Quality and Quantity of Dialogue...

[Aimée]

Not sure if we've discussed this before, but I was wondering, about how much (maybe percentage-wise) of a novel is dialogue? Obviously it's quality not quantity that counts, but I was just curious, and my WIP is a bit peculiar in the dialogue area... I'm trying to find a nice balance between description, dialogue, and narrative. I tend not to have enough dialogue, which leaves my characters seeming a bit dry and closed off emotionally. I don't want that. I'm kind of a shy person, so writing dialogue is not my strong suit. In my WIP, conversation is quite important, and I'm not so great at that type of thing.

[maybegenius]

I know this is the most unhelpful answer in the world, but it really depends on the story. There have been successful novels written completely without dialogue and novels written in nothing but dialogue. Both are experimental extremes, of course, but they exist. Ultimately, it depends on what the story needs. If you're writing a story about a young boy who crashes on a desert island and has to live completely alone for sixty days, there probably won't be much dialogue. If it's a story where characters have to talk to each other to relay information, then there has to be dialogue.

You have to find what works best for your story! If your characters need to talk, then you need to get them to talk. Try watching films that are similar in genre to what you're writing and pay special attention to character interactions. That might help jump start something. Good luck!

[polymath]

Alice of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland says in the opening a book without conversation, or pictures, is boring. Dialogue is one of if not the most useful narrative methods for developing characterization, dramatic action, emotional subtext, and plot's many facets. Dialogue is causal, often contentious interaction. Dialogue as conversation provides context for other writing modes. Action, conversation, introspection, sensation, and emotion being the more dramatic modes. Narration in the sense of a narrator's commentary discourse provides context too, but from a more open narrative distance than the close and personal narative distance closeness of viewpoint characters and their conversation partners' discourses.

Dialogue can be categorized by main types. There's the colloquy of question and answer. There's echo conversation, where a speaker says one thing, and another says something parallel in response, often with word or phrase or topic repetition and amplification. There's non sequitur conversation, where a speaker says something, and another speaker says something unrelated, that does not follow. There's conversation that's soliloquy, a speaker says something in a self-reflexive manner to an audience without anticipating a response, though response is the hallmark of conversation: clarification seekers, parallel point amplifiers, hecklers, interjecters, dippers, and so on. There's dramatic monologue where a speaker says something to an audience and will brook no interruptions, though it is a discourse, again, that's not conversation, and is usually some form of implied imperative or commanding discourse.

A simplistic formula for dialogue quantity is to use action, sensation, introspection, and emotion context proportionally for lending meaning to a conversation. Five facets, five parts, equal, about 20 percent each. But that's a guideline, not a hard and fast rule. Quality will win out over quantity. For quality's sake, emotionally loaded dialogue is ideal. And that means subtext and context for the conversation from reporting related action, sensation, introspection, and emotion.

Readers are most engaged by dialogue as one of the most entertaining and curiosity-raising activities in which social beings engage. There's not much weaker drama than a solitary character contemplating his or her navel sitting in a figuratively inescapable bathtub. If there's not much dialogue, send in foil characters to engage in conversations that are playing badminton with live handgrenades. We readers are eavesdroppers. Give us juicy, intimate conversations we want to surreptiously, vicariously overhear.

[Guardian]

It depends. There are no true rules for this as different scenarions are requiring different approaches. Write as you feel as writing is about imagination and not about rules. In this case you must feel what is the best for your story.

As Polymath said dialogues is one of the most useful narrative. I have to agree with this. However sometimes colorful descriptions or thoughts should replace them and sometimes they're better than any dialogues. Personally I love dialogues, but I never force them just to have some dialogues. If the character doesn't have to say anything, it's better if (s)he stays silent. You must feel what is good for the novel and the story. And there is also no quantity vs. quality in dialogues. In writing quantity can be quality in dialogues (Of course it depends on the execution.).

Personally what I hate is the forced, ultra compressed single sentences, like if every character would have a volcabulary of 500 words, no more. This is starting to become a trend lately, along with the ultra compressed D-Tags which is giving the impression like if the characters would follow the Steven Seagal emotion chart.



But unlike Seagal, book characters use "said, asked and frown" in D-Tags. What a great diversity...

[Sanderling]

As the others have said, the amount of dialogue you use is dependent on your story. It's also dependent on your narrative voice. It isn't only a matter of what happens in the story, but also how you present what happens in the story. For example, Robin McKinley has a very distinctive writing style / voice that doesn't utilize much dialogue, at least compared to many books, but the end result is still very engaging.

[Hillsy]

Passing on the love....

I got a critique from Herr Bransford himself. He actually pointed out that I'd hung a lot of my novel's opening on dialogue and characterisation, but largely missed out the context surrounding it. As such, rather than speed up the pacing and introducing exposition sans infodump...without the proper context it became an impediment to narrative flow. I hope I'm not treading on Nathan's toes, and I do appreciate that this advice is somewhat novel specific (namely mine) but I'll post what he kindly sent me in his reply....

"Characters mainly talk about everything, which makes it difficult to have a sense of urgency or suspense or danger or really grasping what is going on in this world. It's difficult for the reader to process things through dialogue, and if characters have enough time to talk everything through it cuts against the idea that something may be amiss. I'm afraid there were times I had a bit of difficulty tracking what was happening because the characters were often talking about things that we didn't have full context to understand."

So, in brief, If you're going to have a lot of dialogue, make sure the reader is in no doubt as to what they're conversing about..

[Doug Pardee]

If I might add: in most cases, people don't say what they mean. This is especially the case in emotionally-charged situations.

[Aimée]

Thanks to everyone for their comments! Since dialogue varies from book to book, it's hard to judge whether mine works or not.

Hillsy - I really like Nathan's advice there. "Cutting against the idea that something may be amiss" is a great way to put it. If the characters talk about everything, then there is no mystery where mystery needs to be.

And of course polymath is helpful as always.

Thanks again everyone!

[polymath]

There are several useful, somewhat complex writing principles for a writer to gauge whether dialogue is artful or artless. Primary among them is whether dialogue deepens particpation mystique or causes willing suspension of disbelief disturbances. Firmly and carefully identifying and defining a central reader surrogate and then evaluating whether he, she, or it maintains proactive centrality in all things is another. Another is also firmly and carefully identifying and defining a central attitude holder and then evaluating whether he, she, or it maintains proactive commentary expression centrality in all things.

Of course, reader surrogate and attitude holder may or may not be one character, a character or narrator persona or both, or all or one roll of the many potential rolls a narrative asks for, like protagonist, nemesis, villain, or supporting character, etc.