McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Daily Recommended Allowance for Dialogue in First Person Narratives.
Paynesgrey:
I understand the importance of dialogue in a story, it's what hooks us to characters and how they react to things, it's a great tool for showing rather than telling (so long as the character isn't become a funnel for an infodump), etc.
I'm writing a story from the first person though, and I'm wondering about balancing the amount of dialogue with the narration, as that is itself a form of dialogue. Like how much, if any, slack does 1st person take up from inter-character dialogue?
At what point does one say "You don't really need to detail the conversation with the checkout clerk regarding the shopper's value card"?
That sort of thing. I've found myself going back and injecting dialogue into places where I'd written something like "I told so-and-so to go and blahblahblah", usually when it was an area of text that just felt kind of flat and barren. (My character uses a slight, but easily understandable dialect and a frankly Whedonesque sort of wordplay, and I keep invented slang terms to things readily understandable because of the context. That can spice up simple descriptions and scenes, but I don't want to use as a crutch or substitute for entertaining or useful conversations.
I'd like to hear people's viewpoints. General rules of thumb you might prefer, should any exist, good examples to keep in mind, etc. The most obvious "good example" would be the Dresdenverse, but I don't want to just ape Jim's style, or accidentally craft something that's going to be limited to people who like the same things about it that I do.
So I'm looking for food for thought.
Feed, me, Seymour.
Lany79:
I think you write about the stuff that is important to the plot or subplot of the story you want to tell. The ancillary stuff, the little things are the ones you probably want to gloss over. Unless there is the occasional fun little bit you want to add in.
Lanodantheon:
The desire for Whedonesque and Tarentinoesque banter is perfectly understandable. If you want a test for whether or not a bit or a bunch of Dialogue is necessary, answer these 3 questions:
1. What is the purpose of this dialogue? Does the Dialogue move the story forward in a significant way?
2. If this dialogue wasn't here, would the scene still work?
3. Does this dialogue relate to something else that happens in the story later or earlier? Does the subject of the dialogue ever come up again?
That's my $0.02
The Deposed King:
--- Quote from: Lanodantheon on August 03, 2012, 12:03:03 AM ---The desire for Whedonesque and Tarentinoesque banter is perfectly understandable. If you want a test for whether or not a bit or a bunch of Dialogue is necessary, answer these 3 questions:
1. What is the purpose of this dialogue? Does the Dialogue move the story forward in a significant way?
2. If this dialogue wasn't here, would the scene still work?
3. Does this dialogue relate to something else that happens in the story later or earlier? Does the subject of the dialogue ever come up again?
That's my $0.02
--- End quote ---
If you've done it once, for instance a full on meeting of the command crew. with accompanying dialogue, then you don't have to do every command meeting in all its gore detail.
Also sometimes dialogue and conversations that you think aren't important, others do. Your Beta's should be able to help you out there. I know my brother did for me. Rule of thumb, count how many paragraphs of inner monologue/narration you are doing between dialogue. If you are going 3 or more paragraphs, you need to take a hard look at it and make sure it wouldn't be better off either broken up or converted into dialogue.
For what its worth....
always follow the dream,
The Deposed King
Shecky:
From what I've seen in well-written stories, the dividing line is defined by a couple of things:
1) Is what was said not more important than how it was said?
2) Are real-time actions/reactions important to later developments? (Honestly, this can go both ways, unless the actual words used by characters turn out to be important later, and even that can be handled with a summary that includes quasi-excerpts of the dialogue.)
3) Which way will have the greatest impact on the reader? (If it's simple information-gathering, a summary is fine, but if there are bombs dropped, especially in an attention-getting, dramatic fashion, the blow-by-blow dialogue works.)
Basically, it seems to boil down to a question of the unusual/significant/story-advancing, with a side dish of setting up the reader (subtly or less so) for later developments.
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