I almost phrased this blog title as a question, because it is one I have been wrestling with all week.
I am at that point in Book 2 where I have (hopefully) lured the reader into the story with action, reminders of key aspects of Book 1, and one or two intriguing curveballs. Now I need to set up one of the two major plot arcs. To do so, closets must be opened and skeletons revealed, which means a lot of chit chat. As in an entire chapter that is mostly dialogue.
We like to "listen" to characters talk to each other. It's not only good to learn what's going on in the story from each of their perspectives, but the words they choose and how they speak helps us form our own mental image of them as distinct individuals. But if it's overdone, if there are several pages of people sitting around doing nothing but talk, some of us get antsy. The dialogue has to be compelling.
As I struggled through the chapter in question - and this is only a first draft I keep telling myself, a good topic for a future post - I thought of examples from my favorite books. The obvious one, at least for me, was Gandalf's conversation with Frodo in Bag End where the wizard summarized the history and imminent peril of the One Ring and set the hobbit on his quest. The later Council of Elrond chapter consists of pages and pages of characters telling stories, but this is why it works. Tolkien was a storyteller more than a writer, steeped in real and invented mythologies evolved by oral tradition. We enjoy each of those stories, and look forward to the next one, as if we're sitting around a campfire with friends. So that is one device we can use: one (or more) characters telling a story to an audience of other characters.
Another device, if you want to add tension into the scene, is interrogation, an extended sequence of questions and answers. One of your characters wants something from another, something the other character is unable or unwilling to reveal. I try to be careful with this. You have to ask enough questions to get some value, either as interrogator or spectator, but too many and you risk revealing too much or, worse, boring the reader.
What other dialogue-writing techniques do you use in your writing, or see used in the books you read? Please comment below!
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