I spent most of my career in science writing narrative. Only narrative, and nothing but narrative. We don’t write manuscripts with dialog in them. Scientific books that I’ve written are long tracks of narratives broken up not by dialogue, but by mathematics. Heaven help the scientist who tries to publish scientific information in a dialogue.[1]
So when I began writing novels, the concept of dialogue was interesting and new to me. I learned that one hundred years or more ago, many of the novels produced were essentially narrative. Scenes were first set by describing the surroundings and backdrop in excruciating detail. It seemed that dialogue was used to occasionally break up narrative which is where the author told the real story of the novel. One of my favorite’s novels, George Orwell’s 1984, has chapters that are narrative from another fictitious book.
However, our media oriented readers require a reversal. They are interested in hearing dialogue on their displays and reading it in their books. If you turn on the TV you commonly hear dialogue before the picture comes on.
Device screens are visual. The scene is set on the screen. Outdoors, in an office building, a war zone, or a frozen tundra, the scene is set for you. The characters with their appearances and clothes are clear. Imagination is not invoked. The scene is already in the background and understood by the reader. They only need the characters with dialog to be added. Books offer another degree of complexity, because the scene has to be set. Yet, the device-oriented reader is hungry for dialog. Too much time setting the scene can lose the easily distracted reader. It’s the unusual, modern book that has a first page, or a first chapter devoted to narrative,
So. as novelists, we provide dialog as soon as possible and as impactful as possible. The reader wants to understand the character and wants to see character relationships , are inciting and incisive. However, one can have too much dialog. While exciting at first, reading only dialogue can begin to feel if not disconnected, then bumpy, like a car on a broken road. The readers need a break from dialog to catch their breath to absorb what has just been said and consider its implications for the characters.
We might try this with beats. Beats are small sections of narrative that intersperse dialogue. Look at the following example.
“I think we need to go as far as possible, as fast as possible,” Denis said.
Yegan said, “I’m down with that.”
Plain dialogue, pure and simple. Let’s embellish.
Looking through the windshield into a blue sky that almost hurt, Dennis said, “I think we need to go as far as possible as fast as possible.”
Yegan slapped the leather upholstery of the Mustang GT and said, I’m down with that.”
We’ve broken the dialogue up with a beat, Let’s push this some.
Looking through the windshield into a bright blue Arizona sky that almost hurt, Dennis said, “I think we need to go as far as possible as fast as possible.” He looked over at his lifelong friend.
Ignoring the siren that yelled behind them, Yegan slapped the leather upholstery of the ruby red Mustang GT. “I’m down with that.”
Here we know about the relationship between the two, the car, and what may be their relationship with the law, Typically, the dialogue-narrative- choice is presented as dichotomous. You either have dialogue managed with beats or a stretch of narrative. This leads to a dialogue interspersed with narrative throughout the book. This can become tedious. However as demonstrated above, we can intertwine dialogue and narrative, using any mixture that we would like. It becomes much more fluid and much more flexible writing tool. One doesn’t have to have a page of dialog, followed by a quarter of a page of narrative, followed by two pages of dialog. It can be blended with the dialogue and narrative that support each other by breaking each other up.
Here is an example from Catching Cold Vol 3-Judgment, just released.
The finger prods, like rifle butts, jabbed her awake. “What’s your name?” demanded the grating voice.
“I’m . . .” Meredith paused, fighting to collect herself. “I am Ms. Doucette, CEO of SSS.” She looked into the face of an overweight, pale man, his sweat dripping down on her.
He belched and then smiled, “I heard that story from an orderly. What a sense of humor after what’s happened. Do you have any discomfort?”
Anger consumed her as the executive meeting and its tension jumped back into her. OK hold on let’s jump back for a second interview. No, I feel great. Where’s my bicycle? The CEO closed her eyes, taking a slow deep breath. Why doesn’t my arm hurt? And the leg pain is gone. She looked up to see the IV bottle dangling from the metal rod above her.
“Not really. Whatever you have given me is making a difference, and I’m thankful for that. What happened?”
The man nodded. “I am Louis Simmons, PA. There was an explosion on the twenty-ninth floor of your building. Looks like a bomb blast. Lots of shrapnel. Many people were hurt.” She saw him look at her hand that was now in an ice-filled plastic bag, sitting like a companion. “Including you, I’m afraid.”
“Please tell me, sir, who was injured.”
Here, we just don’t have narrative and a dialogue. The characters talk and react in a way that provides all of the narrative that you need. From this we know that a lady who is (or thinks that she is) the Chief Executive Officer of a company engaged in a conversation with a physician assistant (PA) But it is in a specific environment. There has been an explosion, maybe by a bomb, and there has been physical injury (noted by the pain of the woman and the IV bottle) The swear pouring off the PA tells us the situation is urgent. And we know this without a single paragraph of narrative. The “narrative” comes from the characters.
Also, later in Judgment.
“I’ll miss showering with you, Kev.”
Olivia jumped out in front of Kevin who had just stepped onto the bath mat, reaching for a towel.
“You bet you will,” he said, leaning forward and smacking her pale-ass cheeks.
Olivia dried off, wrapped the towel around herself, and fell back on the bed. Her gray tresses fell around her face. Kevin lay next to her, putting his arm around her waist.
“Are you going to look for another house?” she asked, brushing the end of his wide nose back and forth with her finger.
“Hadn’t thought of it. How long do you think you’ll be in Washington?” He watched her ponder. She is the delight of—
“I don’t know. It may be just a week. On the other hand, maybe a few months.” He smiled and worked his hand under her bath towel. “I guess it depends on whether you want to stay for just the writing or the actual passage of your bill.”
“I’m sure we can write it and get it to the committee. Unless the American people are riled up, there is just no chance that it will pass.” The sixty-two-year-old jiggled on the plush bed. Kevin leaned over her. “You can always go fallow with it, you know,” he said, admiring her trim legs. He knew he could not persuade her to stay. Ever since that terrible day in the high country, she had been seeking her purpose. Now that she’d latched on to it, he couldn’t, wouldn’t get between them.
“Fallow?”
“Sure. It requires a tight-knit group to do the actual writing,” he said, sneaking his hand between her thighs. “Once done, let it sit. When the time is right, you release it to the right members of Congress and, uh senators. This allows them to move forward while the iron’s hot.”
“If you’re a senator, you’re a member of Congress, silly.” “I uh, must have gotten myself distracted by these soft thighs,”
“Hmmm.”
We don’t need a narrating sentence here. You know where the characters are and what they are doing. You know so much more than what they say.
Think of the third person perspective. It is not fixed but instead, flexible. One can have for the same character a distant, rather unemotional third person perspective, or a close third person point of view which is full of emotion. The dialogue-narrative can also be mixed across a wide range. It is a dynamic tool that strengthens both narrative and dialogue.
[1]Although I did try this once in my textbook, (2007) Elementary Bayesian Biostatistics. Francis and Taylor. (2007) Bocca Raton.Chapman Hall. Curiously, the reviewer said absolutely nothing about that chapter.