This post begins a series on narrative and dialog. Stated most simply, narrative and dialog are the tools writers use to tell their stories. They take different forms and serve complementary functions, but with plenty of overlap.
Writers use narrative to:
- Describe—to show—action (“Bob ran down the street after Alice’s car”) or emotion;
- Describe a person (“Alice’s hair was dyed souvenir-shop-coral red”), a place, or a thing;
- Make connections between people, places, actions, emotions, or things; and
- Provide the reader with whatever other information she might need.
It is the words not placed inside quotation marks or used for internal monolog (sometimes shown in italics).
While it’s true that dialog can do many of these same things, and often does, narrative is the better choice in many cases. Consider how awkward it would be to have characters discussing the details of every setting in order to present that information to the reader:
“Oh, look, Alice. This room has windows through which the sun is shining on a round oak table with two chairs set opposite each other.”
“Yes, Bob, and the far wall is nothing but bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes and the occasional knick-knack.”
Oy.
On the other hand, while it’s possible to write a story that contains little or no dialog—I published one that had only internal monolog; none of the characters ever said a word to each other—it’s rare and unless done well, hard for readers to stay engaged with.
One reason is that we engage in dialog every day: we talk to each other. Characters need to do that, too. Dialog:
- Allows characters to interact with each other: to support each other, provide information or direction, deceive each other, etc.
- Illustrates character. What a character says reveals what he knows, how she’s feeling, what he thinks about a situation, how she perceives another character, and so on.
- Can build or relieve tension and conflict.
- Lubricates the plot and the narrative and keeps them moving forward.
In short, dialog is all but essential to a story.
Much of what I wrote about in earlier Critique Technique articles dealt with problems in narrative. This next series will, too, because many problems in dialog appear in narrative, too, and vice versa. But there are also some problems that are unique to dialog, so this is where I’ll address them. Specifically, we’ll be looking at:
- Awkward, choppy, and stiff or stilted writing;
- Overused words, phrases, or text patterns;
- Writing that is verbose or cryptic;
- Inappropriate language, including but not limited to obscenities and vulgarities;
- Unintentionally contradictory language and statements;
- Imbalance between narrative and dialog;
- Name-calling within dialog; and
- Using dialog to blatantly convey information to the reader, including the “As you know, Bob” problem.
I may add other items to the list as we go along, but this is where we’ll start. What other problems would you like me to discuss in this section? Add your suggestions in the Comments below.