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dialogue that does not contain tension but does help
us understand the characters.
Here is a section from one of John D. MacDonald’s
Travis McGee novels, The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper.
McGee has just met a woman named Penny in a bar and
they go through introductions and small talk. Too much
of that in actual dialogue form would be boring. Mac-
Donald gives us summary:
So Trav was in town to see a man interested in
putting some money in a little company called Floa-
tation Associates, and Penny was a receptionist-
bookkeeper in a doctor’s offi ce. Trav wasn’t mar-
ried, and Penny had been, four years ago, for a
year, and it didn’t take. And it sure had been a
rainy summer and fall. Too much humidity. And
the big thing about Simon and Garfunkel was the
words to the songs, reely. If you read the lyrics right
along with the songs while the record was on, you
know, the lyrics right on the record case, it could
really turn you on, like that thing about Silence
especially. Don’t you think, honest now, that when
people like the same things and have enjoyed the
same things, like before they ever met, Trav, it is
sort of as if they had known each other a long
time, instead of just meeting? And people don’t
have enough chance to just talk. People don’t
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