McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Help. Thoughts?

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LizW65:
I agree with all of the above; in my experience much YA tends to rely heavily on dialogue for its exposition rather than long descriptive passages, which can make a lot of kids bored and impatient.

Carnifex:Pacifex:
Man, I always read all of the book, feeling immersed into it and all ( though if it was a book i really didnt like i just skipped parts or left the book altogether) and felt irritated when friends would be like "yeah i finished it!" and learned they skipped to the dialogue or action scenes.

The Deposed King:
My books are dialogue heavy.  So long as its action packed, be it, action, high stakes negotiation or political life and death conversations if you keep it real, I say go dialogue heavy.  It can totally carry your story.




The Deposed King

Dom:
Being able to bounce back and forth with dialogue is a hell of a lot of fun.  But since it sounds like you're "new" to having this happen, I would look for these things when reviewing/editing what you've written:

A) Can the reader distinguish who is talking?  I occasionally see people who put a line of dialogue down, and IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH put the nonverbal (or even verbal!) response of the other character.  That makes the reader pause to figure out who is doing what, and breaks flow.  Or, when you have three or more characters, you can end up failing to give enough clues as to who is talking, particularly if two characters talk similarly.  I will have a lot of times when I edit my own stuff where I tweak the words *around* dialogue, just to clear up who is speaking or doing what.  After I've been away from the work for a while I can spot places where I thought I was clear who was talking when I wrote it, but throw *myself* for a loop on the re-read.

B) Are you keeping the dialogue interesting, without having thesaurus diarrhea?

C) Is the dialogue DOING something?  If you really love your characters, it's easy to fall into a "sitcom" trap where your favorites are just quipping at one another and YOU think it's freaking hilarious, but your story isn't really going anywhere with it. Unless you're writing a sitcom, this sort of thing can be an issue if too much of it goes on.  I typically flow with ensemble quipping, because it gets me writing and it can be really fun, then go back and strip out bits I don't need.

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