The Cadence of Falling in Love: Using dialogue to show that your characters are vibing
It's a reasonably well-circulated tidbit that the dialogue between Romeo and Juliet, when they first meet, forms a sonnet. That fact lodged in my brain and, like a sign nailed to a still-growing tree, was eventually absorbed in such a way that it permanently affected the shape of the thing absorbing it.
One of my favorite writing tricks to pull is to show two characters getting onto the same wavelength through mostly just their dialogue. I've experienced it in real life, occasionally - not a moment when something clicks, but a momentum, a roll, a groove. So I thought I'd take a moment to sit down and talk about how I do it because dammit, Jim, I'm an author, not a magician, and I don't need to guard my secrets.
For the sake of example, here's an excerpt from my upcoming novel, Powered:
Our main two, Ambrose and Lupe, go from a reasonably normal conversation to literally finishing each other's sentences, despite the fact that they're arguing. Ambrose takes Lupe's monosyllabic cops and carries right on from the verb: will shoot anything that moves. Lupe, for their own part, picks up the contradiction with a conjunction (BUT it's stupid), once again maintaining the flow of what could be a single sentence from a single speaker (albeit a conflicted one).
This (and most of the prose chicanery I pull) is mainly a matter of rhythm. People in fiction don't really talk like people in real life (try transcribing a conversation if you don't believe me), but rhythm helps dialogue flow the same way it helps rappers speak so fast it makes your head spin.
You may also note above that the dialogue tags and interstitial actions get shorter and then disappear as the two characters get spun up to the same speed, which is significantly faster than everyone else in the room... or at least headed in a different direction.
Basically, it's like this, but in prose form:
(And yes, they are both having fun, even if only one of them will admit it.)
