At EDF, we get a lot of “Dialogue only” stories. These are stories with zero description, just (at minimum) two characters talking to each other.
I can count on one hand how many of them we’ve ever accepted (and have fingers to spare).
The biggest reason for rejection? Both voices sounded the same. With dialogue only stories, you’re basically saying, as a writer, that you’re so good at writing dialogue that you don’t need all that mundane stuff like description, setting, and plot. You can do it all in the spoken word. Well, if you can’t even make two character sound different from each other, you’re in trouble. As an editor, I should be able to point to a random line of dialogue and say, oh, that’s character A speaking. I can tell because of his/her (way of speaking/accent/personality/etc).
Other good reasons for rejection are:
- You’ve inserted a random line of description at the end. If you have description at all, you need it everywhere. Otherwise it just looks like you tried to write a dialogue only story and failed.
- More than two characters. Two is hard enough. I’ve never seen a successful dialogue only story with three characters. The reader just gets confused.
- Info dumps. Just because it’s in dialogue, doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.
- The story sucks. A “clever” format like dialogue-only can’t save this.
Anyways, dialogue only pieces make for great exercises, but poor stories. Disagree? Prove me wrong. And then submit that proof to EDF’s slush pile.
13 Comments(+Add)
Hmm…now you have me questioning the 95% dialog story I sent you. Maybe I should have left it all dialog. Too late now.
I agree that it makes a good exercise. Want to see it done well? Check out the April contest winner at coolstuff4writers.com I entered that contest and lost. I humbly concede that the winning story was better. Very clever.
I don’t disagree, it’s hard to pull off.
Have you ever seen the books of Parnell Hall, though? He writes entire novels like that, and they work pretty well.
No, I haven’t read Parnell Hall, though I might have to look him up now.
When dialogue only works, it works brilliantly, just be aware that the odds are stacked against you.
Scott, I wouldn’t worry about it. These “rules” like any writing rules, are meant to be broken…
It takes talent to break rules well. I know I have talent, but is it the right talent?
I seldom worry about small-scale problems in stories. That’s why God created the rewrite request.
Scott,
Dave Farland says that you should absolutely worry about small-scale problems in stories, because for everyone you detect, there’s probably at least one more you missed.
About talent, yeah you probably have it (you’d need it to be waitlisted at Clarion), but to pull off dialogue only you need a healthy does of skill alongside it.
Jordan,
Allow me to clarify. I worry about small-scale problems; I don’t let myself obsess over them. Like here, if I have two lines of non-dialog that unbalance the story, I’ll let an editor mention it. I also reread each story after it is rejected to get a fresh feel for it (I avoid reading stories currently under consideration) and let the rejection process help improve the story.
Well, that only works with markets with personal rejections. On Duotrope, out of hundreds and hundreds of markets, I think only 40 have personal feedback and most of them are closed.
I very much agree. I’ve read some good dialogue only stories, but not a lot.
I’ve read my share of slush on Baen’s Bar and have seen that often enough.
Even though I agree, my rough drafts tend to tend in this direction. When a conversation starts I tend to want to get right to the words, but before sending it to critiquers I need to go back and take the time to insert beats for pacing and characterization.
“More than two characters. Two is hard enough. I’ve never seen a successful dialogue only story with three characters. The reader just gets confused.”
Hmmmm, something challenging…
You might just be able to pull it off, Scott. And lord knows it’s been too long since we’ve seen one of your horrors in the slush.
As soon as I finish the final episode of my podcast novel, I’ll get right on that story.
I suppose its indicative of the whore-like nature of my existence that I couldn’t read this post without pointing out my own dialogue-only short story, which is here if anyone has a few minutes and there’s nothing good on the youtube.