What do you do when there isn't any dialogue?

[Isingforhim86]

I'm starting to work on the first draft of a chapter where a character walks into an apothecary shop that has recently been ransacked. I'm writing in close third, describing what he sees/feels/thinks as he interacts with his surroundings.

My concern is this: There isn't any dialogue or speaking. He is currently alone, and I don't plan on having another character join him.

If you have run into this and have ideas, let me know. I'm considering having him talk to himself as he processes things.

 

[Cathbad]

He can always talk to himself!

As a reader, I find that long periods without some sort of dialogue can get boring (Sue Grafton has a habit of doing long descriptions that I tire from quickly). Let us see it not only through his eyes, but his thoughts as well. If you're not doing omniscient, then possibly speaking to himself out loud?

 

[Toby Frost]

I'd have him either talk to himself or work through a process in his mind as he explores. You could give him a question to answer as he's in the shop. After all, he'll be there for a reason, and that reason may be enough of a question in itself. So, he might think "What happened here?" and will look around to try to work it out, and his thoughts will follow that. Or he'll be trying to find something to take, in which case he'll be trying to work out where the right stuff would be kept, what sort of things might survive a fire, and so on. As he moves around, the new discoveries will give him new things to examine and consider.

You might find that your sentences start to all look the same: "He did this, then he did that" and so on. One way around this is to intersperse those sentences with description, so that the character is doing something, which leads to more description, which leads to him doing something else. So he walks in, there is a trail of blood on the floor, he follows the trail of blood, there is a body around the corner, he searches the body. If you do something like this, and include the character's thoughts, it won't seem repetitive.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Panic.

No, seriously, as others say, internal exposition is your friend.

 

[Isingforhim86]

This helps. I already laid out the question that he asks before he walks in within my first paragraph, and know what I want him to ask himself when he finds what he is searching for. ("Who the hell am I?") I just need to fill in the blanks so that there is a trail of sorts.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I like to do a hybrid version by having internal thoughts written in italics. It allows you to show instead of tell, and I think it is also a lot more economic with wordcount.

pH

 

[Juliana]

And he can speak out loud, too. If I walked into a situation like that, I'd probably mutter a "Well, damn!" or two out loud.

 

[Cathbad]

I like to do a hybrid version by having internal thoughts written in italics. It allows you to show instead of tell, and I think it is also a lot more economic with wordcount.

That's how I do it!

 

[Brian G Turner]

My concern is this: There isn't any dialogue or speaking. He is currently alone, and I don't plan on having another character join him.

If you have run into this and have ideas, let me know. I'm considering having him talk to himself as he processes things.

No dialogue needed - but obviously we'd expected the character to be driven by something.