Narrative Vs Dialog

Lets talk a little about narrative and dialog. Dialog is just what it sounds like. Characters talking to each other (though in theory you can also have a monologue or a dialog in which a character is mainly just thinking to himself).

Narrative is that part of the story in which the narrator/writer tells you what is going on. Both of these elements can be over used, underused, and misused. I mention this because I have found myself over the years developing odd rules for when to use narrative vs dialog that when actually used did not make a whole lot of sense.

There is a time and a place for both and not really a great deal of hard and fast rules for when you use whichever one you use. There are really just people like me who go about saying stuff like "I cannot believe they used narrative there."

Let me give you an example of this. In high school, I had to read Pride and Prejudice. If you like reading other people's conversations that do not really go anywhere and take their precious time advancing the plot then this is absolutely the book for you. It takes place in the English countryside (19th century) among a society of people too rich to be laboring in the fields and too poor to be aristocrats.

Most of the plot is conveyed in very long-winded conversations. Though in fact it seems that the women of this time and place had little else. ::Spoiler Warning - Not that I recommend this book to anyone ever....::: So you follow the main character from dinner to dinner to ball, to writing letters to her friends, to visiting relatives and conversing over dinner, to chatting over brunch, to reading a letter from a lord who has fallen in love with her, to a few more letters and conversations, and finally to her deciding she loves him too and telling him as much.

The trouble is that while all the other major events of the story are conveyed in dialog the climatic moment when the heroine tells her chosen that she loves him is conveyed in narrative. So instead of hearing the finer details of this epic conversation, which you work through a very long-winded book to get to, you get something along the lines of:

They decided to take a walk together. After they had made it a little ways down the garden path she looked at the lord and told him that she really did love him....

This is not verbatim, just roughly what I remember. Anyhow, it was a let down to say the least. So if there was a rule to be taken from this it would be something along the lines of "If dialog is a crucial part of the style and character of your story and the climax happens in conversation, please, for the love of god, share that conversation with your audience."

Still I found myself with one story trying to convey everything in dialog. The setting, the conflicts, and even the physical details of the characters. This basically amounts to having some character at some point comment on everything that you have decided is pertinent to share with the audience.

"Wow! Look at that sunset. Isn't it beautiful? The way the orange sinks into the yellow which blends into pink. And the thin silvery clouds reflecting the pink and gold on the bottom side while maintaining the same silvery gray on their topside as the calm ocean beneath them."

"Yes it is lovely but not as lovely as your startlingly brilliant long red hair, deep green eyes, and delicate white skin. Which of course perfectly compliments your long legs, slender waist and ample breasts..."

This rather odd reaction was due to the fact that I had read some sci-fi stories at that particular time in which the author spent pages and pages setting up his story. He told you not only every little detail of the environment and what his characters looked like but explained the arising conflict in detail, perhaps went into the finer points of the local galactic politics or even detailed the characters genealogy.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. There have been plenty of really great novels that have done this (lord of the rings comes to mind), and it actually makes it easier to jump right into the action if your audience gets a primer of what is going on and why you are calling your evil guys the "DORtinan" instead of the big bad evil guys etc. In fact if a story takes place in a disparate enough culture from our own some of that is likely to be necessary.

It is far less acceptable a device in short fiction than it is in longer works. In a short story you are likely to lose your audience if they have to read page after page of exposition detailing names and places that they have no way yet to actually connect with.

Believe me I have put down many books that did exactly that. So trying to establish a middle ground can be a tall order. You have to figure out what is and is not appropriate to be conveyed in narrative. What would better be revealed in character dialog, or perhaps in a letter or newspaper article they read that day.

How you determine that is dependent not only on the style of your work, but also on the point of view. Which will be coming very soon.