terrified me. Thrillers are hard enough to write without trying to balance two time-lines and, on top of that, two wildly different genres (actually, three genres, but talking about that would be a spoiler).

The challenge of telling two connected stories, one in the past and one in the present, is making sure the reader isn’t ahead of the characters in either time-line. Because if you fail, it will kill the suspense and the mystery. There will be no surprises. Yet, you also don’t want to withhold information from the reader, because that would be cheating. The trick is knowing when to cut away from one time-line to the other, so the reader is never quite sure how much they really know. Maintaining that delicate balancing act throughout the story is the sweet spot because, if you can pull it off, it creates a palpable tension that generates excitement… the thrill in thriller.

You also have to create two protagonists, one in each time-line, that the reader will find equally compelling and that will anchor the reader so they can endure the shifting POVs. In Calico, those characters are Beth McDade, a disgraced ex-LAPD cop, seeking redemption as a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s detective in the Mojave Desert in present day…and, in 1882, it’s unskilled wanderer Ben, desperately trying to survive in a silver mining camp located in a scorching, dry, desolate hell-scape. Ben’s choices in the past will have a profound impact on Beth’s life over 135 years later, when a homicide investigation will either redeem her… or destroy her.

I created a spreadsheet to track the two time lines…as well as the key plot moves/reveals which, if given away too soon or too late, could ruin the entire book. I also used the spread sheet to get a sense of the pacing, of when it would be the right time, emotionally or thematically, to shift time periods, to keep the narrative momentum moving at warp-speed.

Beyond telling a two-track story, I wanted to take the two genres (actually three) and, while delivering on the familiar tropes, also subvert all the baked-in cliches and expectations. So, I gave myself another delicate balancing act to perform: delivering a true police procedural and a western (and that other genre I’m not revealing), while also de-constructing them to create something new.

And if you’re crossing genres, and time-lines, it’s essential that you maintain the same tone and pacing across them both, so it doesn’t feel like two different books, but one relentlessly engaging thriller.

Calico was the hardest book I’ve ever written (out of nearly 40) but, in some ways, it’s been the most creatively rewarding. I’m glad I took the risk. Because I believe if I don’t occasionally scare or challenge myself, I’m going to fail anyway – because my writing will become formulaic and complacent. 

I hope you’ll read Calico… and that you’ll let me know if my high-wire act worked…or if I hit the ground with a sickening splat.  

Musing on Mitty

 At the just-completed Nashville Bouchercon, I was on the panel "Is It Over Now?: Bringing Characters to Life in Short Stories."  I always find these panels fun, a chance to meet some fellow writers and have engaging exchanges with the audience.  Our moderator, Meagan Lucas of Reckon Review, had some lively and insightful questions for us, including this: who is your favorite character from a short story?  For this particular question, I didn't have to think very hard.  My all-time favorite character from a short story is the protagonist of my all-time favorite short story: Walter Mitty, from James Thurber's masterful 1939 "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

If you haven't read "Mitty," you're missing something special, and you should go do so now.  It can be found in any number of anthologies and collections, and a little light Googling just might turn up a PDF version on the web, if you're not picky.

Am I going to spoil the story as I discuss it here?  In a way, although "Mitty" is a hard story to spoil, because, in some ways, it's barely a story at all.  It's very short, coming in at just over 2000 words, and strictly speaking almost nothing happens.  There's certainly not much that you could describe as a plot: Walter and his wife dive into the town of Waterbury to run a few errands.  That's it.

James Thurber

So what makes the story so memorable, and why is it worth talking about on a blog about crime fiction 85 years after it was published?

It's all about Walter.

Walter Mitty is fiction's ultimate daydreamer.  As he goes about the crushingly dull chores of a perfectly mundane day, he repeatedly slips into highly detailed reveries in which he is the world's foremost surgeon, or a crack pistol shot on trial for murder, or an RAF pilot stoically preparing for an impossible mission, and so on.  He's always jerked back to reality, but invariably returns to his inner world of fantasy, to the imaginary existences where his true life is lived.

As far as everyone else in the world is concerned, Walter is a shlub.  His wife nags and infantilizes him.  Cops yell at him to move it along.  Parking attendants and mechanics sneer at him, and store clerks condescend to him.  In his fantasies, however, he is powerful, accomplished, confident, feared, adored.  And here, perhaps, is the first reason for any reader or writer to love this story: it's a tribute to exactly the kind of enrichment and empowerment we have all felt in reading and writing; in slipping away into a story, of our own making or someone else's; in the world of fiction itself.  To be sure, Walter's specific fantasies owe more to the movies than to written fiction, but in a very real way Walter Mitty is a writer.  He may not be a great writer, or even a particularly good one; his fantasy life does lean heavily on familiar narrative tropes and genre archetypes.  Still, there are some inspired stylistic touches (I love the "pocketa-pocketa-pocketa" noise he imagines every machine as making), and you certainly can't fault him for lacking narrative energy.

What really makes the story work is that Thurber doesn't look down on Walter or condescend to him.  He shows us all the other people who feel disdain for Walter, but, right up through the story's perfect closing line (which I will not spoil here), he himself understands, sympathizes with, and even admires how Walter has made an interior life for himself that is so much richer and more fulfilling than his reality.

It hardly needs to be said that the story itself is masterfully written.  Thurber was a great prose stylist in the style of The New Yorker, where "Mitty" first appeared: sophisticated, witty, expressing tremendous emotion through restrained, carefully selected detail.  He creates one of literature's most enduring characters and his entire world in what amounts to about five pages, something anyone interested in short fiction can respect.  I particularly love the way small details are woven through through the story, linking Walter's inner and outer lives in clever ways.  

For example: remembering how he's been humiliated when his wife makes him take their car to a mechanic, Walter decides that next time he'll wear a sling on his right arm to show why he couldn't do the work himself.  In the meantime, he can't remember what it was his wife asked him to go buy, and while he's thinking about it, a passing newsboy shouts something about a trial.  In a flash, Walter is on the stand being interrogated by a district attorney about his ability to fire a fatal shot at a great distance with a pistol.  Walter's lawyer protests that his client had his right arm in a sling on the night of the murder, but Walter immediately and calmly asserts that he could have easily made the shot with his left hand.  A woman screams, the DA strikes out at her, and Walter punches him on the chin, calling him a "miserable cur"--and the physical Walter, standing on a sidewalk, says "puppy biscuit" out loud, having suddenly remembered what he's supposed to be shopping for.

A lot of what a writer needs to know about transitions and focus can be found in that passage.

Hollywood has taken two passes at adapting "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," and while both films have elements of interest, neither completely lives up to the source (surprising, I know).  The first version, released in 1947, starred Danny Kaye as Walter and was directed by Norman Z. McLeod, who made some truly great comedies with people like the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields. Thurber was consulted at various points by the filmmakers, and there are small moments lifted more or less directly from his story, but he ultimately didn't care for the result.  The film's narrative and style were so directly shaped around its star's persona that Thurber is said to have referred to it as "The Public Life of Danny Kaye."

Kaye's Mitty is a proofreader at a publisher specializing in pulp and adventure magazines (in the original story, we're given no hint of Walter's occupation, and he may well be retired).  He's had this job for eleven years, but still lives at home with his overbearing mother, who tucks him in at night and brings him warm milk.  His abusive boss steals his best ideas while mocking him for his daydreams, and his fiancé is an empty-headed young woman who cares a good deal more for her dog than for Walter.  

The film is not, of course, content to let Walter remain just a daydreamer.  A chance encounter with a mysterious woman on a train draws him into a real-life adventure revolving around the location of Dutch treasures, hidden prior to the Nazi invasion and now sought by government agents and a gang of crooks.  The plot makes virtually no sense, but there is some fun to be had, particularly in Boris Karloff's turn as a malevolent psychologist who tries to get information from Walter by convincing him that it's all just been another daydream.  In the end, Walter asserts himself, foiling the bad guys, marrying the girl (the one from the train, natch) and demanding a promotion.  He thus earns what Thurber's Mitty never earns, and does not need: the validation of the external world.

Danny Kaye was known for comic songs built around nonsense patter, and the movie obliges him by shoehorning two of them in for no very good reason.  The first is particularly jarring.  It comes at a moment when Walter is having his fantasy of being an ace RAF fighter pilot, much of which--including some of the specific dialogue--is lifted directly from Thurber's text.  Suddenly, however, one of the other pilots remembers that when he and Mitty were in college together, Mitty did a hilarious imitation of their music professor.  Everyone present immediately demands that he do the imitation, causing Walter to shuck his RAF uniform, don a waiter's coat as an academic gown, and launch into a German-accented musical "lecture" about the history of a symphony.  When I watched the film, I felt as though the song lasted just a bit longer than WWII itself (the YouTube link above is only a portion of the number).  Danny Kaye was a talented man who did a lot of great things in his career, but this scene is the reason fast-forwarding was invented.

The other song, "Anatole of Paris," is somewhat more bearable, if only because it is shorter and easier to understand.  It comes when Walter, for reasons I won't even try to explain, is trapped at a fashion show and daydreams about being a famous designer of women's hats--not, I think, something that would have much appealed to Thurber's character.

The next big-screen version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty arrived in 2013 and starred Ben Stiller, who also directed, in the title role.  This version is even further removed from Thurber's story, but is, in my view, a considerably better film than Kaye's vehicle.  Stiller's Mitty works in the photo department of Life magazine, which is about to publish its final print edition before becoming Life Online (it's interesting that both movies have Walter working in publishing).  He has a crush on his coworker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), but can barely bring himself to speak to her, let alone send her a wink on eHarmony.  He's good at his job, but his family and coworkers are accustomed to the moments when he "zones out," entering one of his daydreams and becoming completely oblivious to what they're saying.

The daydreams in the 2013 Mitty are largely confined to the first half of the film, and none have any connection to the specific fantasies in Thurber's original.  They're mostly brief action sequences, like an elaborate, physics-defying martial arts battle with his smug jerk of a boss.  Inevitably, this Walter is also drawn into a real-life adventure.  A legendary photojournalist (Sean Penn) has sent in a picture to be used as the final Life cover, but it's been lost.  Walter sets out to track the photographer down, pursuing him first through Greenland and Iceland, then across "ungoverned Afghanistan" into the Himalayas.  Along the way he jumps from a helicopter into the shark-infested North Sea, flees an erupting volcano, plays soccer with warlords, and so on.  Once again, by the end of the film, he has gained the courage to act, making a date with Cheryl and telling off his boss.

Like the earlier film, this adaptation of "Mitty" inverts Thurber's story by presenting Walter's daydreams as a childish habit that must be left behind, rather than a defiant act of resistance again drudgery.  Still, the Stiller version is much more worthy of your time.  The central plot is engaging and reaches a satisfying resolution, the cast is stacked with talented performers (Patton Oswalt, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott), and much of the movie, particularly the sequences in Iceland, is stunningly beautiful.  It's also interesting as a kind of time capsule of the cultural moment when the old, analog world vanished into a new, digital one.  The film is explicitly an elegy for the print version of Life, and thus an elegy for the world of newsstand magazines--like the one that gave birth to "Mitty" to begin with.

We really did lose a great deal when we let that world slip away.  Computers can do a lot, but they hardly ever go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.