And I wanna make them shut up. Or seriously, everything I write at the moment seems to be dialogue heavy. It's a consequence of the fact that I'm concentrating a bit more on character interaction rather than action, but a story that is mostly dialogue doesn't make a good read, in my view. I don't want to add narrative for the sake of it, and I find myself trying to think of plot elements to add unnecessarily, The alternative is to add more goobly bits about the characters' facial expressions, tone of voice etc. I'm not sure what to do here. As a additional aside, I have a scene where two robots are talking to one another. I want to somehow explain to the reader that they are talking using very truncated language, cutting out all the extra words we fleshbags put in, but that the dialogue is written in natural English for the sake of the reader. In other words, the robots might be saying: "Last night action?" "SAL-E Interface clean store" But the written dialogue is: "Did you get any action last night?" "Yeah, me and SAL-E had some hot serial port interfacing in the cleaning stores cupboard." I can't think of a way to do it without speaking directly to the reader and breaking the fourth wall.
Remember that dialogue, when it's good, IS action. It should be moving the plot along and expressing character interactions. This is done through more than just the words themselves––the cadences etc of the dialogue plus implied actions and expressions help to indicate these things. I think if you're doing it this way and adding in the occasional physical action/interaction etc it should come across as not being too dialogue-heavy. Sorry, I got nothing for the second part. Except maybe this that just occurred to me: why do they use words at all? I would think robots could dialogue via some kind of high-speed supercompressed blip-language. Sort of R2D2 but not so comical and faster. Maybe below or above the threshold that humans can hear. Leaving you to have to probably chip away at that 4th wall to explain what they're saying. Ok, sorry, refer back to previous 'got nothing'... Or wait––yeah, you could have a human character interpreting what the 'bots are saying to someone else, a child or something. No wall demolition necessary, though it could be a pretty cheesy device.
Maybe write it fully fleshed out for the first draft but with plans of cutting back for the second draft. That way you can utilize in the scene, description hints as to what the robots are talking about that way they don't need all the words in the dialogue. I.e. X21 circuits were really glowing today. "Last night action?"
Well, I’m no expert, but when you create the world setting do you mention how these robots communicate and do you maybe have more than just one scene where they interact with each other? Or even interact with someone organic? The difference between their mode of communication should be fairly obvious to the reader in contrast or you could make a third person comment on how truncated the language is? As to the first problem of too much dialogue, I think it’s best if you keep in mind one goal for the scene. Do you want to establish a relationship, explain something, describe a setting or get action in, and then try to mix it up. Really good dialogue, and slapstick in particular is best developed with the help of some kind of action part. Don’t know if this helps somehow, just trying to put into words how I tackle this problem.
I agree with all the above; with the addition to Xoic's sentiment, that not only can dialogue be action, it is also perfectly fine as long as it is also progression. Are we learning new stuff from this conversation? Character backstory, development of plot, relevant info, etc etc. And Pad's point of what is the overall goal. edit - as for the fourth wall breaking bit, I don't really see a way around that unless you have someone listening in that can mentally translate for the reader. Otherwise, it's just like two characters talking in a foreign language.
When the robots talk to humans, or when there is a human around, they speak normally. They only use robot-speak when they don't need the humans around them to understand. In the scenes where the robots are directly communicating with one another, there are no third persons present. Inspired by this: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatbot-new-language-research-openai-google-a7869706.html
I remember reading that article when it first came out. Loved it. Purely because it freaked out all the people who think AI will automatically turn SkyNet and Terminate our collective asses. The problem is still the same tho, Nao. POV. The Independent article shows that unless the narrator is a robot themselves, tell it from one of the robots' POVs, or you tell it from the point of view of someone listening in who isn't a robot, otherwise you'll have to break the fourth wall. Edit - or... or... dunno how fourth wall-y this is... (fourth wall-e.... oh the pun's I could make) "Last night action?" asked Such n Such "Did you get any action last night?" "SAL-E Interface clean store" replied Bot-o-bot "Yeah, me and SAL-E had some hot serial port interfacing in the cleaning stores cupboard." Fourth wall-y, half-n-half, but I gotta say, i've never read a book before with its own subtitles. USP 101
It's certainly an interesting problem. I'm leaving that scene until last. Actually I kind of like your idea: The robots spoke to one another with a strange, staccato speech pattern, developed over the long years without the meatbags around. "Last night. Action?," said Bot. Did you get any action last night? "Clean store. SHRL-E. Interface," replied Droid. Yeah, me an' SHRL-E had some high-temperature gyratory interfacing in the broom cupboard. Bot's ocular receptors glowed green. "That SHRL-E has a huge pair of hard drives. You lucky son-of-a-batchfile."
I love dialogue, I think fantasy (and sci-fi too) focuses too much on descriptive action scenes. Your story would feel really fresh in that genre. I give you full green lights
Robot Erotica? Platonic steaminess? Sign me up. Just imagine how jealousy, admiration or seduction would play out. Really interesting thoughts, here.
What percentage of a chapter is considered heavy dialog? I had a rough draft of a screenplay that I rewrote as a novel, and I worried about the heavy dialog scenes and kept it at about thirty percent.
@Naomasa298 - It might be an idea to put an excerpt of your dialogue-heavy writing into the Workshop, and ask for feedback on the issue. It's hard to generalise the topic. Personally I find unbroken dialogue intensely irritating and uninformative if it's shoveled on, page after page, with very little in the way of narrative or 'beats' to break it up. Why? Because it's only the words which have been said. All other aspects of the scene—from the environment itself to the facial expressions, actions, INNER THOUGHTS of the POV character as the other person is speaking (which might not be reflected at all in their own reply), the timing of the speeches, voice inflection, etc—all get ignored. It's just transcribed yak yak yak yak yak ...and that gets tiresome for me, very fast. Even comic books have pictures AND speech bubbles with font differences, to help emphasise the importance of what the characters are saying, voice inflection, facial expression, action—and even some frames where nobody is saying anything at all. And comics contain thought bubbles as well. If I'm reading a book that has pages of unbroken dialogue in it, I find myself racing along, not really taking in much meaning. I get to the end (whew) of the long passage being not much more the wiser. Yes, dialogue can be a 'page turner' and some how-to authors strive for this—as if racing through a book is something of a virtue. But getting readers turning pages when comprehension is shallow doesn't actually help get the story across.
I use something that I learned in group. After bits of dialogue, instead of a tag, I use an action or thought, unless necessary to add a tag for some kind of effect. It adds a bit of dynamic to a character without making a lot of 'chatter' feel like a monotonous slog to the more active bits of the story. Little things like mannerisms and gestures can really add a bit more depth and add 'flesh' to a character that isn't often utilized.
I think longer dialogue passages always work better when the conversation takes an unexpected turn, like a twist. For me, personally, the most devious thing is to surprise the protagonist with something that completely rips the carpet from under their feet. (Is that an English phrase? I just know it from German) I tend to be devious and gleeful if a discussion hits a few characters in the face, but obviously you can’t Always do that to keep a dialogue from becoming stiff.
I do try to do this. Generally, I prefer to use actions rather than dialogue tags, like: "You look great." Zed rubbed his hands. "Let's get down to business." As with the line above, I also have a habit of splitting dialogue to break up long lines. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
Here's one thing that is specific to the story I'm writing now - in several passages, the characters are robots. They have no inner thoughts and no emotions. However, what I'm trying to do with them is *imply* emotion. I'm trying to invite the reader to read their own emotions into the dialogue. I remember Brent Spiner talking about playing Data in Star Trek - what he said was that he showed no emotion and any emotion the viewer saw was something they read into it themselves. Lots of fun challenges writing robots.
I just use asides to break up the monotony. Page or two of dialogue, and then a few paragraphs about something completely unrelated that began as an aside about one word that was said or implied during the last portion of dialog. Sometimes it works, sometimes my jokes are just shit. Either way, at least my stupid characters aren't talking.
That's more difficult in a short story, I think. In a novel, you have words to play with, in a short story, you don't necessarily have that luxury. I mentioned this in the OP - what I wanted to avoid was adding unnecessary elements. I've done this before, and I think it's an impediment to the reader - you need to keep the reader wanting to progress with the story, not put your work down and move on. In comedy, you can keep the reader amused with jokes in the aside, but otherwise, it needs to engage the reader somehow, not have the reader get to the end and think "what was the point of that bit?" - and I'm not very good at engaging asides. A lot of the feedback I get is along the lines of "cut out the fluff".
EDIT: Posted before I saw your edit. I can certainly see that side of the argument. I'm not personally a proponent of the "cut the fluff" stuff, because I believe that comedy is the fluff. Ah, glad I read this bit before replying again. I've seen you write some comedic stuff, so I presume that's your genre of choice. If so, one thing I do is to simply tell far more than show. For example: He was unsure what Lou meant by that. "I'm not sure what you mean by that." Lou rolled his eyes. "Why are you rolling your eyes?" -- Something like that. Maybe you could have their actual dialog be what you need it to be to fit the characters, but overtly explain, as the narrator, what they actually mean, for comedic purposes: The transistor-based lifeforms traded gazes, before delving into some swelteringly hot serial port interfacing in the cleaning store's cupboard. SAL-E's cooling fans were exhausted. "Data transfer successful." -- I dunno a lot about computers . . .
Comedy isn't really what I write. I write lots of different genres with my first-choice being fantasy, although for some reason, most of what I've been writing lately seems to be horror. The excerpts in this thread are just examples, although if someone wants to turn them into full-on robo-porn, feel free...
Oh, yeah ...robots might be odd to write, from a dialogue point of view. However, because they don't have any emotions, then the words robots say ARE all there is to it—unless they are doing something at the same time as speaking, or if the environment is collapsing around them, or something else is going on that they're responding to. I reckon that's different from reporting human conversation with nothing else added in.
