Day 194 – Characters and their conversations

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Beyond the Final Word: Why Character Intentions Drive the Best Conversations in Fiction

“Dialogue should be a series of pitched battles in which the characters are trying to get what they want.”

Every fiction writer eventually encounters a scene where two characters are talking, yet the pages feel utterly lifeless. The exchange is grammatically correct, it moves the plot forward, and it delivers the necessary information. And yet, it bores the reader to tears.

Why? Because the characters are simply arriving at what they want to say, rather than wrestling with the turbulent, messy journey of how they get there.

To master the art of subtext and realistic human interaction, we can look to one of the 20th century’s most brilliant stylists. The celebrated Anglo-Irish novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Bowen had profound insights into the architecture of conversation. Bowen understood that in great fiction, dialogue is rarely about the destination; it is about the struggle of intention.

In this post, we’ll explore why characters should focus more on what they intend to say rather than the tidy sentences they finally arrive at, drawing inspiration from Elizabeth Bowen’s literary philosophy.

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The Elizabeth Bowen Perspective: Conversation as a Secret War

Elizabeth Bowen viewed the surface of life—and polite conversation especially—as a delicate, often deceptive crust over boiling depths. To Bowen, dialogue was never just an exchange of data. It was a social dance, a power struggle, a form of concealment, and an act of psychological warfare all at once.

In her critical writings and through the immaculate prose of novels like The Death of the Heart and The House in Paris, Bowen demonstrated that people rarely say exactly what they mean. Instead, they circle their desires. They hint, they deflect, they use small talk as a shield, and they weaponise silence.

When characters’ conversation is overly streamlined—when they immediately arrive at crisp, articulate summaries of their feelings—the psychological realism evaporates. Real people are hampered by pride, fear, social conditioning, and a lack of self-awareness.

Bowen’s characters speak not to deliver exposition, but to assert themselves against a hostile or indifferent world. The magic happens in the gap between what is intended and what is actually uttered.

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What Happens When Characters “Arrive” Too Fast?

Let’s look at the two approaches: dialogue driven by arrival versus dialogue driven by intention.

The Trap of the “Arrival” Dialogue

When a writer focuses on what a character arrives at saying, the dialogue often falls into the trap of “on-the-nose” writing or pure exposition.

• Example (Arrival):Mark: “I am leaving you because you never pay attention to my emotional needs, Sarah.” Sarah: “That’s not fair. I’ve been stressed about my mother’s illness, but if you’re going to be selfish, maybe we should break up.”

Why it fails: It’s efficient, but it feels robotic. Real human beings in the middle of a breakup rarely diagnose their relationship with the clinical precision of a marriage counsellor in the first three seconds. They are defending their egos, deflecting blame, and masking panic.

The Power of “Intention” Dialogue

When characters are driven by what they intend to say—the subtextual desire to wound, to plead, to hide, or to conquer—the conversation becomes a living, breathing thing.

• Example (Intention):Mark slammed the refrigerator door harder than necessary, rattling the jars inside. “You leave that wet towel on the counter every single day.” Sarah didn’t look up from her phone. “Some of us have actual responsibilities outside of interior decorating, Mark.” Mark: “Right. Responsibilities. Must be nice.”

Why it works: Mark intends to say, “I feel neglected and invisible in this house,” but that requires vulnerability. Instead, he arrives at a petty complaint about a towel. Sarah intends to say, “Don’t make me feel guilty; I am drowning under pressure,” but she arrives at a counter-attack. The tension comes from the reader feeling the heavy, unspoken weight of their true intentions beneath the trivial words.

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3 Ways to Apply Bowen’s Wisdom to Your Writing

If you want to shift your character conversations away from neat arrivals and toward messy, intention-driven power struggles, try these three techniques:

1. Give Every Character a Hidden Agenda

Before writing a scene, ask yourself: What does this character want from the other person by the end of this conversation?

• Do they want validation?
• Do they want to hide a secret?
• Do they want to provoke a reaction without taking the blame for starting a fight?

When characters have an active internal agenda, their dialogue will naturally become evasive, tactical, and charged with subtext.

2. Interrupt the Thought Process

In real life, we edit ourselves mid-sentence. We start to say one thing, realise how it sounds, and pivot sharply.

• Let your characters trail off.
• Let them change subjects abruptly when they feel vulnerable.
• Use action beats (gestures, glances, fidgeting) to show the friction between their brain and their mouth.

As Elizabeth Bowen showed us, the most telling moments in a conversation are often the things left unsaid, or the sentences that fracture before they can be completed.

3. Let Misunderstandings Breed Conflict

When characters are aiming for an intention rather than a neat conclusion, they will inevitably miss each other’s points. Character A is speaking from a place of fear; Character B is interpreting it as an attack.

This friction creates authentic dramatic irony. The reader understands the tragic or comedic mismatch between what the characters intend to communicate and how their words are actually landing.

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Conclusion: Embrace the Mess

Great dialogue is never a straight line. It is a zigzag path of sidesteps, false starts, defensive maneuvers, and buried longings.

By following Elizabeth Bowen’s implicit advice—prioritising the volatile, underlying intentions of your characters over the neat, polished sentences they eventually arrive at—you will breathe authentic life into your scenes. Stop letting your characters say exactly what they mean right away. Let them struggle to say it, let them fail, and watch your fiction transform into something unforgettable.

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What are your favourite examples of subtext-heavy dialogue in literature? How do you handle character intentions in your own writing? Let us know in the comments below!

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Days 192 and 193 – Writing exercise

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I woke to the sound of a very large explosion, yet it wasn’t exactly that; it was the blood-curdling scream that came after.

It wasn’t panic I felt in those few seconds of silence that followed the scream.  It was like I knew it was going to happen, and I could feel a sense of utter calm come over me.

I got out of bed and threw on the nearest clothes near me, then the coat at the back door where I had hung it the previous evening, and the torch I had left nearby in case I needed it.

I did.  It was still dark outside, but dawn would soon be here.  It was also cold, colder than it should be for the last days of winter.  At least it was not snowing.  Snow had a way of making things more difficult than they should be.

My first instinct was to go out via the back door.  Looking across the backyard, I could see other neighbours stirring, internal house lights going on.

From the front I could hear vehicles and then saw the kaleidoscope of red and blue flashing lights on police cars and the sound of an approaching fire engine.

I took in all the movement and sounds that carried on the night air, disjointed pieces of conversation, the murmur of people talking quietly as they headed towards their front gates.

I stepped down off the veranda and went up the side of the house, and as I came out at the front wall I could see the majority of activity was further down the street, outside, if I was not mistaken, the Johnson residence.

A few more steps and I was on the sidewalk, the full extent of the scene apparent.  The cars and truck were outside the Johnson place.

It was no surprise.

The police made regular visits because the Johnson children were prone to getting into trouble, a polite way of saying they were thieves, liars, bullies and troublemakers. 

Old man Johnson, the patriarch of the clan, had once greeted me with a hunting rifle.  To say he terrorised the neighbourhood was an understatement.

My next door neighbour was on his sidewalk, watching.  He had come out with a weapon ready to defend himself if necessary.

“It’s a war zone,” he said, shaking his head.

“I don’t see any bomb craters,” I said, thinking it might lighten the mood.

“I hear someone had enough of that family and tried to blow them up.”

Unlikely, but the neighbours, some at the end of their tether with the Johnson children, would be happy if that was the case.

Riley, my neighbour one house along from me but further away, came to join us.

He too has an opinion: “I hope those fools just blew up their basement meth lab, and they’re all dead.”

As he said it, three ambulances sped past on their way to the bomb/meth lab site.

“The Johnsons are just bad people, and I don’t believe they have either a meth lab or enemies that would want to blow them up.”

Mrs James from over the street came over.  She knew everything that happened in the street, sometimes before it happened.

“Herbert says it was a gas leak. Someone struck a match…”

It was a rational explanation, but then Herbert said that his garden had been overrun by aliens three mornings ago.  Saw them himself, he said, and had to fight them off with a samurai sword.

He’d been out before dawn sweeping the path with an old broom, brandishing it at an invisible enemy.

Herbert should be in a facility; such was the deterioration of his sanity.  In my last conversation with him, he asked me if I had seen the lizard people too.

Riley and Herbert were not talking at the moment, an innocent remark at the last block party getting under Riley’s skin.

“Herbert…”

I interrupted before he said something he would later regret, “I’ll go down and see what’s really going on.  I suspect it is probably something perfectly explainable, and we are all only too willing to call it something else.”

“I’d take care,” Foredyce, the man everyone loved to hate, simply because he had money he couldn’t explain adequately.  “I hear Johnson has the police in his back pocket.”

Odd that I thought, after leaving him, that it was more like he had the police in his back pocket.

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Seconds later I ran into a policeman who was setting up perimeter tape, the sort that had the words “Do Not Cross”.  He didn’t let me cross, so I stood against the tape as a personal act of defiance.

Two police cars had been angled so that traffic could not pass in the street, and the same was happening a hundred yards away.

Other police were shunting spectators back to their properties.  I was now one of about a dozen that had come to the line, people I recognised from block parties, but didn’t speak to often.

There were also people I didn’t know or recognise.

I think one was a reporter.  I had seen her photo in the paper, though I couldn’t be sure.  I looked around, but I couldn’t see the film crew she usually had in tow.

My cell phone vibrated; an incoming message.
“When they leave, come.”

I replied with the appropriate emoji and just got my phone back in my pocket before the reporter, or whoever she was, burrowed her way through the small group to end up next to me.  She hadn’t exactly tried to bump me out of the way, but I was going to defend my territory if she tried.

She had her cell phone in her hand, ear pods and a vacant expression.  If I was to guess, she was listening in on the police band.

She moved slightly, and I gently nudged back.

Her attention went from the broadcast to me, a scathing look.

“What are the police saying this is?” I asked, before she could remonstrate.

“What?”  Abrupt.  It reminded me of an article I’d read where she had been accused of being over zealous in the gathering of information, got her facts wrong, published and caused an innocent person trouble.

“What are the police saying?”

“Don’t you have better things to be doing than rubber necking?”

“And you do, barging your way like an out-of-control motor bus.”  It was the best I could come up with at short notice.

That was when I realised those who had been behind her had drifted away to find better vantage points.

“Of course, these clowns are news.”

“Those clowns are trouble.”

“More than you know.”

I’d noticed a woman talking to several police officers outside the front of the house, then scanning the rope line, and eventually stopping, and looking fiercely at me, or more likely the woman I was standing with.  A few more words with another officer, she started walking towards us.

“You have a friend in the police.”

“Not exactly.”

The woman gave me a glare and nodded to the woman beside me, then lifted the tape line.  I watched them walk along the perimeter until no one could overhear them.

I watched two paramedics come out with a gurney with a body bag on it, and then transfer the bag to the ambulance, then go back into the house.

One dead person.  How many were there?

The paramedics repeated the process four times, then they drove off.  Four collections.  Four dead, or four smuggled away.

I saw the reporter see the last person loaded, exchanged what I thought were heated words, then came back walking quickly.

She seemed annoyed.

“What did the cops say?”  I thought I’d ask.  I might get an answer.

“Nothing.  It was staged to get them away.  There’s an assassin coming, or already here; they don’t know.”

“More likely an angry mob of neighbours, me included.  I hope they’re not coming back.”

She shook her head then headed towards her car.  I guess she was going to follow the ambulance and see where they were being taken.

With the ambulance leaving, the police cars gradually left until there was only one, belonging to the local sheriff’s department.

The deputy was in the process of retrieving the perimeter tape.  The emergency, if it could be called that, was over. 

I knew him.  He had found one of my kids being a jackass at the mall and brought him home after giving him a warning.  He could have locked him up, but chose a less problematic way of dealing with the problem.  Telling us and we handed out the punishment.

“Ned.”

“Mr Raven.  Not a lot going on here now.”

“What happened?”

“County and federal stuff.  We just get to clean up the mess they left behind.”

“The Johnsons?”

“Best not to know.  They won’t be giving you or anyone around here any more trouble.”

“Dead.”

“Exactly, if you get my drift.”

In other words, taken away to end up in another town to annoy them.  I could hear in his tone that he would have preferred to shoot them.

“Good.”

“Trust me.  There’s nothing more to see.”

“Is it alright if I go and see where some of my tools Johnson borrowed are?  If he’s not coming back, he won’t need them.”

“No.  I guess you’re right.”  He shrugged.  “I can’t see why not.  The place is empty; just try not to touch anything that’s not yours.”

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I didn’t go via the front.  There were still a few people waiting, for what, though, was not clear, but perhaps they thought the Johnsons might come back.

Instead, there was an alley behind that line of properties, recently built as our estate got bigger, with our road the closest to the farming land behind it.

The man who had owned it had sold a few acres to raise funds to keep the farm going.  It wouldn’t be for much longer; a local businessman was planning a much larger housing development with a mall and a public park ready for the influx of workers needed for a huge distribution centre.

That was a more interesting story than the Johnsons; the centre was looking to use robots built at a high-tech robot assembly plant nearby, part of a technology park.

Maybe.

All manner of propositions were being tossed about by local politicians, each claiming they were saving our town.

At the back fence line to the Johnsons’ property, I peered through the crack in the fence, the one I think they used to keep an eye on people, saw no one in the rear yard and went in.

It was a short distance from the back fence to the rear veranda, and once inside the structure, built to add more space to the house to have outdoor cooked meals in summer and keep dry and warm in winter.

I waited and listened to see if there was anyone still in the house.  Peering through the kitchen windows, overlooking the veranda, I couldn’t see anyone, but they had left the lights on when they left.

I let five minutes pass, then knocked.  Not loudly, just enough that if there was anyone inside they’d hear it.

Someone did; a moment later the back door opened slightly and a hissed, “get in here,” was issued.

I just got through the door when it was closed again. A woman old enough to be my daughter was standing by the door, out of line of sight.

“You took your time.”

“It was just a little busy out there.  Are you ready?”

“I was never ready for this.  He sure as hell didn’t tell me his father was a rat, and we would be dragged across the country because of his mistakes.”

I got a call about a week ago from my sister, who lives on the other side of the country.  Her daughter had married the son of a CEO.  She had always maintained there was something odd about him, and when he had to go into hiding, it confirmed her suspicions.

She had just learned that her daughter had moved to my city, and asked her mother for help to get away from them.  She called me.

She said she had drawn a line under the experience and wanted out, and away from her husband, who wouldn’t take it kindly to her leaving.  Thing was, she was under no obligation to stay, and her life was in danger.

I was not sure what I could do, but Eloise wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I still hadn’t found them, or recognised the daughter when I went looking for her at the mall.  It had been a long shot, until the explosion.

I went to the front of the house, and peered through the cracks in the shutters.  The deputy was leaning against his car, smoking.  Several people were still standing around. Talking and gesturing, looking at the walls as if they could see through them.

I came back.  We could go out the back door but not go to the front of the house.

“How did you get away from the others?” 

“I told them I wasn’t going with them.  John wasn’t happy about it, but I was tired of running, looking over my shoulder.”

“You still will be.  You can’t just go back to your old life.”

“I’m nothing to them.  It’s the old man they want.  He was the one who dobbed them in.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

She gave me a look of exasperation.  I don’t think she was willing to accept the truth just yet.  As much as I couldn’t believe they simply left her behind.  Not if they cared about her safety.

There was a knock on the front door, not loud, but loud enough.

“Are you expecting someone, anyone?”

“No.”  The exasperation had changed to desperation.  She looked genuinely scared.

The knock was louder and more impatient.

“Hide.  I’ll see who it is.”

She went up the passage and out of sight.  I waited; the next knock now signalling the person on the other side’s next step was to kick the door down.

I took a deep breath and opened the door.  I was expecting the deputy.  It was the reporter.

“Where is she?”

“Who?”

She barged past me, looking in every direction.

“Don’t play dumb.”

I looked at her, and realised her demeanour had changed completely.  I was mistaken as to her identity.

“You are the assassin.”

She glared at me, that same severe expression as before.  “Are you naturally stupid, or what?”

“You’d be surprised if I told you.”

She shrugged.  “Leave now, and I’ll forget you were here.”

In that moment we both heard a noise, a box or case hitting the ground.  Next second she had reached into her voluminous handbag, and I could just see the shape of a gun.

Next second I shot her gun hand then upper leg; she went down, and I was stepping towards her carefully, gun aimed at her head.

Good thing I remembered to bring a silenced weapon, just in case.

The girl came running up the passage and stopped when she saw the reporter, or more likely assassin.

“You,” she said, recognising the assassin. 

“What can I say?  It pays better.”

The girl reached into the assassin’s handbag and pulled out the gun.

I was still processing the fact they knew each other.

She aimed it at the woman on the ground.  I thought it surprising she was not screaming.  I knew what it was like to get shot in the hand.

“Why are you after me?  I did nothing to upset anyone.”

“Guilt by association.  You’re on their list.  Kill me, and they’ll just send someone else.  Let me go, and I’ll forget I saw you.”  She turned to look at me.  “Who the hell are you?:

“Ex Cop.  I thought I’d settled into retirement.  Now I’m going to have to go after some more bad people.  I’m going to give you a choice.  Tell me who sent you or die.  And don’t go with the I got an anonymous call who didn’t leave his or her name.”

“You and I both know who it was.  He gave four of us the assignment.  One fails; there are three others.  And no, I don’t know who the other three are.”

“Were you ever a reporter?”

“Yes.  Gets me places others can’t.  Not very good though, but it doesn’t matter.  This was going to be my last job.  One way or another.  Do what you have to.”

I shrugged.  I wasn’t that sort of person

My sister’s daughter was.  Spending time with the Johnsons had turned her into a monster. Or maybe living with her mother.

Or…

“You were left behind specially for this reason.  You didn’t really need me.”

She looked down at the dead reporter.  “Cleaning up after their mess.  You’re right, though; I didn’t.  My mother said you were always a horrible child that made her life hell.  It seemed like a two birds with one stone moment.”

She aimed the gun at me.

“I’ll tell mother you said hi.”

Pity.  Killers who like the idea of announcing their intentions never get to live long lives.  I’d met a few and recognised the signs.  Added to the fact my sister never liked me and I thought it odd she had wanted me to do anything for her other than die.

Another reason why I brought the gun.

She was dead before she hit the ground.  It was a waste of life, and I hated killing people.  It was basically why they retired me early.  I wouldn’t get tough on the criminals.

This was a waste of two lives.  Reporter/assassins and wannabe bad girls.  I took my gun and cleared any fingerprints. I was not new to the game of ensuring no evidence pointed the gun to me, then staging the scene so it looked like the two of them killed each other.

Been there and done that a few times.

It was, all in all, a very strange situation. 

I had two calls to make.

My sister answered on the second ring.  “Tell me you killed the bastard.”

I rang my sister on her daughter’s phone, suspecting she would answer the way she did.  The number was on speed dial.  “She might have, had she been smarter, but she was as dumb as you are.  She got killed by an assassin before she could shoot me.  Don’t tell me your plan was for her to assume I’d come, and then kill me.”

“Caught in the crossfire, it seemed good at the time.”

“You never considered the consequences of your actions, never have.  She lived long enough to ask God to rain fire and hell down on me.  I guess that sort of hatred was fed to her by you.”

“You were always such a selfish, self-righteous pain.”

“You were always telling us mere mortals how common and useless wrong we were.  I think the self-righteous label belongs elsewhere.  But whatever was supposed to happen didn’t.  I’m sorry for your loss.  I doubt we will be speaking again.”

I put the phone back where it belonged after bricking it.  There would be a record of a phone call to her mother but not what it was about.  I had no doubt she would try to implicate me, but what did I have to gain?

Her attempt to smear me would fail.

Then I went out the front door, slightly panicky and calling for the deputy.  He saw me and came over, and there, with just the right hint of breathless panic, I related the story of what happened.

He went in and checked them immediately, then called for backup.  He went through all the right steps for a crime scene, asking all the right questions.

Then, over the next three hours, I had those same questions plus more asked over and over.  At least the police department and the sheriff himself knew I was a decorated big-city police officer who knew the ropes, and remembered not to contaminate the scene, but if stray prints were found, there was a legitimate reason.

After that I was free to go, but be available if there were more questions.  There would be, if they did a thorough job.  Not to implicate me; but get a clearer idea why they shot each other.

Then there was only one call left.

A last phone call, one I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to make, and wouldn’t if my niece had left with the rest of her new family.

No one answered the phone.  I just said, “Target four dispatched, debt paid.  You now have a new enemy.”

That was it.  The receiver of the call would know exactly what the message meant.  I looked at my watch.  Just enough time to get home for the family Zoom call.

Who said life in the countryside was going to be boring?

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©  Charles Heath  2026