Talking on Phones in Fiction

I’m always interested in small problems that are unique to different art forms, and how each artist has to make a choice how to handle that problem. For example, there is the problem of talking on telephones. It’s a problem in fiction, and also in the movies, for different reasons, and it leaves me wondering what the most graceful way is to handle it. You’ve got to juggle realism with ease of understanding for your audience.

Take movies for starters. Movies have to make choices. If the camera is with one speaker, can you hear the other side of the phone conversation? If not, it can be pretty tough to figure out what’s going on based on just half of the conversation. If so, it can seem cheesy or just be downright confusing. Moviemakers might try a split-screen presentation of both speakers, but that makes things completely unrealistic. In real life, you’d only be observing one half of the conversation. On the other hand, moviemakers might only let you hear one side of the conversation, but leave their audience feeling frustrated and out of the loop.

After the jump: examples of proper phone usage in fiction.

Fiction writers have similar challenges with portraying the phone. Do they recount everything that is said directly, using quotations? That can mean a lot of wasted fluff. Do they observe their character from afar and only “listen in” to half of the conversation? Often phone conversations work most effectively if they’re efficient. The best way to depict a phone chat efficiently is to just talk about what has been said, using indirect dialogue, like this:

He called Tony and told him he’d be at the funeral in time.

But there might be one phrase or two that is crucial to the conversation, that must be heard in the character’s actual voice. This is something fiction can do that movies can’t nearly as well: draw out just that one sentence so it stands out, then move back into efficiency mode. So you get:

He called Tony and told him he’d be at the funeral in time. Tony replied, “Don’t bother — Dad wouldn’t want you there anyway.” They exchanged a few more insults and then Tony hung up.

In this example, you end up with a kind of telescoping focus — focus that moves in and out, completely under your control. Continuing with the movie metaphor, the audience looks where you want them to look. That’s just one example of the power of writing for expressing the complexities of real life.