Before I go on, I would like to make something clear. Writing is relative. Extremely relative. Anything I say are more like guidelines and how much you gain from it depends entirely on your ability to apply it to different situations. Writing is not like mathematics. A lot depends on the characters, not just the scene itself.
This is particularly true for this week's article. With that said, let's begin.
One of the hardest skills to master in fiction is the balance between dialogue and narration. When to use one or the other for the situation or character? It is such a relative concept I can hardly say something definitive. I can only give suggestions for clarity or realism, though there are holes it would be best to avoid.
One such hole is the need for information. I recently wrote a short story where I limited my word count so severely I had almost no space to provide the reader with cultural or geographic information. A lot of readers did not like this for obvious reasons. Readers need information in order to form a picture. They don't like having characters talking in empty space. There are three basic types of information: stuff all the characters know, stuff at least one character doesn't know, and stuff only the author knows. Readers won't know any of it.
Here is my suggestion. For stuff all the characters know, let narration provide it to the readers. This is the hole a lot of writers are guilty of. People do not go around explaining to others things everyone already knows. It makes no realistic sense. It is a ploy to make information more interesting to the reader, but it only makes the scene silly. Nowadays, readers are starting to realize this and trust me. They don't like it. Even if they don't know what's going on, they can't shake the feeling of something odd in the back of their minds.
For stuff at least one character doesn't know, you can chose either dialogue or narration. It depends on a lot of factors. It's usually easiest, and the most interesting, to provide bits of information through dialogue. With this, you can avoid the dreaded "info dump." Let's be honest with ourselves. When a reader comes across a huge paragraph, the majority don't read it. I don't. I skip it. This can be really bad if the info dump contains critical information. Information is best spread thin, wide, and often, like a layer of glaze on a cake. The glaze covers the entire cake, but the layer is transparently thin and you only get a bit of glaze with each every bite. You remember the flavor and don't get sick of the glaze.
For stuff only the author knows, narration is the single option left to you. You have no choice but to use the narrative. Now, you can through the narrative give your characters information and then use dialogue, but until you complete that preliminary narration, nothing can be done.
Now, these aren't hard and fast rules here. They are guidelines at the most. Narration, dialogue, and character action all distribute information. None should be used more than any of the others. You run the risk of confusion, irritation, or boredom. Body language isn't always enough for a reader to understand what a character is doing, no matter how well-written it might be. So spread the information around.
Another thing where narration, or more like character action, should be used is where you find a character explaining their emotions through dialogue when the character's personality would have him acting it out. It is a writer's tendency to continue with the flow. When writing narrative, we tend to keep writing narrative. When characters talk, we make them windbags. I almost made one of my characters a windbag. I had to think what he would do. Would he simply tell her how he much he longed for human contact, or would his body language and actions display it? For him, it was the latter. A simple brush of a finger on her cheek said more about his loneliness than anything he could have said to her (especially since she's so dense, but I digress.) Some characters, particularly females, aren't necessarily like that. Women like to talk. It depends on the person, but I thought I would mention it since it is an important concept to understand.
Characters can tell you when they need to talk or be silent. If they don't know, they won't say anything.
This is particularly true for this week's article. With that said, let's begin.
One of the hardest skills to master in fiction is the balance between dialogue and narration. When to use one or the other for the situation or character? It is such a relative concept I can hardly say something definitive. I can only give suggestions for clarity or realism, though there are holes it would be best to avoid.
One such hole is the need for information. I recently wrote a short story where I limited my word count so severely I had almost no space to provide the reader with cultural or geographic information. A lot of readers did not like this for obvious reasons. Readers need information in order to form a picture. They don't like having characters talking in empty space. There are three basic types of information: stuff all the characters know, stuff at least one character doesn't know, and stuff only the author knows. Readers won't know any of it.
Here is my suggestion. For stuff all the characters know, let narration provide it to the readers. This is the hole a lot of writers are guilty of. People do not go around explaining to others things everyone already knows. It makes no realistic sense. It is a ploy to make information more interesting to the reader, but it only makes the scene silly. Nowadays, readers are starting to realize this and trust me. They don't like it. Even if they don't know what's going on, they can't shake the feeling of something odd in the back of their minds.
For stuff at least one character doesn't know, you can chose either dialogue or narration. It depends on a lot of factors. It's usually easiest, and the most interesting, to provide bits of information through dialogue. With this, you can avoid the dreaded "info dump." Let's be honest with ourselves. When a reader comes across a huge paragraph, the majority don't read it. I don't. I skip it. This can be really bad if the info dump contains critical information. Information is best spread thin, wide, and often, like a layer of glaze on a cake. The glaze covers the entire cake, but the layer is transparently thin and you only get a bit of glaze with each every bite. You remember the flavor and don't get sick of the glaze.
For stuff only the author knows, narration is the single option left to you. You have no choice but to use the narrative. Now, you can through the narrative give your characters information and then use dialogue, but until you complete that preliminary narration, nothing can be done.
Now, these aren't hard and fast rules here. They are guidelines at the most. Narration, dialogue, and character action all distribute information. None should be used more than any of the others. You run the risk of confusion, irritation, or boredom. Body language isn't always enough for a reader to understand what a character is doing, no matter how well-written it might be. So spread the information around.
Another thing where narration, or more like character action, should be used is where you find a character explaining their emotions through dialogue when the character's personality would have him acting it out. It is a writer's tendency to continue with the flow. When writing narrative, we tend to keep writing narrative. When characters talk, we make them windbags. I almost made one of my characters a windbag. I had to think what he would do. Would he simply tell her how he much he longed for human contact, or would his body language and actions display it? For him, it was the latter. A simple brush of a finger on her cheek said more about his loneliness than anything he could have said to her (especially since she's so dense, but I digress.) Some characters, particularly females, aren't necessarily like that. Women like to talk. It depends on the person, but I thought I would mention it since it is an important concept to understand.
Characters can tell you when they need to talk or be silent. If they don't know, they won't say anything.