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two characters up in a blank room—that is, a bare stage, a void, a place not yet defined. Now make a decision. One of them wants something. The other does not have it, or can not get it. How will the first get it, if not by speaking? He must move in the direction of his desire.
    1: Give it to me.
    The direction here is clear and declarative. It's a palpable tension. Surely, you can see that this addresses a need in a particular way. Nothing has been named yet, we have no fix on place, or even space, and yet the character speaks out of a sense of what she wants. But it would be no less so if it started this way.
    1: Excuse me.
    He's still moving in the direction of his desire, toward what he wants, by breaking the silence, by starting things up. I don't have to move much past that utterance to see a sort of tension filling up the space. Where would you expect this to move from here? Direction is a natural part of dialogue. We expect to be led somewhere by the response. How will the other character deal with this? As the answer to this question becomes clearer, we often start to see the issue of distance, or separation, being defined. The tone of that response will set up speed. You might expect me to say that the tension I've set up demands that he reveal everything he wants in the first line. For now, let's have the second character work from a position of total neutrality.
    1: Excuse me.
    2: Yes?
    1: Do you know the time?
    2: No, I don't.
    1: Do you have any sense of how long we've been here?
    2: No.
    That's probably as neutral as you're going to get. Still, speaker 2 is resisting. It's possible to read a certain distance into that exchange, an attitude that suggests speaker 2 isn't going to help speaker 1 in any way, shape or form. The brief responses lend an element of increased speed. Play it any way you want. Some element of tension is generally shaped by the act of speaking.
    All good dialogue has direction. It's a mishmash of need and desire on the part of an individual character weighed against the tension inherent in the gathering of more than one person. Not convinced? Think there isn't always tension when people speak? "What about families?" you say. "What about people who love each other? There's not always tension there." Some of you are laughing at that already, because for many of us a family (love it as we may) is our greatest tissue of tensions. But I would remind you of my terms. This is not grand conflict here, not man versus nature; nor is it painful tension, nothing one could take care of with a little cup of tea and a foot rub. This is the stuff that fills the spaces between us, even when we don't recognize it As a writer you have to learn to trust that it's there.
    Go back to the conversation in the blank room. Try to make it as free of tension as possible. Would it look something like this?
    1: Hi.
    2: Hi.
    1: How are you?
    2: Fine. How are you?
    1: Great. Nice day.
    2: Really. Nice day.
    Sounds hauntingly like those conversations we all have in elevators, or at a chance encounter, or in the hallways at school. Most people say they hate this kind of jabber, and in other places in the book, I've suggested, as I will again here, that there's no place for it in fiction. Sure people talk like this in the world, but that's why we must shape dialogue when we write. Good dialogue relies on a stronger tension than we see here. Good dialogue requires sharper word choice, more defined attitudes, more originality. As I said in chapter one, good dialogue should be something of an event unto itself.
    But despite the apparent neutrality of the dialogue above, it is not without direction. Look at it again. Chart the direction using arrows if you want. Who starts the conversation? Speaker 1. ("Hi.") It's his energy that plays off the response too. Here, again, we might use the word "speed," or "pace." ("How are you?"). He's the one asking the questions. Speaker 2 is feeding off him. The arrows I'd draw would