h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In my writing course, we talked about scene planning and subtext. Conversation often has a subtext -someone who seems to be chatting is actually finding information from his colleague for example. So, we were told to think of subtext when planning the scene. Everybody in a scene wants something - whether it's sex, or information, or just dinner (my characters talk a lot about food!). So those wants will inform the conversation. But the characters won't necessarily make those wants clear - they will hint, or beat about the bush. Do I do all this successfully? Probably not.

But someone who's brilliant at dialogue is John Le Carre. I've just been reading his 'The Honourable Schoolboy', where the eponymous character is Jerry Westerby. He appears to be an easy-going, upper-class Englishman and not very successful journalist, who chats amiably to people. But he's actually a tough intelligence officer. And there's Smiley himself, who seems a very innocuous character- dumpy and bespectacled. At a meeting, he sits and says very little, but he's like a chess player - keeping several moves ahead.

I think you've put your finger on something there. And these days, it's not often done very well.

We've been watching old episodes of 'Danger Man' on Youtube. That's one of the things they do well in that series - even in the old 25-minute episodes. Even the minor characters are interesting, because the conversations are so full of context.