how much dialogue do you thnik?

[alternicity]

How much dialogue is good? I always worry that I write from a single characters head too much, that I should be making that text into dialogue with another.

Or another way of asking: should dialogue predominate?

Cheers.

[Peter Graham]

Entirely up to you. Personally, I love dialogue and try and use as much of it as possible. I think it's the best way of imparting information, developing characters and building a believable plot without commiting the mortal sins of info dump and telling rather than showing, but then again I'm much more into character than science, technology, gore or quests. It's probably why I think the Blair Witch Project is so much better and scarier than all that splatterfest nonsense, but I know that many would disagree with me.

Ultimately, it's down to personal choice, but a work with no dialogue would be heavy going. If interaction with other characters doesn't fit the story, could you perhaps give your character internal voices a la Gollum?

Regards,

Peter

[Lith]

I think dialogue is inherently a little more "active" than plain old descriptions. So putting it in can draw your reader's attention a little quicker.

I say, put it ALL in- easier to take it out than put it in later when you find your manuscript is lacking something, but you can't figure out what.

A further benefit is that dialogue is subjective- any mistake you make in consistency can be blamed on the character's bad memory rather than your own. It also gives you room to explore ideas without having to fully commit to them, again because it's the character's opinions rather than the authoritative narrator.

[Mad Tam McC]

Whatever feels right! Of course the difficulty I have is trying to put different personalities into different character's voices.

[alternicity]

Ultimately, it's down to personal choice, but a work with no dialogue would be heavy going. If interaction with other characters doesn't fit the story, could you perhaps give your character internal voices a la Gollum?
Peter

Yeah I'm doing internal, and also seamless/transparent network talking. After some hand wringing I've ditched the italics for it too, not that its relevant!
Alt

I think dialogue is inherently a little more "active" than plain old descriptions. So putting it in can draw your reader's attention a little quicker.
Lith

I agree. I try and write it, but when I'm in the zone and writing fluently the result is often not very dialogue heavy. I guess I'll just have to get it done enough for uploading for crit.
Alt


A further benefit is that dialogue is subjective- any mistake you make in consistency can be blamed on the character's bad memory rather than your own. It also gives you room to explore ideas without having to fully commit to them, again because it's the character's opinions rather than the authoritative narrator.
Lith

Now that is really useful to me, thankyou for pointing that out Lith.
Alt

Of course the difficulty I have is trying to put different personalities into different character's voices.
Mad Tam McC

Thats interesting. I don't really try to do that, although some POVs have certain words they use exclusively.
alt

[Dean F. Wilson]

You need exactly 1/3+2lines/7pagesX8letters of dialogue per 2/3 of description in your book.

Okay, just kidding.

It really does depend on the book, genre, characters, and your personal style. If you're dialogue-writing is good, then I suppose you'll want to play with that, but the main thing to remember is not to force it (no matter how good it is). If the characters should be talking, then dialogue is applicable. If it's an intense, quiet moment, don't feel you have to force some dialogue in there (unless you have a character who wants to break the silence to ease the tension).

Try joining a critique group (private with password protected to ensure no copyright issues) to get specific responses to your dialogue and how much or little there is.

-D

[Culhwch]

I think I share your fear when it comes to the amounts of dialogue in a work. I tend to be light on dialogue, a little because I tend to think I'm pretty bad at it, but mostly because otherwise I feel I'm forcing it on my characters - that I'd be giving them something to say for the sake of saying something, rather than out of any specific need. But as others have said, it's a personal thing. Whatever works, works...

And welcome to Chronicles, by the way.

[alternicity]

Dean: Thats the plan. Critters probly.


Culhwch: I went downstairs a moment ago (too much blood in the caffeine stream) and whilst there pulled a book I think is masterful off the shelves to see how dialogue heavy a few pages were. They weren't very dialogue heavy, which made me feel better. Anyway it was Excalibur if your interested, by Cornwell.

[Culhwch]

One of my all-time faves. It's funny how you don't notice things like that until you're looking for it. Though that is first-person, so one could argue the whole thing is a dialogue of sorts. I can imagine that there would be some differences between first- and third-person. But again, it'd differ depending on the author, as well.

[The Curious Orange]

"Hey, this guy want to know about dialogue!"
"What about it?"
"Well, how much should he use?"
"Hmm. that's tricky. I'd say that it's pretty easy to write something that was all dialogue, but harder to pull something off with no dialogue at all."
"I agree."
"So while the amount of dialogue used should entirely depend on the story being told, I'd suggest that if in doubt, more is better than less."
"As so much in life."
"Shut up, you."
"Sorry."

[Karpinskaia]

It depends on what you write, how you write and how you like to write, so there's really no universal recipe on how much dialogue you should use. Personally, I love using dialog, partly because I'm preety good at it, but mostly because I believe that it brings the story "to life", it imposes a more dinamic pace, it gives consistency to characters, not to mention that it helps to transform info dumps into a much more pleasant form. Of course, this doesn't mean that you should use dialog in excess, and forget about description or naration, but you should find a balance between this elements according to your style, and the type of story you are telling.

[Lord_Rahl]

Just a thought, but if you have a specific market/publisher that you're trying to appeal to. You may want to read some books they've published or even check their guide lines.

They can be a terribly fussy bunch.

[alternicity]

Lord_Rahl

Good point. Write for the target editor.
I've always wanted to write and publish an sf novel, but in recent years have learned to model/render/animate, and very recently found out that unless you are a top tier novelist, writing novels for a living isn't a great choice, in terms of effort/reward. So I'm wondering a bit now whether a novel should be my target end product for this story. I've *got* to finish it as a textual story for morale reasons, but after that I reckon I'd want to storyboard it at least, which would change the form. An eventual jump to animation would certainly require more text to be converted into dialogue, but a graphic novel wouldn't.
hmmm...*scratching head*