Writing dialogue (#5 in the series of “classic posts” on writing)…
Thursday, July 31st, 2014If you’re an avid reader (I read more than I write, if you can believe it), you know there are certain things that slow you down. One is what a prospective agent of mine long ago labeled in a critique of my MS (after sitting on it for many months): “…too much narrative.” I wrote and asked her to define that, but received no response—not surprising, because it required more than a form letter, so she couldn’t bother. I was left to figure out what she meant, naively giving her the benefit of the doubt instead of thinking it was a lame excuse pulled from a list of similar lame excuses she maintained (you’ve already concluded what I think of the phrase now). The novel, a lengthy sci-fi tome, later became “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” [Note from Steve: see the webpage “Books and Short Stories” for a complete list of my books.] Back then I figured she was complaining about the world-building—it tends to lengthen hard sci-fi, but needs to be done—and also that there wasn’t enough dialogue [Note from Steve: I now put the blame squarely on her inability to understand the difference—there’s no guarantee that an agent knows anything about writing].
Lots of narrative—lengthy description or back story about characters and situations, or world-building in sci-fi—can slow a reader down. I’ll admit that. One of the worst examples is Melville’s classic Moby Dick. [By now, you’ve probably got the idea that I hate this novel.] You’re reading speed slows down from whatever a normal fiction [reading] rate is for you to one comparable to a snail crawling uphill in a molasses spill. The book is partly a how-to book—How to Hunt Whales Unmercifully and Turn Their Blubber into Lamp Oil should be the subtitle (today whale meat is for Asians [in Japan and China, mostly] who feel sexually inadequate—they need to complement the ground rhinoceros horns and tiger gonads). If that’s not boring enough, you have endless pages of description and very little dialogue. I’m not sure Melville knew anything about dialogue—many 19th century writers didn’t. These literary wunderkind wouldn’t have a chance in today’s competitive publishing arena. (And Einstein wouldn’t have ever left the patent office, let alone have a paper accepted by Physical Review—but that’s another story.)