Is dialogue imperative?

I like dialogue for a lot of reasons, one of them being that it keeps the pace of a story going. And i think it's fun. But I don't think that there are any rules that you have to use it. What do your readers say?

There are no hard-and-fast rules, but I've been taught by more than one writing teacher to aim for a ratio of about 50:50 for dialogue and exposition in short fiction. Letting it tilt 60:40 either direction is okay. If you have much less than 40% dialogue, you may find it difficult to engage the reader.

I don't know about other readers, but my eyes glaze over at large hunks of exposition uninterrupted by human voice. It doesn't matter what the content is or how well written it may be.

Maryn, aware that's not what you hoped to hear, and sorry about that

Personally, I like to see some dialogue. I like hearing voices other than the narrator, I think it keeps the interest up. But if your description is brilliant, maybe I wouldn't be bothered by an absence of dialogue.

You say you tend to summarise or describe conversations. In those cases I think I would almost always prefer to read the dialogue unfold rather than read a potted summary; the former will always be more intersting than the latter, imo.
It goes back to the "show don't tell" rule which i'm sure you're aware of. Seeing something happen is almost always more engaging than reading a description of it, especially with dialogue. Dialogue can be so many things when done well (e.g. funny, dramatic, revealing of character etc), I think it is always something worth developing and including.

I'm a big believer in Joan Didion's maxim: "Show us what they looked like; tell us what they said." A reader can learn so much about a character's attitudes, beliefs, etc. by what they say and how they say it. I would find it hard to invest in a story that contained little or no dialogue.

Usually storys have interaction between people, and they speak. I used to be one of these writers who did the "one person in his head" kind of writing, which would require no speaking to anyone, but found out it was totally boring. Books are about people and how they solve problems in the world. I tend to believe that saying things out loud ought to be a part of that. There are times that this could be wrong. The main rule I have always employed is "context."

I think it depends on personal style, especially in a short story. If you do it right and make the story engaging enough, it won't matter if it contains dialog or not. Having read the story you posted in SFF, I think you have a style that could pull it off well, though I thought the plotting still needed a little work. Here's a highly entertaining non-dialog story I recently read:


Why I Am Not Gorilla Girl

It's easy to lose one's personal style with all the advice out there, so hang on to what you value most and what sets you apart as a writer. But don't be afraid to experiment with other's advice as well.

Nicole

A page of solid narrative is not a pretty sight.

If you don't know about him already, take a look at Keith Snyder's blog. I think he is the best writer on writing of them all. Can't find the link, but he's easy enough to find.

It definitely depends on style. I wrote an entire novel which had a lot of dialogue and then only realized much later that a significant character never actually speaks. That's a different issue, but what I mean is that the absence of dialogue can be masked if readers feel like they know characters through other ways.

I bet it could be done, but personally, I'd get annoyed after a while if a story was just the narrator telling what everybody said. That's what dialogue is for. Telling what the characters said instead of just having them say it is...well, telling rather than showing. It's okay for summarizing certain conversations that are either lengthy/ongoing or of little consequence, but as was mentioned above, actually letting the characters speak for themselves can go much further toward illustrating who they are as people than just telling us what they said can.

It's personal preference, but that's my opinion on it. *shrug*

If I read it and didn't notice the absence of dialogue, it worked. If I read it and all I could think was, "Where's the dialogue," it didn't work. I can't know whether it works without having read it.

The MC of my last novel was unable to speak until the last 1/8th of the book, but I still managed to get dialogue mainly through flashback and other characters. Dialogue is used to establish tone, reveal character, reveal background information, and so on. If you can do those things without it, I guess it's okay.

It's certainly not imperative. Lovecraft wrote very minimal dialogue, partly because he just wasn't any good at it. If you find that you're weak at dialogue but better with narrative, then write accordingly. If you're better at dialogue and not so good at narrative, there are always screen and stage plays to be written.

If people are talking I want to be told what they are saying. So in most cases I would expect no dialogue only in stories where there is no talking.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a story that has no dialogue.

If no one says anything.

If there are people talking, and you never show it, just summarize or describe it, I'd say that's a problem. If there's talking, make it dialogue.

Short fiction can get away with no dialogue though the presense of it 99% of the time makes it a better story. As short fiction should be about one specific event or scenario, limited number of characters, etc it is possible that the writing can contain no dialogue which is "acceptable" - that being said, readers dont want to be told what you think, they want to "hear" what your characters are saying..aka...dialogue

Counselor said:

My SF stories tend to be descriptive (of scenes, characters, MC's POV and actions). There is almost no dialogue, other than descriptions of conversations. If written well is this story telling acceptable

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As with all stylistic choices, this comes down to: What are the effects (on the reader) of showing a conversation? What are the effects of describing the conversation? Which effects do I want?

A description of a conversation is a summary of the conversation, summarized from a particular point of view for a particular purpose. A description is a personal response to the thing described, and so says something about the describer. And it's model of the conversation, and like all models it distorts the thing it describes.

Description necessarily distorts the thing described. This makes it less informative about the thing described, but potentially more informative about the describer.

The questions that come to my mind are:

How does the description differ from the conversation? Which details are left out? Which are included? What details, if any, are added to the description that didn't actually happen in the conversation? What does each deletion, inclusion, addition, and other distortion tell the reader about the narrator?

What words does the narrator use to summarize the conversation? What commentary does the narrator make on the conversation? What do those choices convey about the narrator's attitude toward the conversation or toward particular details?

Showing the conversation allows us readers to draw our own conclusions about participants' intentions, feelings, and thoughts. This, in addition to their words, helps us to characterize the participants. And drawing conclusions ourselves helps us to participate emotionally in the dialogue.

There are probably lots of other kinds of effects that I'm forgetting right now. But that's how I'd approach the question: Which effects do you want to create in the reader?

Dale

No dialogue ? - Only in a Trappist Monastery....

Redzilla said:

I'm a big believer in Joan Didion's maxim: "Show us what they looked like; tell us what they said." A reader can learn so much about a character's attitudes, beliefs, etc. by what they say and how they say it. I would find it hard to invest in a story that contained little or no dialogue.

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I think this is good advice, and is almost exactly what I was going to say. You can reveal a lot about a character through dialogue. It also provides you with excellent opportunity to introduce conflict. Someone once said that dialogue in fiction should be two people saying "no" to one another.

That said, Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God" has no dialogue and is one of my favorite stories. (Caveat: favorite story list is long.)

Counselor said:

My SF stories tend to be descriptive (of scenes, characters, MC's POV and actions). There is almost no dialogue, other than descriptions of conversations. If written well is this story telling acceptable.

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Your story is acceptable if it entertains your target audience. Beyond that you needn't worry too much, except that at some point you're probably going to have to convince someone else to invest their time and money in your work.

The best way to gauge whether it satisfies your target audience is to let them read it. Posting your work will help to answer your question.

Cheers,
Rob

Writers use dialogue because it reveals the psychology and social status of characters. When the character is a viewpoint character, you can do it with narrative instead if you want, but when the character is non-viewpoint then dialogue is the most useful way to do it.

Some stories are all about the psychology and social status of non-viewpoint characters: murder mysteries and romance stories are examples -- and they're full of dialogue, of course.

Some stories pay scant attention to psychology or social status outside the viewpoint -- adventure/survival stories, animal stories, some sword-and-sorcery tales, and some hardcore SF are examples. They may use little or no dialogue.

Dialogue is slow and subtle. It makes puzzles out of character motives, passions and relationships, but it slows down the action. If the action gets too hot in a story -- if the pace gets too frenetic, you can use dialogue to cool it off. But likewise, if the pace gets too sluggish you can summarise the dialogue as narrative -- talk about what information is communicated but omit how.

Dramatically, dialogue is very powerful. It can turn a simple conflict into a duel of wits and wills; it can turn a simple dilemma into pages of rising anxiety. It also lets you craft insights into pithy epithets and put them in your characters' mouths -- so it can be great for developing themes and story morals. Many people remember and quote lines of dialogue; by contrast, action is often far less memorable.

My suggested rule of thumb: if you feel that the characters outside the viewpoint feel 'flat', use more dialogue. If you feel that 'the characters are detracting from the action', use less. If you have a story-message that you want readers to remember, say it in dialogue through the mouth of a memorable character.

Hope this helps.

I'm in the middle of a bizarre novel ("Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Cornbelt" by Tristan Egolf), and it was only about after I got 150 or so pages in that I noticed there was no dialogue. It works for this particular story (a rambling narrator recounting a major event in his town) IMO, but before I started it, I'd have been hard-pressed to say I could enjoy a book with no dialogue.

Writing without dialogue is usually called non-fiction, but actually some non-fiction actually involves dialogue. I think for a fiction piece to work without dialogue, then it would have to be in the first person. And not just any old first person narrator, but more likely one that is nearly insane or an alcoholic or a drug addict or just completely off the wall.

When I first started writing I avoided dialogue like the plague. When I finally got around to using dialogue, I began with just using one or two key lines in a story and expanded from there. A book called "Writing Dialogue" by Tom Chiarella was a big help, as well as a writing class that I took. If dialogue is that big a hurdle, creative non-fiction is a fabulouly rich area to explore. Narrative travel writing is wonderful venue, which can easily take you into the realm of surrealism and magic realism without using one word of dialogue.

Why I Write

I've sold two stories that had no dialogue at all. One was in first person past and one was in third past close. So, no. It isn't imperative. As someone said above: If you don't notice the lack, it worked.