What to do when you have too much dialogue?

[RaySizm]

Personally, whenever I'm writing my story for this site, I always think that I add too much dialogue to some scenes. What do you do to pad out the pacing between dialogue?

I'm writing my story in third person, and it isn't an isekai, so I can't really have my protagonist suddenly talk about anime references or something in their head, or reveal to the reader everything that is going on in the protagonist's head for story and lore purposes.

 

[Venior]

What I found for writing third person past tense is you can still include the occasional thought from your main character, but you have to stick to only one perspective per scene, so it doesn't seem omnipresent and overbearing.

Also for internal thoughts in third person it's typically done using ' ' rather than " ". Most readers will see 'this sort of thing,' and understand that it's internal. Make sure to never flip flop internal monologue or perspective during the same scene, though.

The biggest thing to note is to change up dialogue entries, like 'said', or 'complained'.

"Remember, dialogue can flow naturally if given the chance," Venior explained gleefully, patting Ray firmly on the back as he did so. "Never forget to change things up and don't overdo it with 'he said she said' nonsense."

From a quick glance at your chapter 1, the dialogue seems alright overall, and you seem to understand how to let dialogue flow back and forth rather well. If you could, link me or DM me the chapter or draft you're struggling with the most. Your problem may be more so in your head than anything, especially if its in or around the same degree of quality as your first chapter.

 

[GDLiZy]

Cut down useless dialogue or put in some actions to break them into sections.

 

[K5Rakitan]

Just write what you write and trim it down later. My husband just went over Chapter 63 and told me I had some repetitive stuff in there, so I trimmed it down a lot.

 

[Saileri]

The series I'm currently publishing is FPP present slice of life, which kinda makes it hard to tone down the amount of dialogue. There are full chapters of almost just talking and there are some with just a few lines, it really depends on the situation. I'm aware it can be overwhelming, but that's just the story's style and I decided to go with it.

While the other story I'm working on, which is TPP past adventure, makes it much easier for itself to have less dialogue since there's almost always something happening.

Naturally, in both of them, I just go with the flow about the dialogues and then after finishing and rereading, I try my best to make it simpler and shorter wherever it's possible. It's easier to change when you have the whole picture already presented.

Oh, but I almost never have dialogue tags one under another, making it a bunch of dialogue lines in quick succession. I always try to insert either some action tags like "he pondered for a moment while stroking his beard.", "I sit down and take a sip of my wine. After a moment, I continue with a smile." between them, or whole bigger descriptions of what the character does between the lines, to emphasize their emotions or reaction.

 

[Draculus-del-Viafat]

I also sometimes have problems with dialogues. The reason of it, as I've found out, is usually the fact that I don't imagine the picture I describe too well. So try to form the picture in your head first, as if you were directing a movie, and then decide where a dialogue would fit the best to emphasize something or tell a specific story that is crucial to the plot. Often you can avoid dialogue just by thinking if you can deliver very important information through it or not. Because sometimes you can notice authors telling you about a subject of a dialogue instead of writing the dialogue itself. Something like, "They spent two more hours talking about senseless stuff." The information is clear - they were talking about senseless stuff, so turning this information into a dialogue is not required. But I will refer to my very first tip about creating a scene in your mind - this, as for me, is the most important thing, and you can only master it through a lot of practice. I'd like to advise you not to hurry when you write something and think through every detail very carefully, maybe write down a plan, even if it takes days and days to finish a single chapter. After all, it's better than being unsatisfied with the final result. Well, that't just my humble opinion.

 

[Kaguro]

Pad in reaction sentences between dialogue. Describe how the character reacts to what they are being told. Helps to break up a wall of back-and-forth, and adds detail.

If you have too much for a section, maybe transition to exposition for the last bits. Just explain from a narrator's view what were the important things said/done, and leave it at that.

I.e. two people are negotiating in dialogue, you could end it with something like 'they came to an agreement' instead of using the actual words from the conversation.

 

[Venior]

Pad in reaction sentences between dialogue. Describe how the character reacts to what they are being told. Helps to break up a wall of back-and-forth, and adds detail.

I've found including actions alongside dialogue to be highly useful, and allows you to pad things out to appear more natural.

"What do you mean?" Venior queried, turning his head from left to right as a sigh escaped his mouth. "You're not making any sense at all here..."

Padding things out with actions and movements in between dialogue makes it feel more so like an actual scene, rather than reading words off a script. There are still quite a few places I need to go back and pad in actions between dialogue branches, but it's definitely tedious.

 

[Sii]

I like to interlace throat punches every now and then. Just to remind the reader that I'm getting tired of thinking up dialogue.