This is more properly an article. Moved to the Articles area, else it will just roll aware into the obscurity of Page 2 of Creative Writing.

Well said. Illusion of realism. I like that. I think you're spot-on about what makes good dialogue.

However, I am one of those people who isn't all that crazy about dialogue, or rather too much dialogue. Why? Because it goes by too fast.

Page after page of nothing but dialogue does get galloped through, but how much gets retained? If there's nothing to break up a wall of dialogue and no input (via the author) of what is happening during the dialogue exchange or what the speakers are thinking while the conversation is happening, then it's too pepped up to sink in.

I don't know when it started, but there now seems to be a fashion for writing stories using as much dialogue as possible—we're urged to present a story using mostly dialogue 'because it's faster and people keep turning pages.'

Think of it like a movie. How much fun would a movie be if all the characters ever did was talk? No moving around, no moments of quiet, no setting of scene, no facial expressions, no interactions, battles, dances, journeys etc. Just yappity yappity yappity yappity yappity yappity yappity yap—the end. How enjoyable would this experience be for the moviegoers? If you think this would not be enjoyable, then don't put your readers through the same experience.

Too much dialogue is like living on coca cola. Yeah, it'll pep you up and pass through your system quickly, but you'll be nutritionally deficient unless you eat and drink plenty of other more substantial things as well. Stuff that sticks to the ribs and makes you strong. You can't live on soda pop.

Wreybies: you're kind of assuming it doesn't deserve to roll away into obscurity.

jannert: Too much dialog is a terrible thing! And that's one of the reasons I didn't think about submitting this as an article in the first place--it's very incomplete. Overusing dialog drastically undermines its effectiveness, and that's just one of a pile of different things that I didn't have time to cover when I made this post.

I don't read enough to keep up with present fashions in writing, so I can't offer much comment regarding the idea that we're writing more dialog now than we once did. For anyone who wants to see it done well, though--even if I don't personally believe that it's as effective as decent exposition--Isaac Asimov is famous for throwing his descriptions and his actions into someone's dialog. Not having read many of his fourteen thousand jillion published works, I can primarily recommend Foundation.

I agree with the above. Robert Mckee pushes the idea that you should be able to write an entire story without the use of any Dialogue; in fact, I use this idea in my own writing. I write the entire first draft with no dialogue (I do jot down their thoughts) and during my second draft I come back and start putting dialogue in.

I have mixed emotions on dialog. Some stories read like a scripted reality show, without small talk.
Other stories I've read were dialog free, and wearisome. The reason may be all the years of having to read contracts and technical manuals. Still I'm a fan of small talk in certain situations.

I love dialogue and use it a lot. Sure, it needs to serve a purpose, just like everything else in the book needs to serve a purpose, but I think with dialogue it's really easy to get a lot across with not that many words. A single phrase can contribute to plot, setting, characterization, theme, mood... very efficient.

Don't know how much I agree with the profanity thing. And this is coming from my view as a reader more than as a writer. I think that, if you have a character (or even a bunch of characters) who grew up in an area where there would be a lot of profanity, I think it only makes the character believable to have them use it. Of course, this will be dependent on what you're writing and who you're writing for, but it seems a bit silly to me to have characters who were born and raised in "the hood", so to say, and they very rarely drop an f-bomb. This is my opinion, so it doesn't go for everyone, but I like characters to be written honestly, and if you have a cast that would be cussing like a bunch of sailors in real life, I think they need to be written that way.

Odile: in comparison to what?

If all your characters are in the hood, or all of your characters are sailors, then what difference does it make? What are we contrasting with? This is kind of how Tom Clancy's work comes off: everyone spews profanity all the time, and no one notices.

Like dialog itself, expletives lose their punch when you use them too often. Your character may not care about that, but you're the writer. Its your job to preserve their voice.

I haven't read Tom Clancy, so maybe I'm understanding your statement wrong. I was referring to stories with characters that, in reality, would do a lot of cussing. If you have characters that would cuss a lot, I think it is honest to them character to have the use profanity.

I don't think that profanity necessarily needs to be used to convey emotion or a powerful expression. I think they can just be words that the character uses a lot because that's the language they grew up with.

Now maybe I'm misunderstanding you. I don't know, but that's just my take.

It's also a bit weird to use Tom Clancy as an example of someone writing poorly. I mean, I don't think I've ever read more than one of his books, but clearly he's got a pretty huge audience who don't have a problem with his writing...

I never said Tom Clancy was bad. I said he uses profanity so much that it becomes practically invisible--devoid of emotional impact, which is what I'm warning against here. If you want profanity to be invisible (which was Clancy's goal because that was a part of the tone of his writing), then do exactly that.

Writing is about controlled effect. You are God. You make the decision.

I found this article interesting and helpful. It is always useful to reflect on what and how we write with a little steer from some guidelines. Like most commentators, breaking the guidelines and treading one's own path is fun and creates a personal style. Sometimes it works and sometimes it don't. Working within the guidelines may be safer and more sure-footed. Treading across the guidelines may be risky and more likely to fail, but when it works for us as individuals, much more fun. And when it works well, re-orientates the guidelines, our world and view. The key point is, if our readers like the work, find it interesting and want more, it works.