Dorothy L Sayers was an outstanding author of novels, poems, plays, and essays as well as being a successful advertising copy writer and skilled translator.  Her crime stories, set in England during the years between the world wars, rank with those of Agatha Christie as defining the ‘Golden Age of Detective Fiction’.  She also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy and wrote serious essays on religious and feminist themes.  In her essay Are Women Human? she told a story about writing dialogue:

A man once asked me … how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty- five.

“Well,” said the man, “I shouldn’t have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing.” I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over.

One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.

 

The secret of a convincing dialogue – whether in a novel or the community – is perhaps to treat everyone like a human being too?  Conversation is something all us humans have in common.  As a councillor or other local leader, you may have a different set of experiences from other people in your neighbourhood.  As Dorothy Sayers showed,  a woman can listen and learn from men and a man should listen and learn from women too.   

Is there anyone in your locality you can’t listen and learn from?

 

What’s Next?

Go back to thinking about why conversation matters

Who could be up for chatting in your locality (and why chatting might be better than consultation)…

OR – follow the menu on the right to have a look at other parts of the guide.