Redirection in Dialogue: Keep it real

"Franny and Zooey" -- J. D. Salinger.
Utilize redirection in dialogue to engage your readers. Issue commands or questions from one character that another character ignores/doesn't answer/talks about something else. Listen to real spoken dialogue, people often keep two separate threads going at once, say one thing (think another), fail to respond to questions, say things out of the blue.
(bathroom scene)
"No, I haven't spoken to my little sister yet. How 'bout getting the hell out of here now?"
"Why haven't you?" Mrs. Glass demanded. "I don't think that's nice, Zooey. I don't think that's nice at all. I asked you particularly to please go see if there is anything--" - Page 77.

Brilliant Author Tip: Layers of meaning

“Waiting For the Barbarians” — J. M. Coetzee

Layers of characterization and perception, symbolism and setting, narrative point of view.

“So I continue to swoop and circle around the irreducible figure of the girl, casting one net of meaning after another over her. She leans on her two sticks looking dimly upward. What does she see? The protecting wings of a guardian albatross or the black shape of a coward crow afraid to strike while its prey yet breathes?”

Setting to improve your novel

“The Things They Carried” — Tim O’Brien

Delivers chaos and a sense of wonderment, increases reader curiosity, believability and adds characterization layers (how you as a writer describe the setting shows how your main character sees the world, and tells us as readers a great deal about your characters).

“The was no music. Most of the hamlet had burned down, including her house, which was now smoke, and the girl danced with her eyes half closed, her feet bare. She was maybe fourteen. She had black hair and brown skin. “Why’s she dancing?” Azar said.” — Page 135

A Short Story: The Mistake

At the edge of the field I watched the sun rise. It bled through translucent clouds, making me think of that body lying dead on the side of the road. A man that was too young to die. Raspy breathing, hideous gurgling sounds made from the rising and falling of his chest. Blood filling his lungs and spilling out of his mouth as he fought to stay alive. 

I was only twelve.

We all knew something was wrong when the farmer rapped on our door, as if death itself was after him. He was a burly man, jean overhauls, straw hat, and a face that my mind refuses to remember. That bloated face, bloated with fear and hysteria. It wasn’t his fault. After all, it was a warm night, the first warm night that spring.

Was he a boy or was he a man? In the idiocy of the warm night, clear air, charged with the feeling like the twilight was endless, lay the trap of the void of death. The hand squeezed. 

As my mom and me ran after the farmer, my dad called the police. Shouting, like if they didn’t come now he couldn’t guarantee what he’d do. The farmer ran in a waddling movement. Ran from our Victorian farmhouse. Ran down the road towards the blinking red lights. The tractor. The baled hay. The two long gory forks, glistening in the light of the moon. Wet. His motorcycle splayed out in the road like a discarded toy.

He was too young.

I stood behind my mom as she took in the scene of the young man lying on his back. 

“Step aside, I’m a nurse,” my mom said. “I’ll try CPR.”

She bent down on her knees, huddling over the young man. There was a hole in his belly. So soft and spongy-looking. I’d never seen someone like that. I wanted him to be better. I was so scared I jumped right back twenty feet from my body, and yet at the same time I was right there in his face, smelling the hot, sticky stench of death pouring from his mouth. I heard and felt the squish-squish of his chest as my mom thumped down, trying to restart his heart. 

His intestines jiggled. I guess it was blood coming out from his belly, but in the moonlight it just looked like water. My mom pressed her lips over the dying man’s mouth and exhaled, as if she were a goddess giving life. I knew what blood tasted like, but I wondered if this kind of blood, with the taste of death, if it tasted any differently. 

My mom stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said, as if apologizing to the young man’s parents, probably sitting at home watching Miami Vice. For it was a Friday night, the night the urging of death tapped this young man on the shoulder. It whispered in his ear, “You’re young, enjoy the night, feel the air rushing, faster, go faster now, this night, this magical night you’re eternal, invincible, you can fly.”

And fly he did, into a sharp-enough prong, catching him in the belly, opening him up. He panicked. Saw the flashing red lights of the tractor, carrying a freshly mowed bale of hale. He went right, went left, freaked out and smacked right into that prong. 

But his last moments were peaceful. I saw everything. Every breath still resonates in my body, even now, almost thirty years later. That tired, long sigh, like he wanted to go. He didn’t fight it. He exhaled one slow last breath, and released his worldly cares. And that quiet, I’ll never forget the quiet right at his passing. It brought about a kind of dissonance inside my head and chest, and yet I felt like I was part of some greater thing than my simple life to date. 

I was a witness. Death’s witness. And it forever changed me. I think I cried, because I remember my mom hugging me, turning me aside from the nightmare, guiding me back to the long walk home. I wanted to remember him. Wanted to feel like his death was something more than just foolishness. There was a mystery in that night. A feeling like the night was expanding, and had become some strange creature. 

But the night was empty, and offered me nothing but a haunting memory.