Reflection: Focus - Why so much dialogue?

10 min read

Deviation Actions

Destiny-Smasher's avatar
Published:
319 Views




While I'm by no means a professional writer yet, even back in my amateurish days (ie before college) people consistently seemed to like one thing the most in my fiction - and still do: my dialogue. My lack of description and heavy use of dialogue is probably both my greatest weakness and greatest strength as a narrative writer. Obviously, this issue doesn't come up in my editorial stuff because...well, it's not a story. :P So I've been thinking lately...why DO I write such heavy dialogue? Why does so much of what I write boil down to line after line of dialogue with descriptors of how something is said?

The simplest answer is that what I want the reader to FOCUS on is what a character is saying, how they are saying it, and how any characters involves are reacting/acting. Their tone, the way they stutter or fumble with their words, their body language. This is, at its core, what is most important in my storytelling, I think...Really, I'd probably be better off writing/directing film/animation from a story-telling standpoint BECAUSE of that very fact: I slack off a lot of the time with describing locations or visual details.

BUT, you'll notice, I put all of that energy into describing a character's physical habits, ticks, expressions, and gestures.

The way I look at it, your mind will fill in the blanks. They're in a dorm room. Does it matter exactly what is on the walls? How clean or dirty the room is? What it smells like? What the rain outside sounds like? Probably not. If it DOES matter then I will probably make mention of it.

But otherwise, I want you, the reader, to use your own imagination and fill in the blanks as far as the location and even a lot of the characters' appearances are concerned. If I mention exactly how Katara's hair is styled in a given scene it's likely because I think it's a detail that will shed some light on what kind of mood she is in - otherwise, I will often let you decide how her hair is styled or what kinds of clothes she's wearing.

An exception is Jane "Smellerbee" Fitzpatrick. You'll notice that, again and again, I constantly make reference to three things: her freckles, her thick, messy, bushy orange hair, and her olive eyes. The Smellerbee you're most familiar with doesn't have freckles, or orange hair, or olive eyes. By drawing attention to these visual details I am focusing on the idea that this is NOT the Smellerbee you know, that she is a hybrid character - born of the essence of the original character but joined with parts of myself or of people I have known. While that's...actually VERY true with the other main characters, Smellerbee is even more my own creation here if only because there is less of her to work with from the source material.

Back on track with the details of environments, it generally doesn't MATTER what a classroom looks like, what the cafeteria looks like, etc. When I write these scenes out I naturally envision the college I went to with pretty much every internal location in SRU. I can't help it. Just as I bet it's easier for your mind to just paint from memory some vague depiction of a cafeteria. Maybe I'll specify what kind of table they're sitting at, whether it's in a corner of the room, etc., if I think that kind of detail signifies some kind of tone or mood. But really, I can't just plaster my every thought into your head, so it's better to focus on what MATTERS and let your minds fill in the blanks otherwise. In writing this way I make my chapters leaner and meaner than they would otherwise be if weighed down by too much description and it's probably easier for your mind to go, "OK, they are in a Pizza Hut. I've been to Pizza Hut. It looked...like this" and paint that background on your own, since what's important is the interactions between the characters in most cases.

The way that Jane rubs her eyebrows when she's nervous or upset or impatient, the way Katara kind of stammers when she starts sentences as her mind races to figure out what would be most tactful to say, the way Aang is constantly trying to pacify any potential arguments, the way Sokka dramatically points and pounds and flails about, the way that Toph's tone changes when she's being playful or serious and how she will use or drop nicknames depending on her mood...Those details are important and those are what I want to stick in a reader's head as they experience a scene and think back on it.

I don't want you to get bored because I'm spending three paragraphs describing a room when the only thing that really matters in relation to the scene is that Sokka has a giant atlas stuck on his wall. By only focusing on details that matter, ideally, my story is letting you fill in the background and when I draw attention to something seemingly insignificant like that, maybe it will make you wonder why I pointed it out. ;)

I'm by NO MEANS saying the way I write is "best," merely thinking about WHY I write the way I do, why my writing style has become more and more like this over the years, and writing it out for those who might be curious as for my own benefit as a reflection to keep me on track as to what I am trying to accomplish in my writing - and thus what I should work on and what I should avoid.

Thanks as always for all of your support and feedback. I'm excited to keep pressing on with :icons-r-u: and show you where the story goes, and I'm also super excited to see some SRU commissions get completed so I can share with you how I envision the characters in my head as I write them. Get ready for Homecoming!

© 2011 - 2024 Destiny-Smasher
Comments4
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
jinjinbun's avatar
Honestly, I find reading dialogue and behaviorisms much more interesting if set in a contemporary setting, rather than something completely foreign, like an aquarium run by aliens on Mars :alien: THAT, I'd probably like a little more detail.

Otherwise, backgrounds we can always draw from our own experiences/imaginations to fill in, unless a character needs to move/examine a specific detail. Almost like a point-and-click game, where if you click to "examine" something that doesn't have anything to do with moving ahead it gives you a vague, uninteresting, or general answer.