Dialogue is fun in fiction, but too much can be exhausting
by Anne R. Allen
Yes, I’m quoting an Elvis song (actually by his songwriters Mac Davis and Billy Strange) in a writing article. But the title is a good thing to keep in mind when you’re writing fiction.
I recently paid money for a Big Five published mystery novel with tons of great reviews that had me humming this song through the first 5% of the book, until I’d had enough. There were two whole chapters of dialogue before we even knew where we were or why we should care about these talking heads. I found no hint of a plot. Two characters were pontificating in a not-terribly-witty way about nothing in particular.
I almost never give up on a book I’ve paid full price for, but this one defeated me. I went back to the buy page at Amazon and read some of the one-star reviews and realized I was not alone. Apparently, this “mystery” only started at the 40% mark when a body actually turned up.
I understand the urge to write long-winded conversations. It’s the way people really talk. We want our writing to be realistic, don’t we? Um, in a word, no. Realism is overrated. Real people hem and haw and go off on tangents. In a novel, we want a story. If the dialogue doesn’t move the story along, it needs to be cut. I know, you’re killing your darlings, but it’s necessary.
If dialogue is your thing, you might be a playwright or screenwriter at heart. That doesn’t mean you can’t write novels, it just means you need to be aware you’re likely to depend too much on dialogue to tell the story, so that’s what you should watch out for in revision.
A Novel is Not a Screenplay
Excessive dialogue is a problem I’ve seen many times — usually in unpublished manuscripts. But sometimes a book like this slithers into the marketplace unedited.
When I was working in a bookstore in Morro Bay (yes! Just like Camilla 😊) thirty years ago, a man came in with a carton of vanity-published books and asked me to sell them.
I reluctantly said I’d put a few on the shelf, but offered no guarantees.
“At least read it?” the guy pleaded.
So I did. I could have sung the Elvis song. The book had dialogue. Lots of dialogue. In fact, it was all dialogue. Like a tediously lo-o-o-ong screenplay.
There were a bunch of 1960s surfer dudes in a bar talking about stuff in wonderfully authentic 1960s stoner-surfer patois. For the first five chapters. I skipped to the middle. More dialogue. More patois. No action. Nothing happened on the page. No wonder other bookstores wouldn’t carry it.
Luckily the poor guy came back the next week and took the books back. I felt sad for him. At that point I was still working on my first novel and I knew how hard it was to complete a whole book.
But even then, I knew that a play is much harder to read than a novel. I read lots of plays in my days as artistic director of a theater in southern California.
A written play is like an un-inflated beach ball. Until it gets filled up with input from directors, designers, and actors, it’s just a lifeless object.
A Novelist is a Storyteller First
And yet, in all the standard how-to-write books, we’re urged to write: “More scenes! More dialogue!”
I think that’s because lot of classic books on writing, like Strunk and White came out before the TV era. They’re full of warnings against the author-intrusion and diary-like musings that come from imitating those wordy Victorian novels whose purpose was to fill long winter nights.
A novel can’t be only about clever word play or creating authentic conversations. It’s about telling a story.
So tell your readers who, what, when, where, and why. Give them characters with juicy backstories and emotional wounds. Let the characters do stuff and not just talk about it.
But What About Show-Don’t-Tell?
But, sez you, if I tell my readers who what when where and why, isn’t that telling instead of showing?
If you just tell the reader a guy is a Detroit firefighter, is that cheating? Isn’t it better to have him say “I’m off on J’s. We stretchin’ three jobs last night. Probie’s up there with the deckies, then we need a pipeman, and he grabs the tip and loses it. He’s Jake.” That way a real Detroit firefighter will know who this character is.
Um, maybe. But what about the other 99.9% of your readers? Do you really want to leave them in the dark because of the show-don’t-tell rule?
Show-don’t-tell isn’t always wise. It’s what often leads new fiction writers to create bloated, boring chapters where nothing happens.
If it takes you ten pages to show something you could have told in one sentence, you are not being kind to your readers.
Clarity is Kindness
As self-help guru Brené Brown said in her 2018 book Dare to Lead, a being unclear is unkind. No matter what your creative writing teacher told you about show-don’t-tell.
Your job is not to obfuscate, but illuminate. That’s showing kindness to your reader.
Withholding story elements may seem to create conflict, but it’s not the good kind. It’s the kind that leaves the reader conflicted about whether to read on, blindly hoping for clarity, or to throw the book across the room.
Remember the usefulness of indirect dialogue.
That’s when you say, “Melanie was sure George’s strange monologue had something to do with a distressed firefighter and an incompetent new hire, but she didn’t find out what really happened until she called the paramedics.”
Zoom. We get through all the hemming and hawing and showing off the author’s knowledge of firefighter slang, and get back to the story. This is a good thing.
Use Dialogue as a Condiment
Noah Lukeman, the literary agent who’s written a number of excellent books on writing, says in The First Five Pages that dialogue should be used sparingly — like a condiment, not the main course.
That means you shouldn’t use dialogue to info-dump or give backstory. Don’t depend on dialogue to let us know where we are or who the characters are. You can tell us. It’s okay. Your 9th grade English teacher won’t give you an F.
When I first read his book, I thought Lukeman’s concept was kind of over the top. But I slowly realized he was right.
So many of us — me included — want to tell stories in conversation rather than through character’s thoughts. That’s because it’s what we’ve grown up with in the age of television.
But that’s just what we saw as audience members. The truth is, screenplay writers are taught to be sparing in their dialogue too. There’s an old rule that says dialogue in a scene shouldn’t be more than three pages, and it needs to concern the storyline, and nothing else.
But television can also use location, music, body language, and lighting to tell the story.
As a novelist, you have only words. But you don’t have to put them in the mouths of the characters.
How to Tell if You Have Too Much Dialogue
Janice Hardy at Fiction University, says, “One easy test to see if you have “too much dialogue” is to zoom out on your page and see if you have a lot of short lines or a nice mix of lines and gray areas. A dialogue-heavy/narrative-sparse page will have a lot of white space and look more like a list than a page from a novel.”
Excellent advice!
You’ll also know you’ve overdone it if your beta readers start skimming and flipping pages, wondering when you’re going to get back to the story. Listen to them. 🙂
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) February 4, 2024
What about you, scriveners, do you tend to write more dialogue than you need? Or do you have trouble getting the right amount of dialogue? Do you find yourself skimming a novel when a conversation goes beyond 3 pages?
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What a great subject for us all, from seasoned author to those just getting started. Robert B. Parker was the master of using dialogue to build his Spenser mysteries, but always knew how to balance talk and action. The original Spenser novels are a master class in getting dialogue right without going overboard, losing the plot, or making every character sound alike.
Carmen–Reading classic mysteries is a great way to find a balance in your writing. I agree about Parker’s dialogue.
Good Sunday, Anne & Ruth. And good post, too. I recently read something that stuck with me about the old show vs tell thing. It said you tell through exposition and show through dialogue. Makes sense to me. Personally, I think maybe 60% of a story should be told and 40% shown. But that’s just me. Enjoy your day!
Garry–Thanks. It was a cold wet Sunday for me. No power; no Internet. I put on three sweaters and got caught up on my stack of New Yorkers. Yeah. People need to do stuff between the talking. The percentage depends on genre, but I think 60-40 is a good ratio to aim for.
I‘m so guilty of this. I love reading dialogue-heavy books, especially witty banter, and I also love to write dialogue. I‘ve come to suspect that I let my characters talk it out whenever I‘m not sure where to go with my story. Thank you for kinda confirming this. Definitely something to look out for in the future.
Tina–That’s good insight: sometimes characters “talk it out” when you’re at a crossroads in the novel. I think I do that too. I started as an actor and a playwright, so that comes naturally to me. But I need to keep an eye on it.
You don’t have to put those words in your character’s mouth – well said!
I think I balance it all. I’m certainly not going to take ten pages to say what could be said in one line.
Alex–Hard Sci-Fi with too much dialogue would be a snooze for sure. You need lots of action in your genre. I’m sure you do it well.
Interesting post! I’ve been using the Marlowe AI Analysis for my last novels—mainly because you get cool stats and charts—and they claim that the most popular novels contain between 25% and 35% dialogue. They even provide a nifty graphic not only telling you how much Dialogue you have vs. “Narrative,” but they show how much of each is spread out over the course of your story. Turns out my last three novels—in different genres—clocked in at 20%. They think that’s not enough, but I think it’s just about right. 😉
Harald–I’m impressed that you learned to use AI for analysis. I’m such a Luddite when it comes to AI. People tell me it can be terribly helpful. But then you run into the problem you brought up: one-size-fits-all usually doesn’t. All books don’t have to be identical. Plus AI Grammar checkers that are dead wrong drive me nuts. They’re only as good as whatever programmed them. So many people don’t know how to use apostrophes, I suppose AI will wipe them out in short order. Sigh.
Excellent advice as usual, Anne. This post reminds me of something Jim Bell wrote recently, “‘I love you, too’ is the worst line of dialogue.” Though he does have a problem with that response, on a deeper level he’s saying, if the reader can predict the response, rewrite it. Some of the most engaging dialogue is unexpected, original, and filled with things the character doesn’t say.
Sue–You bring up a good point. (I’m a big fan of James Scott Bell.) Dialogue doesn’t just have to move the story along. It also has to not be predictable and boring. And what is unsaid is often the most important aspect of a conversation.
He said. She said.
One of them is lying. Or are both of them lying? You mean maybe both of them are telling the truth? Could be, couldn’t it?
For more details about how to write dialogue and what skillfully written dialogue can — and can’t do for you + your book: https://annerallen.com/2020/01/15-keys-writing-dialogue/
Ruth–Thanks for the link to your great post on how to write dialogue!
Great suggestion on using visual clues to see if you are using too much or too little dialogue. Screenwriters have been doing this for years. Just step back till you can’t read the print. The density of the ink will tell you a lot.
Henri–Yes. I thought Janice Hardy’s suggestion was really helpful.
In class, I call this ‘talking heads’. We hear a lot of dialogue, but we can’t *see* anything! Definitely, we need a balance. We also want to hear the protagonist’s thoughts – and see how they are different from what is said. That’s where novels are different from screenplays: we are in the protagonist’s viewpoint. Nice column Anne!
Melodie–Yes. Talking heads was all that novel gave readers for the first two chapters. I kept asking myself “who are these people?” and “where the $%&* are they?” And yes, we need to know what the protagonist is thinking about this conversation. If it’s “This guy’s a Bozo” we’ll have a different interpretation of the dialogue than if he’s thinking “Wow. I could learn a lot from this guy.”
Thanks Anne for this timely piece of advice. It’s a great reminder that every line of text whether narrative or dialogue should have a purpose and serve the story. During edits is a great time to reevaluate whether or not certain swathes of dialogue are needed.
As for show and tell, not everything has to be shown. It’s fine to tell that a trip took 3 days. Nobody is interested in a day to day breakdown unless something important happened. It’s fine to tell in setting descriptions unless there’s an emotional impact on a character. It’s fine to tell what a character sees then go into deep POV of the observer. It can be a delicate balance that’s best not to tip too far to extremes.
Brenda–I think that’s a tough lesson for new fiction writers to learn–how much “transportation time” to put into a story. I used to think I had to describe the cab ride instead of just using a line break and starting the next scene after she’s arrived. And there’s the “Chekhov’s Gun” issue. If it doesn’t get fired, don’t put the gun on the wall.
I think I had that problem early on, in which dialogue would drown out everything else. it took me quite a few….years to find the right kind of balance between dialogue and descriptive scenery. And I’m getting very good at using info dumps in the way that they’re meant to be used: the primary food with the dialogue being the sauce.
I rarely go beyond a half page of dialogue in a given shot, as I try to make it germane to what the scene is at the moment.
Oh and, lots of dialogue or lots of descriptive scenes with no dialogue turns me off.
GB–I’m not talking about physical description here, but action. We do need description too, and that needs to be carefully doled out. But action is required in order to have much of a story. I agree that too much description is a turn off too.
I don’t know that I’ve put a book down for too much dialogue in the beginning. I know I have because the first few chapters were only description and the MCs thoughts. I’ve also stopped reading because it seemed to go nowhere- that may have been too much dialogue!
As a writer, I can adr both more dialogue and more prose. I tend to be a sparse writer and am working to learn and improve it. The book I’m reading now has a lot of great description and dialogue, I’ve noticed how quickly it can be dropped in and create layers without having large paragraphs.
Tonya–That’s the secret–learning to layer in the different aspects of the story so you know where you are and what’s going on without being hit over the head with it. And you’re right that contemporary readers hate those huge, long paragraphs. Break them up or the reader will feel daunted.
Thanks, Anne. I hope I have more balance in my writing than I have in my life right now. I better give it the page check…already focused on life check.
Judy–Oh, my. I hope you’re okay! Were you in the dark yesterday? Our power went off exactly 3 minutes after I got this post up. My internet didn’t come back until this morning. It’s amazing how unbalanced my life feels when I don’t get to follow my routines.
Recently, a friend who’s familiar with my writing suggested I should try my hand at screenwriting/playwriting, but she didn’t say it as a criticism. I definitely feel the urge to write dialogue over narrative at times, but I like to think I can control it. I just wrote a 1000-word short where the only dialogue came at the very end.
Rich– It sounds as if that was a lovely compliment from your friend. Writing good dialogue is a gift. You might want to try your hand at writing a play. There are also short story contests where everything needs to be in dialogue. It sounds as if yours was the opposite. I read one in the New Yorker yesterday that had no dialogue at all.
Anne, I used to try to read Academy Award nominated screenplays. After a couple of pages, I wondered how did this ever win an Oscar???
You answered my question: “A written play is like an un-inflated beach ball. Until it gets filled up with input from directors, designers, and actors, it’s just a lifeless object.”
Great advice on how to balance dialogue and action. Thanks!
Debbie–Haha! I’ve had that feeling reading famous plays. It makes you understand how much input comes from the people creating the production.
Thanks Anne, I love the screenplay vs novel comparison. On my third chapter and was thinking about “Good Will Hunting.” I need music and a car. But wait, this is not a script. ..Maybe some day..
also love the comments from others.
Londie–We have a great little community here. I learn a lot from our commenters myself. You know, I think you could put the music and the car into your story. Of course, we have to be careful about quoting lyrics. That can be very pricey unless you can find appropriate music written before 1923.
As usual, great stuff. It’s always a balancing act, isn’t it? Dialogue / action / showing / telling / tension / description…
CS–Yup. It’s all about balance. Not always easy to do well.
I think I’ve done pretty well on the dialog/exposition balance, though I’m probably a little high on the dialog part. On the kill your darlings subject, I wrote a 300,000+ word novel without even realizing how long it was until I was done. While editing I chopped out about one third of that, and most of it was dialog and situation that was raunchily humorous. I enjoyed writing it, and reading it. But it didn’t move the story forward at all, so I got rid of it and finished with two novels of about 95,000 words each. Sometimes you just gotta toss the excess overboard.
Fred–I love writing that kind of funny dialogue too. Then editing happens. Sigh. I think new writers often try to put too much in a novel and they don’t realize they’ve written 2 or 3 books, not one. I sure did that.
I would add that faithfully transcribing a conversion between two drunk characters is not a good idea. (It took me many, many rejections of that particular story before the light finally dawned.)
Liz–Haha! I did that with a couple of golfers at the 19th hole, lying about the game they just played. I was hanging out with a bunch of golfers at the time and I thought their conversation would make hilarious dialogue. But on paper–it was snoozerific.
Just received this post this afternoon (Feb 6).
Great advice, and I love “Use Dialogue as a Condiment.” That says it all.
Kay–My goodness! Both our lists were sent notices on Sunday morning. I wonder if all the power outages had something to do with the delay. I love that piece of advice, too!
Good point about too much showing! But it’s not just dialogue–too much action is boring too, if by “action” is meant endless descriptions of combat or running away from danger. What is really needed to keep a story moving along is variety and elements that intrigue the reader: questions, apparent contradictions, and problems for the characters to figure out.
BTW, how do you explain all those 5-star rave reviews for books that aren’t that great?
Audrey–I probably should have defined “action” and what it means when we’re talking about writing a scene. Action doesn’t equal violence. It’s what we call “business” in the theater. It can be as simple as petting the dog or pouring a drink. It’s true that action itself doesn’t move the story forward. It only works if petting the dog shows the character who hates dogs is finally changing her mind or taking a drink means the character is giving up years of sobriety. Violence often doesn’t move a story forward at all.
Don’t get me started on fake reviews. There are 100s of review mills that mass-produce paid reviews. Often they’re negative reviews purchased by a rival. Consumer Reports estimates that 42% of Amazon reviews are fake.
Wow! That’s an amazing, and worrying statistics. Then maybe my one star review of my historical novels, that begins with a boy of 6 being forced to watch his father’s crucifixion was one of these paid reviews. It called it a children’s book! The reviewer had obviously not read it as it’s definitely not a children’s book, but the protagonist is a child at the beginning. Hence, probably, the children’s book comment. It has girls sent to brothels and violence.
VM Sang–Not all trolls are paid, but I’d say you were definitely hit by a troll. They love to read one page of the preview or maybe just the title, and use that to trash the book. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who use the internet to vent their rage at the world and write nasty reviews just to be evil.
Great advice.
I’ve just done a critique for another author. The chapter had loads of dialogue. Talking heads. No movement, no introspection, just pages and pages of dialogue. what is more, he had no dialogue tags. Ok, there were only two people, but I still found myself having to go back to work out who was speaking.
VM–This fad in the MFA crowd to eliminate dialogue tags and quotation marks makes me furious. New Yorker short fiction is full of it. It’s pretentious and disrespects the reader. “Who’s speaking?” “I’ll never tell. That’s for me to know and you to find out, peasant!” Grrr.
Awesome article Anne. You explained with great examples how over-dosing on dialogue can turn a reader off. And I’m glad it’s not just me, but stunningly, I’d have to say that 50% of the books I read from Netgalley, I just can’t finish. One book doesn’t sum up an ending, another with so much headhopping I was getting dizzy and tired of having to go back and re-read paragraphs, typos galore, and more of its ilk. It makes me wonder what’s going on in the publishing industry and their editing processes. <3
Debby–I’m having the same experience. The last 3 books I bought through Bookbub were unreadable. The amount of head hopping in Big 5 published books these days is appalling. It’s as if none of them has an editor at all. Or the editor never took a creative writing course. A bookstore owner I know made the same complaint a few weeks ago. I wish I knew what was up. The whole idea of a solid POV has disappeared, as well as proper use of the apostrophe and the difference between “lie” and “lay.” Sigh.
Okay, so I’m not alone in this. I hope we get to figure out what exactly is going on with the publishing biz of the Big 5!
Great stuff, spoken as a dialog heavy writer. I’ll tuck this advice away for consideration.
coldhand–I just gave up on a book I was reading that put all the exposition in dialogue until it became unintentionally comical. “As you know, Bob” dialogue over and over. I just wanted to shake the author and yell “It’s okay to tell, not show!”
I think I can guess that the unnamed author you started the post with is Tana French. (I just read/skimmed her latest.)
Jacqueline–Not Tana French. I don’t want to give away who it was because others may enjoy the book more than I did. I’ve never read Tana French, but I’d always heard good things. I’ll make sure to read the sample before I buy from now on!
haha it was a great article. I enjoyed reading the examples too!