quote:

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My husband (and biggest... ok only... fan) was reading something I wrote a few weeks ago, and said, "There's too much dialogue." To me it seemed fine, maybe because I've written plays, it didn't bother
me. So I wanted to ask, "When is it too much dialogue?" Is there a limit? Is it better to say what needs saying as narrative? My work is very dialogue oriented, but I don't want to be doing
something which will put off a perspective publisher. Thanks for the input!

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That said, I love writing dialogue, and have to watch it when i go overboard.

edit: it is impossible for me to spell dialogue right on the first attempt.

Ni!

Other times, you're portraying an on-going conversation, so basically everything that the POV hears should be written so that the reader feels immersed in that scene. But you can't rely on dialogue alone to create immersion. The words that are being spoken are only one thing, simply transcribing them doesn't even give you the sense of how they're being said, let alone what else might be going on in a scene. If the motivations for certain lines spoken by the POV or the implications of lines heard by the POV are non-trivial, those motivations and implications need to be addressed.

Even in writing something like a play, you have a lot of things that aren't just what the actors should say but how they should say things and what they should do while saying and reacting to the lines spoken. A good director and cast will fill a lot of things in, must fill a lot of things in, but a good playwrite puts into the action as well as the lines.

The difference is that with a reader, you can't just tell them to imagine this or that happening. You must persuade readers to feel and percieve the action of a scene, the flow of motivation and reactions. So in writing for readers, you need to put far more into writing about what doesn't get said by any of the characters.

This isn't a matter of having too much dialogue. The problem is not having enough of everything else.

Of course there are situations where you can let dialogue stand entirely on its own. Usually, this is a vignette--less than a page, usually less than half a page--which occurs outside of any POV or scene. If you're doing something like that, it is quite possible to make it just a little too long or involved.

But usually when I see a couple ( or more ) of long paragraphs all encapsulated in quotes I get very antsy.

It's funny but I don't mind it as a character muses over something -- internal dialogue -- but I can't stand it when they're talking out loud.

Maybe it is because people don't often talk in rambling soliloquies or, if they do, few people will listen.

Maybe if the character is a crashing bore, it is okay, but don't expect the reader to remember or care what they are saying.

Wouldn't it be your worst nightmare to see a play that you have written performed without any expressive gestures, or movement or lighting or music or anything that help to establish the mood and setting? Just two people jawing-off on a stage under fluorescent tube lights, no almost-grins nor eyebrows raised. The audience would probably hate it.

But when you write a story you are the writer and the actors and the director and sound and lighting and props and stage management. To mangle a well known phrase, don't let the dialogue get in the way of a good story, or in fact the 'rest of the story.

I once heard that about 85 percent of a person's communication is non-verbal, I wonder if this relates to the question of 'how much dialogue should I write? When dealing with a character maybe make about 15 or 20 percent of that character's communications come by way of dialogue and the rest as non-verbal cues.

This of course depends heavily on what POV the writer employs. In some cases you may be able to add internal dialogue, observations, realisations etc

This may sound stupid and it may be too cut and dried, but certainly gives me pause to think.

By the way, I have never used that method and it occuer to me just now as I write but will give it a shot, its just ink and paper after all.

Maybe it will be worth it, maybe not.

Either way, my point is that when all is said and done people learn less from what is said than what is done.

(Now I am feeling very clever, will go away and read some Spike Milligan)

From a personal perspective, I can only read dialogue as long as I care about what is being said, and I only care about what is being said if 1) I care about the character, and or 2) the dialogue carries the story ahead and works to fulfill the social contract between writer and reader.

"---," he said.
"---," she said.
"---."
"---," she said.

But he'd rather see this:

As I have become more sophisticated in both writing and reading, I have learned to find value in those in-between paragraphs, but they still don't grip me as much as dialogue. Even now, I write some novel chapters that are almost entirely dialogue driven.

Here's the thing: proper setup. If we know who the characters are in advance, then there is little need to break up the dialogue with meaningless observations of what the character is thinking or feeling. We should be able to guess based on what we know of them.

Many people seem to think that breaking up dialogue is necessary, and if *more than oNe* person tells you it's too much, then I would suggest finding some things to break it up, but there's definitely no magic number, no formula.

On the other hand, there is such a thing a dialogue unsuited to a particular piece. In writing done less skillfuly than Tolstoy's (such as, for example, that of L.E. Modesitt), a much smaller word percentage of dialogue seems like far too much.

But, as Christine said, the real issue isn't amount--it's propriety. Proportion, if you will, but in a Platonic rather than a mathematic sense.

In my opinion, dialogue serves two major roles:

1. To develop characters (traits, attitudes, personality, heritage, et al).
2. To further the plot

There's a short story I read in high school--"They're Made out of Meat" by Terry Bisson--that's 100% dialogue. There aren't even attributions in it. It's just
"--"
"--"
"--"
"--"
for the whole thing. And I loved it!

But I also think that the characters are the heart of the story. Many readers (often men) like plot and intrigue and technobabble. So I think a perception of "too much dialogue" could be a result of either party -- too much empty, unexpressive dialogue on the part of the author, or the reader simply does not place as much weight in character development as the author feels the story warrants.

Edit - because you never see the typos until you post... ~Alethea

But if your biggest fan says "too much dialogue", then you have a problem of some kind. You shouldn't just shrug it off and say "there's never too much dialogue."

Percentage of dialogue:

23%
34%
41%
49%
53%
22%
51%
10%
63%
52%

Anything that begins with "As you well know..." or an exchange that goes something like "Are you familiar with x?", "Of course," then proceeds to explain in excruciating detail what x is, is an info dump. It brings on a feeling of "too much dialogue". There's no need for it because the person asking the question is already aware of the answer, and nothing more than a brief summary is needed from the person answering (as with all things, the amount of detail varies).

That doesn't mean it can't be done. Teachers explaining something to a class, or messengers delivering a report can get away with it because it's a natural part of the conversation.

"I'm a quantum physicist, actually," said Dr. Jones.

"Excellent. I'm a cosmologist myself, so perhaps it would be better if you explained quantum entanglement to me for the benefit of the reader, rather than the other way around."

Dr. Jones frowned. "You were planning on having the reader explain entanglement to you for my benefit?"

When I read something that is pure dialogue or is at least 80% dialogue, I get bored because to me it's like listening to the radio. Yawn. Even when the characters have good voices, it's still hard for me to picture what it is that they're doing at the same time that they are speaking.

See, when I write or when I read stories, a movie plays through my head of what's going on. If I have plain dialogue, I can't picture anything but a radio in front of me playing a story over the air. I can't visualize much of what's going. I need to read descriptions of what's going on to do that. I want to be able to see to picture myself in front of a movie screen, watching everything that's going on while the characters speak to one another. I want to notice what Joe is doing with that pocket knife he's got in his hands. I want to see his eyes shifting back and forth from the door to David as he waits nervously for something to burst in at any moment. I want to see David enjoying his coffee, not noticing at first what David is doing. I want to see his brow furrow, his smile fading, as he notices that Joe keeps fidgeting with the knife and then asks him what's going on.

If all I have is:
"Hoo, boy! That was a great game last night, wasn't it, Joe?"
"Uh...yeah, s-sure."
"Joe? Ya...you seem a little nervous. What are you playing with that knife for?"
"N-nothing, David, nothing."

Sure, I can picture Joe being fidgety with the knife and sure, I can picture a look on David's face when he asks him why, but I can't picture Joe's eyes darting back and forth from the door to David to the door again. I can't see David leaning on the counter as he drinks from a mug of coffee. I can't see that look of bewilderment and concern on his face when Joe replies, eyes darting back to the door again.

With pure dialogue, no matter how well-developed the voice, I can only picture fragments of the scene going on. Yet, again, I think this is something that depends on the reader. Some people like dialogue, others description. I just happen to be one who likes description.

My favorite pet peeve from my Print On Demand copyediting days was "Go on." Some character would have a huge paragraph of diatribe, and the author would have another person in the room say "go on" just to have a break before the NEXT huge paragraph of diatribe.

Maybe my stuff would be boring to a lot of people.

Also, as an Informal Education and Interpretation designer (That means self-directed discretionary learning that people choose to do for fun) I get a lot of information about the 'methods of learning' or 'learning strategies' that people generally use ie: the Visual Learner 1 & 2, Auditory Learner and Kinesthetic Learner. I am beginning to wonder whether there is correlation between a person's preferred learning method and the stories they tend to enjoy.

Most people use a combination of methods to learn, but one will usually be predominant, and the learner will be most skilled in that method.

getting to the point

In a culture that is increasingly visual/kinesthetic in focus ie: movies, computer games and other modes of modern entertainment, are we breeding a generation less skilled in the Auditory learning methods? If so, how might this effect the popularity of heavy-dialogue stories and reading for fun in general?

Is there any established research on such things or am I kidding myself? Is it worth worrying about? Here is where you get out the 'just tell your story' pen. But writing is about communicating, shouldn't we want to tell the story in a way that is enjoyable to the broadest range of people? I'm not advocating broadcasting either dumbed-down or sexed-up stories but rather, telling our story in a way that will get into a majority of minds.

Is this a twisted, self-torturing thought?

When I read a bit of dialogue out loud for the benefit of someone who wonders why I'm laughing, I usually treat everything outside the quotes as "direction". I don't say "he said" "she tapped her foot" "he grinned sheepishly". I may or may not actually do those things, but I don't read them out loud. But when I read a non-dialogue passage I include every word unless I'm deliberately skipping part of the text for some reason.

quote:

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"Excellent. I'm a cosmologist myself, so perhaps it would be better if you explained quantum entanglement to me for the benefit of the reader, rather than the other way around."

Dr. Jones frowned. "You were planning on having the reader explain entanglement to you for my benefit?"

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Focus: To concentrate attention or energy, (concentrate: to converge toward or meet in a common center.)

Intuition: The act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of deductive reasoning

Logic: Method and validity in deductive reasoning

Dialogue needs to feel right. (But then I'm a kinesthetic learner.)

Maybe this line of thinking goes to support the idea that a range of senses needs to be represented in a single work in order to gesture toward the whole, or greater subject, being addressed. No one argues with the idea that dialogue needs to be balanced or deliberately in imbalance. Balance or imbalance can be achieved in many ways. It is achieved through an enormous range of methods when composing visual artworks especially when you consider the impact of absence, or the negative space in a piece.

The same MUST be true of a written work. The absence of any type of communication, whether it is verbal or nonverbal, deduced or realised, says a great deal.

Whether that is known or unknown to the writer is another question.

Maybe this should all be in another thread and I should just shut-up now.

But to compensate, I have a memory so good I can remember things that didn't even happen...

[This message has been edited by hoptoad to 're-spell' Survivor as though he existed when Summa Theologica was written... which we all know, of course, is true.]

In reference to Hoptoad's theory about learning styles, he could be onto something. My husband is a very visual learner. Show him something once, he can repeat it perfectly. I am somewhat of a visual learner, but my real strength is auditory. Perhaps that gives us a bit more of purely unscientific data. I like data too, only find compiling it is rather tedious.

My dialogue is always plot oriented. I try very hard not to have people babble about nothing, adding little to the forward motion of the book. My descriptions tend to be a bit abbreviated, the play thing again. They give enough detail to give the reader information to ignite the imagination. I hope?

My husband is a very detail oriented person, probably because he's in the medical field. He likes specifics. I tend to be less specific because I like to involve the reader, let them add to the scene. I hope that clarifies a little.

I hate to write it, though. I just struggle sometimes to find a 'natural' feel for it. Maybe it's just having to add all those litte quotes that bogs me down....

But I think if someone perceives that there is too much logic, then characters are probably speaking without anything really being accomplished. As someone said previously, it either advances the story, reveals or develops character, or generates conflict. If there's a lot of dialogue and it's not doing one (or all) of these, then I can see someone feeling like there's just too much of it.