Are there any rules about amount of consecutive diaglogue? I've got a section of 2.5 pages of single lined a4 typed diaglogue. The characters are all moving about and there are visuals in it, but is it too much?
Does a reader get exhausted with that much chatter (it's for children of 10+)?
I know I've read something about this, but I can't find it in my books and would be grateful for any quick pointers.
Thank you very much.
PS it's quite a confrontational bit.

I start getting twitchy if more than 60% of a page is pure dialogue, so it depends on how much descriptive bits and moving around you've got in there along with it, to break it up. Thoughts and feelings also help to break it up.
Also, if it's a confrontatinal bit, is there a long build up, or a long shouting match - the latter can be tiresome.


- NaomiM

Thanks Naomi, I think I am trying to fit in too much info into this exchange and if I've noticed it, then I guess others will too. It feels at this final stage like everytime I change a brick, the building is going to fall down.
Hope all is well with you.

<Added>

Have had a re-read andI think I do have enough moving, thoughts etc to keep it going, there's no big chunks of pure dialogue longer than three lines. Do you think that's ok?

Some books are almost all dialogue scenes - though obviously with bits of choreography among it.

You're right that one thing that goes wrong is when you're using dialogue to slide facts in - 'As You Know, Bob,'. And the other thing is anything that doesn't move the scene forward, either in plot - physical and/or emotional action and change - or in our understanding of what's really going on, or.

Where it doesn't work is when the scene trickles along with too many of the sort of conversational fillers about 'Would you like red or white?' and 'Where shall I put my jacket?' which actually we do all the time, but don't advance the plot. They creep in horribly easily as you work your way through what actually happens, so you need to be absolutely ruthless with those. Unless, of course, the fact that she says 'red' is deeply significant because she always drank white, only now her secret and adulterous lover's converted her, or when he puts his jacket in the cupboard a body tumbles out...

Emma

It is difficult to say what's right, but adult fiction certainly gets away with much longer sections of dialogue than childrens fiction.
I've been looking though Angie Sage's Septimus Heap books, and the book format (short & thick) allows ~200 words per page - about half, or less, the word count of a side of A4. She has a number of sections of dialogue that extend for 2.5 - 3 sides, which is probably about half your word count. However, some pieces of dialogue are quite long - about the length of this paragraph.
The acid test is whether it retains the reader's interest long enough to get to the end.

Why don't you post it in Children's or YA, to get some feedback?

Thank you Emma, Naomi and Leila. Emma, I think I've cut the waffle, but am still left with a bit of 'As you know, Bob'. If I can get that out, I think it will be ok. I have read so many times how ruthless I have to be with the cutting, but so much still slips through, but thanks, Naomi, for telling me about the Septimus Heap books, that's a big help.
Leila, good idea, i will re-write and post it up.
Thanks so much and hope work is going well, best wishes.

For (women's) adult commecrial, my editor has many times said to me 'you can never have too much dialogue'. It's one of her mantras. (Not talking about the consecutive-chunks-of-speech-without-snippets-of-action issue - but the balance of dialogue scenes to action scenes or description/internal monologue). She says, people are used to watching telly, and telly's all dialogue.

But kids' books may well be different, as others have said.

Rosy

I've noticed that just about every book my husband recommends to me is almost totally description and narrative, rather than dialogue. They have all be prizewinning, and mostly translations of foreign language. One example is Orhan Pamuk, Turkish writer and Nobel prize winner. Hardly any dialogue. Then there is a Lebanese writer - just the same. I've just finished Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez (Nobel prize) and then The House of the Spirits by Allende - not huge amounts of dialogue. Of course, they do have some dialogue - without any, the character would be 'dead' and the story would seem too flat.

These have fascinated me because, as Rosy says above, I always assumed you can't have too much dialogue - so long as it's good, pertinent and moves the plot along. But there is also perhaps a fashion and genre element involved too... perhaps even a cultural one. Our contemporary fiction is generally very dialogue based. Maybe that's because we don't NEED so much description of place, clothes etc when a story is based in the world we very much know and move around in - we already have that mentally on board. In our real life, what makes things happen and our prime way of interacting is speech, play, listening to radio or watching tv - unless we're artists of course when we may view everything in a more visual 'language'.

I would say that most balanced novels have a pretty even mix. But if the rules don't suit your work, go with your instincts.
S

I think Sarah has hit the nail on the head - a very sensible and knowledgeable reply.

This question is one of those that pose the more difficult question of defining what is meant by 'too much'. In he end it will come back to the style and expertise of the writer. Most writers will have a fairly clear idea of the audience she/he is writing for and it is this knowledge, this understanding of the end-reader that will provide answers for the writer.

Len

But there is also perhaps a fashion and genre element involved too

Very true, Sarah. If you look in Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan novel you'll find pages of description and maybe only a line or two of dialogue (never was a chatty one, that apeman ), but, likewise, an historical, fantasy or SF novel will have a lot more scope for adding descriptions of the - often strange - world around the characters, than a character-driven chick-lit novel set in, eg, contemporary London.

- NaomiM

Genre novels also have the added benefit (to the dramatic writer) of getting away with theatrics. The whole 'Now I shall rule the world!' speeches provide scope to 'info dump', and that's ok for the genre, but of course, you can overdo it - or at least if you do, overdo it so it conveys the 'pantomime' atmosphere. I suppose the speculative genres in particular are 'hyper-real', so allowances are made. No one really talks like Gandalf or Saruman, do they?

JB

I read The Dead (short story) by James Joyce this weekend and it's full of the most stunning description and feels like it's only 1% dialogue and yet his characters are all there, alive and kicking.

I think that I am not James Joyce might be my problem, that and too much 'info dumping'.

Rosy, does your agent say that because the more dialogue you get, the better you (the reader) know the character? Sorry, bit of a basic question.

Thanks so much for the help everyone, I really appreciate it.

I only just found your question, FunnyV. It's my editor who says 'you can never have too much dialogue', not my agent - and my ed is VERY commercially minded. Sadly, I think she is mainly talking about the poor attention span that the typical reader of commercial ficiton has, these days, for long paragraphs of description. She says we live in a televisual age, and novels, if they are to carry on attracting readers outside the narrow 'reading classes', have to acknowledge that and tap into it. Reading dialogue, she reckons, is like watching TV. She also says it's the best way of avoiding too much 'tell'. Dialogue is the easiest way of ensuring 'show' - letting characters speak dircetly to the reader themselves so the reader can form her own impression. Thus the reader gets to know them as one gets to know real people - by what they say, not by what a disembodied voice tells you about them.

I'm not saying I agree with all this - just that is is at least a view held by an experienced editor at a major commercial publishing house.

Rosy

Thanks for that Rosy - I sort of thought that too, all the white bits make it go quicker! It's interesting though.