Joseph Gergen Works

Many of us enjoy some good witty repartee, whether participating in it or observing it. I’m personally quite fond of it, which explains my love for movies/plays such as “Rosencrants and Guildenstern are Dead,” where the banter is epic throughout.

I like writing witty repartee or even just some good solid dialog (whether I succeed is up to someone else to decide). I sometimes wonder where that comes from since I am not naturally a talkative person. But then I theorized one day that maybe it stems from the interior monologue trait that many of us has.

Many of have this inner voice so I’m not unique there. The voice in our head that is talking, whether to ourselves or to envisioned persons. For some it is a monologue but sometimes it is a dialog, the counterpoint being sometimes your voice and sometimes the voice of another.

Many of us you this interior dialog to work through a situation or to prepare for a future conversation.

Introverts are known to prepare for a conversation by rehearsing it in our heads. I think we do this to help frame our thoughts so we don’t have to do it on the fly (which some introverts are terrible at) and perhaps to ease the social anxiety, though sometimes I think I have just made the anxiety worse by going through  dozen variations of the same conversation.

And then there is the other side of the puzzle. Rethinking a conversation that has happened. A real fun introvert trait, which too often turns quite critical on your performance. But nonetheless you rewind the conversation and thin about what you could have said or wanted to say but couldn’t in the moment. This sounds like a path to some good dialog.

Without the pressure of time, you can find yourself to be quite witty.  I heard it referred to as “carriage wit” in some period British movie. Referring to riding home in the carriage and thinking of all the witty comebacks you could have used.

I have done countless pre-emptive and post-emptive  dialogs in my head, especially when I was younger and was painfully shy.  I had to practice communication somehow. And since I am also an empathetic introvert, placing myself in another’s position was normal and so I could lend authenticity to counterparts in my inner dialog, because having a dialog with yourself was only going to be bounded by the same point of view pinging back and forth and getting you nowhere.

So writing dialog is like the ultimate in carriage wit, since you can not only think it through in your head, you can write it down and sharpen it into a rapier of stinging word play. And that’s the fun of it.