Is dialogue necessary?

Do you feel like dialogue is necessary in your writing? I'm honestly of the opinion that I'd rather write dialogue only as needed, rather than an excess amount.

But I can't help but think that the less dialogue, people will get bored fast. Do you guys think dialogue is required in prose writing? I do think, to some extent, talking is needed, but I don't want my entire pieces of writing to just be....back and forth talking, so I try to write more description than talking. But, that's a me thing, I guess.

Dialogue isn't necessary, but it does make a longer story read more naturally most of the time. In a short story though, I'd say you need it even less. One of the best things I've ever written is a short story that doesn't feature a single line of speech.

Dialogue is a natural way to convey and trade information, so dialogue is as needed as doing any of those in a natural fashion (as in: trying not to mentally trip your readers) is needed.

Most importantly, dialogue is a marker of how characters relate to each other in the story, so the more the characters are connected to each other, the most important it is that you have (natural, good!) dialogue or something that can cover for it. Have you seen how naturally flowing dialogue is between real people? They blurb, they repeat themselves, they errr, they trip on their gerunds, they verbal backspace a lot, damn there's so much, lots and lots and lots od dialogue. Written dialogue can convey most of it but not all of it (in fact, "AAAA Literature" has trained us to believe that Reality is Unrealistic in that people who talk like that are "trying too hard" because silent potentially salker loners are Totally Cool, but trust me, IRL was like this before COVID hit).

While a bit too 90s for some people's tastes I'd strongly recommend watching the middle seasons (3, 4 and 5) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to get a grip on how much or how little dialogue is needed to convey familiarity (or enmity!) between characters.

It isn't necessary to tell a great story, but like any other aspect of creative writing, it can bring the narrative to life and make characters distinctive and memorable when it's done well. But line after line of dialogue does become a bit much, reading more like a script than anything. A problem I see frequently in fan fiction (and something I'm guilty of because dialogue is tough!) is very bland dialogue where everyone has the same "voice". It's probably the first thing to turn me off a story. But great dialogue, the kind that flows so naturally and reads like a person would actually speak, the kind that hints at a character's dialect, culture, ways of life, without having to state it... it is such a joy to read. Even if it's not really progressing the story - I love it purely for getting to hear more of that character.

This applies to video games, too! Bowser's Inside Story is an example of fun dialogue, in my opinion. "I have many chortles at such stupidity!" Gotta love Fawful.

Hyzenthlay said:

It isn't necessary to tell a great story, but like any other aspect of creative writing, it can bring the narrative to life and make characters distinctive and memorable when it's done well. But line after line of dialogue does become a bit much, reading more like a script than anything. A problem I see frequently in fan fiction (and something I'm guilty of because dialogue is tough!) is very bland dialogue where everyone has the same "voice". It's probably the first thing to turn me off a story. But great dialogue, the kind that flows so naturally and reads like a person would actually speak, the kind that hints at a character's dialect, culture, ways of life, without having to state it... it is such a joy to read. Even if it's not really progressing the story - I love it purely for getting to hear more of that character.

This applies to video games, too! Bowser's Inside Story is an example of fun dialogue, in my opinion. "I have many chortles at such stupidity!" Gotta love Fawful.

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I honestly agree that if there's lines and lines of dialogue, I'm a little turned off unless the dialogue is good.

I'm the type of person who writes descriptive dialogue where the sections of dialogue have actions described, some facial descriptions written and even tone of voice sometimes indicated because I can't stand dialogue like

"This!"
"Talking"
"More talking"

Maybe that's a me thing, though, I prefer to have descriptive dialogue rather than he said she said etcetera I'd post examples but I don't want to

Hyzenthlay said:

It isn't necessary to tell a great story, but like any other aspect of creative writing, it can bring the narrative to life and make characters distinctive and memorable when it's done well. But line after line of dialogue does become a bit much, reading more like a script than anything. A problem I see frequently in fan fiction (and something I'm guilty of because dialogue is tough!) is very bland dialogue where everyone has the same "voice". It's probably the first thing to turn me off a story. But great dialogue, the kind that flows so naturally and reads like a person would actually speak, the kind that hints at a character's dialect, culture, ways of life, without having to state it... it is such a joy to read. Even if it's not really progressing the story - I love it purely for getting to hear more of that character.

This applies to video games, too! Bowser's Inside Story is an example of fun dialogue, in my opinion. "I have many chortles at such stupidity!" Gotta love Fawful.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I would say, but you worded it so much better than I would have!

My works are dialogue heavy and I struggled for a while to identify a unique voice for each character, I still have that problem with some new characters. One thing that definitely helped was traveling to countries where my characters were from and having conversations with people just to hear speech patterns and how certain words sounded when they said them.

I struggle with this too. As I've mentioned on PC somewhere, I wrote a story called Demise (also posted on here) and thought it had too much dialogue. So then the next story I wrote, I challenged myself to have no dialogue, choosing to focus on descriptions. (there were a few lines of dialogue... it was inevitable tbh) It just makes me wonder, what's the perfect balance of dialogue and description?

Palamon said:

I can't stand dialogue like

"This!"
"Talking"
"More talking"

Maybe that's a me thing, though, I prefer to have descriptive dialogue rather than he said she said etcetera I'd post examples but I don't want to

Click to expand...

I'm the opposite here. If the dialogue is written well and it's natural, I love back-and-forths like this in certain contexts. Which I think is what it all boils down to. Contextually speaking, dialogue is absolutely necessary when you're trying to convey characterization outside of the narrative POV (including relationships, how a character sounds, acts, thinks, etc.).

I find that I actually really enjoy starting my stories out with a quick quip of dialogue to get across a whole slew of important information, as well as introducing a character. That said, it has to be done right, and be done well, in order for it to work.

I'm also really interested in writing dialogue in general. It's one of my favorite parts of writing, with the other being deep introspection on the characters' parts. I'm just as fascinated with quick dialogue as I am with slow thought.

CiCi said:

I'm the opposite here. If the dialogue is written well and it's natural, I love back-and-forths like this in certain contexts. Which I think is what it all boils down to. Contextually speaking, dialogue is absolutely necessary when you're trying to convey characterization outside of the narrative POV (including relationships, how a character sounds, acts, thinks, etc.).

I find that I actually really enjoy starting my stories out with a quick quip of dialogue to get across a whole slew of important information, as well as introducing a character. That said, it has to be done right, and be done well, in order for it to work.

I'm also really interested in writing dialogue in general. It's one of my favorite parts of writing, with the other being deep introspection on the characters' parts. I'm just as fascinated with quick dialogue as I am with slow thought.

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Well, everyone's different. If back and forths are generally fun to read, I do like them. If the voices are distinctive enough, I won't have a problem, and won't get bored.

But for me personally, because the protagonist I'm writing is really quiet, and doesn't speak unless spoken to, I absolutely need to do descriptive dialogue to convey his body language and his tone when speaking so people know if he's obedient, or being unlike himself. Which, I put a lot of effort into explaining through descriptive dialogue. But, that's just me and my writing style. Everything writes differently, and that's why writing is a spectrum of talent.