...it is one of my key beliefs that a good novel will include lots of dialogue...

-this from Grumpy Old Bookman.

I'm inclined to agree, and wonder what other people think.

Pete

Hmm. I'm sure that most good modern novels do include lots of dialogue, but putting lots of dialogue in won't make a novel good if it otherwise isn't.

Novels are about people, and most people talk. And novels need action, and dialogue is a kind of action. Actors, you could say, are only a particular kind of athlete, after all. But I think it's putting the cart before the horse as a writer to start stuffing in dialogue for the sake of pleasing the likes of GOB, much as I love him.

Emma

I think you need to get the balance right.

I don't enjoy reading something which only has say two sentences of dialogue in the space of about three pages, and I agree that dialogue can up the pace of a novel and make it more immediate, if you see what I mean. But, reading page after page of only dialgue can be wearing too.

I think on the whole, I have lots of dialogue in my book, but there are some sections that don't have much, it depends what's happening in that bit.

Katerina

In that case I'm well and truly fucked! There can't be more than a page of dialogue in my whole book.

My question is why do you need dialogue? What does it add specifically to a novel? If people need dialogue to 'break' up the story or to introduce an element of action doesn't that say something about the story itself? If the story itself carries without dialogue then why use it?

It's true what you say Emma, that stories are about people and people talk but do you need to have character interaction to make it interesting?

I don't really think it's truly possible to have a book without any dialogue at all, though I could be wrong. One book that comes to mind is To the White Sea by James Dickey about an American airman who bails out of a bomber over Japan at the end of WW2 and his struggle through the Japanese countryside. There are a few pages of dialogue but other than that it's all narrative yet it still manages to hold.

I do think though that books with minimal dialogue can really only be written in the first person but again I could be wrong. Are there any examples of books in the third person with minimal dialogue?

As I recall, Life of Pi was a bit short on dialogue, since Pi was a bit short on interlocutors.

I'm sure you can write a book with no dialogue, but I'm also sure it would be bloody difficult to get right.

Emma

Maybe that's why I've been chugging away at it for 7 years.

Hmmm

I think dialogue definitely helps with the progression of a novel and soon helps wrack up the word count but whether this is of any benefit is another thing.

Whenever I'm on the train and in a position to read over someone's shoulder I often find that the books most people read are absolutely crammed full of the most banal dialogue imaginable and I'm always left thinking how the hell is that interesting and how the f@*k did that get published?

I think there was still quite a bit of dialogue in Life of Pi as he recalls the conversations of his past and the conversations with the imaginary other towards the end but it was probably a little lighter than most in that respect.

I'm sure I've read some books with pretty much no dialogue in, but for the life of me I can't remember what they are.

I suppose, you do need some drama - and usually that is some sort of conflict - to sustain a book, provide tension and make people want to read. The good thing about dialogue is that it allows the possibility of some different angles on a situation. For example the book I was recently reading (by Sappholit as it happens) contrasted the first person views of her characters, through which the reader forms a view, with scenes described in dialogue, which we were able to see a different side to those characters and to see those characters from the outside - as others might see them. This was rivetting to read and very satisfying.

In book that is in the first person, scenes with dialogue can draw our attention to untrustworthy narrator, or can provide a counterpoint to their point of view and allow you to see THEM as a character, rather than just a narrator.

It is the tension and the drama and the conflict and dialogue can carry all that without being overt at all. Many Irish plays use the tension of the unsaid, which can be just as rivetting in dialogue. Knowing there is something enormous to be said whilst everyone talks about something quite banal instead can create huge tension.

Also dialogue can provide humour, which is always good.

I think it depends on the book and what you're trying to achieve.

Lots of novels (perhaps mostly not contemporary) have very little dialogue, or large patches with little dialogue. For instance, I recently started reading The Rainbow and it was very dense, very tell rather than show (which is another thread I want to start sometime), almost no dialogue in the first few chapters, and I personally didn't like it at all (despite having liked other Lawrence).

Ian McKewan's Saturday (which I didn't like much either) doesn't have a great deal of dialogue IIRC.

However, I loved Andrew Miller's books Oxygen and The Optimists, and while they had dialogue there was a lot of narrative without dialogue. I loved it, but most people in the book group I briefly joined (I suggested we read Oxygen) really didn't like his writing because they found it too subtle with not enough action - yet he'd been shortlisted for prizes for it. So who's right? The majority verdict of the book group, me, the reviewers, judges of awards?

The only answer that makes any sense to me is that the balance between action, dialogue and narrative is largely a taste thing, and depends what you look for in a book and how you judge a book.

I guess each book must find its own balance that's right for that story and for the way the writer wants to portray it. Then you find out what percentage of people like the product.

(I'm not suggesting there isn't downright bad. Just that if the writing is competent then the rest is taste.)

Deb

if the writing is competent then the rest is taste.

I think this is a lot of what's going on with squabbles over whether a book is any good or not. I just wish people would admit it, and say 'I didn't like it, it was too subtle/crude/wordy/bald for me...'. But they will keep saying 'it was a bad book,' which is different.

Even if there is some kind of absolute good or bad in writing, I actually believe there's no such thing as a perfect novel, in the sense that you can't do all the good things a novel can do in a single novel: some of them are mutually incompatible. The better you do what you decide you want to do, though, the fewer readers will be sighing for what you didn't. But you'll always get some who just don't get on with it.

Emma

I have been told that contemporary commercial fiction MUST include plenty of dialogue (though it's true that doing that alone will not make it a good book!).

The positive reasons are good ones: that its's a way of 'showing, not telling', of letting the reader get to know the characters as one would a person in real life, and of allowing the characters to be immediate and speak for themselves, not filtered through a narrative voice.

BUT I can't help also suspecting that editors want plenty of dialogue because it is easy to read! It looks less dense on the page, it requires little or no imagining on the part of the reader - and people are used to watching TV, which is all dialogue, so are comfortable with receiving their storytelling that way, these days. If this is the reason, it depresses me somewhat. Is it really true that readers lack the attention span or imaginative powers to cope with long passages of descriptive writing, or internal monologue...?

Rosy.

If this is the reason, it depresses me somewhat. Is it really true that readers lack the attention span or imaginative powers to cope with long passages of descriptive writing, or internal monologue...?

If that depresses you, are you sure you're writing in the right genre? Just a thought.

Deb

Deb - thanks for your comment. I suppose I wasn't necessarily thinking about my own writing, though - more about trends in reading habits and in what publishers 'expect'. I hate this idea that there should be 'rules'. Such as that if a person wants to write a novel which is light in tone and funny and about falling in love that means it's 'commercial' so it must contain a minimum of X% dialogue...

Rosy.

As a reader I can't stand internal monologues, and presumably publishers would put me in a majority and fear it will hit their sales figures.
Bottom line, the writer is creating a commercial product and the publisher will do everything possible to maximise sales.
If the author prefers monologues in their work then they should go ahead and write them, but they should also be prepared to go the self-publication route if the Agents reject it on those grounds.

- NaomiM

<Added>

...because why should writers always pander to the majority?

Yeah - I'm with you there, Rosy. However, if it was done in a way that was sufficiently different (perhaps quite literary in some respects) it might be possible to leave that genre behind and be the booksellers' literary that Emma was describing in another thread (the one on literary fiction).

So I guess if you're inventive enough you don't have to follow the crowd. The problem probably comes if you're just a little bit inventive and just want to go a few paces off piste rather than half a mile.

BTW most of this is speculation based on things I've heard and read, and I don't really know.

Deb

There's hope then!

I'm so far off piste that I think I can see the Sahara