Video post: creating and escalating tension in dialogue

A return to Ninth House for a look at how to use two characters withholding information to create dueling dialogue that doesn't run in circles

Information is the content and currency of well written dialogue. Last week, we looked at the movie Hell or High Water to see how exposition was done through dialogue, based on characters who have a rich base of shared knowledge.

But what if your characters are withholding information from one another?

In this revisit to Ninth House, we get a perfect demonstration of two characters dancing and dueling in their dialogue to protect and extract information from each other. These characters have limited history, but it’s enough to bring plenty of simmering tension to the page.