Being a Better Writer: Too Much or Too Little Dialogue? · 6:19pm February 10th
Welcome back, writers! We’re here once again with another installment of Being a Better Writer, talking about writing advice, tricks, and tools of the trade.
Speaking of which, if you want to immerse yourself in three days of writing education, be sure to attend the Life, The Universe, and Everything writing symposium this Thursday through Friday! I’ve already posted my schedule for the event, but there’s a whole lot more going on, and it’s always a blast to attend. If you can’t make it this year, then plan ahead for next year. Because if you’re a writer, especially of Science-Fiction and/or Fantasy, this is the event to attend.
All right, I’ve talked a lot about LTUE over the last two weeks. It’s coming, you should know about it, and it’s awesome. With that said, let’s dive into today’s Being a Better Writer topic.
I’ll admit that I’m currently thinking over this topic myself with regards to a scene I quite literally just wrote in Axtara – Armies and Accounting. It’s not that it’s a bad scene. It has characters interacting as they make the final leg of a journey and talking with one another in order to keep their minds off of the pressure of the big plot elements they’re headed into.
But even as I finished that bit and the characters arrived, I couldn’t help but wonder if I really needed it. It was good dialogue, sure, and we learned some more about some characters and their place in the world, as well as the world at large, but … was it too much?
Now, I’ll probably leave that up to the pre-Alpha or the Alpha Readers, but it’s an example of what we’re talking about today in more ways than one. Today, as you hit that jump, we’re going to talk about the balancing of our dialogue. Is it too much? Too little? And is there more we need to include when two or more characters have a discussion?
Argh, WordPress doesn't like me leaving a comment. Anyway.
"Balance is the Way of the Acrobat."
Kami Khazud, "D'Shai"
I'm forced to agree with every single word in here. (ok, you can put down the gun now) I'm guilty of taking a page of dialog and stripping it out, replacing it with a single line or two because if I get confused in the middle of it, my readers will too. There is a trick to keeping the pace of a story up while in a section that might be over in a fraction of a second, and that is *not* to do what some writers do, i.e. detail out every motion, the reasoning for every motion, etc... Push some of the description/dialogue *before* the action, and push some of the description/dialogue *after* the action, and keep the actual action dialogue-free. In a critical situation (like being shot) there's a decoupling of perception and actions because your mind runs faster than mere nerves and muscles. Sometimes the actor in the action may not be aware of some things, like being shot himself. (Equestria 1940 for a few examples)
Interesting that you note not having enough dialogue for the given story/scene/whatever is a problem quite rare in published fiction but more common (though still uncommon) in fanfiction and the like. After mulling on it, I can see it, on the logic that published fiction will have often weeded such stretches out during editing, while a subset of novice writers when doing fanfiction will be in that “write like a movie” mode, or otherwise overcommitted to brevity or pacing at the cost of feeling lived-in.
I will confess, my storytelling and writing instincts are more inherently visual. Not to say I fall into the trap of writing like it’s a screenplay or anything, I do write for the correct medium. There just have been times in fiction writing where I have to actively focus on making a scene be more of full dialogue driven when I was leaning towards getting through it before, and also to not impulsively describe exactly the motions or actions of the character accompanying every line. This has, at least, gotten easier and more second-hand with time.
In any case, part of the trick is just writing better dialogue (something you have several blogs on, of course), as if it’s immersive, people won’t feel it’s too long or too short so easily.