Too Much Dialogue, Not Enough In Between?

[Blackrook]

I've started writing again and I've noticed my style hasn't changed.

I write a constant stream of dialogue with very little descriptive text in between.

I have little patience with describing the setting, describing the character's facial features, or explaining anything else.

I just get the characters to talking and jam straight through.

I'm not good with action sequences either, because there's not much talking involved.

Should I be writing screenplays perhaps?

 

[Blackrook]

Does this belong in workshop?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

No, it's fine where it is.

I don't think we have many aspiring screenwriters here, so it may take a while before you get a definitive answer to your question.

 

[Sapheron]

Too little is no more a problem than too much, as with most things. Which is to say that it can be a big problem is done badly, but if done well it can work fine.

That said; if you fancy giving writing a screenplay a go, why not try it? The worst that can happen is you'd go back to novels haven't learnt some new stuff.

 

[Boneman]

Okay, TE and The Judge, stand back... I am due one slap-free mention, having been given one in advance, by The Judge, a week or so ago.

Blackrook, here's some advice given to me by Patrick Rothfuss, which should help you: "What really defines a character in a reader's mind is the actions they take and the dialogue they engage in."

It is true, (and you've asked about this on another thread) that description/exposition/infodumping in large chunks tends to be ignored by a lot of readers, so a really short detail can stick in the mind incredibly well. Take for instance a description of a little girl in a blue dress, with blonde hair and pigtails and clear blue eyes - we'll skim a good bit of that, it's kinda expected. But if you have a little girl in a blue dress with skinned knees, it tells us more about her, as well as being slightly incongruous with 'blue dress' - it "forces a little dynamic interaction in the reader's mind for the character's creation".

So although you say have little patience in describing the setting, the character's facial features etc, that could be a strength - the minimum of description to move the action along. Rather than doing a police sketch - 'he was a male cucasion, 6ft 3inches tall, brown hair, dark eyes, moustache, tan jacket etc etc etc' - you just say 'he was tall with Adolf Hitler's moustache', guess which will stick in our minds better?

And if dialogue is your strength, then you'd be foolish not to wield it to best effect in your storytelling. As a counterpoint to my major opus, I'm writing another story when I have writer's block. The first chapter is almost entirely dialogue, with an absolute minimum of descriptive words. I think it's great, but I know some people will not like it. Does it work? Yes, it does. Is it perfect? Of course not... but it will be one day!

Hope this helps, especially since I've used my 'get out of slap free' card...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I frequently write all of the dialogue in a scene first -- certainly when it is where all of the dramatic tension lies. If the scene is about how the character's interact (as opposed to, say, climbing a mountain), then if the dialogue doesn't work, I'll have to scrap the scene anyway and start from scratch. No use filling in the rest until you know the scene is a keeper.

But then, ultimately, we have to fill in the rest, too. Even in the different forms of drama (stage plays, screenplays), there has to be some description, and you need to learn how to do it well.

 

[Blackrook]

OK, I'll try that. Do the dialogue first and then fill in with description.

I think that approach will work for me because dialogue just comes to me naturally and doing description at the same time would interrupt my chain of thought.

 

[Nik]

D'uh, I have to disengage part of my mind to write *any* dialogue. Sometimes it comes easier than others, but one, now-infamous hard-SF short story of mine ran to several thousand words with but one (1) essential phrase of dialogue, "Gah ! Pineapple !"

Trick is to get the balance right: If you must go back and flesh your tale's skellington with descriptive prose-- Well, if it works for you, do it !

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Hehehe. Personally, I am a major fan of dialogue. It comes easier to me than description does, and dare I say so, provides a larger window into a character's mind than any other method of writing. (Unless, of course, you insist on third-person omniscient POV-which I don't.)

 

[Ursa major]

Given that a writer ought to know a bit about their characters and how they'd react (assuming we're not at the top of a blank page one of a so-far-unwritten manuscript), dialogue should be relatively easy to produce as a first draft. (After all, most of us engage in conversations every day.) The skill should be in deleting it back down to what is essential for the scene in which it occurs, rather than generating it in the first place.


As I've mentioned elsewhere, getting the characters supposed to be in a scene talking to each other is a useful way of kick-starting that scene when one cannot otherwise get going. And if there's only the one character, they can always debate the situation they're in (as long as the scythe is waiting for what turns out to be superflous).

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Over the years, I've discovered that in a lot of scenes I write the characters are not really talking to each other so much as they're talking to me, telling me things that I need to know about them. The scene may or may not appear in the finished book -- very often it doesn't -- but the insights I gain into their characters come out in the way they behave throughout the rest of the book. I think it's important to know the difference between scenes like that, which may have to be cut no matter how attached you are because the dialogue is so entertaining, and scenes that really do advance the plot.

With some characters I have to struggle over their dialogue, while others seem to write their own and I never have to change a single word. Most, however, are somewhere in between; I do have to edit them, but more often than not I know what they are going to say.